Director Khyentse Norbu’s fifth feature is in production on location in Nepal. Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache is being filmed by noted Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing, best known for his work with world cinema legends Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-Wai.
The story is about Tenzin, an ambitious and worldly man—highly skeptical about a sudden, mysterious threat to his life—who must find an exceptional and magical woman if he is to survive more than seven days. He is driven to create the best coffee shop in Nepal, and reluctantly, he also follows his mother’s deepest wish that he learn a traditional but dying Tibetan song art in which she had excelled. While obsessively pursuing his ambition, Tenzin is suddenly tormented by peculiar and recurring dreams and images that friends and seers tell him signal his imminent death.
Realized sages and ancient texts advise that only finding a dakini can save his life or else he will die. Tenzin disparages both the prediction and the advice as foolish superstition. But no matter how skeptical we are, the reality of death—and especially our own—makes us paranoid and panicky. And so, Tenzin soon embarks on a desperate search for this “very special woman” that brings him face to face with his own neurosis and attachments, and with the speed, frenzy, distraction, and rational limitations of modern life.
In a director’s statement, Norbu says, “In a world that is becoming increasingly mechanized and automated, a world that is on the verge of creating artificial intelligence, and a world in which superstition is frowned on, I try in this film to explore some of the last genuine residues of Tibetan mysticism.
“With rare exceptions like the character of Master of the Left Hand Lineage in this film, who is based on an exceptional living master, these traditional beliefs and ways of behaving and looking at the world are increasingly rare even among Tibetans, and today carry little if any weight.
“And yet, I believe this ancient wisdom, which reflects the Buddhist view of reality, has something vital to offer our modern world. Especially I see its age-old respect for and celebration of feminine energy as absolutely crucial in these volatile times, and so I intend this film to express some of the ways that energy has traditionally been summoned.”
Norbu, known in the Tibetan Buddhist world as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, previously wrote and directed The Cup, Travellers & Magicians, Vara: A Blessing, and Hema Hema: Sing Me A Song While I Wait. He is also the founder of Khyentse Foundation, a multinational charity focused on education, and 84,000, a massive translation undertaking.
Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache official website.
