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The HIV/AIDS pandemic is not often discussed in movies, and certainly not with the head-on veracity that “3 Needles” dares to attempt. The film, which is opening in limited release on Worlds AIDS Day, Dec. 1, depicts the seemingly futile fight against the unconscionable disease, and does so with a harsh, uncompromising reality fraught with ineptitude and ignorance.
“It’s very much real life and very current,” said Lucy Liu, the star of the tri-layered movie’s Chinese portion. She plays Jin Ping, an unsanctioned blood runner who travels from village to village offering five dollars to peasants for their blood. The blood is then sold on the black market, meaning the disease is transferred throughout the country with the blood and throughout the village via unsanitary needles.
Two other vignettes comprise the film: one stars Shawn Ashmore and Stockard Channing as a son and mother in Montreal who are dealing with his contraction of the virus, while the other stars Chloe Sevigny, Sandra Oh and Olympia Dukakis as nuns in an African village who are fighting an uphill battle against dirty needles and tribal superstitions (one of which says that the only way to get rid of the disease is to have sex with a virgin).
“The undercurrent of the movie is about AIDS and HIV,” Liu said when asked about the talent drawn to the project, “but I think the reason people wanted to be a part of the movie is because it expresses a human aspect of the disease. It also addresses the fact that AIDS spreads in a number of forms.”
The role is an interesting career choice for Liu, who was already fluent in the Mandarin Chinese needed for the part because her parents are Chinese. “It’s important to have variety in your career, and not get stuck doing one thing,” Liu said, noting that she made the film after shooting “Kill Bill” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,” but before “Lucky Number Slevin,” which was released earlier this year. “Anything I work on I want to be special and meaningful.”
Liu was so committed to the project that she and writer/director Thom Fitzgerald worked on her role for more than a year, during which time her character was given AIDS and made pregnant.
Liu, who has never been pregnant but has visited pregnant women suffering from HIV/AIDS while doing charity work, said it’s important to be open to new and different projects because in the end it’s ultimately about the experience of making the movie, not the movie itself.
“I enjoy doing something I care about that’s challenging,” she said. “The work should be in the moment. You can’t control what will happen during editing, and nor do you want to. That’s why it’s not as much about your career as it is what you’re doing in that moment.”
Fitzgerald was very happy with Liu’s performance. “Lucy approached the character with great respect and she chose to play the character as most vulnerable to ignorance,” he said, noting that AIDS/HIV are never mentioned directly, and most of the time those suffering don’t understand situation’s severity. “She dug into the depths of fear when one faces the helplessness of a nameless, faceless illness.”
While Liu will return to Hollywood in January with the release of “Code Name: The Cleaner,” a comedy, she’s disheartened that the problems of the “faceless illness” are not going away any time soon.
“This is not something that’s been resolved in the least bit,” she said. “We have such a long way to go. Hopefully it’s something we can affect change in, and to bring that message to our community.”
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