What a beautiful movie!

The first must-see film of the year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

William Yang is one of Australia's most celebrated photographers, especially in portraiture. He's a Brisbane local boy (born in Nth Queensland, also raised and studied in Brisbane) - he's also become a friend since I first saw "Sadness" performed live as a "monologue with slides".In Performance William stands to the side of the stage facing the audience with slide-projector remote in hand, and with a mirror clipped to his lectern, so he can be sure what slides are displaying. The order and pace of the slides is just as practised and purposeful as the dialogue.We feel strong empathy with both William and his photographed subjects, because we know that they are people he personally interacted with, and because we're given personal and intimate detail of his relationship with them.Just as his subjects trusted him implicitly, we also know that William is holding nothing back. He knows exactly what emotional buttons to push, as well as how to set up a joke perfectly - so even though some aspects of "Sadness" will necessarily crunch the heart of the audience, William also gives us good reason to celebrate life in all its cultural and biological diversity - and inevitability.Tony Ayres has done a truly remarkable job in adapting "Sadness" to film. All of the original performance elements are there, plus relevant moving film, fine music and warming cinematic flourishes like the blue-screened scenes of travelling north in "Shirl" (William's car). We also glimpse more of William himself."Sadness" encourages us to see beauty and a story in every aspect of a face and to be brave enough to live, love and die with dignity.Sadness deservedly won the audience award as Most Popular Film at the 1999 Brisbane International Film Festival.

William Yang seems like a nice enough Chinese-Australian photographer. The slide show of his family and friends is pleasantly bittersweet. I agree with Mr. Yang that all the AIDs deaths, and the murder of his uncle were wrong. I understand his quietly stated sorrow and loss. I, however, would have rather seen a movie instead of this slide show on film. The subject matter was of some interest to me, but the movie itself could not keep my attention. My biggest complaint was that this felt like a vanity publication -- albeit made by someone else; not the subject. That is: it felt like someone wanted to be nice to Mr. Yang rather than working at making a compelling movie.