Over the past three weeks Bank of America BAC

The benchmark Nikkei .N225 gained 230.59 points to 8,253.90after falling to a one-month low under 8,000 on Thursday, whilethe broader Topixclimbed 2.8 percent to 818.67 (Reporting by Elaine Lies) Stocks Asian Markets. BEIJING, Jan 16 (Reuters) - China's sovereign wealth fund hasbeen buying shares in the country's three largest commercialbanks, the fund's chairman Lou Jiwei told reporters on Friday. Stocks Mergers & Acquisitions Funds News ETFs News China China said in September that Central Huijin, a domesticinvestment arm of the country's wealth fund, would buy shares inIndustrial and Commercial Bank of China (601398.SS) (1398.HK),Bank of China (3988.HK) (601988.SS) and China Construction BankCorp (0939.HK) (601939.SS). Lou said on Friday that it had been continuously buyingshares in the three banks. Reuters reported in September thatCentral Huijin had bought 2 million Shanghai-listed shares ineach of them. CIC was closely watching the selling of the Chinese banks'Hong Kong-listed shares by foreign investors, Lou added.

Over the past three weeks, Bank of America (BAC.N), UBS(UBSN.VX) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) have all sold orreduced their stakes in Chinese partner banks. Lou also said that CIC would continue to invest abroad, buthe declined to name any specific assets or targets. (Reporting by Zhou Xin, Editing by Jacqueline Wong) Stocks Mergers & Acquisitions Funds News ETFs News China. PARIS (Hollywood Reporter) - "Et Apres," the French title of Gilles Bourdos' bilingual movie "Afterwards," also can be translated as "So What" That's the response one is tempted to make to this ponderous rumination on life, death and the meaning of existence that fails either to convince or to truly engage. FilmBut the film's high-profile cast, lush romanticism, limpid lensing and modish New Age sensibility mean that with astute marketing, it may yet find an audience on both sides of the Atlantic.

The film opened January 14 in France.Its premise shows promise: After undergoing a near-death experience resulting from a car accident, Nathan (Romain Duris) has become a successful lawyer but is divorced from his wife, Claire (Evangeline Lilly), for reasons that are not at first explained. One day he is visited by a mysterious figure calling himself Dr. Kay (John Malkovich), who claims to be able to identify people who are about to die by an aura of bright light that surrounds them.Assuming that Kay's attentions mean that his own days are numbered, Nathan seeks to debunk the doctor's claims, particularly when he singles out an old flame, Anna (Pascale Bussieres), as being next in line for the chop.The movie builds, via a revelation that Nathan's break with his wife was caused by his inability to handle the loss of his infant son, to a surprise ending that should move us more than it does. But in getting there the film tends to lose its way and much of the spectator's goodwill. Roadblocks include a lot of portentous philosophizing of the gather-ye-rosebuds variety and heavy-handed symbolism involving swans and swan songs and flowers that bloom only one day in the year.