Year: 2024

Helpless (ヘルプレス, Shinji Aoyama, 1996)

Posted on by

A title card close to the beginning of Shinji Aoyama’s debut film Helpless (ヘルプレス) lets us know that this drama which spans a single day takes place on Sept. 10, 1989. It is indeed late summer for most of the protagonists, refugees from the Showa era living on borrowed time in Heisei and intensely resentful towards the contemporary society which appears to have no place for them while the glamour of the Bubble economy does not appear to have trickled down to their peaceful provincial existence. 

Yakuza, for example, are very much associated with the post-war past and one-armed foot soldier Yasuo (Ken Mitsuishi) is an old-school street thug who can’t accept that his former boss literally is as dead as the institution itself. He’s met at a train station by two former associates, but it’s clear the older at least is awkward around him finally telling Yasuo not to call “too often”. “It’s nice to be normal,” Yasuo sneers, realising his former comrade has gone straight and lives an ordinary life as a regular businessman which is why he really wants nothing to do with his yakuza past. Yasuo takes his as more than just a personal betrayal and shoots him dead with his own gun.

He is quite literally helpless, there’s no place for him in the contemporary society and his only hope is killing his old boss, who is already dead, so he can go back to prison. The only sticking point his younger sister Yuri (Kaori Tsuji) who has learning difficulties and had been living in residential care. Another of Yasuo’s former associates now longer a yakuza, Kenji (Tadanobu Asano), is similarly caring for his father who is in hospital for serious medical treatment. Kenji’s father hums the Internationale to himself and seems to have been consumed by the failure of his personal revolution muttering about blast furnaces while at home Kenji looks out on the now rusty aspirations of another “new era” in a moribund steel plant. He lies to his father that he has a received a job offer from there. 

The two men seem destined to collide, Kenji’s numbed resignation and Yasuo’s irrational rage, though it’s Kenji who later snaps after learning that his father has hanged himself while he was busy taking care of Yasuo’s sister. Even an old classmate he runs into is filled with resentment, talking about taking his “revenge” at the class reunion by poisoning the punch. He says he “forgives” Kenji because he once helped him find his PE kit, though Kenji claims he did it mostly for selfish reasons.The chef at the roadside diner where they wait for Yasuo also seems to be henpecked by his wife who calls him “weaker than a woman.” Kenji later says that he killed them because they ridiculed him, tipped over the edge by his own insecurity and sense of futility. 

Yasuo discovers something similar after being stopped at a roadblock, a policeman expressing sympathy that “they forgot about a punk like you.” Yasuo points the gun at his own head, discovering one last bullet, but it’s not quite clear what happens after that. Yasuo was a wandering ghost anyway, a man of the Showa era haunting the streets of Heisei with a mission to kill a man like himself already dead. On the severed arm Kenji later discovers in his bag, there’s a tattoo of a skull and the motto “help me” which might speak for them all desperately looking for some kind of way out but finding little support. 

But then again, Kenji proves unexpectedly kind caring for Yuri even while Yasuo selfishly considers a double suicide. Dressed in white though also in a T-shirt featuring the cover for Nirvana’s Nevermind which was released in 1991, Kenji is the light and Yasuo the dark despite their mutual violence one bound by nihilism and the other a strange positivity blithely searching for an escaped rabbit just as helpless as he himself may be. Filled with ironic whimsy the film takes place in a purgatorial space inhabited by those displaced by the Bubble who no longer have anything to pin their hopes on while living on borrowed time in a late summer rapidly drawing to a close. 

Ghost Cat Anzu (化け猫あんずちゃん, Yoko Kuno & Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2024)

Posted on by

It can be comforting, in a way, to think that this world is deeper than we often think it is and that we live surrounded by ancient spirits who touch our lives in ways we never suspect. All of this is, however, a little more palpable in Iketeru, the town of eternal summer, where the heroine of Yoko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita’s animation Ghost Cat Anzu (化け猫あんずちゃん, Bakemono Anzu-chan) is unceremoniously dumped by her feckless father as he attempts to sort out some persistent trouble with loan sharks. 

Of course, to a girl from Tokyo who hoped to spend the summer break with her cram school crush, being sent to a temple to stay with an estranged grandfather it’s not even clear she has ever met before is not a whole lot of fun. But then as Karin (Noa Goto) says, she’s used to being alone, which might be why she takes against the giant ghost cat, Anzu (Mirai Moriyama), who lives like a human but obviously isn’t one. The funny thing about Iketeru is that no one finds Anzu’s existence odd, if at times troublesome. He’s even patiently arrested by a pair of policemen for not having a proper license for his moped which he didn’t think he needed because, after all, he’s a ghost and also a cat. A pair of little boys who’ve formed their own gang called “The Contrarians” to “defy society” call him “aniki” like some kind of yakuza boss and try to recruit him though being in a gang seems like too much bother for Anzu, which is something he has in common in Karin. 

But the funny thing is, Anzu isn’t really so different from her father in that he too can be somewhat irresponsible. Though he knows he shouldn’t, he spends the money he was keeping for her on pachinko hoping to win big but predictably loses it all. He gets over excited about jobs that pay 3000 yen (£15) a day and overcooks food he’s dropped on the floor because it’ll burn off all the dirt. But like Karin, Anzu can be a little standoffish and it isn’t even until her arrival that he starts to interact with some of the other supernatural creatures in the area who appear to have already set up some kind of club. Having invited them over, Anzu complains they didn’t pay him enough attention and he won’t invite them again while Karin asserts that they seemed “nice”. Though Anzu himself has not yet quite taken to her, the yokai are touched by her tragic circumstances and feelings of abandonment so decide to do what they can to help her. 

Part of Karin’s problem is that she’s still struggling to come to terms with her mother’s death three years previously. Iketeiru calls itself the town of eternal summer, but the summer in Japan is synonymous with the Bon festival during which this world and the other are at their closest and the spirits of the departed may temporarily return. Thus the town itself is a liminal space caught between the living and the dead which the mortal and supernatural co-exist in a very tangible way even if Karin’s eventual descent into hell involves jumping into a broken toilet in a Tokyo columbarium. Even so, she eventually finds herself squaring off against the King of Hell himself in the middle of the Bon festival while straddling the worlds of the living and dead and discovering the will to go on living which is perhaps what the town’s name may actually mean. 

In that sense, it’s a place Karin discovers as much as it’s home to cure her sense of rootless abandonment. The rotoscoped animation and live-recorded dialogue lend a sense of uncanniness to the beautifully animated backgrounds which effortlessly evoke a sense of serenity in the timelessness of a summer in small-town Japan. The juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern, Jizo playing Nintendo Switch, yokai working at the golf course which is perhaps a manifestation of the disruption wrought on the natural world by human endeavour, echo a kind of cosmic irony but also an odd kind of warmth in the strangeness of the world around us with its immortal cat spirits and friendly supernatural creatures that seems a far cry from the sterility of the city with its violent loan sharks and indifferent friends. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

Duel to the Death (生死決, Tony Ching Siu-Tung, 1983)

Posted on by

What is the essence of martial arts, self-improvement and defending the weak, or victory at all costs? The debut directorial feature from action choreographer Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Duel to the Death (生死決) may have a familiar theme but is unusual in its even-handedness focussing instead on the bond between its martial artist heroes who are each as it turns out pawns of greater powers and the mercy of a world in nothing is fair or righteous.

This is obvious right from the high impact opening sequence in which Japanese ninjas raid a Chinese temple to steal “The Lost Manual to Breaking the Swordplay Stances of All Clans.” Obviously, the scroll wasn’t very lost, in fact quite easy to find along with the names of all the martial artists in China which will come in handy later, but right away sets up the Japanese as essentially duplicitous and underhanded. The central drama revolves around a contest held every 10 years between a representative from Japan and China to decide whose martial arts is best, but it’s obvious that the Japanese plan to win by cheating which they attempt at every opportunity. 

This remains largely unknown to earnest swordsman Miyamoto (Norman Chui Siu-keung) who genuinely believes he’s engaging in a test of skills with a worthy opponent. In contrast to that advocated by the Shaolin monks, the philosophy fed to Miyamoto is that he must win at all costs even if it meant turning a sword on Buddha. His own master challenges him in disguise and is pleased when he is killed because it means his pupil has eclipsed him and there is no greater honour than dying at the hands of a superior samurai. Destructive as he maybe, Miyamoto is no villain for he has a pure-hearted attachment to his code only to have his illusions shattered when he realises he’s just a patsy set up for an easy victory by the shogun who has already cut a deal with the contest’s organisers to have his opponent kidnapped so he’ll have to fight the organiser’s daughter instead.

The authorities in China are shown to be duplicitous too, and despite the prevailing Shaolin philosophy it becomes apparent that Hsia-hau, the current guardian of the House of the Holy Sword, cares quite a lot about fame and fortune. Desperate to restore the name of his clan and perhaps irritated not to have had a son, he’s raised his daughter Sing Lam (Flora Cheong-Leen) as a boy but does not seem to fully trust her ability to improve their fortunes despite the supposed gender equality of the jianghu society. Notably, Miyamoto refuses to fight her after realising she is a woman signalling once again the destructive qualities of his code in its rigid misogyny where Ching Wan (Damian Lau), the Chinese challenger, fully accepts her but seems unwilling to let their potential romance disrupt his own commitment to pursuit of his skill.

Like Miyamoto, Ching Wan sees the contest as a means of testing himself yet places no importance on winning or losing. Ching Wan often often comes to Miyamoto’s defence, stating that the Japanese were only acting in accordance with the their national character and they could learn a lot from their perseverance, while Miyamoto too refuses to rise to the bait when Sing Lam remarks that Japan must be a very poor place if the simple dinner they’ve been offered seems like an extravagant feast so it’s understandable that they always seem to be trying to plunder China. Trying to plunder China the shogun most definitely is, or least hoping to dominate it, but all the two martial artists want is the impossibility of a fair fight in a world in which double dealing is the norm and nothing’s quite as it seems. 

The full-on weirdness of Ching’s action sequences underline just how absurd this world is. Ninjas lurk everywhere including in the sand, while during one fight one giant ninja suddenly explodes into lots of tiny little ones. In the opening raid, they use dynamite for suicide attacks and are later seen flying in massive kites. The shogun keeps all the kidnapped martial artists he was planning to take back to Japan to steal their knowledge in a giant spider web-like network of ropes underground, hanging around until the ninjas load them into palanquins. Nevertheless, despite the obviousness of his use of Korean sets standing in for Japan, Ching injects a degree of realism in a painstaking attempt to maintain authenticity in depicting Japanese sword style. Cutting fast and furious with delirious wire work, the most impressive action sequence may well be that of Sing Lam effortlessly setting up a pair of obnoxious Japanese swordsmen. “Why dwell on determining whose martial arts is better?” a monk idly asks, and indeed there is no real answer save a vicious cycle of violence of retribution that remains unfinished even at the nihilistic conclusion. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Woman in the Rumour (噂の女, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

Posted on by

A mother and daughter find themselves deceived by the same man, each hemmed in by realities which cannot be altered but eventually coming to a place of mutual understanding that allows them to restore their relationship not only as parent and child but as women in Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1954 melodrama, The Woman in the Rumour (噂の女, Uwasa no Onna). The first question we might ask ourselves is to which of the women the title refers, or indeed to which rumour, though in a sense rumours matter little for either of them when the problem is the constraints which each of them feel as women in the contemporary society. 

Even so, the sense of shame is evident when Yukiko (Yoshiko Kuga) is brought back to the geisha house run by her mother Hatsuko (Kinuyo Tanaka) after having attempted to take her own life in Tokyo. As we learn, the reason for her despair is in part heartbreak. She had been engaged but her fiancé’s family convinced him to end their relationship when they discovered that her mother ran a geisha house. Thus the suicide attempt is also a reflection of her sense of futility. She will always be the daughter of a woman who earned her living in the sex trade. This is a fact that cannot be changed and may lead her to think that her situation is hopeless because the same thing is likely to happen again leaving her unable to marry in a society in which there are few options for a single woman to make a life for herself not to mention the loneliness of living without romantic love. 

Hatsuko, meanwhile, is uncertain how seriously she should take the situation in part believing that it’s a product of youthful naivety in her daughter’s first romantic heartbreak. When a young doctor with whom she is close, Matoba (Tomoemon Otani), explains to her that Yukiko is depressed because she feels deep shame, self-loathing, and hopelessness due to her mother’s occupation, Hatsuko struggles to understand it and does not fully believe him. Nevertheless, she took care to bring her daughter up largely outside of the geisha world, sending Yukiko to Tokyo to study music implying that she herself to some degree sees her work as improper. The other girls view Yukiko with a degree of disdain, realising that her refinement was bought with their exploitation and noticing her animosity towards them. 

Hatsuko is mother both to Yukiko and the young women under her care who are always quick to point out that this is one of the better geisha houses because they are well looked after. When one of the women, Usugumo (Kimiko Tachibana), is taken ill, Hatusko calls in the doctor and allows her time off to rest which likely would not be granted at another house. She is reluctant to send her to hospital, but would if the situation called for it. In a sense it’s this solicitation that eventually allows Yukiko to find accommodation with her mother’s profession as she grows closer to the other women while nursing Usugumo herself and comes to understand their particular circumstances that have left them no choice but to live as geisha. Usugumo is reluctant to go to hospital because she is worried about the money she’d usually send to her sister Chiyoko (Sachiko Mine) who works the family farm and cares for their sickly father, but when she dies Chiyoko herself is left with little option other than to petition the geisha house to take her sister’s place. 

On seeing Chiyoko sitting on the step and pleading to be taken on, another of the women laments as she’s leaving that she wonders when there will be no more need for women like them. The geisha world is perhaps an unchangeable reality, just like Yukiko’s birth and her mother’s age. The rumours that surround Hatsuko are to do with her closeness with Matoba with whom she has clearly been in an intimate relationship, dreaming of becoming his wife and even considering selling the geisha house to buy a large property where they could live together as a couple while he runs a private clinic. Matoba predictably decides he prefers the younger Yukiko, Hatsuko increasingly desperate after overhearing their conversation about leaving her behind to move to Tokyo together where Matoba ponders finishing his education. The play they’ve gone to see almost feels like a personal attack as an actor intones that feelings of love at 20 are fine but at 60 it’s merely shameful. “Even carp know better than to fall in love at this age”, he adds, the old woman a figure of ridicule in her romantic delusion leaving Hatsuko feeling both humiliated and resentful.

When Hatsuko finally confronts Matoba, she does it as a scorned woman rather than as a mother, while Yukiko in turn first turns on her rather than Matoba even as she begins to realise the reality of the situation that the man who seduced her had been using her mother for his own gain in total disregard of her feelings. In short, even if Hatsuko were not her mother which certainly makes this a very complicated situation, he is not the sort of man she’d want to make a life with. Acutely aware of her own experiences of heartbreak, she fears for her mother’s wellbeing and comes to an understanding of her as a woman while accepting that “men are all alike” and in that at least perhaps her mother’s profession is the most honest of all. Mutually betrayed, mother and daughter are able to repair their familial bonds while Yukiko finds herself taking refuge in the geisha house as a space of female solidarity and bulwark against a cruel and patriarchal society. 

The Gesuidouz (ザ・ゲスイドウズ, Kenichi Ugana, 2024)

Posted on by

According to Hanako, vocalist of the band The Gesuidouz (ザ・ゲスイドウズ), punk is “like this miso soup”. She later describes the soup as soothing, made by her bandmate Santaro who turns out to be an unexpectedly dab hand in the kitchen, though in many ways the band’s selling point is that they aren’t very good at anything, least of all music. Even so, and quite crucially, they have one devoted, though otherwise anonymous fan who comes to all their gigs and dances wildly which just goes to prove that the old lady who becomes a kind of muse to them was right when she said there was probably someone out there to whom their music meant more than anything. 

But Hanako is writing under the shadow of death because she’s just turned 26 and is convinced she’s going to join the 27 club which means she has a very limited window to achieve her musical destiny. Perhaps in a way it’s a kind of quarter life crisis, or the sense of desperation that can be felt while young that time is already running out and you still haven’t made anything of your life. You still don’t know who you are or what you want to be and in Hanako’s case, no one has much faith her except her bandmates who stoically excuse their lack of audience under the rationale that everyone’s very busy these days and they should make sure to consult the calendar when they’re booking gigs. 

In fact, her manager’s the least supportive of all. He calls the band “rubbish” though casually admitting the may have forgotten to even release their album though it’s true that no one’s buying it. He’s the one that talks them into taking part in a government-backed scheme to encourage young people to move to the country in exchange for a stipend and place to live. But the weird thing is, unlike the indifference they felt in the city, the local community embrace their eccentricity and support their music even if they find it difficult to see what’s good about it. Despite describing the place where she lives as a “shithole”, the old lady listens patiently to Hanako’s tall tales about headlining Glastonbury while arranging gigs for them to play for such esteemed audiences as the local cows while bemused elderly resents look on stony faced but ultimately supportive. After all, as the old lady says, it’s a rare gift to create something so amazing that other people don’t understand it.

Though obsessed with horror films, darkness, and death, Hanako is strangely touched by country warmth and almost seems to tear up on the simple gift of a bunch of leeks after working in the fields. In a funny way, this village is actually quite like Glastonbury, a small rural settlement with a down-to-earth new age sensibility that suddenly erupts with music even if in this case on a much smaller scale. The old lady who becomes in a way a future echo of Hanako might be the most punk of all, joyfully living her little life in the shithole she’s never been outside of but welcoming these weird youngsters with patience, warmth, and acceptance which eventually allows Hanako to find a way back to herself and to art leading to a kind of rebirth in contrast to the death she was convinced was waiting for her. 

Of course, that all comes from a talking dog giving life advice through he medium of pithy quotes and song lyrics divined through automatic writing while practicing calligraphy. With frequent references to classic horror films, the film is an ode to the strangeness of country life but also its borderless horizons and sense of community solidarity alien to Hanako’s lonely life in Tokyo. But tellingly this is a paradise destined to be lost as the band finds success separating them from the environment that made them successful, fostering their art but also their souls with its gentle sense of acceptance. Often hilarious in its matter of factness, Kenichi Ugana’s anarchic dramedy has true punk spirit which is to say there’s nothing more punk rock than a good bowl of miso soup crafted with wholesome practicality and an altruistic desire for mutual happiness.

The Gesuidouz screens 30th November as part of this year’s London International Fantastic Film Festival (LIFFF)

Original trailer (English subtitles)

A Swordsman in the Twilight (황혼의 검객, Jeong Chang-hwa, 1967)

Posted on by

Jeong Chang-hwa is better known for the films he made with Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, including the iconic King Boxer which helped to kick start the Kung Fu craze of the 1970s, than for earlier films he made in his native Korea. Nevertheless, while he was there he also instrumental in creating a new genre of Korean swordplay films with A Wandering Swordsman And 108 Bars of Gold and 1967’s A Swordsman In The Twilight (황혼의 검객, Hwanghonui Geomgaek).

Drawing inspiration from both Japanese samurai movies and King Hu’s wuxia dramas, the film is set in 1691 and like many Korean historical dramas revolves around intrigue in the court. Our hero is however not a high ranking courtier but as he describes himself a struggling vassal who was lucky to get his job as a lowly palace guard because he has no real connections nor does he come from a prominent family and his skills and long years of study mean almost nothing in this society ruled by status. The more things change, the more they stay the same. In any case, he was not unhappy with his life, got on well with his father-in-law, a poor scholar, and had a loving wife and daughter, who like him, valued human decency over ambition. 

But it’s that gets them into trouble when the venomous Lady Jang stages a palace coup to usurp the position of rightful queen, Min. Queen Min is depicted as a shining example of traditional femininity and idealised womanhood. Though the situation she finds herself in is unfair, she bears it with good grace and refuses the small comforts others offer her saying only that she is a sinner and it’s only right she suffers this way for displeasing the king. Hyang-nyeo (Yoon Jeong-hee), wife of swordsman Tae-won (Namkoong Won), was once her servant and shares her birthday so feels an especial connection to her. Pitying Queen Min seeing her forced to walk barefoot through the mud she offers her shoes and for this crime is hounded by the Jang faction on account of her supposed treason.

Having taken the local governor and his clerk, who are also against the Jang faction but don’t know how to oppose it, hostage, Tae-won narrates his long sad story and reasons for his desire for revenge against corrupt courtier Oh Gi-ryong (Heo Jang-kang) who, it seems, is also motivated by resentment and sexual jealousy after having once proposed to Hyang-nyeo but been instantly rejected by her father who did not wish to marry his daughter off to a thug. As such, he comes to embody the evils of the feudal order in his casual cruelty and pettiness. When we’re first introduced to Tae-won he saves a young woman who was about to be dragged off by Gi-ryong’s henchmen presumably as a consort for their immediate boss, Gi-ryong’s right-hand man, but is warned by the other villagers that he should leave town quickly else the Jang gang will be after him. That is however, exactly what Tae-won wants. He fights a series of duels with Gi-ryong, the first of which ends with Gi-ryong simply running away when Tae-won breaks his sword and in their final confrontation he resorts to the cowardly use of firearms not to mention an entire squad of minions pitched solely against a wounded Tae-won and the unarmed governor.

What it comes down to is a last stand by men who know the right path and are now willing to defend it rather than turn a blind eye to injustice. Tae-won’s own brother (Park Am) had thrown his lot in with Gi-ryong in the hope of personal advancement, willingly aligning himself with the winning side and complicit in its dubious morality. This of course puts him in a difficult position, though he implies he will be prepared to sacrifice Tae-won and his family if necessary even if he also tries to find a better solution such as suggesting Tae-won kill Queen Min to prove his loyalty to the Jang faction. In an odd way, it speaks to the contemporary era as a treatise on how to live under an authoritarian regime not to mention the creeping heartlessness of an increasingly capitalistic society. 

This sense personal rebellion may owe more to the jianghu sensibility found in the wuxia movies of King Hu than to the righteous nobility of the samurai film even if the ending strongly echoes chanbara epics in which the hero is displaced from his community and condemned to wander as a perpetual outlaw in a society which does not live up to his ideals. While staging beautifully framed action sequences such as fight at a rocky brook, Jeong undoubtedly draws inspiration from Hu in the use of trampolines and majestic jumps that have an almost supernatural quality. The sword fights are largely bloodless until the final confrontation but also violent and visceral. Gi-ryong’s henchman plays with a minion he feels has betrayed him by lightly scratching his throat before going in for the kill and such cruelty seems to be a hallmark of the Jang faction. But despite the seeming positivity of the ending in which a kind of solidarity has been discovered between Tae-won and the governor, the film ends on an ambivalent note with the fate of the nation still unknown as Lady Jang stoops to shamanic black magic to hold sway and darkness, the lingering shadows of authoritarianism, still hang over the swordsman even if he is in a way free as s rootless wanderer no longer quite bound by feudal constraint. 

A Swordsman in the Twilight screened as part of Echoes in Time: Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema.

THE KILLER GOLDFISH (Yukihiko Tsutsumi, 2024)

Posted on by

“Did the goldfish have a grudge against your husband?” It is a very strange question, but the policeman admits he has to ask it because he knows his contact at Public Security’s Extraordinary Unit will ask him if he asked. Goldfish aren’t something you’d ordinarily think of as dangerous, but perhaps they’re sick of being cooped up in tiny bowls, denied the whole ocean, so they’ve decided to fight back against humanity? Either that or, as Public Security agent Erika (Eriko Oka) suspects, someone is using them to exact a very particular kind of revenge.

Helmed by one of the premier directors of mainstream contemporary Japanese film, Yukihiko Tsutusmi’s The Killer Goldfish is not the schlockfest its name may suggest but a hark back to the anarchic conspiracy thrillers of the 90s. In fact, it’s produced by a director collective, Super Sapienss, of which Tsutsumi is a member alongside Katsuyuki Motohiro, best known for the Bayside Shakedown series, and Yuichi Sato (Kisaragi) which aims to shake off the inertia of the contemporary Japanese film industry by taking charge of the entire process so they can make the kind of films they want. 

You have to admit, it might be difficult to get a production committee to sign off on a such an outlandish series of events that only begins with murderous goldfish and eventually spins off into a far reaching conspiracy involving superhumans, psychic powers, neanderthal migration, missing high school students, a young woman who is somehow connected psychically with goldfishkind, and long-haired jizo that can stir up human appetites to the point of mass destruction. Erika has a feeling all of this is connected, but she doesn’t quite yet know how save that this world is apparently full of strange crimes to the extent that the powers that be are well aware of them but they prefer to keep quiet and let the Extraordinary Unit handle them.

In any case, the action proceeds X-Files style as Erika teams up with sceptical cop Yukine to try to solve the mystery and avoid any more fishy crimes in the future. This conspiracy is it seems located at the nexus of the primaeval and sophisticated, neanderthal rage delivered into the contemporary society in the opening scenes via our ubiquitous technology with a secret symbol broadcasting into the minds of those born to receive it. A professor digs up evidence that suggests early man arrived in Japan earlier than previously thought and is invited on a daytime talk show only to cause consternation with the obscene quality of his find, while further clues are bizarrely delivered through a love island-style reality dating show and its caddish heartthrob contestant. Making contact with the suspect eventually entails solving a riddle, messaging them on social media, and then completing an online questionnaire.

Nevertheless, these superhumans are apparently so because of their primaeval genetic makeup that places them outside of contemporary notions of civility. Their atavistic qualities render them, like the goldfish, constrained by the limitations of contemporary society from which they long to break free. Even so, their sensibilities seem to align with a problematic seem of historical nationalism that lends them an edge of danger aside from their potential connection to the unexplained goldfish murders which in themselves may indicate a rebellion against entrenched patriarchy given that they seem to target only middle-aged men. 

These ideas may be fleshed out more fully in the accompanying manga, also produced by Super Sapienss, or explained in the Chapter Two alluded to in the title card following the post-credit sequence but otherwise have an unconstrained, freewheeling quality rocketing between the primaeval past and the ultra modernity of reality television and social media conspiracy. The film makes frequent use of animation to express transformation or transportation between these worlds along with another that may exist in a less visible dimension, and has an unexpected freshness that belies Tsutsumi’s long career in the industry. The script by Hoarder on the Border director Takayuki Kayano similarly has an anarchic sensibility which is both retro and ultra-contemporary blending buddy cop procedural with zany horror comedy and an unfolding sense of unease in modern society. It’s fair to say that with The Killer Goldfish Super Sapienss has made good on its mission statement to disrupt the status quo of mainstream Japanese cinema with hopefully more to come in Chapter 2.

THE KILLER GOLDFISH screens 26th November as part of this year’s London International Fantastic Film Festival (LIFFF)

Original trailer (English subtitles)

London International Fantastic Film Festival (LIFFF) Announces Full Programme

Posted on by

The London International Fantastic Film Festival (LIFFF) celebrates its inaugural edition this year running at BLOC Cinema and Genesis Cinema in Mile End, London from 26th December to 1st November. Included in this year’s packed programme, are three films from Japan.

THE KILLER GOLDFISH

Surreal conspiracy thriller from the prolific Yukihiko Tsutsumi in which a series of murders take place across Japan which appear to have been comitted by goldfish.

Self-Revolutionary Cinematic Struggle

Meta drama from Gakuryu Ishii in which a professor of film named Gakuryu Ishii goes missing after being driven out of his mind by his work. His fellow professors try to teach his ideas though they do not really understand them, plunging the students into a labyrinthine world of expanded consciousness.

The Gesuidouz

Charming punk-themed rural drama in which an unsuccessful band are sent to the country to take part in a subsidised scheme to ameliorate rural depopulation.

London International Fantastic Film Festival (LIFFF) runs at BLOC Cinema and Genesis Cinema in Mile End, London from 26th December to 1st November. The full lineup is available on the official website as are scheduling and ticketing details. You can also follow the festival on Facebook and Instagram.

Love After Love (第一炉香, Ann Hui, 2020)

Posted on by

A naive young woman’s path from besotted teen to tortured yet masterful courtesan amid the colonial realities of pre-war Hong Kong is elegantly charted in Ann Hui’s stately adaptation of the novel by Eileen Chang, Love After Love (第一炉香, Dì yī lú xiāng). A slow-burn romantic tragedy, Hui’s floating drama at once reflects a sense of hopeless rootlessness and the ruinous intensity of a one-sided love but also the transgressive possibilities for freedom and independence in the rejection of traditional patriarchal social codes. 

Displaced from her native Shanghai by ongoing political tension, Weilong (Ma Sichun), the daughter of a once noble house, finds herself impoverished and left with the choice either of accompanying her family in returning to the Mainland where she will be set back a year in completing her studies or remaining behind alone in Hong Kong to graduate high school. Unable to support herself, she decides to turn to an estranged aunt she barely knows, throwing herself on her mercy and asking to be taken in even while knowing of the animosity which exists between her father and his sister. That would be because her aunt, Madame Liang (Faye Yu), turned down all the suitors her family found for her and chose instead to become the mistress of a wealthy man. He now having died, Madame Liang has inherited a sizeable fortune including a European-style mansion where she hosts society parties and enjoys a hedonistic lifestyle which has earned her a reputation as a seducer of young men. 

On her introduction to this world, one of the maids uncharitably describes Weilong’s entrance as like that of a new girl in a brothel and there is indeed something of that in her new role in the household, dangled like a bauble in front of Madame Liang’s collection of wealthy male associates, though Madame Liang apparently intends her only as decoration rather than gift. Tensions come to the fore as Weilong develops a fondness for a dashing young man, George (Edward Peng Yu-Yan), the mixed ethnicity son of coterie member Sir Cheng (Paul Chun), previously eyed by Madame Liang who understands much better than her naive niece that men like George are dangerous in their destabilising faithlessness. For Madame Liang, so perfectly in control, George may be manageable but as she later tells Weilong, unwisely goading her that her life of comfort is a failure because she will never find love, the only danger that exists to her is in unequal affection a prophecy that will in a sense come to pass in Weilong’s single-minded obsession to possess the heart of George. 

Weilong may describe Madame Liang’s lifestyle as ridiculous, yet as she points out her transgressive sexuality is also currency that permits the opulence and luxury in which she lives. Seduced by this world as much as by George, Weilong disapproves but admits that she is no longer the naive girl who arrived even if she also dislikes this new version of herself, considering a return to Shanghai and a possible reset to become someone else again presumably more in line with contemporary notions of social proprietary. She can’t deny that Madame Liang’s rejection of the patriarchal institution of marriage has granted her an unusual degree of independence otherwise unavailable in the contemporary society. She herself faces a choice in approaching the end of her high school days, either progressing to higher education, seeking work, or getting married naively insisting to Madame Liang that she will earn money in order to support George and his lavish lifestyle even as she advises her to enact a plot of romance as revenge. 

While Weilong’s discarded suitor benefits financially in becoming Madame Liang’s lover, she sponsoring his study abroad, Weilong again attempts to reverse traditional gender roles by trapping George as a kind of trophy husband. He had repeatedly told her he wasn’t the marrying kind, in part because of his insatiable sexual desire and perpetual loneliness in having lost his mother young, yet also because of his father’s perfectly acceptable yet socially destructive romantic history which includes several concubines and illegitimate children meaning there will be little in the way of inheritance. If he married, he’d need to marry well but Weilong’s family is impoverished and she has only her connection with Madame Liang to leverage. As she’d warned her it would be, the relationship between them will always be unhappy, Weilong winning a symbolic victory in coercing George towards marriage but unable to accept the limits of her control while he, paradoxically, is emotionally honest only with her but she can only see this as a slight as if he is so indifferent towards her that she is not worth lying to. 

As Weilong gradually morphs into her aunt, George’s sexually liberated sister Kitty lands on a different path later becoming a nun. The three women attempt to muster all of the advantages afforded to them under an oppressive patriarchal system but none perhaps find true happiness. It might be tempting to read a subversive comment on the nature of colonialism in the various frustrated love affairs and persistent sense of rootlessness, Hui’s drama is at heart a romantic tragedy in which two people become locked in a torturous relationship because they cannot understand each other. Their very idea of love is different. Doyle’s floating camera perfectly captures the fleeting opulence of this unreal society itself lingering on an abyss as the lovers continue to dance around each other looking perhaps for the love after love in immaterial comfort. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Faceless Dead (行旅死亡人, Kishu Izuchi, 2009)

Posted on by

If you suddenly got a phone call one day to tell you that someone with your name living at your address had been taken ill, how would you feel? Sponsored by the Japan Journalist College, Kishu Izuchi’s mystery drama The Faceless Dead (行旅死亡人, Koryo Shibonin) sends its aspiring investigative reporter through a murky world of crime and identity theft to discover why someone would need to discard their name and live a life of constant inconvenience in an ever modernising society. 

As she explains in her opening voiceover, Misaki’s dream is to become an investigative reporter working on important social issues exposing scandals such as contaminated blood supplies, mislabelled food, and people trafficking but has found little interest from publishers when pitching her ideas. Currently she regards herself as a “job-hopper” working part-time at a local supermarket which has recently been taken over by a larger conglomerate intent on introducing a new creepily cult-like corporate mentality. With her lease about to expire, Misaki is feeling desperate only to receive a weird phone call from another apartment building informing her that “Misaki Takigawa” has been taken ill and is currently in hospital. Obviously this comes as quite a surprise to Misaki as she tries to explain she is Misaki Takigawa and she feels fine to the dumbfounded man on the phone. On venturing to the hospital to find out what’s going on she discovers that the person using her identity to rent a flat is a woman she worked with at a publishing company some years ago, Yasuko. 

Misaki can’t figure out why or how Yasuko would be using her name and documentation but is both curious and feeling a sense of obligation to find out not least because Yasuko also had a bank book with a substantial amount of money in it that’s in her name. Her quest leads her on a meandering path discovering that it obviously wasn’t the first time the woman she knew as Yasuko who had always seemed kind and honest had been living under an assumed name even though it’s something quite difficult and inconvenient to do in contemporary Japan because it makes it all but impossible to access medical care, rent an apartment, or even get a mobile phone all of which require verified documentation. Having access to Misaki’s employment record presumably enabled her to get what she needed to sign a lease and open a bank account in her name and perhaps explains one reason why she elected not to get treatment when a routine workplace checkup highlighted possible medical concerns, the other reason being a sense of guilt which also explains why she chose to live in austerity saving all her money and later instructing Misaki to send it to an older couple living in a remote country village. 

More and more, Misaki is forced to admit that she really didn’t know Yasuko at all even if she felt indebted towards her for having taken her under her wing at her first job, or perhaps that she did in a sense know “Yasuko”, the persona she had adopted at the time, but not the woman underneath it. Apparently based on a real case, Misaki’s quest for the truth takes a rather dark turn that eventually intersects with the weird company that has taken over her supermarket intent on turning all its workers into soulless drones who live only to serve, the boss ominously instructing his subordinate to inject their new philosophy directly into the arms of the unenthusiastic shop staff after failing to achieve their desired sales goals. 

Maybe you could say it was all done for love and Yasuko is simply a hopeless romantic willing to sacrifice her identity but not her life in order reclaim past happiness but even if every life has a price as she reflects in a moment of desperation you can’t simply buy someone else’s no matter how much you’ve lost or suffered in the one you’ve been given. Through her quest to ascertain Yasuko’s true identity along with the original one, Misaki is forced to reflect on and reconsider her relationships with others as well as her own identity while hoping to prove her journalistic skills investigating this very strange and ultimately sad case as borne out by the post-credits sequence which finds her, perhaps strangely, still working at the supermarket trying to organise her life goals around her financial responsibilities in an intransigent society. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)