The Strangling (絞殺, Kaneto Shindo, 1979)

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In some ways, the themes of Kaneto Shindo’s The Strangling (絞殺, Kosatsu) may have seemed a little outdated even on its original release in 1979, though it was in fact based on a recent event in which a boy from an elite high school was murdered by his father because he had become violent towards his parents and they feared he would eventually become a criminal, while it was also reported that that he was being sexually abused by his mother. The main controversy may be, however, that the father was given a significantly lighter sentence than might be expected with a crime of this magnitude, partly because his wife had strongly supported him in court.

The film’s title implies that a noose has already been placed around Tsutomu’s (Tsutomu Kariba) neck and it’s the society that is slowly strangling him. His family moved into this area because he succeeded in getting into a prestigious high school which, they hope, will enable him to win a place at Tokyo University and then be set for life. It is never really clear what Tsutomu wants, though it seems he’s growing resistant to the pressure that’s being placed on him. The 4:3 screen ratio seems to bear out this sense of claustrophobia as Tsutomu is regularly cautioned not to get left behind and if that you fall from the ladder before reaching the top, that’s it, you’re out of the game.

His father, Yasuzo (Ko Nishimura), echoes this survival of the fittest mentality in remarking it doesn’t matter how much pesticide they drop, it just makes the flies who survive stronger. If his generation isn’t strong enough, it’ll perish. When a girl in Tsutomu’s class, Hatsuko, takes her own life after killing her abusive stepfather, the other students are asked for their opinions, but they don’t really have any. She was a rival, not a friend, many of them say. They’re all in competition for places at top universities, and now there’s one less person standing in their way. Several of the students call the girl stupid, one remarking that she should simply have tried to manipulate her stepfather instead to turn the situation to her advantage. “We can’t help students who can’t hack it,” the teacher callously explains.

In any case, with all this studying, the kids haven’t had any time to develop social skills or emotional bonds with other people which might be one reason that Tsutomu has become alienated from his parents. The unnaturally loud sound of their walking on en masse to school takes on an ominous quality. Tsutomu becomes interested in a girl, but tries to rape her, and is then confused when she starts avoiding him. The film seems to forget that this happened as the girl, Hatsuko, calls Tsutomu after murdering her stepfather and asks him to have purifying sex with her in the snow before she takes her own life. Hatsuko’s death seems to deepen Tsutomu’s resentment towards the older generation, though he’s incapable of seeing that perhaps he isn’t much different given that he also tried to force himself on Hatsuko. 

He sees his father as the same as hers in that he accuses him of raping his mother, attacking the idea of patriarchal marriage in part because there’s was arranged and not a love match. Meanwhile, he feels Yasuzo to be a hypocrite and is ashamed of him because he continues to live on the inherited wealth of his father. Unlike the other parents, Yasuzo owns a small cafe which would not ordinarily permit living in this kind of home in this kind of area nor support their comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle. This class-based resentment perhaps also makes Tsutomu feel generally out of place, while also convincing him that his father is a small and petty man which might not be entirely unfair. 

He has a boy working in his cafe who has failed the entrance exam for Tokyo University several times and has now decided to go wherever he gets in on the next round. For Yasuzo, maybe he’s just a fly who didn’t make it. When he catches him stealing from the till, he extends him no compassion and doesn’t stop to ask why he did or if there’s any way he could help. He doesn’t offer him the opportunity to pay the money back and is offended when the boy pleads with him not to tell his teachers or the police because he doesn’t want his mother, whom he’s been sending money home to, to know what he’s become. Rather, Yasuzo makes a point of humiliating him by making the boy kneel and apologise before his female waitress ends up quitting too in solidarity with the belittled worker.

It seems to be this incident that makes clear to Tsutomu that his father uses violence and status to control those around him, but his relationship with his mother is problematic too in that he partly blames her for allowing herself to be dominated by his father while her latent incestuous desire for him sees her mollycoddling her son by sucking on his finger when he cuts himself though he is nearly a grown man. Eventually he tries to rape her too, which is equal parts an attempt to overcome his father and misplaced sexual desire.

Throughout it all, the parents are surrounded by a greek chorus of noisy neighbours who are also all firmly on the father’s side. The implication seems to be that they think they did the right thing in ending their son’s life because he’d already veered off the path and was not going to become a respectable member of society. Though an attempt to take Tsutomu to a doctor only ends up with a diagnosis of “adolescence” which he says can be cured through “good parenting”, the judge seems to have some sympathy for the father with the implication that he’s cleaned up his own mess in being unable to raise his son to be a model citizen. The films seems uncertain whether it agrees with him, but is otherwise convinced that the whole society has gone to pot. When Tsutomu smashes up his father’s pointlessly expensive Buddhist altar, it’s like he takes a bat to the patriarchal order, but in the end achieves very little of anything at all as his rebellion appears to generate only more pain and suffering until the system finally snuffs it out. 

Goodbye, Hello (あなたと私の合言葉 さようなら、今日は, Kon Ichikawa, 1959)

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A pair of young women reassess their views on marriage when one breaks off a long-term engagement and the other unexpectedly falls for her spurned fiancé in Kon Ichikawa’s witty comedy, Goodbye, Hello (あなたと私の合言葉 さようなら、今日は, Anata to Watashi no Aikotoba: Sayonara, Konnichiwa). Exploring a change of social mores in the late 1950s as the economy improved and it became easier for women to lead more independent lives, the film ends with a sense of liberation as the heroine’s desire to reject marriage in favour of self-fulfilment is validated by her departure for America to study abroad at her company’s expense.

On the other hand, it’s a lack of direct communication that causes most of the issues as everyone seems to want someone else to explain their feelings to a third person rather than frankly stating their desires. Kazuko (Ayako Wakao), a woman with an engineering degree working for Nissan Motors, is subject to an arranged marriage set up by her father and his friend that she will marry his son, Hanjiro, who has since moved to Osaka. She wants to break it off, she says because her father can’t look after himself, and asks her old university friend Umeko (Machiko Kyo), who also lives in Osaka, to explain it to him plainly because she is someone who is good at that sort of thing.

Umeko shares Kazuko’s rather low opinion of marriage. She thinks that all men are idiots and marriage is only for dim women who can’t by on their own. For some reason, however, she is quite smitten with Hanjiro and immediately changes her mind. However, her adoptive brother who was brought in to inherit her family’s sushi business, has always assumed she’d eventually marry him, which is why she’s consistently turned down even promising proposals from various suitors despite growing close to aging out of the marriage market. Meanwhile, Kazuko’s air stewardess Michiko has a crush on their over helpful neighbour, Tecchan, though he is actually interested in Kazuko and just assumes she will also be interested in him if he can finally find a steady job after graduating from university.

The men are both more conservative and more romantic. They make a lot of assumptions about women’s feelings and intentions, the chief among being that will ultimately want to become wives and mothers, but they also reject arranged marriages and say they want to marry for love. Of course, they may also be a way of resisting commitment and rebelling against their parents’ control, but they also seem to be interested in romantic fulfilment in a way that is unimportant to some of the women. At its most cynical, the film seems to say that in the end, anyone will do and marriage isn’t much different from a job application in which both parties weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of each candidate and make a rational decision of which offers the best terms. Some fear that Kazuko is held back because her widowed father is incapable of looking after himself in a society which inadvertently infantilises men, but their solution is not that he should learn how to cook and do laundry, rather that he should simply marry again. Hanjiro similarly remarks that he could overcome the barriers to Kazuko’s marriage if he had money by hiring a housekeeper for her father while he still lives with his widowed mother who presumably takes care of him.

But in the end, Kazuko is just using her father as an excuse because what she really wants is to continue with her career. The company have offered her the opportunity of studying abroad in America, but she is afraid to accept it because of the social expectations placed on her. A repeated motif sees Umeko tell her to take off her glasses so that she sees the world less clearly and is almost seduced by conventionality. Her father pressures her to marry, but at the same time does not actually want her to, because he does need someone to take of him and is emotionally unready to let go of his children.

But Kazuko also feels as if she needs her father’s blessing to go abroad and just as she was unable to break off her engagement in person or through a letter, is unable to ask for it until her father volunteers it for himself having realised he may be holding her back in another way. Nevertheless, his solution is that Michiko and Tecchan should move into the attic, even if it’s Tecchan who will presumably be handling the domestic chores such as cooking and laundry. Umeko too seems to have found a third way, marrying a salaryman to become a salaryman’s wife, but still planning to open a branch of her family’s restaurant in a Tokyo department store. Each of the women gets what they want and the men are sort of forced to go along with it, but somehow everyone seems to have ended up in the right place with Kazuko’s decision to reject marriage entirely validated as she seeks new horizons in the wider world.

Bridge of Japan (日本橋, Kon Ichikawa, 1956)

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Punishment Room, released in 1956 as Daiei’s attempt to get in on the Sun Tribe phenomenon, had provoked a moral panic that brought the whole short-lived movement to a close. In considering his next film, Ichikawa consulted with Daiei executive Matsutaro Kawaguchi, who is also the father of Punishment Room’s star Hiroshi Kawaguchi, and was offered the chance to direct one of two relatively safe and subdued literary adaptations, either Izumi Kyoka’s Nihonbashi, or Kafu Nagai’s Okamezasa. Ichikawa chose Nihonbashi (日本橋), though his wife and screenwriter Natto Wada feared adapting it maybe beyond her capabilities.

The film is generally known under the The Bridge of Japan in English-speaking territories. This is either an attempt to suggest a wider thematic importance that extends across the nation, or an overly literal translation of a place name. In any case, the significance of Nihonbashi is that, during the time the film is set, it was known as an area where there were many high-class geisha houses. On the other hand, Izumi was well known for incorporating supernatural themes in his work, which  is why the film opens like a ghost story with the curtain rising on a dark and gloomy alleyway through which a geisha walks until she finally dissolves leaving only a creepy song and the sound of her geta rattling along on the cobbles. 

The messages seems to be that this is a place that consumes women. The ghost is said to be that of Owaka who, according to rumour, cheated on her husband who left her after which she died of tuberculosis. Ambitious geisha Okoh (Chikage Awashima) has just moved into Owaka’s former giesha house, apparently unperturbed by its grim history or the the possibility that it is effectively cursed. Geisha come to a miserable end if they act selfishly, according to one of Okoh’s clients who will essentially prove correct further sealing Okoh’s unhappy fate. As is common in these tales she has an entirely one-sided rivalry with local favourite Kiyoha (Fujiko Yamamoto) who her is total opposite in terms of personality. Kiyoha is kind, gentle, and dislikes her life as a geisha, not because she disapproves of it, but because of the moral compromises it requires her to make and the happiness that it denies her.

She has taking a liking to a regular customer, university professor Shin, but when he asks her to marry him, she has no choice but to refuse. Then again, Shin’s proposal is seemingly driven by his incestuous desire for his older sister, who, perhaps having realised this, has disappeared from his life apparently in shame in having become the mistress of a married man to provide for his education. Shin then bears out a sense of hypocrisy in the relationship between men and geisha in that he insists he has never seen has as one but only as his sister who was of course another woman sexually exploited for material gain. As Kiyoha is unable to marry him because she must also financially support her mother and an illegitimate daughter, as well as being indebted to her primary patron, they will not meet again as a geisha and a client.

Okoh, meanwhile, has a tendency to pick up things Kiyoha as dropped as a way of getting back her meaning she is now determined to become Shin’s lover, though he is not interested in her. After she helps in him out with a predicament with a local policeman in which she claims to be his wife, she really considerers herself to be so, though again one-sidedly. She then faces the same thing with a clingy client, Daikichi, she nicknames “Red Bear,” who has convinced himself, one-sidedly, that she is his wife despite also having a legal wife and child.

Red Bear is presented somewhat grotesquely and really takes on the position of a monster within the story. He was once a wealthy seafood wholesaler from Hokkaido who set up shop in Tokyo before an economic downturn which has also impacted the geisha world. This, along with his foolish infatuation with Okoh has ruined him financially and may also have contributed to the later death of his wife which leads him to abandon his infant son ironically dropping him off at Kiyoha’s knowing she will care for him though she rejected Red Bear on the grounds of his ugliness. Driven into a kind of madness, he now subsists on grubs and maggots that live on his distinctive but poorly made bearskin coat.

Okoh is also driven into madness when Shin decides to become a wandering pilgrim and search for his sister in order to ease the tension between Okoh, Red Bear, and Kiyoha. For her, Shin may represent a way out of this geisha world as a respectable man’s wife, something which is otherwise unobtainable to her. While in some senses, a geisha could claim greater independence as a single woman through running her own house rather than being dependent on a patron, she may also be denied the possibility of a settled domestic life or romantic fulfilment. Even if Kiyoha cannot escape her life as a geisha, she does at least have her daughter and comes to dote on Red Bear’s son, though without knowing who his parents were. 

Her parting with Shin (Ryûji Shinagawa), who does not belong in this world and has undergone a religious conversion in deciding to become a monk permanently having given up on looking for his sister and symbolically accepting Okoh as his wife, is then bittersweet but not as much of a tragedy as the fate of Okoh. The geisha house appears to have been purified, released from its cursed legacy under the ownership of Kiyoha even if geisha gossiping about the constant flow of people in this ever changing area. The alleyway which was once dark and gloomy, is now brightly lit and has lost its sense of ominousness, if otherwise seeming rather ordinary.

This was Ichikawa’s first colour film, though in order to recreate Izumi’s world he decided on a broadly grey colour palate for the props and sets, recreating all of the Meiji-era setting only to burn it down for real during the fiery climax. At that time, filming in colour also required additional lighting which meant that it was stiflingly hot on set. They eventually had to purchase industrial size air coolers of the kind that were only used in cafes, pushing up the production budget which was already high considering the painstaking attention to detail in the historical sets which included laying actual tracks to recreate the Meiji-era street car. Nevertheless, it all pays off in the exquisite visuals that bring that bring this world to life in all of its defeated hopes and melancholy. 

Fight Against Evil 3 (东北警察故事3, Yang Bingjia, 2026)

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Top cop Li Hongqi (returns for another holiday gone wrong in the third instalment of the Fight Against Evil series, and there is indeed some serious evil to be thought. Directed this time by Yang Bingjia rather than Qin Pengfei, Fight Against Evil 3 (东北警察故事3, Dōngběi jǐngchá gùshi)received a theatrical release in Mainland China rather than premiering on IQYI’s streaming service and so benefits from slightly higher production values and features a mild tonal shift that sends the film into action comedy territory.

In fact the first “fight” takes place off-screen as Honqi casually takes down a man who’s taken his wife hostage so that he can finish a telephone call with the rather demanding mother-in-law (Diama Lin Xiaojie) he hasn’t actually me though he and his wife Touzi have already been married for two years. Having become estranged from her birthmother, Touzi tells him not to bother with her because she’s a handful, though Hongqi is keen to be a good son-in-law and hopes to broker a reconciliation by agreeing to his mother-in-law’s madcap plan to stage a second wedding in her hometown without actually telling Touzi until she gets there. 

In any case, Hongqi is immediately distracted when Xinxin (Ma Qianyi) , a cheerful teenage girl he met on the plane, is reported missing, suspected of having fallen victim to traffickers after failing to reach her grandfather’s house. Hongqi feels personally responsible because he said he’d take her, but had to leave after hearing that his mother-in-law had been arrested for causing trouble in a cafe. Nevertheless, the mother-in-law proves to be unusually well connected and helps him track down the local crime kingpin whom she apparently knew when he was a snivelling child getting beaten up for his lunch money. 

On his arrival in the town, Hong’s old friend Sun Biao (Cui Zhijia) tells him that times are different now and they have to do law enforcement in a more “civilised” way, which might suggest that things work differently here compared to the city, though as it turns out Hong’s skills are still in demand as he finds himself repeatedly getting into brawls with the local bad guys. Even Baio also gets into the swing of things wanting to prove that his fighting skills are still as good as Hongqi’s. This is, however, violence very much in the service as justice as everyone involved in the fights is already an active participant in the world of crime and the violence is being used to subdue rather than interrogate them.

Meanwhile, the trafficking gang seems to be an offshoot of some kind of cult that attracts people who’ve encountered financial ruin due to contemporary social issues from being scammed to failing in business or developing a gambling problem. Most of the lower-ranking members are doing this more out of desperation and have abandoned their humanity as a means of survival, not that it excuses what they’ve done. The leader, meanwhile, experienced a tragedy of her own which seems to have affected her mind and has made her especially attached to young Xinxin who otherwise proves plucky and resourceful with her repeated attempts to escape from the gang.

Despite the grimness of the subject matter, the film finds plenty of opportunities for comedy not least in the zany antics of Hongqi’s mother-in-law who also has a justice-loving heart and at one point takes off to catch the kidnappers herself on her moped. There’s a fundamental absurdity to Hong’s existence in which he’s been yet again drawn into a case while supposedly on holiday while attempting to keep his demanding mother-in-law happy and keeping the whole thing secret from wife in the hope he can either bamboozle her into taking part or she will arrive and talk her mother out of it. This sense of absurdity also carries over into some of the fight scenes in which Hongqi has to fight off an entire gang while his mother-in-law hides under a table in a pool hall or has to go undercover in a club, despite looking the most like a policeman it’s possible to look without actually wearing a uniform.

It is not, however, all slapstick and still features some seriously impressive action sequences. The film also makes some attempt to mine humour in the decidedly unfunny customary series of title cards explaining that the nation is taking measures to combat human trafficking and explaining that everyone was caught and punished in accordance of law before finishing on a note that explains China has over two million police officers, which is intended to be reassuring but perhaps is also the exact opposite. Nevertheless, the film is a great deal fun as Hongqi and his mother-in-law fight off bad guys while simultaneously planning a wedding.

Fight Against Evil 3 screens 23rd August as part of Big Bad Film Fest.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese subtitles only)

Wings of Dread (万米危机, Ashton Chen Xiaolong & Qin Pengfei, 2026)

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Perhaps surprisingly, aeroplanes seem to be dangerous places in recent Chinese cinema. From the hardware failure of The Captain to Oxide Pang’s hijacking drama High Forces, something always seems to go seriously amiss when it comes to air travel. Streaming actioner Wings of Dread (万米危机, wàn mǐ wēijī) is the latest in this growing genre and once again carries a mildly patriotic message in praising the Chinese air police who are willing to put their lives on the line to ensure passenger safety.

Then again, former cop Chaoyang (Ashton Chen Xiaolong) may feel a little bit inferior after giving up his police career to become an aeroplane security officer in order to spend more time with his girlfriend, air stewardess Dong Lu (Nita), who also gave up her opportunity to work abroad. Dong Lu has evidently had enough of Chaoyang’s grumpy behaviour and moved out their flat, though he is carrying a ring he still hopes to give to her. Rushing to the airport in an attempt to convince her to move back in before her next flight, Chaoyang becomes distracted by a drug user and decides to take down their entire gang first. From a certain point of view, his priorities may be all wrong, though the main problem in the relationship seems to be that Chaoyang expects Dong Lu to be in stewardess mode all the time by being constantly cheerful and treating him like a prince without seeing her as a real person who needs to be able to switch off and relax after a long shift.

This relationship issue is never resolved in a concrete way but only through the action movie trope of Chaoyang’s proving his heroism by saving Dong Lu when the plane they’re both on after he flew to her destination to win her back is hijacked by a criminal gang. One of China’s most wanted has been arrested in a fictional South East Asian nation and is being escorted back to the mainland. Among the passengers, there are both undercover members of the gang planning to break him out and plain-clothes security officers ready to deal with any trouble. Slightly confusingly, the gang have also brought a bomb and are threatening to blow everyone up if the captain doesn’t fly to their chosen destination, which at the very least seems counterproductive and a little bit reckless on behalf of the crooks.

That the bomb got on board along with a lot of 3D printed plastic guns can be attributed to lax security procedures at the airport in the fictitious South East Asian nation, but the point is that this plane is well protected by Chinese air police. Villain Paquet (Iko Uwais) sneers that Chinese police are “pathetic”, which proves quite irritating to Chaoyang who immediately bounces back to win the fight and prove that they are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure passengers reach home safely even at the cost of their own lives. The passengers too are unusually co-operative after being made aware of the bomb threat, giving up their bags to form a barrier and even joining in with the final fight against the bad guys. 

Qin, who is known for his skill in shooting action sequences in confined spaces, does some of his finest work in a fight between a female officer and gang member set entirely within a toilet cubicle, while otherwise making full use of the environment as passengers grab tray tables to attack the hijackers who equally throw opponents over shelving units and smash their heads into arm rests. Casting top international action star Iko Uwais as the villain adds a degree of prestige unusual for a streaming film, though choosing to dub his voice seems like an odd decision, especially as all his dialogue is in English. Nevertheless, the film is impressively put together and largely transcends its streaming origins in scope and ambition despite the looseness of its plot and occasionally awkward attempts at humour. 

Wings of Dread screens 21st August as part of Big Bad Film Fest.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Match Monde (マッチモンド, Ryusuke Kurahashi, 2026)

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Scripted by Yugo Sakamoto, Ryusuke Kurahashi’s low-budget adaptation of the Shogo Horiuchi manga Match Monde seems to be aiming for a Baby Assassins vibe while placing a contemporary spin on the classic high school delinquents fighting manga. Unlike many similarly themed films, high school never actually features and most of the users of fighting app Match Monde appear to be long past high school age even if it’s supposed to be limited to those 18 and under. 

The title is a kind pun in that Match Monde operates in the same way as a dating app, though it allows members to find worthy opponents for fighting. Users can also monetise their pugilistic talents though taking the “bounty” from defeated opponents, or pick up tips through live streaming. It’s not really clear why Mikio (Kotaro Daigo) is on this app as he dislikes fighting and seems to be something of a coward. In the opening sequence, he waits outside pretending to play on his phone while his best friend Yuta is beaten up by a bullying gang of older kids that Mikio later hides in a bin to avoid. It’s while running away, however, that he bumps into Mahiro (Masayoshi Katsuki) who can’t really be bothered to fight anyone but gives Mikio some life advice to the fact that he should be fighting to protect something important rather than just to protect himself. 

Mahiro is a bit a stock character in these kinds of stories, walking around with a beatific smile permanently on his face and carrying a strangely vacant aura. Obviously, it turns out that he’s a top fighter and high school drop out who is willing to fight for Mikio after seeing him develop his resolve to stand up to the bullies rather than let his friend get beaten up on his own again. Like Baby Assassins, however, the film is perhaps a little bit more interested in the boys’ mundane lives than it is in the fighting. Mahiro ropes Mikio in to help out at a part-time job working in his childhood friend Suzuna’s cafe because he says he seems kind earnest, which is broadly true, while Mahiro struggles to knuckle down and work and fears letting his friend down in that way.

While it may have strongly homoerotic undertones, particularly in the relationship between sometime villain Mairu and his late “best friend” Kitano who was murdered after becoming a delinquent, the film’s humour is distinctly old school and in some ways spills over into sexism as the defeated bullies are seen acting in stereotypically feminine ways such as knitting scarves for each other. Meanwhile, Mahiro and Mikio aren’t really afraid of getting into fights with the delinquents, but are apparently terrified of being told off by Shizuna. 

The focus is indeed on traditional masculinity which is rooted in protecting those weaker than oneself, especially women, though here also avoiding becoming someone who deliberately picks on picks on easy targets to assert their dominance as Mikio had been doing. Perhaps the only reason he was on the app was to prove Yuta wrong when he called him a coward, though he quickly ends up being exploited by the bullies who force him to fight so they can take his winnings, as optimistic as that might be. As the so-called “Penniless King”, Mahiro comes to occupy the space of an underdog hero who isn’t even technically in the game, but ends up winning it anyway just by virtue of being a cool guy who’s good with his fists.

Speaking of which, the fight scenes are sometimes unpolished but generally well choreographed. There seems to be some attempt to set up a continuing series with repeated references to a friend who is no longer on the scene as well as an incongruous appearance by Danhi Kinoshita, the star of Takashi Miike’s Blazing Fists, seemingly in a background, non-speaking part as a random member of Mairu’s gang. The potential there is quite interesting given that the natural result of all these boys fighting is that they end up becoming friends, even as Mairu insists he wants to defeat all the delinquents in revenge for his friend’s death so he’ll be the only one left and they’ll cause no more harm. Who knew that what they were really fighting was loneliness? Maybe Match Monde is friendship app after all.

Match Monde screens 23rd August as part of Big Bad Film Fest.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Salmokji: Whispering Water (살목지, Lee Sang-min, 2026)

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Is there something a little bit uncanny about a manmade lake? Despite the sign warning of deep water and potential loss of life, the area surrounding the Salmokji reservoir is otherwise idyllic, its ominous “dead tree lake” name not withstanding. You wouldn’t necessarily know that it was only created in 1982 for the purpose of storing water for agricultural use. Its modernity seems slightly incongruous with the presence of a ghost.

Perhaps this is why it has become a tourist hotspot following the surprising success of Lee Sang-min’s low-budget indie horror Salmokji: Whispering Water (살목지), having previously mentioned on late-night TV show Midnight Horror Story. The location’s sense of eeriness ironically seems to stems from its disconnection from the modern world. A physicist who claimed not to believe in the supernatural reported that she nearly drove into the reservoir after her car’s GPS malfunctioned and subsequently suffered misfortune after visiting the area. The inability to get a phone signal or connect to cloud networks etc may of course be due to the fact that is surrounded by mountains and rocky terrain rather than the presence of a malevolent spiritual entity who is actively blocking digital signals. Yet its also true that the natural silence of this tranquil environment can be disquieting to those used to the ambient noise of a city.

In any case, within the world of the film the lake is a popular fishing destination as demonstrated by the couple visiting it in the opening sequence who are on what seems to be quite an early date in their relationship. The woman’s aversion to the worms used bait is also reflective of a new squeamishness regarding the natural environment that is also echoed when producer Su-in drops a box bait brought by her cameramen who were planning on staying behind once their job is done. Su-in’s irritation stems from a different source. They’re supposed to be here to work, and in fact to fix an urgent problem, though no one is taking it seriously and the team are largely behaving as if they’re here on a day trip. Junior producer Seong-bin has brought an intern with him he is clearly pursuing romantically, while she secretly plans to moonlight by filming footage for her personal horror vlog.

They’ve come to Salmokji because a ghostly figure has been spotted in a photo they uploaded, though it does not appear to have been one that was taken by them. As such, they urgently need to replace with a photo that is not cursed, because they’ve been getting complaints from the locals. It’s not really explained why they can’t just stop with deleting the original photo, but for some reason Su-in’s boss insists the image must replaced immediately. He even insists they stay overnight when it turns out further equipment is required and won’t reach them until after dark. This perhaps bears out another lingering horror in contemporary urban life with the pressure of workplace heirarchy and exploitative employment environments. The cameramen immediately resent Su-in for telling them off for bringing the fishing gear and subsequently reject her authority by disobeying her commands and belittling the idea of their actually being a ghost even when strange things start happening.

Su-in is also exposed as having tried to palm this job off on a colleague after visiting the area herself previously and deciding it was too creepy. Some suggest this is all then her fault, that the lake did this to make her come back and now she’s dragged all of them into it. She meanwhile seems to have been dealing with a potential crush on her team manager, a widower who may have been attracted to the lake by the rumours of it being somewhere that the worlds of the living and the dead intersect. The lake then also becomes a metaphor for a more literal drowning in grief, as if her co-worker willing embraced oblivion by walking into it in order to be reunited with his wife if in death rather than in life. The creepy old lady living nearby tells them to place a stone on a cairn and make a wish, but in reality this seals their fate just as getting even a toe wet later will. The real horror is that once marked by whatever is in the lake, there is no real possibility of escape and even if you think you’ve made it out, in reality you may not have. Incorporating some elements of food footage horror, Lee piled on the sense of supernatural dread right until the ambiguous ending that suggests all this has happened before and will happen again.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese & English subtitles)

All Wishes Come True! (八仙！, Mu Zhengyang, 2026)

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Long ago, a lantern defended humanity from the darkness. But now the lantern has gone missing, and the world is plagued by storms and turmoil. Those who can have fled to the glamorous city of Penglai where the mortal and immortal co-exist and destruction cannot follow. Mu Zhengyang’s animated epic All Wishes Come True! (八仙！, Bāxiān!) draws inspiration from the classic folktale Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea, dramatising it as an Oceans Eleven-esque caper in which a series of scrappy heroes must learn to put aside their greed for the greater good.

The very existence of Penglai is in itself a symptom of the problem. As some point out, the residents aren’t all that interested in finding the lantern because everything is fine in the city. The guardian gods who govern it, Fu Lu Shou, who represent luck, prosperity, and longevity, have become corrupt and are sitting on vast riches embezzled from citizens. Apparent hero Lü Dongbin believes that the lantern is hidden in their vault, but needs help to break in and retrieve it. He recruits local pickpocket Zhongli Quan, whom he believes reshaped the lantern to disguise it, on the promise of allowing him to take as much of the gold as he wants.

It turns out that Zhongli Quan was thrown out of the immortals academy for using an artefact to improve the lives of ordinary people suffering in a famine after prolonged drought. His master reprimands him that the vase is intended to help the elite, not a few peasants. He ironically curses Zhongli Quan that he will always be a thief and a liar, preventing him from living an honest life and forcing him into that of an outlaw. This has, in a way, made him cynical and greedy. The quest to retrieve the lantern presents an opportunity to break the curse and redeem himself, though Zhongli Quan always has half an eye on the gold. Lü Dongbin isn’t completely untainted either with the implication that he is the guardian who sold the lantern in a fit of pique having been passed over for promotion and is now trying to make it right by taking the lantern back. 

As such, the film presents an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist message along with an ant-corruption sentiment as this team of ordinary mortals attempts to go against the gods by outsmarting Fu Lu Shou to reclaim the lantern and lift and the curse on the wider society. Zhongli Quan’s cynicism is an extension of that which has infected ordinary people who have been encouraged to believe that greed is good. As he and Lü Dongbin forge an uneasy alliance, there is a constant push and pull between them as Lü Dongbin does his best to bring Zhongli Quan back from the dark side by retrieving the lantern. 

The gang ironically attract some attention as apparent “thief catchers” signalling the ways in which people are not always who they claim to be. Nevertheless, they find themselves having to live up to the expectations of being a “hero”, gradually swapping their cynicism for a genuine desire to help those around them. This act of deciding to do the right thing in defiance of the authorities is both quietly subversive and a counter to the greed and selfishness which taken hold across the world along with the elitism that defines life in Penglai. 

At the same time, it’s clear that the gang can only succeed by working together and utilising each of their unique skills in harmony. In the end, they prosper precisely by calling in an unexpected ally who helps them pull off another heist on the villain through misdirection and subterfuge. Like many similar recent animated takes on classic folklore, the film humorously layers the modern world onto the fantasy setting through the swirling cloud highways that surround the city and opening taxi chase along with the magic wristbands that secure entry to Penglai’s VIP area. That the gang are later made immortals precisely so that the authorities can take credit for their actions is another ironic touch, suggesting that they can not really transcend the forces that constrain them. Nevertheless, what remains is the poignant tale of brotherhood and redemption in the relationship between Lü Dongbin and Zhongli Quan that quietly makes plain that in the end we save each other and kindness will always be repaid.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese and English subtitles)

Crossing a Dawn (今晚正好, Zhao Badou, 2026)

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“Beijing is Beijing, no need to romanticise it,” according to the practically minded heroine of Zhao Badou’s romantic odyssey, Crossing a Dawn (今晚正好, jīnwǎn zhènghǎo). A little less zany than 2012’s similarly themed Lacuna, the heroes of Zhao’s tale of city serendipity are in their own ways yearning to believe in something beyond urban cynicism with its lack of affordable housing, dissatisfying dating app romance, scammers, and pressure to conform to socially defined notions of success.

In their own ways, Qiu (Ma Sichun) and Yuzhou (Edward Chen) are each displaced people struggling to get a foothold in the city. They spend the entire night wandering around in part because they can’t find anywhere to hook up. For various reasons that only will be disclosed in a final moment of mutual vulnerability, neither than take the other one home while they’re kicked out of a hotel when a receptionist figures out what they were planning on doing there. An attempt to borrow a friend’s apartment is also frustrated, firstly by nosy neighbours and the need to avoid waking her roommate, and then by the friend coming home unexpectedly after catching her boyfriend with another girl. Tinting (Lv Xingchen) hadn’t wanted to move in with him to preserve her own space and independence, only for him to complain it made him feel “insecure”.  

Qiu may seem cynical and materialistic, but in another way she is trying to exert a degree of control by asserting dominance over her dating life. Perhaps bearing out the superficiality of dating app culture, she seems to go for conventionality handsome men but is generally disappointed. This one wants to meet her in a supermarket, for some reason, but turns out to have been using an outdated photo. Qiu feels as if she’s once again been “scammed” by this duplicitous city, though her would be date may have an ironic point about ageism. He complains that he’s done a lot of interesting things in his life and is still the fun-loving and adventurous person he was in his youth, but no one gives him a chance. Qiu is saved from this encounter by Yuzhou, in the supermarket in search of somewhere to return his power bank, though their criticism of him turns out to be somewhat hypocritical given the extent to which both he and Qiu are misrepresenting themselves. After all, as Qiu later reflects, who can resist the temptation to make out their lives are a little more impressive than they really are if it’s just going to be for one night?

It’s clear that Qiu isn’t really looking for anything more than that. Her constant references to making money may seem cynical but also hint at the extent to which money is the only thing that can be relied on in this environment, even if others may try to con it out of you. Her desire to own her own apartment is symbolic of that root herself in this city and carve out a domestic space that’s hers alone. Yuzhou, meanwhile, says he prefers renting because it offers more freedom. In contrast to Qiu’s straightforward practicality, he is more soulful and romantic, countering Qiu’s desire for ownership by suggesting that the place doesn’t matter as long as you get to live with the person you love. 

Qiu may not, however, be quite as cynical as she seems so much as she is afraid to trust in this moment of city serendipity. Beijing beats you down, she says, like the woman still looking for a dog who went missing a year ago driven out of her mind by loneliness and disillusionment. Yuzhou has been here two years, but feels as if he’s achieved less than nothing. Their long walk through the city takes them from walk-up, multiple occupancy apartments to a vast, unoccupied mansion full of unused rooms watched over by one of Qiu’s previous hookups whose name she never found out. He too is experiencing romantic drama with a free-spirited young woman equally afraid to face her feelings. As the night wears on, the pair begin to generate a kind of intimacy that paves the way towards emotional authenticity. Whether this one magical night in the city, or the beginning of something more, they have at least crossed their own kind of dawn, now less guarded and more open to the possibilities of the world around them.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese & English subtitles)

The Crowded Train (満員電車, Kon Ichikawa, 1957)

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The Japan of 1957 moves like clockwork in Kon Ichikawa’s absurdist satire, The Crowded Train (満員電車, Manin densha). You can’t expect a seat to be there just because you want to sit down, according to go-getter Tamio, you have to fight for your place on the crowded train that is the post-war economy. His horologist father raised him to prize things like order, precision, and self-reliance, yet the irony is that in a nation like this, if everyone else’s clocks are wrong and only yours are correct, you may be better off resetting them.

Nevertheless, Tamio (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) comes to think of himself as part of the machine and does his best to slot himself into the rhythms of contemporary urban life. People move around in the same way as the bottles manufactured at the brewery where Tamio gets a job after graduating from a top university. But he soon learns fitting into the system requires a degree of compromise. On his first day at the office, he’s told off by his new boss for being overly efficient. He finished all his work before 10:30, but his daily quota is fixed and his productivity only makes things difficult for others. The head of brewery anticipates that increasing automation will allow them to increase efficiency through shedding personnel, only the unions and cultural practice won’t let them. Tamio is one of only three people was recruited for his skills. The other seven joining with him are nepotism hires that will likely drain resources due to their lack of ability, but will be promoted anyway because of their connections. 

In any case, he might have hoped for a better job after graduating from such a good university. A rational man like his father, Tamio meticulously works out how much he can expect to earn over a lifetime subtracting things likes taxes, insurance, and the costs of raising a family. It turns out, the salaryman life is rather disappointing and there’s relatively little reward at the end of it. His constant toothaches and mounting health problems are manifestations of his anxiety and buried desperation. He lives in a company dorm with no furniture surrounded by long corridors of identical rooms. Everyone leaves at the same time every morning to take their place on the train. His colleague Sarai (Eiji Funakoshi) tries to make friends with him, but also explains how most of the other men in the building have been ruined in one way or another by the salaryman life. One has returned to the dorm after his wife left him. Another has a heart condition, but has run through his sick leave and has no choice but to return to work. Tamio only got his position because the previous occupant of his room jumped from the window. 

Sarai says that he held off on making friends with Tamio because he was afraid of him. Graduates overthink things, he says, and are ill suited to the regimented life of a salaryman. The film opens with another kind of conveyor belt visualising the expansion of the educational sector beginning with a handful of graduates in the Meiji era to the present day in which there are so many the ceremony has to take place outdoors in the rain. Tamio loses his job after falling into a coma for month without giving prior notice and is told by a friend he asks for help that they just don’t need graduates from top universities. He’s eventually only able to get a job as a school caretaker by leaving his degree off resume, but is then abruptly fired when they find out. Despite the system apparently overproducing graduates it has no need for, all the teachers want their kids to university and are open to Tamio’s plan to set up school to teach people how to get in.

Meanwhile, Tamio’s father has since entered a mental institution and is apparently very happy there. Everyone else is mad except for me, he claims, but also appreciates the sense of order and precision he couldn’t find in the outside world. The doctors find it impossible tell patients apart from visitors suggesting lack of division between sanity and madness, while Tamio’s father had originally accused his mother of insanity simply for being cheerful. Cheerfulness or insanity seem to be the only ways out of this impossible situation as Tamio desperately tries to hold the roof on his shack during a storm while his mother is just happy to be able to live with her son and hopeful that her husband will get “better” so they can all live together again. “There is always another school year ahead of you,” the head teacher of the primary school tells his new charges somewhat omniously, suggesting that they too are destined to spend their lives fighting for a seat on a packed-out train with no clear destination.