A brief teaser trailer for Luc Besson‘s The Lady has arrived in advance of its Toronto International Film Festival premiere. The film features Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as Burmese pro-democracy activist, leader and political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi and tells the story of her ten year house arrest and her relationship with her husband, Michael Aris (David Thewlis). It’s described as “a story of devotion and human understanding set against a backdrop of political turmoil that continues today.”
The Toronto Film Festival provides this bit of background information on Suu Kyi:
In 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to her native Burma from Oxford, where she had lived for many years. Her visit was prompted by news of her mother’s deteÂriorating health, but the country was in an uproar. Burma’s military leader, General Ne Win, stepped down, and protestors quickly filled the streets of Naypyidaw to demand democratic reform. Those protestors were beaten and their message suppressed. The charismatic and politically engaged Suu Kyi, whose father was a martyr for Burmese indeÂpendence, found herself called upon to lead Burma out from under the shadow of miliÂtary dictatorship as the General Secretary of the newly formed National League for Democracy. In 1990, a general election was held and the NLD won, but Suu Kyi was held under house arrest by the military junta. She remained a prisoner in her own home for most of the next fifteen years.
The film was shot largely in Thailand and Burma and if the above image and some of the brief imagery in this teaser is any indication it looks like Besson has filled the screen with bright and vivid colors to tell his story. Hopefully I can fit it into my Toronto schedule.
Have a look at the teaser below and I have added one more image to my gallery for the film right here.
The Lady is the extraordinary story of Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband, Michael Aris. It is also the story of the peaceful quest of the woman who is at the core of Burma’s democracy movement. Despite distance, long separations, and a dangerously hostile regime, their love endures until the very end. It’s a story of devotion and human understanding set against a backdrop of political turmoil that continues today. The Lady was written over a period of three years by Rebecca Frayn. Interviews with key figures in Aung San Suu Kyi’s entourage enabled her to reconstruct for the first time the true story of Burma‟s national heroine.
