Michelle Yeoh Met With Standing Ovation at AFI Fest Premiere in the Lady

Friday evening within the 2011 AFI Fest, the seats inside the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre weren’t quite filled to ease of the gala screening of Luc Besson’s The Lady, which received mildly lukewarm reviews round the festival circuit. But, since it did at its premiere in Toronto, the biopic of Burmese democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi received a standing ovation at AFI Fest — one clearly directed mainly at star and Oscar hopeful Michelle Yeoh. The film itself, a extended, somewhat pedestrian retelling in the encounters of Suu Kyi just like a British housewife and mother-switched-opposition leader, is slightly less concerned about the politics of the heroine in comparison towards the sacrifices she and her family made as, throughout the time of two decades, she was placed directly under house arrest by Burma’s military junta and progressively separated from her family people. The entire final third in the film is centered by her marriage to Dr. Michael Aris (David Thewlis, who’s given a lot of rope — and plays opposite themselves as Aris’s twin in one fancy scene), highlighting Suu Kyi’s emotional anguish and Sophie’s choice. See Michelle Yeoh, Leonardo diCaprio, plus much more stars in Movieline’s 2011 AFI Fest gallery. But whilst Suu Kyi’s political motivations are opaque, and her villainous Burmese military competitors cartoonish, Yeoh’s stoic, elegant performance, as well as the film’s noble intentions, ensure it is all helpful. (For just about any much much deeper film account of Burma’s modern troubling political and human rights conditions, start with the 2008 doc Burma VJ and vary from there.) Joining Luc Besson and co-star Thewlis within the AFI Fest premiere, Yeoh briefly walked onstage through the film’s review of wave for the audience. When the lights elevated, with Sade’s “Soldier of love” — a distinctive choice, but hey, it’s Luc Besson — playing inside the finish credits, it progressively dawned round the audience that Yeoh used to be sitting incorporated within this. All eyes switched towards her, and section by section everybody else hopped towards the foot in rapt appreciation — having a measure adoring Suu Kyi vicariously, at the same time. Stay up-to-date for further Movieline coverage in the 2011 AFI Fest. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.