Category: Festivals

Your Face (你的臉, Tsai Ming-Liang, 2018)

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Your Face posterThe act of looking is an oddly intimate experience, which is perhaps why it becomes so uncomfortable to be looked at. The 13 souls who brave the camera for director Tsai Ming-Liang’s Your Face (你的臉, Nǐ de Liǎn) have all, obviously, given their consent to to become a subject for contemplation and are fully aware of being observed but still suffer the self-conscious embarrassment of being on show. That embarrassment is perhaps the point, pointing to a different kind of truth than the one we might have thought ourselves to be looking for but it’s also true that the camera becomes a kind of veil shielding us from our own anxiety safe in the knowledge that we can look all we please because we will never be seen.

Tsai’s subjects, aside from one or two, are mostly elderly residents of Taipei spotted by chance in the street and selected for their interesting faces. These faces, perhaps in contrast to those most often seen in cinema, are lined and worn. They wear their stories rather than tell them. Tsai gave few instructions, solely asking for an hour of time – 30 minutes spent in silence and 30 in conversation. The results are varied. Old men fall asleep, one plays a harmonica, a woman boils her life philosophy down to a love of making money, and a man laments a life wasted on pachinko and romantic disappointment.

Flickers of a smile erupt around a woman’s lips until she can’t contain her amusement any longer, finally breaking into a laugh in noting the strange incongruity of her position. It all looks so different on the screen than it looks at the scene. Tsai shoots in the same location as his earlier short Light, Zhongshan Hall – a public auditorium completed in 1936 when Taiwan was under Japanese rule (and therefore coincidentally close in age to many of Tsai’s subjects), but from different angles which almost obscure a sense of space until the hall itself gains its own portrait in the final shot, empty of life but somehow no longer passive.

Tsai encourages us to look deeply into the faces of others in manner which would be inappropriate in any other context. Yet the faces themselves react to Tsai’s camera and the people standing behind it. They do not and cannot react to us, except in an abstract sense, while we lurk behind a two way mirror protecting our own fragile senses of self from the same kind of scrutiny. Yet there is a kind of commonality in the way in which those on each side of the screen reach a point of mutual vacancy during which something else begins to emerge. The subjects fall into a kind of reverie, be it a literal sleep or motion towards activity such that of as one lady who decides to show off some of her “exercises” designed to stave off the effects of old age.

Those moments of activity, however, in breaking the stillness rupture the sense of contemplation in simply beholding an unfamiliar face. The ordinary had become uncanny, but now we have other concerns, narrative concerns with which to engage on an intellectual rather than instinctive level. On hearing the story, we forget about the face and concentrate on words while also forgetting that these stories are not really being told to us but to whoever is behind the camera and that the subject may also have lost consciousness of the camera itself while concentrating on relating their truth.

Then again, Tsai rejects the medium of documentary and we have only our own assumption that what we’re told is authentic and offered in the natural feeling of the moment. This is particularly true of the final subject who happens to be Tsai’s longterm muse Lee Kang-sheng (whose mother also appears in the film). Lee too muses on his family history, offering a meta comment on his face and its transitory likeness to that of his father, lamenting that though they say Lee’s father looked like him when he was young Lee knows that in “reality” he no longer is. Tsai’s camera turns its lens on ageing, on changes superficial and spiritual while remaining rooted to the spot as if fighting for an impossible objectivity. Closing in an empty room, Tsai nevertheless finds the light and the soul in the stonework as if to suggest that perhaps it wasn’t faces that were so important after all.

Your Face screened at Tate Modern as part of the Taiwan Film Festival UK 2019 and The Deserted film series.

Festival trailer (English captions)

The Tag-Along (紅衣小女孩, Cheng Wei-hao, 2015)

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The Tag-Along posterWhy are little girls in red dresses such a frequent figure for fear? From the cheerfully naive little red riding hood and her unavoidable association with unscrupulous wolves to the murderous spectres of Don’t Look Now, we don’t seem to be able to abandon our strange anxiety on seeing little girls incongruously alone and distinctively dressed. A little girl in red became a national meme in Taiwan in 1998 after accidentally photobombing an ordinary family out on a mountain hike, notably appearing behind a family member who later passed away though no one was able to remember having seen the little girl on the day. Truth be told, our little girl in red does not actually feature as much as you’d expect in Cheng Wei-hao’s The Tag-Along (紅衣小女孩, Hóng yī Nǚhái), but she does become the embodiment of the “mosien” – an ancient monster appearing in the form of a child or a monkey who bewitches and feeds on guilt.

Cheng opens in the mountains with an old woman, Shui (Pai Ming-hua), wandering. Shui is subsequently reported missing and much missed by her friend, grumpy grandma Shu-fang (Liu Yin-shang). Everyone seems to be worried that ancient spirits may have dragged her off to the mountains, but Shui does eventually return, albeit not quite as she left. Meanwhile, Shu-fang’s grandson Wei (River Huang) is an overworked real estate agent in a committed five year relationship with radio DJ Yi-chun (Hsu Wei-ning). While Wei is keen to get married and start a family, Yi-chun is not convinced partially for financial reasons but also perhaps because she simply is not ready to give up her individual freedom to become a member of Wei’s family.

Indeed, Yi-chun asks her radio listeners if marriage isn’t “the tomb of love”, but shows no other signs of wanting to break up with Wei only emphasising that she does not envisage marriage as part of her life plan – something later contradicted by a message she scrawled on the back of a photo five years previously. In a touch of disappointing conservatism, The Tag-Along makes Yi-chun its ostensible hero who alone battles against  preternatural horror to reclaim her rightful relationships, but frames her mission as a gradual process towards conforming to conventional social norms in which she learns that her qualms over marrying Wei are nothing more than commitment phobic selfishness and pointless guilty self obsession – something which she needs to abandon in order to fulfil her proper role as a woman by marrying and making a home even if she is also allowed to continue her radio career.

Meanwhile Wei, who has a strong desire to start a family of his own precisely in order to forge his own identity, treats his loving granny with contempt and irritation, eventually mortgaging the family home in order to buy a fancy apartment he hopes will help convince Yi-chun that he has the means to marry. Yi-chun, again, is not convinced partially because she fears Shu-fang may think it was all her idea and use it as evidence of her gold digging. The rot has already set in at home. Shu-fang feels sad for Wei who seems to have lost his parents young but also for the burden he feels himself under because the family lost their money, while Wei resents being shackled to an old woman who still cares for him as if he were a child, nagging him about getting married when she herself is one of the obstacles in its way.

Yet “civilisation” is perhaps the force that each of them are fighting, living as they do in ultramodern, always aspirant Taipei. The mountains represent something older and earthier, filled with atavistic passions and the dark fear of the unknown. One of the more supernaturally inclined elderly residents of Wei’s apartment block speculates that the forest spirits are angry with the encroachment of modernity, that persistent tree cutting has destroyed their natural habitat and sent them into the cities in search of souls to devour like foxes hungry for human suffering. Another forest dweller adds that every time a tree is removed, the spirits steal a body to “plant” in its place in an ironic act of restitution. An encounter with dark nature however sends each of our conflicted souls reeling back to the comforts of urbanity, suddenly no longer quite as afraid of the things which frighten them and now convinced that their salvation lies in each other and in repairing the bonds of the traditional family. Socially conservative as it may be, The Tag-Along’s spectres of moral decay are all too real in the increasingly indifferent city plagued by greed and selfishness where competition is key and human feeling merely an afterthought in a rabidly acquisitive society.

The Tag-Along screened as part of the Taiwan Film Festival UK 2019.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Dragon Inn (龍門客棧, King Hu, 1967)

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Goodbye Dragon inn posterCorruption invades the court, the innocent flee the city but are pursued. Able to run no more, they take refuge at a point of hospitality where they encounter the jaded forces of justice who eventually offer themselves as a human shield, protecting the precious seed of a new world while beating back the evil of the old. It is the archetypical wuxia plot, but never better told than in King Hu’s (Hu Jinquan) seminal Dragon Inn (龍門客棧, Lóng Mén Kè Zhàn).

The first Taiwanese production from Mainlander Hu who began his career at Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, Dragon Inn is set in feudal China. A weak emperor has enabled the rise of an ambitious underclass of eunuchs – once trusted servants whose forced celibacy supposedly ensured loyalty because, having no children, they would have no interest in dynasty. A loyalist scholar is about to pay the price for the eunuchs’ rise when they have him executed for treason as a means of silencing his rebellion. Fearing reprisals from his still young children, they exile them to the far frontiers as a ruse to disguise their murders on the road. Fortunately, however, the Yu children are saved by the heroic intervention of wandering swordsmen. Hoping to head them off at the next pass, the villainous Cao (Bai Ying) sends his best men to Dragon Inn where they will lie in wait.

Obviously, Cao’s plan is not to work out quite as he intended. Firstly because of the arrival of ultra cool swordsman for hire Xiao (Shi Jun), who happens to be a friend of the temporarily absent innkeeper Wu, and then because of the wandering bandit Zhu Ji and his sister (currently dressed as a man) Hui (Shang Kuan Ling‐Feng), who are determined to cause trouble with the East Espionage Chamber who are currently occupying the inn by means of force. In order to minimise the possibility of resistance, EEC have also wiped out a local company of Tartar soldiers, seemingly indifferent to any diplomatic incident which might ensue. Xiao, Wu, Ji, and Hui, are eventually joined by a pair of Tartar defectors who were pressed into the EEC after pledging their loyalty to Yu, and thereafter commit themselves to ensuring the safety of Yu’s offspring as a means of protecting his legacy while facing off against the corrupt forces of Cao.

Like all wandering heroes, Xiao and the others are mainly concerned with the problem at hand, saving the Yus, rather than acknowledging that their present predicament is a product of the society in which they live. They do not challenge “authority”, but only minor corruption as embodied in the upstart Cao who has attempted to step beyond his station. Cao is, however, himself a victim of his society as Xiao almost seems to admit in his cruel taunting of him over his complicated liminal status as a castrated man. Xiao repeatedly mocks his lack of appendage and his (presumed) lack of sexual experience coupled with his inability to father children which places him well outside the demands of regular society in being unable to carry on his family line. Cao’s usurping ambition is then a kind of revenge born of frustration and resentment against a society which has placed a deliberate limit on his progress.

Still, his villainy knows no bounds – not only did he have a “good”, innocent man sent to his death, but he also dared to call for the murder of his still small children solely to secure his own position. Of course, this inevitably means that the fault lies with the “weak” emperor whose softness has enabled the wicked ambition of men like Cao who have simply stepped into a vacuum created by insufficiently robust government (an idea perhaps born of the same kind of social values which have corrupted Cao). Nevertheless, our heroes are nominally loyalists rising in support of the fallen Yu in an attempt to rescue his legacy in the form of his children. Outlaws all, they have their wanderers code and even if their first meeting may be strained, they are quick to recognise each other as fighters for justice even if by virtue of being among those who’ve chosen to live outside of the systems of corruption which define their world. The tale ends as they always do, but it does so with an ambivalent sense of triumph in acknowledgement of the hollowness of moral victory in a world still defined by corruption and injustice.

Dragon Inn screened as part of the Taiwan Film Festival UK 2019.

Restoration trailer (English subtitles)

Four Springs (四个春天, Lu Qingyi, 2018)

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Four Springs poster“Time flies. Life is so short, isn’t it?” a cheerful relative remarks lamenting that the family only comes back together once a year during the first of Lu Qingyi’s Four Springs (四个春天, Sì gè Chūntiān). Rather than follow his family through four seasons for one year, Lu Qingyi observes his ageing parents at yearly intervals as time both moves on and doesn’t delivering joy and sadness in equal measure.

Beginning in the spring of 2013, Lu Qingyi returns home to the remote small town of Dushan where his parents have lived for decades. The family comes together again, if only briefly, to ring in the New Year much as they always have. During the second New Year, Qingyi is joined by his sister Qingwei but there is sadness on the horizon as we discover she is coping with serious illness though the family once again celebrate joyously recalling the past more than dwelling on the future. Subsequent reunions are born both of joy and sorrow as family illnesses take hold, bringing people back together again if only to unite them in sadness and anxiety. Yet life, as always, rolls on just the same.

Briefly including shots of himself, Qingwei focusses on the figures of his parents – retired teacher Yunkun and mother Guixian. Though they must have lived through some turbulent times, the couple are blissfully happy in each other’s company and used to taking pleasure in the simple things such as the swallows which occasionally nest in their roof, or making a new hive for some migratory bees come to visit. The natural world is very much a part of their existence as they make time for hiking out in the mountains, tending graves and enjoying the scenery singing always as they go.

Music, indeed, seems to be an important part of life in Dushan and song is never far away from the lips of of Qingwei’s parents who find themselves humming folk tunes or stretches of traditional opera. Yunkun makes use of his computer to listen to and edit tracks while the rattling of his wife’s manual sewing machine echoes from the next room. Though many things here are “traditional”, the couple are not so much trapped in the past as happy with what they have. Yunkun has embraced his computer, but a later attempt to introduce the couple to smartphones and teach them to use the WeChat app ends in hilarity as they attempt to process the extreme modernity of instant communication.

Technology is both a privilege and a curse, as the family discover one New Year in being deprived of watching the spring gala thanks to an ill timed power cut which also leaves them inside in the cold but perhaps makes the fireworks a little brighter. As the New Year becomes marked by its absences – the empty chairs and increasing silences, technology also provides a path back to happier times through the home videos filmed in previous years by Qingyi and his father which provide a record of ordinary family life both happy and sad in recalling past springs never to come again.

Time itself becomes a theme as it marches on invisibly. Qingyi’s cheerful parents are thankfully in good health, though his mother wishes they could dance again like they did in the old days and worries what will become of the one left behind when the inevitable happens. Nevertheless, the New Year arrives as it always does, preparations are made, too much food is cooked, the family eats, and sings, and remembers. Lu Qingyi’s Four Springs is a touching evocation of the joys and sorrows of being alive in his loving tribute to his goodhearted parents who have learned to find the tiny happinesses in the every day even in the midst of unbearable sadness.

Four Springs screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema on April 7, 2pm & 5pm, at Heritage Museum of Asian Art, 218 West 26th Street.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Up the Mountain (火山, Zhang Yang, 2018)

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Up the Mountain posterThe story of modern China has often been one of migration as the young find themselves pulled towards the cities, sending their children back to the countryside to be raised by relatives while they earn what they can away from home. As the economic situation improves, however, there may be motion the other way. Successful artist Shen Jianhua moved from the bustling metropolis of Shanghai to a remote mountain village where he practices his art and opens his home to all who have an interest in learning from him.

Shen’s mountain home is an interesting exemplification of a blend of old and new. Though he seems to prefer the simple life, the renovated property is decorated in a modern, though fairly minimalist, style and the family do not appear to want for anything. Their living is not austere and Shen does not object to the idea of modernity, as the toys bought for his baby son seem to testify while his apprentice chats on an iPhone and his teenage daughter listens to music while she runs.

Nevertheless, life in the mountains is lived slowly and there are things which must be done which is why we see apprentice Dinglong continually chopping firewood while the gaggle of old ladies who make up the majority of Shen’s pupils come back and forth with vegetables preparing tasty food to be shared communally by the small family that has grown up around Shen’s art practice. It does not appear that the ladies pay anything for Shen’s instruction or that he draws much of an income for it, but all seem to benefit from a shared sense of creative community. One old lady describes her life before art as “stagnant, like old water”, but now she feels reenergised and happily gives away her finished paintings to her bemused children as something to remember her by when she’s not around.

Not everyone is as happy for the old women as they seem to be for each other, however, as we notice in the persistent discord between one older bickering couple. Dinglong too remains conflicted. Still young, his parents are beginning to pressure him to give up painting and the mountains to settle down. Dinglong, like many young men, doesn’t really want to and so is surprised and dismayed when Shen’s advice is more conservative than he might have expected, encouraging him to obey his parents’ wishes and reminding him that good art is founded on a wealth of life experience. Truth be told, Dinglong has a girlfriend already and is perhaps edging towards marriage but the snag is that her parents are from a nearby city. They’d rather their daughter marry nearby and would worry about her living in a remote village they perhaps assume is much more rustic than it really is. The other problem is that artists don’t earn much and Dinglong admits he only paints one picture a year with no guarantee it will sell. As a son-in-law, he’s not a particularly good catch.

Dinglong’s dilemma is perhaps unusual, most of the other youngsters are desperate to leave the country for a better life in the cities no matter how illusionary it might turn out to be. Then again, his resistance is perhaps more understandable as he complains to Shen that he is being given almost no choice in his future as everything is being sorted out by his fiancée and the parents with him the only one in favour of his staying in the mountains. His future wife has a point, however, when she objects to raising children in the village without access to a good school. Shen and his wife are educated people and they’ve been able to teach their teenage daughter at home but Dinglong is a rural boy and they won’t have the resources to give their children the best start in life unless they travel to a place those resources might be found.

Reluctantly, Dinglong is forced away from the simple, traditional life which seems to suit him best while his wife remains unsympathetic to his attachment to the village and its guardian god. Meanwhile, Shen’s life carries on much as before even after the birth of his baby son who put in an appearance a month early to be born in the middle of New Year. Zhang captures the ancient rhythms of the traditional village through its rowdy, colourful festivals filled with joy and excitement but also sees the ways in which it is changing. One older lady enlists Shen’s help to build a bathroom on her property because her daughter was too embarrassed to bring a prospective husband home to a house without one (and a daughter getting married is after all the most important thing), creating a beautiful space dedicated to modern ideas of relaxation and serenity rather than the efficient austerity usually associated with rural life. The young might not be able to stay, but given time they may return and the mountain will be waiting for them with patient warmth.

Up the Mountain (火山, Huǒshān) screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema on April 6, 2pm, at Heritage Museum of Asian Art, 218 West 26th Street.

Original trailer (dialogue free)

High Flash (引爆點, Chuang Ching-shen, 2018)

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High Flash posterThe little guy is often at the mercy of big business, but the conspiracy runs still deeper in Chuang Ching-shen’s high stakes thriller High Flash (引爆點, Yǐnbàodiǎn). Set in the relatively unglamorous world of a small fishing village, High Flash begins with a mysterious death but quickly spirals outwards to ask questions about the connections between industrial conglomerates and the political establishment both local and national. Those who seem keenest to root out corruption may in fact be no less self serving than those who take advantage of it but perhaps there’s nowhere free of greed and selfishness when there are such gains to be made.

The action opens with a fierce protest by the local fishing community towards the large scale Tonglian petrochemical plant which they believe has been polluting their waters, ruining their health and livelihoods. While the newly elected mayor, Chen (Lan Wei-hua), is giving his best at the megaphone, a commotion breaks out when a burning boat collides with protestors and is later found to be harbouring the body of one Ah-hai (Bokeh Kosang / Hsu Yi-Fan) who is assumed to have committed self immolation in protest of the plant’s continued intransigence.

Earnest medical examiner Chou (Chris Wu Kang-Ren) isn’t sure that’s the case. His evidence suggests Ah-hai, who was already terminally ill with liver cancer, did not die of burns or smoke inhalation while his kidneys also exhibited strange florescent spots later identified as copper sulphate. Chou’s findings are music to the ears of jaded prosecutor Jin (Yao Ti-Yi), who also happens to be Chou’s former fiancée. She too is convinced there’s more to this than the elaborate suicide of a man whose life had been ruined by the heartlessness of big business.

Chuang quickly sets up the expected contrast between the scientifically minded Chou who claims to assess only hard evidence without emotional baggage, and the passionate Jin who is desperate to expose the truth at any cost though the romantic drama between the pair never quite ignites even as the past continues to inform their present relationship and the case at hand. Despite his insistence on hyper-rationality, Chou is not is a cold or unfeeling man as he proves by tenderly introducing himself to Ah-hai’s body and asking for his cooperation in investigating why he died, but his rigidity is perhaps to have unexpected consequences despite his best intentions which see him taking a special interest in Ah-hai’s unfortunate wife and son.

Ah-hai’s illness and that of his little boy who is suffering from a brain tumour are not explicitly linked to the illicit activities of Tonglian but the implication is clear. Industrial pollutants have destroyed not only the local fishing industry but with it a community which is now suffering with a large number of serious and unexplained illnesses. Tonglian, as might be assumed, is not particularly bothered, assuming it can rely on friends in high places and a complex web of thuggery and corruption to deal with any more serious opposition. Meanwhile, Ah-hai’s death is already being repurposed for political gain. The village regards him as a hero and a martyr who sacrificed himself in the most painful of ways in order to bring attention to their plight and the evils of Tonglian. None of which, however, is much use to his wife and son who are now unable to claim on his life insurance and are left without an income.

Vested interests exist on both sides – those keen to uphold Ah-hai as a hero and a martyr at the cost of his wife and son, and those keen to minimise the effects of his death in ensuring Tonglian is able to go on doing its (extremely dodgy) business with the same bottom line. While top execs boast about making a killing on the fluctuating company stocks and spending it on yachts, horses, and vintage wine, Ah-hai’s wife and son are left at the mercy of prevailing forces and fearful for their futures. The village might well feel that seeing as Ah-hai is dead anyway making a martyr of him whether he was one or not might be worth it if it helps expose Tonglian’s various transgressions but then again they may have overestimated the extent to which anyone really cares about big business corruption and the complicity of the state.

Nevertheless, in true conspiracy thriller fashion getting too close to the truth can prove dangerous and Chuang perhaps missteps in the case of whom he allows to pay the price, but his anti-corruption messages and warning about the cynical hypocrisy of big business eager to claim it cares about the little guy and his environment are sadly universal, as are his world weary implications regarding the eventual corruption and diminishing efficacy of longterm protests.

High Flash screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema on March 28, 7pm at AMC River East 21 where director Chuang Ching-shen & actor Chen Chia-kuei will be present for a Q&A.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Sen Sen (生生, An Bon, 2018)

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Sen Sen poster 1“The rules are dead but we are not” jovial granny Lili (Nina Paw Hee-ching) insists as she shows some young whippersnappers how pool should be played. An Bon’s Sen Sen (生生, Shēng Shēng) offers more than a few life lessons along its merry way as it wanders through the grieving process from both ends – an elderly woman deciding to live her best life in her last days, and a young boy trying to come to terms with the death of his older brother, but for all of its melancholia affirms that life should be lived without regrets or rancour and with as much understanding as it’s possible to have while remaining firmly rooted in the present.

An begins with an ending – Lili’s middle-aged daughter sadly dealing with her late mother’s effects, before winding back a few months to young Sen Sen (Wu Zhi-xuan) who has inherited his older brother’s smartphone. A lonely child, Sen Sen spends his evenings in fast food restaurants to avoid to going home to an empty house while his mother works nights in a convenience store. Not quite understanding how smartphones work, he is struck by the enormity of his friend’s explanation that if he wants to go on using it he will need to delete some of his brother’s files to make more space. While scrolling he gets a notification that “Live 100 Days” is currently streaming and discovers that his brother had been an avid fan of Lili’s popular web channel via which she livestreams her everyday life as she deals with her terminal cancer diagnosis.

Sen Sen and Lili are of course dealing with a similar problem but from very different positions. Lili has fully accepted her terminal prognosis and decided against chemotherapy, preferring to live out her final days as fully as possible rather than spend them in hospital suffering with the effects of the treatment. Her daughter, Yi-an, however, does not approve of her mother’s choice and keeps nagging her to keep up with her doctor’s appointments which has only placed further strain on their positive yet perhaps distant relationship. Like Sen Sen, Lili is often alone at home, her husband having passed away some years ago and Yi-an now living in the capital, which is perhaps why she gets so much out of sharing her everyday life with strangers online.

Sen Sen, meanwhile, struggles to accept his brother’s death and his mother’s way of coping with her grief. He fears that he will eventually forget him and that his mother seems indifferent to his memory. Perhaps in an effort to ease the feeling of absence, the pair will be moving to a new, smaller apartment and Sen Sen has dutifully sorted out his brother’s things but his mother has all but ignored them. Like Sen Sen, his mother doesn’t like being in the apartment surrounded by a sense of incompleteness and so she throws herself into work to avoid thinking about her loss, leaving Sen Sen feeling neglected and unloved as if she’d forgotten about him too while consumed by her own grief.

Making friends with Lili, Sen Sen begins to understand a little about his mother’s grieving process just as Lili channels some of the things she’d like to say to Yi-an into the videos she gets Sen Sen to film for her. As Lili later puts it, everybody needs to learn to let go – of past resentments, of life, and of loss that can’t be avoided. Sen Sen becomes a surrogate grandson for Lili who admits that no one really knows what happens in life and she doesn’t quite know what advice to leave behind for her daughter, while she becomes a substitute maternal figure him as she gently tries to explain that his mother isn’t rejecting him or his brother but only attempting to deal with loss in her own way.

A gentle tale of learning to enjoy life while it lasts while recognising what it is that’s really important, Sen Sen is a strangely uplifting look at life in the shadow of death seen both by those approaching the end and by the ones who are left behind. Filled with warmth and humour, An’s whimsical screenplay is as cheerful as it’s possible to be just like its openhearted heroine keen to pass on the joy of being alive even as she prepares to say goodbye.

Sen Sen screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-up Cinema on 27th March, 7pm at AMC River East 21 where director An Bon and Nina Paw Hee-ching will be present for an introduction and Q&A.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Show Me Your Love (大手牽小手, Ryon Lee, 2016)

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Show Me Your Love posterIs it ever really too late to make up for lost time? Malaysian-born director Ryon Lee explores dislocations familial and geographical between a conflicted son and the guilt ridden mother who left him behind. Show Me Your Love (大手牽小手) shifts from frenetic, ambitious Hong Kong to sleepy, laidback Malaysia and from the ‘80s to the present day as two generations reprocess the idea of family in the wake of their own fears and disappointments both afraid and eager to put the past behind them while there is still time to make amends.

In the Hong Kong of 2016, Nin (Raymond Wong Ho-yin) is a successful teacher with a high-flying estate agent wife Sau-lan (Ivana Wong) who’s trying to convince him to give up his teaching job and movie to Guangzhou to invest in property. Home life is somewhat strained with Sau-lan working overtime and Nin worrying about a move he doesn’t really want to make, all of which means it’s the worst possible time to get an unexpected long-distance phone call informing him that the aunt that helped to bring him up when he lived in Malaysia has passed away. Travelling alone to the funeral, Nin is encouraged to reconnect with his estranged mother Sze-nga (Nina Paw Hee-ching) who has apparently started to behave strangely much to the consternation of Nin’s cousin who had been looking after her but is due to move to Australia to be close to her own children. Sze-nga angrily insists that she doesn’t want to return to Hong Kong with Nin and so he has little choice other than to place her in an old persons home at least until he can sort things out.

Nin’s melancholy voice over relates to us the various reasons he chose not to stay in contact with his mother. After abruptly moving them from Hong Kong to Malaysia when he was a boy, Sze-nga was continually evasive about her personal life and frequently told him minor lies which left him with longstanding trust issues and a lingering fear that she would soon abandon him. Sze-nga eventually did just that, depositing him with her sister while she went abroad again to work only to resurface 10 years later when her son was almost a man, taking him back and accidentally ripping him away from the surrogate family he’d formed with his aunt.

Truth be told, Nin never quite felt as if he belonged in his aunt’s family either despite her best efforts. A nosy a relative made sure he was pulled out of the family wedding photos in case someone thought he’d been officially adopted, somehow signalling his liminal status like a stray cat given temporary refuge. Perhaps for that reason he never managed to keep in contact with his aunt, either, forgetting to send her a New Year card as he’d promised he would. Broken promises become something of a theme from Sze-nga’s constant attempts to smooth things over with a comforting lie to the guilt and resentment that stands between mother and son.

Failure to communicate honestly continues to cause problems for the pair as well as for Nin individually whose longstanding fear of confrontation has led him to avoid telling his wife he’d rather not move to Guangzhou or to explain what’s going on in Malaysia. Eventually joined by his wife and daughter, Nin begins to repair his familial wounds by coming to understand a little about his “difficult” mother in that she always wanted the best for him but had a funny way of (not) showing it. Before it’s too late, he decides to make up for lost time by making good on some of those long forgotten promises as seen on a cute homework assignment he made as a 10 year old in which he was tasked with figuring out his mother’s hopes and dreams.

Despite the fierce sentimentality, Lee makes space for some typically Hong Kong verbal humour to lighten the mood while Nin’s melancholy childhood reminisces take on a rosy, whimsical tone even as he relates his own heartbreak in feeling abandoned and rejected by his often absent mother. Show Me Your Love is a warm and funny tale of putting the past to rest before it’s too late, making the most of the time you have left with the people that you love before it runs out with too much left unsaid.

Show Me Your Love screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-up Cinema on 26th March, 2019 at AMC River East 21, 7pm where actress Nina Paw Hee-ching will be present for an introduction and Q&A.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Canadian-Hong-Kong actress and Cantopop star Ivana Wong also sings the same titled main titles theme

Counters (카운터스, Lee Il-ha, 2017)

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Counters poster 1The far right is on the rise the world over and Japan is no exception. A resurgent nationalism has long been a worry as the memory of wartime folly fades and the young, manipulated by fears of the nuclear threat from North Korea and frustrated by a stagnant economy, are duped by the messages of unscrupulous forces who convince them the cause of all their troubles is an easily scapegoated minority. Lee Il-ha’s documentary Counters (카운터스) takes a look at the deeply entrenched xenophobic racism directed at “Zainichi” Koreans and the counter protest movement against it which finds itself divided over the question of violence.

The main focus of Lee’s documentary is the enigmatic leader of the “Otoko-gumi” (lit. “men’s group”, a noticeably yakuza-esque name) – former mob boss Takahashi. Unlike many of the “Counters” who turn up to disrupt right-wing rallies, Takahashi identifies himself as a right-winger who venerates the Emperor and the Imperial past but cannot tolerate the unfettered bullying of those who shout vile racist statements while preaching the glory of Japan. A former yakuza, Takahashi himself had originally been taken in by the falsehoods spread by men like Sakurai – the virulently racist leader of Zaitokukai which makes the dubious claim that Zainichi Koreans are somehow “privileged” thanks to special residency arrangements originally set up to avoid the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to account for all the Korean (and Taiwanese) residents who arrived as Japanese citizens during the colonial period. Though he had harboured doubts about the anti-Korean propaganda he’d been hearing, it wasn’t until he had the opportunity of a straightforward conversation with an activist that he came to realise that it was all lies and the guys on the other side had a point after all.

Later, one of his comrades describes Takahashi as an old school yakuza – the kind that thinks it’s his job to protect people and stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Takahashi evidently doesn’t like bullies or liars and was brought into the struggle by witnessing an old lady in kabukicho crying after a protest. His methods are, however, those of the street. Running Otoko like a gang he determines that the best way to silence the racists is to rough them up so they’ll think twice about coming back.

This places places Otoko at odds with the mainstream Counter movement which is committed to non-violent protest and social change through outreach and education. Though their aims share much in common, the Counter organisation fears becoming with associated with Otoko because of its less savoury elements – not only the violence itself but Takahashi’s criminal past and ties to the yakuza. If the Counters want to be taken seriously as a legitimate protest group, they have to be careful to present a professional, diplomatic image. Meanwhile, Otoko is free to shake things up without needing to think too hard about anything much beyond crushing the racist right.

Another activist engaged in building a shelter for oppressed minorities – not just Zainichi Koreans but Ainu, Brazilian-Japanese, LGBTQ+ etc, admits as much when he attempts to probe the paradox of Takahashi’s liminal status in the political world. The progressive movement has long been bound by its own principles and progress has been slow. Like it or not, Otoko seems to have created a shift in the political landscape no matter how one might feel about their methods. Takahashi corrals his men into building the shelter by day, but is a frequent visitor to the Yasukuni shrine in the mornings. Nevertheless, he remains an unlikely ally at the side of all oppressed peoples including transgender men and women and the LGBTQ+ community.

Lee imbues his footage with the true punk spirit, spinning back from Takahashi’s violent clashes to a whimsical jazz overshadowing the shadiness of government while playing heavily with on screen text and effects which occasionally trivialise the action as in Sakurai’s failed showdown with the Mayor of Osaka who proves once and for all that he won’t have any of Sakurai’s nonsense in his kind and welcoming city. The level of vitriol on show is truly shocking with heinous, violent statements offered by ordinary young women turning on the kawaii to call for the deaths of a persecuted minority while middle-school girls influenced by right-wing fathers preach atrocity in the streets (tacitly confirming the veracity of various other atrocities the right is usually keen to deny). The long awaited anti-hate speech law may finally have been passed, but there is still much work to do. The Sakurais of the world aren’t giving up, but neither are the Counters. A timely reminder that now more than ever resistance is the key.

Counters was screened as part of the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (Korean subtitles only)

A Land Imagined (幻土, Yeo Siew Hua, 2018)

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A Land Imagined posterAs the world gets bigger and smaller at the same time, it’s as well to be asking on whose labour these new lands are being forged. Yeo Siew Hua’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner A Land Imagined (幻土, Huàn Tǔ) attempts to do just that in digging deep into the reclaimed land that has made the island of Singapore, an economic powerhouse with a poor record in human rights, 22% bigger than it was in 1965. A migrant worker goes missing and no one really cares except for an insomniac policeman who dreams himself into a kind of alternate reality which is both existential nightmare and melancholy meditation on the rampant amorality of modern day capitalism.

Lok (Peter Yu), a hangdog middle-aged detective, is charged with looking for Wang Bi Cheng (Liu Xiaoyi), a missing migrant worker from China. Just who it was that noticed Wang’s absence is only latterly explained and in suitably ambiguous fashion, but the fact remains that there is an empty space where a man named Wang used to be and Lok is the man charged with resolving that space no matter who might or might not be interested. We discover that Wang was injured on the job, almost sacked and then reprieved to drive the workers’ bus where he befriended a worker from Bangladesh, Ajit (Ishtiaque Zico), who later disappeared sending Wang on his own mirrored missing persons case in which he begins to suspect something very bad may have happened to his friend.

Despite his presumably long years on the force and world weary bearing, Lok is refreshingly uncynical for a police detective but apparently extremely naive about the city in which he lives. Stepping into the world of Wang Bi Cheng, he is shocked to discover that people live “like this” – several men crammed into in tiny bed bug infested rooms so brightly lit from outside that it’s difficult to believe that anyone gets any sleep at all. Wang, in any case, like Lok did not sleep and gradually migrated over to the 24hr internet cafe across the way where he developed a fondness for the spiky proprietress, Mindy (Luna Kwok), while repeatedly dying in videogames and being trolled by a mysterious messenger who may or may not have information about his missing friend.

Like Lok, Wang Bi Cheng cannot sleep but lives in a waking dream – one in which he envisages his own absence and the two police detectives who will search for him, not because they care but because it’s their job and they’re good at it. Men like Wang are the invisible, ghostly presence that makes this kind of relentless progress possible yet they are also disposable, fodder for an unscrupulous and uncaring machine. Asked if it’s possible that Wang and his friend Ajit simply left, the foreman’s son Jason (Jack Tan ) answers that it’s not because the company keeps the men’s passports, adding a sheepish “for their own protection, in case they lose them” on realising the various ways he has just incriminated himself.

Yeo opens with a brief and largely unrelated sequence of a young Chinese migrant worker climbing a tower in his bright orange overalls. Later Lok reads a newspaper report about this same man who tried to launch a protest in having been denied his pay and forced to endure dangerous and unethical working conditions. Meanwhile, Mindy the internet cafe girl, is forced to resort to taking money for sex acts in order to make ends meet. Like Wang, she dreams of escape, of the right to simply go somewhere else without the hassle of visas and passports. Wang jokes that the sand that built the reclaimed beach they are sitting on came from Malaysia, and that in a sense they have already crossed borders, offering to take Mindy away from all this (for a moment at least) in his (borrowed) truck but knowing that their escape is only a mental exercise in transcending the futility of their precarious existences.

Indeed, Yeo seems to be saying that Singapore itself is a “land imagined” – constantly creating and recreating itself with repeated images of modernity. One could even read its artificial territorial expansion as reshaping of its mental landscape while all this progress is dependent on the exploitation of wayfarers like Wang and Ajit wooed by the promises of wages higher than in their home countries but left with little protection and entirely at the mercy of their unscrupulous employers. Yet a strange kind of affinity arises between the lost souls of Lok and Wang, united in a common dreamscape born of sleeplessness and lit by the anxious neon of rain-drenched noir as they pursue their parallel quests, looking for each other and themselves but finding only elusive shadows of half-remembered men dreaming themselves out of existential misery.

A Land Imagined screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema on March 20, 7pm at AMC River East 21 where director Yeo Siew Hua will be present for an introduction and Q&A.

Original trailer (English subtitles)