Category: Festivals

Suffocating Love (愛的噩夢, Liao Ming-yi, 2024)

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Everything seems to put pressure on M, the cavalier hero of Liao Ming-Yi’s quirky exploration of confused male desire Suffocating Love (愛的噩夢, ài de èmèng). At heart, the problem might be that he doesn’t know what he wants, or he’s just someone who chases the dream of romance and is unsatisfied by its reality. Then again, the Chinese title of the film means something like “nightmare of love”, and it maybe that M (Austin Lin) is simply ill-equipped to deal the pressure of grown-up romance.

Conversely, the pressure he feels might be understandable given the nature of his relationship with Chia-chi, a manic pixie dream girl he falls for after meeting her through a book exchange app. Chia-chi describes herself as having “quirks” though at first they don’t seem to extend much past her vegetarianism, issues connected to a longstanding health condition, and her religiosity. But after dating for a year, M moves into her apartment and is confronted by a series of “rules” he must follow which make it clear that Chia-chi is controlling and possessive in the extreme. M must agree to send her updates every two hours to prove where he is with photographic evidence and reply to her messages right away. To begin with, M thinks it’s a small price to pay in the name of love, but eventually begins to feel the “pressure” of Chia-chi’s ever watchful gaze especially once another woman arrives on the scene. 

If these gender roles were reversed, we would be certain M should leave this abusive relationship though he seems to view it with a kind of nonchalance and only mild but increasing irritation. Ai-hsuan, a high school crush serendipitously turning up at work, offers the fantasy of escape to a more liberating kind of romance that’s tinged with teenage innocence even if Ai-hsuan’s problem is that she has cold feet about an impending marriage to a man she feels she’s grown apart from during their seven year relationship. Of course, this affair doesn’t place much pressure on him because for the moment it’s casual, an illicit bubble of freedom from Chia-Chi’s control in which he can be himself again. 

But is that what he really wants? After being transported to a strange dream realm, a bunny man harking back to the Alice in Wonderland reference that brought M together with Chia-Chi puts a gun to his head and forces him to make a wish at which point he wakes up with an other woman entirely, Kurosawa Yumi, a half-Japanese photographer and social media influencer who was his celebrity crush. The pair don’t live together, but Yumi seems to pop round to change his sheets and cook his dinner which is perhaps more reflective of a male fantasy than M realises even as he describes as her at the woman every man wants, What he wants is a woman who takes care of him domestically, and sexually, but demands nothing from him so that he doesn’t feel “pressured” by emotionally interacting with her or having to accept that she’s a whole, real person (which this Yumi at least obviously is not). 

At this point, events take a rather strange turn with implications of black magic and manipulation beyond the weird dream realm and its Alice-esque butler forcing M to play Russian roulette with his romantic desires. With a gun to his head, can he really say what he wants or will he always be chasing romantic fantasy? In truth, M’s tunnel vision has its share of latent misogyny and a fear of being “controlled” by women if in a less literal way than he wilfully submits to in his relationship with Chia-chi, a generalised conviction that each of his potential matches is manipulating him while it’s clear that his view of them is blinkered by his selfish desires so he’s incapable of seeing them as whole people or really giving much thought to their thoughts and feelings. Is he suffocated by love, or does he himself suffocate it in his reluctance to engage with the reality? In any case, the jury seems to the out on whether or not M is awakening from his nightmare of love or perpetually trapped inside it by external pressures he is ill equipped to bear.

Suffocating Love screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Tenants (세입자, Yoon Eun-Kyung, 2023)

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“Think carefully. Think about why you can’t leave here, and what keeps you from leaving,” runs the opening and closing dialogue of Yoon Eun-gyeong’s elegantly lensed monochromatic dystopian drama The Tenants (세입자, Seibja) in which the citizens appear to be trapped in an abusive relationship with a toxic city that offers what it claims are attempts to help the struggling get back on their feet but which are really constraints to prevent them from leaving. 

At least that’s what Shin-dong (Kim Dae-gun), a hard-working if apparently average officer worker, discovers when his landlord, who appears to be a child who has taken over this role from his still living mother, informs him that he wants to remodel the building to attract higher quality tenants and effectively bamboozles him into the idea of moving. Only, in this near future society, moving isn’t an easy thing to do and Shin-dong is struggling to pay his rent already for an apartment he barely occupies considering all the unpaid overtime he does just to show willing in the hope of career advancement. His friend in a similar position informs him of a loophole, that ironically enough as other kinds of tenants have rights, if he sublets part of his apartment his landlord won’t be able to kick him out.

Only the pair of lodgers he acquires are strange in the extreme. A very tall man in an alpine hat with two feathers that looks like bunny ears arrives with a decidedly childlike wife who appears not to speak much Korean and just smiles creepily while standing behind him. To make matters stranger they insist on living in the bathroom, because the wife has bowel issues, which also means Shin-dong has to start using communal facilities which turn out to be much busier than expected with similarly troubled office workers. Meanwhile, he starts to feel like someone is watching him and wakes to find one of the pair staring at him in his sleep.

Understandably, he regrets the arrangement but ironically he’s now in place of a landlord himself and feels awkward about asking the couple to leave while forced to acknowledge that they also have rights as tenants which include those to sublet the part of Shin-dong’s apartment he sublet to them. In this way, his space is literally shrinking but it’s also as if the city is further encroaching on his life. He explains that he’s a solitary person and much prefers to live alone but is prevented from doing so by the socio-economic conditions which surround him. His colleague calls him a hardworking loser who just makes trouble for everyone else with his constant overtime while he has invested in making closer ties with the boss in the hope of getting a promotion that way. 

But it appears the only way out of this toxic city which is literally choking Shin-dong with its low quality air is to get a transfer to the new utopia of Sphere 2, an idyllic future settlement with a purified air system advertised in both Korean and Chinese on his morning commute. The fact that Shin-dong works for a friendly corporate entity titled “Happy Meat” which apparently manufacturers ethical, cultivated meat products adds to the sense of unreality in which everything is somehow fake or a little less than you might have been expecting while things are that marketed as positive attempts at kindness are also in themselves a little bit toxic as Shin-dong works himself harder than the most earnest donkey and gets nothing back in return save the ability to think of himself as someone with the status of “officer worker” which at least confers a degree of respect. 

That might be one reason he’s disgusted by the idea of the attic dweller underclass who are, he’s warned, a little bit dangerous having been driven out of their minds by their dismal circumstances and prone to sometimes violent delusions. A less than helpful medical professional advises him to “reduce his thoughts”, which doesn’t seem like a very good long term solution even in this “zombie-like” city though even when he’s been given a chance to escape Shin-dong is told he’ll have to cancel his lease first, which means getting his tenants to stamp a form agreeing to end their tenancy and also get a form from the the person they’ve sublet to to do the same. It’s tenants all the way down. Shin-dong finds himself staring into the photo of a beach in the eventual hope of escaping to some kind of paradise, but otherwise seems to be trapped inside this hellish yet grey, lifeless dystopia in which it seems the only salvation may lie in madness. 

The Tenants screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Love Lies (我談的那場戀愛, Ho Miu-ki, 2024)

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The heroine of Ho Miu-Kei’s cybercrime dramedy Love Lies (我談的那場戀愛) later rejects the idea that she has been deceived for she was only falling in love and love once believed is real which paradoxically hints at the idea of romantic love as fantasy or self-delusion. There is undoubtedly some truth in what she says, if only in the fact that the young man scamming her also begins to fall in love if not exactly with her but with the image of himself as reflected in her eyes. 

From what we can see of Joe (Cheung Tin-fu), he doesn’t quite fit our image of romance scammer. He isn’t cruel or heartless and has more or less fallen into this kind of work, learning to see it as a kind of game which conveniently allows him to ignore the real human he’s exploiting in order to win. Awkwardly still living with his ex-girlfriend’s family, he’s bonded with her father and seems to be seeking something like familial love and acceptance along with the feeling that he’s wanted and valued by another person. Of course, being a romance scammer gives him what he needs as his targets are drawn into his trap and eventually become dependent on him though it’s obviously not “Joe” they’re dependent on but whoever he claimed to be online who is perhaps all the things he’s like be rather than who he is. 

In any case, he finds himself conflicted while trying to scam Veronica (Sandra Ng), a fantastically rich gynaecologist still struggling to deal with the death of her husband four years previously from whom she was about to get a divorce. Veronica is also not being entirely honest online, posing as a 25-year-old nurse named Linda and using a random photo from the internet while planning to have some idle fun chatting to a stranger in this case a heartbroken French widower named Alain. Like Joe, Veronica is also a little unhappy in herself, explaining that she’s a difficult person who blows off steam by rearranging the goods in convenience stores and has few friends. Being “Linda” also affords her another perspective on herself and a means of reassessing her thoughts about her husband and marriage. 

But this vulnerability is also what makes her vulnerable to the scammers as mastermind Joan (Stephy Tang), who used to be a TV screenwriter, points out in instructing Joe that he’ll really have cracked Veronica when she feels comfortable enough to tell him about her husband. Ho presents the scammers as an unusually well equipped yet old school bunch who have an actual art department to construct props to help Joe sell his fantasy though he’s pretty slow to cotton onto the idea of stalking Veronica’s social media profiles for information he later uses to create a bond with her. 

Though quirky and somewhat wholesome, the film does hint at the dangers of online interaction and the information we choose to share with strangers, perhaps unwisely. Intellectually, Veronica is aware of the potential of scamming but also sees herself as “better” than that, as if an educated, successful woman such as herself should be too smart to fall for something so obviously untrue and is later unwilling to accept that she’s sent large amounts of money to a conman despite the advice of her bank which of course only keeps her in the scam so she can prove to herself that she’s not being conned. 

But the conclusion she finally comes to is that if she fell in love with someone who didn’t really exist, then that doesn’t mean the love itself wasn’t real. In any case, it allowed her to re-engage with lost love and recover herself and her memories of romance while finally beginning to deal with her husband’s death and the end of her marriage which arrived more abruptly than expected. In much the same way, Joe begins to realise that he ended up scamming himself, half in love with the image he created as reflected back to him while more aware of his own needs and desires along with the emotional consequences of the scamming game. To that extent, maybe love itself is a long con or beautiful fantasy but there might also be truth in a lie and a genuine connection between lonely souls beyond all the wilful deception and misrepresentation.

Love Lies screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Killers (더 킬러스, Kim Jong-kwan & Roh Deok & Chang Hang-jun & Lee Myung-se, 2024)

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Led by Lee Myung-se, The Killers (더 킬러스) was originally billed as a six-part anthology film featuring different takes on the short story by Ernest Hemingway, but somewhere along the way took a kind of detour and now arrives as a four partner with a looser theme revolving around noir and crime cinema. Frequently referencing the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks, the film hints at urban loneliness and a haunting sense of futility along with the mythic quality of noir as a tale that tells itself.

At least that’s in part how it is for unreliable the narrator of the first episode, a petty gangster who wakes up in a mysterious bar after being cornered by rival thugs. While in there he meets a similarly lost, middle-aged film director in the middle of a strange date with a fawning young woman who’ve definitely wandered into the wrong place. A sense absurdity is echoed in the fact that the man continues to sit in the bar oblivious to the knife in his back until the bar lady pulls it out for him and exposes the real reason why she lures lonely souls to this strange place out of time. Even so, thanks to her dark initiation the gangster is able to become himself and stand up against the rival thugs who were bullying him with his newfound “feistiness” having overcome something of the futility of black and white, classic noir opening sequence.

That’s something that never really happens for the heroes of part two who are a trio of youngsters trapped in Hell Joseon unable to escape their lives as cut price contract killers working below minimum wage for a chaotic company in which everything has been sub-contracted into oblivion. Ironically, one had dreams of becoming a policeman and another a nun while the third has recently had plastic surgery in the hope of landing an acting gig and claims he’s not in this for the money but to make the world a better place. Seeing their work as a public service, they tell each other that it’s wrong to grumble over their unfair pay because other people get less and are otherwise incapable of standing up for themselves until they take a leaf out of the boss’ book and try a subcontracting of their own which doesn’t quite go to plan.

While the first two episodes had been set in the present day the second two are set during the long years of dictatorship, the first sometime in the 1960s under the rule of President Park as an undercover detective and two men who appear to be unsubtle KCIA agents descend on a noirish, rundown bar with a picture of Nighthawks on the wall waiting for a mysterious fugitive to arrive. They don’t appear to know anything about why their target needs to be caught or who he is save for a daffodil tattoo on his arm and are merely they shady figures of authoritarian power we can infer are hot on the tracks of someone hostile to the regime. In any case, they are they are about to have the tables turned on them in a demonstration of their inefficacy in their power.

It’s the fourth and final piece unmistakably directed by Lee himself, however, that brings the themes to the four as it opens with an allusion to the assassination of President Park as the narrator tells us that it is 1979 and someone sent a bullet into the heart of darkness but the darkness did not die. The two goons who later show up are KCIA thugs working for the new king Chun Doo-hwan come to threaten the denizens of the cafe which include a man called “Smile” because he can’t and a woman called “Voice” because she has none while trapped inside an authoritarian regime. Inhabitants of Diaspora City, a home to the exiled, they have only a small hole to another world which affords them the ability to dream. Relentlessly surreal the segment is marked by Lee’s characteristic visual flair and sense of noirish melancholy that extends all the way out to a world more recognisably our own though no less lonely or oppressive.

The Killers screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

A Balloon’s Landing (我在這裡等你, Angel Teng I-Han, 2024)

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A dejected Hong Kong writer longs to find the path back to paradise if in the most ironic of ways, but finds something quite different after accidentally being befriended by a young street tough in Teng I-Han’s lowkey queer romance A Balloon’s Landing (我在這裡等你, wǒ zài zhèlǐ děng nǐ). Seemingly inspired by the boy’s love genre, the film is chaste in the extreme and overly subtle in its central love story which seems to borrow heavily from other similarly themed East Asian romances such as Il Mare and Comrades, Almost a Love Story.

Director Peter Chan is in fact name checked several times, while Taipei street tough A-Xiang (Fandy Fan) has a poster of Patrick Tam’s Nomad on his wall which of course features the face of Leslie Cheung who occupies a similar space to that of Teresa Teng in Comrades in connecting the would-be lovers. Cheung tragically took his own life in 2003, the same year writer Tian Yu’s (Terrance Lau) parents were killed, while Tian Yu himself seems to have suicidal thoughts and intends to end his life at a place called The Bay of Vanishing Whales he thought he’d made up for his novel but is informed is real in a letter from a little boy in Taiwan he continues writing to as a kind of pen pal older brother. 

In a way, A-Xiang represents his desire for life, fond saying that there’s “always a solution” and begging him not to die just like one of the letters he received urging him to carry on living because the sender would be waiting for him at the Bay of Vanishing Whales. A-Xiang is also his literal saviour in that they meet when he rescues him from a group of conmen after he got very drunk bar but though their first meeting is sexually charged with both men wandering round in their pants their romance is slow-burn to the point of non-existence. While on road trip to find the mythical bay, the pair grow closer with Tian Yu slowly giving up on the idea of finding it along with the death it represents only for fate to intervene.

At this point the film changes direction in allowing Tian Yu to rewrite his present, no longer in search of death but of love and a way to save A-Xiang in the same way A-Xiang has saved him. At least, A-Xiang becomes a kind of symbolic other self as hinted at in his stories of men as lonely islands casting messages in bottles out into the sea in longing for connection. This sense of isolation may stem from a feeling of otherness born of his sexuality, though the film never clearly defines it, along with the more literal orphanhood and existential loneliness he shares with A-Xiang. 

As expected there is a fated connection between the two men which is more than a little contrived if perfectly in keeping with the genre of romantic melodrama as Tian Yu begins to chase a future rather than the past even while actively rewriting it to engineer a better outcome. It might be tempting to read something more into the connections between these two men each orphaned, floating islands seeking new futures together though the central theme seems to be less romance than desire for life in which Tian Yu is able to overcome his depression and desire for death through his connection with A-Xiang who gives him a new reason for living. 

A-Xiang’s symbolic value as Tian Yu’s desire for life might explain why the relationship between them never sufficiently ignites in what is at least billed as a queer romance though could easily be taken for simple friendship or platonic brotherhood with the only expression of desire longing looks and tentative motions from A-Xiang. In any case, Teng lends the beautiful Taiwanese landscape a note of wistful melancholy, a place of infinite nostalgia in Tian Yu’s mind and an evocation of the paradise he’s seeking that’s simultaneously past and future waiting for parallel lines to cross. The lyricism cannot however overcome the coyness of the central romance that for its potential poeticism remains somewhat obscure, an unrealised desire awaiting its season but also a shift in the times born of a new desire for life rather than the melancholy loneliness of past emptiness.

A Balloon’s Landing screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Bushido (碁盤斬り, Kazuya Shiraishi, 2024)

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The hypocrisies of samurai society have led a dejected ronin into prideful penury but there is perhaps a fine line between properness and priggery that he struggles to accommodate. Like his earlier film Blood of Wolves, Kazuya Shiraishi’s Bushido (碁盤斬り, Gobankiri) is a loving homage to a classic genre, in this case jidaigeki, albeit one with a modern twist in which it’s the murkiness of the society and contradictions of its code that make it impossible to live in rather than the innate corruptions of the samurai class. 

Even so, it’s samurai society which has betrayed Kakunoshin Yanagida (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi), now a seal-carving ronin living in a tenement house and months behind on his rent. Largely silent, Yanagida projects an air of calm but also a dangerous tension that hints at a deeply buried rage often echoed in the hellish glow of the candlelight that bathes his face in red. Not a natural gambler, he is nevertheless a Go enthusiast and talented player who gives the impression that he is always several steps ahead of any game in play. 

But that turns out not quite to be the case when he’s blindsided by a series of unexpected events that quickly destabilise his calmly ordered existence. Cast out of his clan after being accused of thievery, he is accused once again of taking 50 ryo from a pawn broker who had become a friend, Genbei (Jun Kunimura). Behind on his rent as he may be, Yanagida would not steal for stealing is beneath the dignity of a samurai and this stain on his honour is more than he can bear. But for all his righteousness we learn that he is also an ironic victim of his own priggishness and responsible for several other men meeting similar fates, cast out of the clan for something Yanagida turned them in for. In his reduced state, he seems to feel guilty and wavers momentarily on hearing the man who framed him for stealing a scroll from his former lord say he did so to gain money to support disenfranchised samurai but is caught between the spirit of samurai integrity and its letter. As his quarry told him, fish cannot live in water that is too clean and his oppressive enforcement of these arbitrary rules did no one any good. 

Yet his seeming righteousness does seem to improve the world around him, proving an epiphany in pawnbroker Genbei who develops a new determination for doing business fair and square after witnessing Yanagida’s conduct at the Go table. The irony is perhaps that everything on the Go board is black and white whereas Edo society is decidedly grey. Even the madam from the Yoshiwara Yanagida and his daughter are on good terms with (Kyoko Koizumi) can switch from wise mother to heartless gang boss in an instant. One moment, she’s giving maternal advice to Yanagida’s daughter Okinu (Kaya Kiyohara) and the next berating a runaway geisha who’s obviously been beaten while her lover has been killed for his transgression. The theft of 10 ryo will also it seems get you killed in this world of heartless rigidity and universal suspicion. 

Yanagida may not be much better in some respects. He is prideful and reckless, endangering himself and his daughter, whom he allows to pawn herself in the Yoshiwara knowing it’s very unlikely they will be able to repay the debt before the New Year deadline seeing nothing other than his obsession with vengeance against the man who wronged him in so many ways, Shibata (Takumi Saito). Shibata is his opposite number, cynical and amoral he subverted the samurai code for his own gain yet in its way perhaps it’s just a rebellion against the kind of austerity a man like Yanagida represented. In the end he can only escape his self-imposed prison by abandoning his rigour and accepting compromise, slashing the Go board with its black and white mentality in two though it leaves him further exiled. He cannot return to the world of samurai, but neither can he live among these ordinary people and like so many jidaigeki heroes seems to be condemned to wandering in this imperfect world. To that extent, the resolution seems much more cheerful than we might have been expecting. Everything works out, no harm done, but there’s a lingering tension even amidst apparent good fortune in a world of constant watchfulness. 

Bushido screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (หลานม่า, Pat Boonnitipat, 2024)

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How is love quantified? Are all relationships essentially transactional, or is there also a love that is purer and transcends material reward? The hero of How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (หลานม่า) seems unable to look beyond literal acts of compensation when it comes to his familial relations, but is eventually awaked to a deeper, less selfish kind of love when looking after his grandmother after she is diagnosed with stage four cancer. 

M only really does this because he has a friend who inherited a fortune from her grandfather after becoming his carer when no one else would. The question of elder care is perhaps increasingly relevant and speaks to a break down in notions of familial responsibility with youngsters unwilling to care for their elderly relatives while simultaneously hinting at their own despair and frustration in feeling unable to acquire such wealth for themselves leaving them dependent on the generosity of the older generation. M originally asks for money in exchange for visiting his grandmother, Amah, and rarely attended family events though later becomes obsessed with familial hierarchy forever asking Amah who her number one family member is hoping that she will say him.

Later Amah says she doesn’t know who she loves the most, but it’s her daughter she most wants to be with. M’s mother is the most involved in Amah’s life of all the siblings but is never really in running for the inheritance, nor does she really think about it. As she tells Amah, “sons inherit assets, daughters inherit cancer,” both making a joke about the heredity nature of the disease and the fact that care is almost exclusively performed by women. Amah too has suffered all her life under oppressively patriarchal social codes. She pays a visit to an older brother who has become very wealthy thanks to property investments built on the back of his inheritance and asks for her fair share of her parents’ money but is told where to go. Her brother treats her with contempt and defends the practice of leaving money only to sons on the basis that Amah’s share would have gone to her husband, which is to say leaving the family, though as Amah points out her marriage was arranged so if her brother disapproves of him it their parents’ fault.

M’s oldest uncle Kiang makes a similar complaint, that he feels they think of his wife as a member the family while crassly asking about Amah’s house deeds while she’s still in hospital. Yet to M, her love seems obscure. Her can’t figure out wh she’s so forgiving of her younger Soei who seems to have made a mess of his life and actively steals from her. One Sunday, the day when the siblings would all come for lunch, grandma sits and waits but later concedes that she likes it better when Soei doesn’t visit because that must mean he’s doing okay. On a day trip to a temple that is really mini battle between M and Kiang who wants Amah to come live with him so he’ll get the inheritance, no one thinks to make a wish for her. M then writes that he hopes she wins the lottery which is ironically also selfish as he’s hoping to inherit her estate.

When Amah leaves the house to someone else, M is annoyed and abandons his position as a caretaker complaining that it doesn’t seem fair that the person who has done the most for her has not been rewarded. But later he perhaps comes to understand Amah’s reasoning and that that isn’t how it works. She tells him that all jobs are equal if you do them well and buys him a white shirt to help him get one, a shirt he eventually wears on a different occasion, hoping that he’ll make something of himself and find a sense purpose. Eventually, he forgets about the financial gain and realises that Amah was trying to give each of them what they most needed, displaying a more selfless kind of love in the way that she continued to care for those who seemingly gave her little thought or of what she most wanted which was simply time. Deeply moving, the film has a rare warmth along an essential melancholy for things only understood long after they have passed. 

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Rei (莉の対, Toshihiko Tanaka, 2024)

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As the opening title cards of Toshihiko Tanaka’s Rei (莉の対, Rei no Tsui) somewhat paradoxically explain, Rei is a kanji character that has no real meaning on its own but can gain it by joining with another kanji as it has in the name of the heroine, Hikari, who does indeed feel herself to be “colourless” to the extent of being transparent. The implication seems to be that human connection is essential to fulfilment, but there’s precious little empathy on show between the disparate and isolated protagonists. 

A mild stigmatisation of singledom is displayed in the opening sequence in which Hikari attends a play alone and seems embarrassed by her unattached status while catching up with old university friend Asami who has since married and had a daughter. Yet it quickly becomes apparent that Asami is struggling as a young mother to a disabled child left largely without support while unbeknownst to her, her husband Ko has been having an affair with a young nurse. The implication seems to be partly that Ko resents his daughter Hina for not living up to his ideals or those of his rather snooty mother who seems to think Hina is an embarrassment to their family. We’re not exactly told what Hina’s disability is save that it involves some degree of learning difficulties and the doctor advises it would be better to put her down for a special school, but are instead uncomfortably focussed on the burden of her care which falls entirely on Asami.

The film then equates Hina’s condition with that of Masato, a photographer who happens to be deaf who had a troubled relationship with his mother while his brother hints that he may also have had some kind of mental disturbance that has left him fragile, too delicate for city life and instead living amid the peaceful mountain vistas of Hokkaido. In an effort to communicate with him, Hikari begins learning sign language only to discover he doesn’t know it but prefers to communicate through written language. Hikari finds herself caught between these different kinds of communication, at once walking with a dejected stage actor who insists words are essential and liberated by the their absence in her tentative relationship with Masato. Nevertheless, there is perhaps a degree of projection going on given that Masato cannot hear what she’s saying and directly respond to it allowing Hikari to interpret her own responses.

Masato’s estranged brother later suggests that Masato may be able to hear at least a little but pretends not to because it’s easier that way. In any case, he given little right of reply while others seem to make decisions on his behalf denying him any kind of agency. His friend, Shinya, tells Hikari to back off, that Masato is too fragile for relationships and she’s just making things hard for him though it seems clear to us that Shinya is in love with him himself and carrying a degree of shame for his repressed sexuality. Shame and a sense of inferiority also seem to be at the heart of Ko’s infidelity revealing to his lover that he feels he has to work twice as hard as anyone else just to get average results and be scolded by his boss. It’s clear that he has already begun to pull away from his family, resenting his wife and daughter for deepening his sense of personal failure while the lover, Rie, ironically presents a more progressive counter to Asami’s dilemma in telephoning her mother to say she plans to have a child and raise it alone in a society in which births outside of marriage are still rare.

No one really connects with anyone else nor are they fulfilled by their connections. Hikari’s relationship with Masato is frustrated by those who either infantilise him or act out of self interest but given the dark path he eventually takes they might have has a point in saying that love was too much complication though Hikari’s determination to reconnect may seem odd given the circumstances. Over long and meandering, the narrative progression cannot help but seem contrived in a manner out of keeping with the otherwise naturalistic treatment even before it rockets into the melodrama of its second half or the meta subplot with the dejected actor. Even so there is something poignant in the beauty of the Hokkaido landscapes and their endless vistas of snowbound isolation tempered by the gently bending trees.

Rei screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Escaping Man (绑架毛乎乎, Wang Yichun, 2023)

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“Life isn’t much better on the outside,” according to Sia (Zeng Meihuizi), the heroine of Wang Yichun’s deliciously ironic dramedy, The Escaping Man (绑架毛乎乎). Escaping men is in part what she’s tried but otherwise failed to do while constrained by the socio-economic conditions and entrenched patriarchy of the modern China. All of the men in the film are, as many call them, “idiots”, but all things considered it might not necessarily be such a bad thing to be even if their guilelessness makes them vulnerable to the world around them albeit in much different ways to Sia.

At least its this boundless cheerfulness and inability to see the world’s darkness that caused Fluffy (Eric Zhang) to be rejected by his status-obsessed mother (Yan Ni) who seems to have got rich by becoming what in charitable terms might be called a motivational life coach though others might describe her as a cult leader. She’s determined to get Fluffy into an elite primary school so he can “win at the starting line,” a buzzword in the contemporary society which basically means engineering privilege for your child so they can elbow other kids out of the way before the race even starts. The irony is rammed home by the fact that Sia, who works as the family’s live-in nanny/housekeeper also has a daughter named “Fluffy” who is one of China’s left behind children living with her seemingly bedridden grandmother in the provinces while Sia is in the city earning money to support the family having apparently divorced her daughter’s father. 

20 years previously, Sia’s mother had accused her lover of rape and had him sent to prison where he’s remained ever since having apparently gone along with the legal process in the mistaken belief Sia would eventually clear up this misunderstanding. She later later says the police wouldn’t let her and that she was never actually interviewed, but also continues to insist that they live in a “law-based society,” and nothing can be done without evidence. On his release, Shengli (Jiang Wu) comes straight to find his former lover in order to confirm that he did not in fact rape her and their relationship was consensual which she agrees it was. This determination is symbolic of his romanticism in continuing to believe in his dream of love despite all he’s been through, convincing himself he can start again with Sia while she continues to manipulate him with the almost certainly false promise of a happy joint future.

But then you can’t really blame her. A little way into the film, Sia is dressed in a white outfit very similar to the one worn by her boss when she goes to see Fluffy in a school play in which, at his own request, he played a tree. Sia is every bit as a accomplished and she has a warm and loving relationship with Fluffy which seems to elude his haughty mother. Later in the film she reveals that she came third in the national university exams but was prevented from going because she was born in a small rural province rather than the big city like her employer Mrs Mao. The fates of the two women are easily interchangeable depending on the circumstances of their birth while Mrs Mao continues to wield her privilege to ensure Fluffy can win at the starting line despite her resentment towards him for his lack of academic acumen or the things that denote conventional success in the modern China. Though he is cheerful and kind, she sees these qualities as actively harmful to his future success rather than embracing the little ray of sunshine he actively is.

Then again, Fluffy’s guilelessness also leaves him vulnerable which is why he cheerfully walks off with Shengli when he agrees to Sia’s kidnap plot and even rejoices in the grave-like pit they’ve dug to keep him in rechristening it as his underground fortress. He’s so nice that he doesn’t even realise the other kids are bullying him for being “stupid” and thinks they’re his friends, just happy to be included in the game. In this way, he and Shengli are alike, a pair of hapless fools living in a world that’s nowhere near as good as they think it is. The irony is that though Shengli perhaps begins to wake up to the realities of his relationship with Sia, his last wish for Fluffy is that he get into the fancy primary school and win at the starting line so he won’t end up like him. Suddenly it seems ironic that Shengli was a breakdancer because in the end he cannot break free of the prison that is the modern China. Filled with a darkly comic humour, the film is a fierce critique of the inequalities of the contemporary society and gentle advocation for the right to just be nice in world in which kindness has become a character flaw.

The Escaping Man screens July 26 as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Frankenstein Father (프랑켄슈타인 아버지, Choi Jea-young, 2024)

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A teenage boy confronts his paternal legacy but finds it largely hollow in Choi Jae-young’s pointed familial drama, Frankenstein Father (프랑켄슈타인 아버지). Frustrated by his circumstances, the boy begins asking questions about his genetic history in search of an explanation of all his “faults”  but begins to realise that perhaps the faults were not his own in any case and what he really wants is freedom, the right and opportunity to be his own man rather than a reflection of her father’s desires.

Left largely alone after his mother’s death amid the absence of his truck driver father, Young-jae decamps at the home of doctor Chi-sung who illicitly sold his sperm as a medical student 17 years previously. Af first Chi-sung wants nothing to do with the boy but is worried by his attempt to blackmail him, insisting he’ll expose the illegal sperm donation and ruin Chi-sung’s medical career. He sets about trying to disprove hie’s the father, but is finally forced to accept it and there after determines to prove to Young-jae that his “faults” are not his fault and he doesn’t owe him anything as per the contracts he signed with his parents. 

Of course, Chi-sung is also keen to prove himself “faultless”, that his austere life is the correct path because it’s order, rules, and discipline that have allowed him to become what he is today. To that extent, it niggles at him that he could have had a son like Young-jae who is sullen and rebellious. Young-jae describes himself as “dumb,” and has a host of other qualities that dissatisfy him such as shellfish allergy but is perhaps looking for some kind answers about himself and his relationship with Dong-suk, the man who raised him but is also a disappointment in Young-jae’s eyes. A long distance truck driver, Dong-suk is unsophisticated and fond of a drink. He is also controlling, insisting that Young-jae continually check in with him via text and send photos to prove he’s where he should be, and crucially preventing him from doing what he most wants to do which is run.

Running is a symbol of Young-jae’s desire for freedom, but he remains constrained by each father figure. After warming to him, Chi-sung offers him what he wants in promising to get him experimental treatment for his heart condition so he can run again, but soon turns out to be much like Dong-suk insisting he follow his rules and stick rigidly to the plan that he has designed for his sophistication which is also an effort to turn him into a mini Chi-sung. Young-jae is to him an echo of himself for he also grew up with a father who drank and disappointed him. Like Young-jae he too learns for escape as symbolised by his dream of buying a yacht and going to sea that he seems to be continually putting off. 

Yet as Young-jae points out, it wasn’t him who broke when he found out Dong-suk wasn’t his biological father but Dong-suk himself. Chi-sung hints that his decision to use sperm from a A+ donor was informed by insecurity, that he wanted to raise a son who was better than himself though as Dong-suk told his patient human’s can go back to what they once were but can never exceed it. The battle of over paternity of Young-jae isn’t so much a contest of nature vs nurture but a vicarious tussle of masculinity between each of the men who each want to prove themselves through asserting paternal authority over Young-jae and determining the course of his further life.

But Young-jae is almost a man himself and is no longer content to be bound by such corrupted authority. As he later says, he’s no desire to become another of his fathers’ “faults”. Conversely Chi-sung is clearly still trapped by his own father’s legacy and and afraid of the freedom Young-jae chases realising that the fault also did lie with him. In attempting to father Young-jae, he’s also attempting to father himself, insisting Dong-suk raised the boy “wrong” and he must correct him, but perhaps realising he learned a few wrong lessons himself and must make peace with his own past to set himself free while allowing Young-jae to run in a direction of his of choosing no matter the risks to his heart.

Frankenstein Father screens July 25 as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.