A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (San qiang pai an jing qi)
Synopsis
In Alan Cumming’s solo directorial debut Suffering Man’s Charity, Cumming plays John Vandermark, a failed composer turned music teacher with a weakness for impoverished young men of great aspirations. When handsome dilettante Sebastian St. Germain (David Boreanaz: Buffy, Angel, Bones) enters his life claiming to be a novelist, Vandermark is stirred to help him in any way he can. But Vandermark soon grows bitter when his charity is abused. The final blow comes with the discovery that every woman in town is getting a piece of Sebastian with not a scrap left over for his gracious host. What ensues is a malevolent comic bow to the Grand Guignol, offering a fresh twist on the hustler/john power dynamic. With echoes of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and the Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter 60s film classic The Servant, the edgy and stylish Suffering Man’s Charity, teeming with juicy theatrical brio, offers fierce performances from Boreanaz and the inimitable chameleon Cumming. Henry Thomas, impressively suave, co-stars, with spirited cameos from Anne Heche, Karen Black, Carrie Fisher, and Jane Lynch.
