Category: Festivals

Victory (빅토리, Park Beom-su, 2024)

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At the end of Park Beom-su’s millennial coming-of-age drama Victory (빅토리) there’s a title card quoting scientific data that people perform better with encouragement. In order to get the headmaster to agree to their starting a cheerleading squad so they can use the clubroom for dance practice, the heroine comes up with a ruse that the moribund football team will play 50% better with the cheerleaders encouraging the crowd to shout their support. But of course it’s really the girls who prosper through a process of mutual encouragement and solidarity.

Set in a small town in 1999, the film’s heroines dream of becoming K-pop dancers in glamorous Seoul. Feisty Pin-sun (Lee Hye-ri) doesn’t see much of a future for herself in Geoje much to her father’s consternation and is forever asking to transfer to a high school in the capital though in truth all she wants to do is dance. The deputy-head seems to have it in for her, taking the clubroom away from them and belittling their dancing while Pil-sun and her best friend Mi-na (Park Se-wan) are older than the other kids having been forced to repeat a year after getting into a fight with a rival school at a disco. Cheerleading’s not something they had much interest in until meeting snooty new student Se-hyun (Jo Ah-ram) who’s moved to their rural backwater with her brother who has been lured their as a top scorer for the school’s football team by the football-crazy headmaster. 

The fortunes of the makeshift team are directly contrasted with the protestors at the shipyard where Pil-sun’s father works. Pil-sun’s father seems to be a man beaten down by life. He’s taken a managerial position but finds himself conflicted in the midst of a labour dispute with his bosses pressuring him to name the ringleaders of the strike so they can shut the protests down. Faced with unfair and exploitative conditions, the men are protesting for basic rights such as not being forced to work overtime  and weekends and having a right to time off. Pil-sun’s father may agree with them, but doesn’t want to risk his job and tries to placate both sides with a spinelessness that later appears cowardly to his daughter Pil-sun. Perhaps as a single-father, he’s mindful of the necessity of keeping his job but otherwise appears obsequious and willing to debase himself in the service of a quiet life. When Pil-sun is once again in trouble in school, her father drops to his knees and apologises much to Pil-sun’s embarrassment.

Yet like the shipyard workers, the girls fight in unity if in this case for cheerleading success. This is after all a synchronised sport that requires the team to act as one. Though they may not universally get on initially, interactions with the team help each to realise their special talents and give them additional confidence to dance their way into a future of their choosing. Meanwhile, they’re each faced with a millennial dread that now seems nostalgic in its references to Y2K and the end of the world. There may not be very much for them in this small town, but there is at least each other along with their burning desire to succeed. 

It’s this  infectious sense of determination that really does seem to improve the atmosphere in this gloomy environment, the protestors also joining in their routine while Pil-sun’s father eventually gains the courage to reassess his loyalties. They are each sustained by the community around them, supported and encouraged by their friends and comrades. The point is rammed home by the fact that Se-hyun’s striker brother Dong-hyun (Lee Chan-hyeong) turns out to be something of a disappointment, while goofy goalie Chi-hyung (Lee Jung-ha) proves unexpectedly reliable telling Pil-sun that he prefers to be the last line of defence rather than the pre-emptive strike as he proves by defending her when the gang is hassled by older kids from another school. With a series of knowing meta jokes (“Girls’ Generation.” “That sounds so dumb.”), Park piles on the sense of nostalgia for a perhaps more innocent turn-of-the century world but equally for the gentle days of youth as the teens dance their way through hardship and heartbreak bolstered by their unbreakable bonds and sense of hopeful determination for brighter futures that are theirs for the taking.

Victory screens Nov. 12 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Concerning My Daughter (딸에 대하여, Lee Mi-rang, 2023)

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The unnamed mother (Oh Min-ae) at the centre of Lee Mi-rang’s Concerning My Daughter (딸에 대하여) has only one wish, that her daughter will find a nice man to marry and have a few grandchildren. But Green (Im Se-mi) is gay and has been in a relationship with her partner Rain (Ha Yoon-kyung) for the last seven years though her mother doesn’t seem to accept that what they have together is “real” believing it to be some kind of delusion that’s holding Green back from her happy maternal future. 

When she suggests Green move back in with her after her attempt to secure a loan to help her out with the rising cost of housing is denied, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that Rain would be coming too while it perhaps seemed so natural to Green that it didn’t occur to spell it out. Green can at times be obtuse and insensitive, unfair both to her mother and to Rain who bears the unpleasant atmosphere with grace and tries her best to get along with her new mother-in-law who is openly hostile towards her and makes no secret of the fact she would prefer her to leave. Of course, some of these issues may be the same were it a heterosexual relationship as the mother-in-law struggles to accept the presence of the new spouse in the family home and the changing dynamics that involves, but Green’s mother’s resentment is so acute precisely because her daughter’s partner is a woman. She cannot understand the nature of their relationship because it will produce no children and to her therefore seems pointless. 

While her attitude is in part determined by prejudice and a sense of embarrassment that her daughter is different, it’s the question of children which seems to be foremost in her mind. Another woman of a similar age at her job at a care home remarks on her maternal success having raised her daughter to become a professor, but she also says that only by leaving children and grandchildren behind you can die with honour. Green’s mother is the primary carer for an elderly lady, Mrs Lee (Heo Jin), who had no children of her own though sponsored several orphans none of whom appear to have remained in touch with her. Now ironically orphaned herself in her old age, Green’s mother is the only one who cares for her while the manager berates her for using too many resources and eventually degrades Mrs Lee’s access to care Green’s mother suspects precisely because she has no family and therefore no one to advocate for her. 

It’s this fate that she fears for her daughter, that without biological children she will become a kind of non-person whose existence is rendered meaningless. Of course, it’s also a fear that she has for herself and her tenderness towards Mrs Lee is also a salve for her own loneliness and increasing awareness of mortality. Green is her only child, and she may also fear that she will not want to look after her as she might traditionally be expected to because her life is so much more modern as exemplified by the bread and pasta the girls bring into her otherwise fairly traditional Korean-style home. On some level she is probably aware that if she continues to pressure Green to accept a traditional marriage they may end up becoming estranged and she will be in the same position as Mrs Lee, wilfully misused by a cost-cutting care industry because they know there’s no one to kick up a fuss about her standard of care.

Even so, it doesn’t seem to occur to her that Rain could care for her daughter into their old age. Resentfully asking her why they “have to” to live together, Rain patiently explains that in a society which rejects their existence, in which they are unable to marry or adopt children, togetherness is all that they have. Green is currently engaged in a battle with her institution which has fired her colleague on spurious grounds but really because of her sexuality with claims that some students are “uncomfortable” with her classes. The violence with which the women are attacked is emblematic of that they endure from their society while even colleagues interviewing her invalidate Green’s concerns because she too is “one of them,” in their prejudicial way of speaking. 

Green’s mother had also, rather oddly, said that her daughter wasn’t like that when Rain reluctantly explained her difficulties at work and again resents that she’s making waves rather than keeping her head down and getting on with her career. Her decision to jump in a car with boxes of biscuits intending to smooth things over with Green’s boss by apologising on her behalf bares out her old-fashioned attitudes, though she too is shocked by the violence directed at Green and her colleague. When her lodgers ask about Rain, she tells them she’s her daughter’s friend, while she avoids the question when her colleagues ask, still embarrassed that her daughter has not followed the conventional path as if it reflected badly on her parenting. 

Yet through her experiences with Mrs Lee and Rain’s constant, caring patience she perhaps comes to understand that her daughter won’t be alone when she’s old and that she too does not need to be so lonely now. There’s something a little a sad in the various ways Green’s mother is told that her attachment to Mrs Lee is somehow inappropriate as if taking an interest in the lives of those not related to us by blood were taboo even if it’s also sadly true that it’s also in Mrs Lee’s best interests to ask those questions to protect her from those who might not have her best interests at heart. What the film seems to say in the end is that we should all take better care of each other, something which Green’s mother too may come to realise in coming to a gradual, belated acceptance of her daughter-in-law if in part through recognising that they aren’t alone and that it’s a blessing that her daughter is loved and will be cared for until the end of her days.

Concerning My Daughter screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Dead Talents Society (鬼才之道, John Hsu, 2024)

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“Why is it more tiring to be dead than alive?” A fed up ghost asks themselves and with good reason. If you thought you’d be able to rest easy in the afterlife, you’ve got another thing coming because it’s just as much of a capitalist hellscape on the other side as it is here. The central conceit of John Hsu’s Dead Talents Society (鬼才之道, guǐcái zhī dào) is that a ghost must must earn their keep by haunting the living in order to provoke large-scale appeasement rituals and the burning of vast amounts of ghost money or risk disintegration and finally disappearing from this world.

In a certain way, this is the paradox of the ghost. They fear being forgotten and only want to be seen mostly by the living but also by the dead in order to feel the validation that they exist and are appreciated. For Rookie (Gingle Wang) , a teenage girl who it later turns out was almost literally crushed by the weight of parental expectation, this was something she was never able to feel in life partly because of her father’s well-meaning attempts to boost her confidence by telling her she was “special”.  He even went so far as to mock up a fake certificate for her while leaving her to feel inadequate that her sister’s trophy shelves were full while hers were empty. It’s this certificate that’s gone missing during her family’s literal attempt to move on from her death and start again leaving her behind. With no place to return to, Rookie will disintegrate in 30 days if she can’t win a haunting licence which is a problem given her mousey personality and the lack of talent that left her feeling so inadequate in life.

Yet many of the pro ghosts are in the same position. Cathy (Sandrine Pinna) used to be the reigning queen, but her thunder was stolen by a former prodigy, Jessica (Eleven Yao), a very modern ghost who’s figured out how to haunt the internet and go viral for scaring influencers to death. In some ways, the living too are ghosts online haunting an alternate plane of reality while it’s through these online personas that we make ourselves seen. After all, in the modern world, there’s no better way to be “remembered” than by achieving internet fame. By contrast, all Cathy has is her decades old trick of backflipping on guests staying in the hotel room where she died in a lover’s suicide over a man who cared little for her. In a hilarious twist, the gang set up the trick on a harried businessman but he’s so busy he doesn’t even really notice any of their ghost stuff and remains entirely focussed on his work. 

Taken in by the gang, the realisation that rookie begins to come to is that she never really needed to be “special” but only herself and for someone to see her as she really was. Her anxieties are those of contemporary youth burdened by the weight of parental expectation and fearing they can’t live up to it. Manager Makoto (Chen Bolin) experienced something similar in life, struck by anxiety while struggling to make it as a early ‘90s popstar while unable to make his mark in the ghost world by virtue of being unable to scare anyone because he’s too good looking. As he tells it, the best thing about being dead is that you no longer need to worry about what other people think and Rookie is therefore free to become herself or else disappear forever. 

Even so, the irony is that the finale sees the central gangs take on unified appearances as if becoming one with one side doing better than the other in their genuine sense of mutual solidarity as a ghost world family. They watch J-horror-esque movies for tips and muse of the contradictions of fame that perhaps we accord those talented that are merely the most visible while these ghosts struggle to be seen in an increasingly haunted world of hollow influencers and illusionary online avatars. Rookie still doesn’t know what being seen means but has perhaps learned to see and accept herself thanks to her experiences in the afterlife. Charming and somehow warm in its lived-in universe of celebrity ghosts and professional hauntings, Hsu’s zany horror comedy may suggest there’s no escape from the living hell of capitalism but that dead or alive you might as well enjoy the ride as best you can before it all suddenly blinks out.

Dead Talents Society screens Nov. 9/10 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Handsome Guys (핸섬가이즈, Nam Dong-hyub, 2024)

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The malicious inequalities of the contemporary society are manifested in an angry goat demon who wants to burn the world in Nam Dong-Hyub’s zany horror comedy, Handsome Guys (핸섬가이즈). Adapted from the American film Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, the film plays with prejudice and superficiality along with the pernicious snobbishness of a society founded on status in which, as a would-be-exorcist later says, some have lost the ability to distinguish good from evil.

Step-brothers Sanggu (Lee Hee-joon) and Jaepil (Lee Sung-min) often suffer precisely because of this inability. They are actually nice, sweet guys who are always trying to do the right thing but somehow their behaviour always comes off as creepy giving rise to a series of misunderstandings. That might be why they’ve decided to buy a cottage in the woods in order to live a rustic life, only the house they’ve purchased is a little more rundown than the estate agent implied and was previously home to a Catholic priest which doesn’t altogether explain the goat-themed pentagram in the basement. 

Like the brothers, Mina (Gong Seung-yeon) is also a nice person as we can tell because she’s the only one of her friends who wanted to give the goat they hit with their car a proper burial while the others decide to just leave it in the road and drive off. She too thought the brothers were creepy, but is also awakening to the fact that Sungbin (Jang Dong-joo), a rising star of the golf world, is a bit of a twit who wields his privilege like a weapon and has essentially invited her on this country weekend as entertainment. He also bullies his friend/minion Byung-jo (Kang Ki-doong) whom they regard as a loser and is evidently willing to bear humiliation merely to be in the same orbit as a man like Sungbin who with his good looks, refined manners and modern manliness projects an idealised image of contemporary masculinity that is the exact opposite of the brothers. 

In many ways, he is the demonic presence of privileged youth damaging the hopes and prospects of ordinary youngsters like Mina. Believing that she has been kidnapped by the brothers, the three guys set out to “rescue” her but Sungbin doesn’t care about Mina at all and in fact only wants to retrieve his phone which contains evidence of his sordid lifestyle which would destroy his prospects of becoming a celebrity through achieving success in his golfing career. Nevertheless, they decide to attack the brothers with mostly disastrous results believing them to be nothing other than idiotic hillbillies if also depraved backwoods serial killers living an animalistic, uncivilised existence that is far too close to the land for city slickers like Sungbin. 

Once again, the brothers are plagued by a series of bizarre misunderstandings based on the perception of their “ugliness” which aligns them with “evil” and demands they be exiled from a society that equates physical “beauty” with moral goodness. To that extent, having been rescued from falling in a pond, Mina becomes a kind of Snow White ensconced in the home of the brothers and coming to understand that they are actually nice, if a bit strange, and merely have difficulty expressing themselves while their down-to-earth homeliness only seems suspicious to those who are a little less honest with emotions.

Their niceness, however, seems to be perfectly primed to face off against the Goat Demon as they become determined to protect their homestead from the likes of Sungbin who has only contempt for them and thinks they’re merely fodder for his heroic fantasy of retrieving his phone and proving his manliness at the same time. In essence, it’s Sungbin who embodies the ugliness of the contemporary society with its hypocrisy and superficiality, its casual misogyny and petty prejudice, while the brothers later vindicated as angelic presences of altruistic goodness. Slapstick humour mingles with a sense of malevolence and an inescapable cosmic irony that plagues the brother’s with misunderstandings and has kept them isolated, “handsome guys” too beautiful for a profane world and attempting to find refuge in their remote homestead and homoerotic relationship but eventually discovering unexpected solidarity with the equally exiled Mina as she delivers a silver bullet to privilege and patriarchy, sending ancient evil back to whence it came.

Handsome Guys screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Love Child (Jonathan Jurilla, 2024)

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A young couple find themselves struggling in an uncompromising society while trying to raise their young autistic son who has complex needs in Jonathan Jurilla’s semi-autobiographical drama, Love Child. Inspired by the director’s own experiences of raising an autistic son, the film never shies away from the inherent difficulties involved but is as interested in the wider social context that makes life particularly hard for parents Ayla (Jane Oineza) and Pao (RK Bagatsing).

The first issue they face is their youth which though termed a “superpower” by a well-meaning older woman makes it difficult for them to raise a child without having had time to generate a financial buffer. Meanwhile, they also face a mild degree of prejudice because they are not actually married nor do they have a religion in a fiercely Catholic culture. The pair were still in university when Kali (John Tyrron Ramos) was conceived and subsequently had to break off their studies meaning not only that they’ve had to change course in life but that they’re locked out of the better paying jobs their degrees would have led to. Ayla was studying to become a lawyer but now has a part-time remote office job that is increasingly incompatible with raising Kali. Her unsympathetic boss complains about the noise and later lays into her about her priorities, claiming that she’s a mother too and she manages so Ayla’s on notice for the next time she infringes on workplace mores. 

Though Kali is now old enough to be enrolled in school, they struggle to find a place for him and are at a loss when he suffers bullying from one of the neighbourhood children after they send him to a government-run special school. It seems their only option is an expensive private institution, but it’s obviously a struggle for them on their already compromised incomes. Meanwhile, they’re constantly recommended other treatments and services that might help Kali’s development and made to feel like bad parents for not being able to afford them. Neither of them can rely on family support as Ayla’s mother disapproved of them having Kali in the first place and is hostile towards him because of his disability while Pao carries a degree of resentment towards his estranged father who abandoned the family and now lives in Australia. 

Pao’s relationship with his father informs the kind of father he’d like to be in his desire to protect his family, but the solutions that present themselves are those familiar to other struggling youngsters and would result in splitting the family up with one or both parents living abroad to earn higher salaries so they can afford the best education and treatment for Kali. Meanwhile, Ayla looks around her former friendship groups and realises that most people her age have either rejected or postponed the idea of starting a family and are instead spending their money on things like travel and entertainment or patiently saving to achieve financial stability. She wonders if they did the right thing or were naive to believe in love and that everything would somehow work out because they were a family. 

Though raising a child is hard enough on its own, the additional financial strain placed on them along with the impossibility of both looking after Kali and trying to earn a living is something exacerbated by the lack of provision for families like theirs especially those without the support of friends or relatives. Sacrificing their dreams to look after their son, the couple do everything they can to ensure he has the best future possible but are often frustrated by those around them who maybe prejudiced or lack understanding of kids of like Kali and the additional care he sometimes needs especially as his developmental process is obviously slower than average and he may never achieve independence. Though some of the meta commentary and references to tropes of a stereotypical Philippine rom-coms are a little on the nose, Jurilla focuses on the love the parents have for their child and their earnest attempts to do the best for him even at the cost of their own health and wellbeing while also hinting at the unfairness of the society around them in which there is little help available to those who do not have the resources to pay for that which should be provided for all.

Love Child screens Nov. 8/9 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Little Red Sweet (紅豆, Vincent Chow, 2024)

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Towards the conclusion of Vincent Chow’s poignant drama Little Red Sweet (紅豆), the heroine says she thinks her family’s sweet soup shop is important because it helps people hang on to memories through food. Like many, May (Stephy Tang) seems to be displaced in a Hong Kong that’s changing all around her while other things stay frustratingly the same from her father’s (Simon Yam) refusal to teach her the family recipe because he wanted to pass the shop onto his son to her brother’s sexist assumptions that the housework is her responsibility while staying home playing games rather than helping in the shop.

Indeed, it’s not until matriarch Lin (Mimi Kung) suffers a stroke that everything she did for the family is thrown into stark relief. It’s clear she did most of the heavy lifting at the shop, especially when it comes to customer interactions which are not May’s father’s forte. He doesn’t speak English and has to fetch Lin when a pair of tourists want to pay. Unable to run the shop alone, he asks his son Boyo (Jeffrey Ngai) to help, but he refuses despite having no other obligations as a cram school student who mainly stays home and plays games. Boyo doesn’t help with the housework either, simply expecting that May will take care of it and him despite his ongoing obnoxiousness. 

Because of his refusal, May finds herself giving up her dream job as an air stewardess to help out in the shop though her father won’t let her near the kitchen and seems as if he’d still ideally like to hand the shop down to his son or perhaps close it for good to free both children from the burden of caring for its legacy. May’s job as an air stewardess may have symbolised her desire for escape but also reflects her rootlessness and sense of displacement. Before her mother was taken ill, she’d suggested using her staff discount to go on a family holiday which would have been their first because her father never wanted to close the shop though it was obviously not to be nor could she repair their familial bonds through her work. Both she and her tentative love interest (Kevin Chu) recall how low the planes seemed to fly when they were children and how distant they seem now reflecting not a broadening of their horizons but the impossibility of escape along with a loss of intimacy and the widening spaces between people.

But as Canadian-Hong Kong travel writer Soar says, it’s the people not the place and it’s the sense of community that May values in the old-fashioned shopping arcade that is inevitably targeted for redevelopment threatening the future of the shop. First trying to resist the march of progress, May eventually starts looking at new spaces but the ones she sees are slick, modern, and devoid of both warmth and character. A journalist who comes to interview May asks her why she wants to carry on a shop selling traditional desserts that might not be so popular among the younger generation but May says that it’s important as they help people hang on to their memories as if she were also talking about an older Hong Kong that is fast disappearing the soul of which lies in the sense of comfort this sweet bean soup provides. Eventually she’s presented with a choice, like many of her generation wondering whether to take her memories somewhere else or stay and try to salvage something from rapidly receding past. 

Her father’s eventual capitulation in agreeing to teach her how to make the family’s iconic sweet red bean soup is akin to a baton being passed, but also a sign of progress in accepting her as his heir rather than insisting on the feckless Boyo whom he also takes to task for his reluctance to look after himself and assumption that it’s his sister’s job to cook and clean for him. Though perhaps bittersweet, there is indeed something poignant in May’s determination to remake a home in a shrinking Hong Kong where community matters and kindnesses are repaid with interest years after they’d seemingly been forgotten. As Soar had said, it’s the people not the place or in another sense perhaps it amounts to the same thing and the taste of home you only find in the warming sweetness of red bean soup.

Little Red Sweet screens Nov. 8/11 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024)

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The central thesis of Neo Sora’s mildly dystopian drama Happyend is that the real looming earthquake the powers that be are so afraid of is a youth revolution. But the film seems to ask if that’s something that’s really achievable or if idle teenage fantasies of a better world will soon be snuffed out by its seeming impossibility or the internalised desire for a conventionally successful life lived under a system they know to be corrupt, unfair, prejudiced, and staunchly hierarchal.

Thus the school at its centre becomes a microcosm for the society at large. Set slightly in the future, though with a retro sensibility, the film revolves around a close group of friends who are nevertheless pulled in different directions as they approach the end of high school while becoming aware of the destructive effects of an authoritarian educational system on children across the nation. The priggish headmaster (Shiro Sano) is involved in dubious schemes with local government and high tech companies and drives a flashy yellow sports car to work. Somehow the teens manage to prank him by standing it on its end like some kind of monolith to his hypocrisy and corruption. The headmaster quickly brands the obviously harmless prank as a “terrorist” action and uses it to crack down on lapses of discipline in the school. 

His actions are mirrored in those of the Prime Minister who uses the looming fear of “the big one” as a means of forwarding his fascitistic agenda. He alludes to the false narrative that Koreans and other minorities committed crimes and poisoned wells in the wake of the 1923 earthquake as justification for his tough approach to immigration while limiting the ability of those who do not hold Japanese citizenship to participate in democracy. Kou (Yukito Hidaka), the most conflicted of the teens is a zainichi Korean whose family as he points out has been in Japan for four generations. He’s not obliged to carry his permanent residency documentation on him, but is repeatedly asked for it by police who scan his face to pull up his records on their ominous new devices. Drawn to rebellious student Fumi (Kilala Inori), he’s minded to resist social oppression but also mindful of his single-mother’s hopes that he will win a scholarship and attend university. 

Nevertheless, he begins to drift away from childhood friend Yuta (Yuta Hayashi) who resists by immersing himself in the dance music of the past. Kou regards him as childish or unenlightened, irritated that he doesn’t seem to have grown or changed at all and increasingly convinced he’s outgrown their friendship. There may be something naive about Yuta’s simple desire to enjoy his time with his friends and find his freedom in music, but he is the only one of the teens who really does reject the system by choosing to live outside it. 

Tensions come to a head when the school instals a mass surveillance system under the cute name “Panopty,” doubtless inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s famous design for the perfect prison. The system awards points for infractions on discipline but ruthlessly and without thought. A delicious moment sees a telltale baseball student fined once for smoking after picking up a discarded butt with the intention of throwing it away and then again for littering when he inevitably drops it. Led by Fumi, the kids resist in distinctly old-fashioned ways with a sit-in at the headmaster’s office but cracks soon start to appear and some aren’t willing to risk their academic futures on something which will only benefit the kids of tomorrow. In the end they win the right to a free vote on the surveillance system, but have perhaps underestimated how many of the young will also vote for “safety” over freedom in the mistaken belief that the system does not infringe on the rights of people like them.

This is a city in which ominous red lights blink in the distance like silent alarms, where the kids are forever hanging out next to signs that read “caution”, where earthquake alerts are so common no one really pays much attention to them but the looming threat of mass destruction hangs over everything and everyone. Even so, these kids are just teens growing up, having fun with their friends, and beginning to decide which path they’ll take in life. A poignant moment takes place at the end of a bridge with steps on either side and the sense that at some point you go one way and your friend another and you may never see each other again. Perhaps this is their earthquake, the silent tremor that sends them into adulthood and a society still in flux that seems somehow beyond repair.

Happyend screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Way We Talk (看我今天怎麼說, Adam Wong Sau-Ping, 2024)

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In the opening scenes of Adam Wong’s The Way We Talk (看我今天怎麼說), deaf children are being taught in a specialist school but are prohibited from using sign language to communicate with each other. The teacher, who does not sign, reprimands them severely insisting that they must speak to her. Her harsh and authoritarian approach is akin to that taken by colonialising authorities insisting that children must speak their language in an attempt to wipe out that which is spoken in their homes and among their families in a concerted attempt to weaken the bonds of their communities. The teacher claims she’s doing this for their own good, as do some of the children’s parents, because they believe that they will not be able to live “normal” lives if they cannot speak and that signing weakens their ability to do so. 

Of course, this is also motivated by internalised ableism and the stigma surrounding disability. Bella lost her hearing following a childhood illness and received a cochlear implant at an early age. Her mother did not want her to learn sign language because she believed doing so would set her back but instead forced her to listen to lines from television dramas multiple times, beating her with a coat hanger when she failed to repeat them with perfect pronunciation. Her prejudice is later exposed when she discovers that Bella has begun learning to sign as an adult, asking her if she wants to be like “one of those deaf people”. 

Bella had internalised a degree of this stigma herself, receiving financial aid as a kind of poster girl for an organisation promoting cochlear implants for whom she gives what is an incredibly insensitive speech in which she remarks that she believes that thanks to technology like this there will one day be no more deaf people in the world. Later she tries to use the sign language she’s learned in one of their videos but is quickly told off. The way the videos are framed presents the use of cochlear implants as a path towards a “normal” life, the point being that wearers could communicate in a way they describe as “normal”. If they were also signing it would imply that implants didn’t work and people wouldn’t buy them. In a later and even more insensitive ad, Bella is pictured with a caption that says the implants restore “joy and colour” to the wearer’s world as if the lives of deaf people were somehow colourless or devoid of joy.

It’s being called out for these unexamined views that gives Bella pause for thought on encountering Wolf, a tempestuous young man who refused a cochlear implant and is determined to preserve the existence of sign language which is after all his mother tongue. Wolf is frustrated by the march of technology. At Bella’s conference, he’s annoyed by the organisers who tell him they’ve cancelled the sign language interpreter because the captioning machine is good enough while appearing indifferent to his objection that they’ve removed the ability for a deaf person to ask a question. He isn’t against the use of cochlear implants for those who want them, like his friend Alan, but is also determined to preserve deaf culture through the preservation of sign language. 

Alan, meanwhile, has swung in the opposite direction and agrees that speech is essential for integration into mainstream society without really considering that it’s the society that should change to become more inclusive rather than forcing everyone to conform with it. Having been repeatedly turned down for employment, ironically in one case at least because she didn’t know sign language, Bella begins to feel that her dream of becoming an actuary is eternally out of reach. Though she’s secured a job at a high profile company, she feels as if she’s a diversity hire, essentially exploited while the company uses her to improve their image as a caring employer but only ever has her doing busy work as if they don’t trust her with anything important. Her mother had always pushed her to be “normal”, as if her deafness were something shameful to be concealed but it becomes clear that living this way places her under a lot of pressure while she may be more comfortable with communicating through sign language which affords her the freedom to express herself without constraint.

Crucially, the point is that Bella should have the choice to use whichever communication style she likes or all of them together rather than being pushed towards that which best suits a hearing society. Those in charge of decision making often claim they’re acting in the interests of inclusivity, but more often than not their decisions are influenced by a desire to cut costs such as relying on AI captions rather than paying an interpreter. Wolf’s dream of becoming a diving instructor is dealt a blow when the Hong Kong diving agency refuses to allow him to take the exam without a qualified deaf diver to interpret, only there obviously aren’t any because they’d all have been in the same position. With a gentle empathy, Wong exposes the petty prejudices of the hearing society but equally reveals the path towards the claiming of an identity among a strong and vibrant community.

The Way We Talk screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Don’t Cry, Butterfly (Mưa trên cánh bướm, Linh Duong, 2024)

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There’s an odd moment of calm in the opening stretches of Linh Duong’s debut feature, Don’t Cry Butterfly (Mưa trên cánh bướm), as the heroine, Tam, dances alone as if enraptured by the music flooding in from the open air aerobics going on in the square downstairs. The Vietnamese cover of ‘90s dance hit Smile by a band also called Butterfly maintains its distinctive “find my samurai” chorus in English though its vision of idealised masculinity couldn’t be further from the reality of Tam’s laconic and apparently unfaithful husband Thanh who utters precisely one line and only at the film’s conclusion which seems to take place in a possibly imaginary past. 

The irony is that Tam works as a wedding planner. We see her shepherd a couple through rehearsal with business-like efficiency, as they were on some kind of conveyor belt to be rushed in and out as quickly as possible. But for all that the wedding is display of untold extravagance that stands in stark contrast to the reality of Tam’s marriage. Even so, many of the attendees apparently to do not show up because the couple have scheduled their nuptials on an auspicious day which also happens to be that of the cup final. Auspicious it is not for Tam who is passed a phone by her 20-something-daughter Ha revealing Thanh at the football with another woman. In a meta touch, the commentator seems to narrate her discovery while photos soon go viral among her friendship group adding to the sense of displacement and humiliation that eventually send her to a soothsayer for a black magic cure to bring her husband’s affections back to her. 

Ha doesn’t understand her mother’s calmness, why she hasn’t thrown Thanh out or raised hell, but also perhaps does not feel the same sense of failure and despair resulting from the end of a marriage as a woman of her mother’s generation might. Though the other women joke about cutting Thanh’s bits off, they too put up with cheating husbands and the onus is on the woman to change and recapture her husband’s love as if she were somehow at fault for losing it. One of the videos Tam watches online features a middle-aged woman who claims to have reformed herself after her husband’s infidelity insisting that it was her fault for letting herself go but now she’s lost weight and dresses more youthfully so her marriage is repaired. Tam goes the black magic route instead but is tempted by memories of a fantasy romance from the past with her college crush though he ultimately turns out to be a loyal husband to a woman none of them liked. 

The slow drip of poison into her life is manifested by a leak in the ceiling and its surrounding mould which only women can see. Another woman knocks on her door with some irritation and asks if she has a leak too, dragging the landlord who declares himself oblivious unable to see the obvious problems of their society because of course he’s a man so everything seems just fine to him. Eventually he sends some anti-mould paint to placate them, leaving Tam and Ha to apply it though it does little to cover up their mounting unhappiness and despair. Ha, fearing that her parents always wanted a boy, wants to go abroad and is intent on taking her best friend from across the way with her but as in her parents marriage never really thought to ask him if actually wanted to go. Trong seems to have a number of abandonment issues seeing as his mother left choosing to pursue her desires to become a dancer rather be trapped by conventional domesticity. 

In the final and increasingly surreal stretches of the film it becomes clear that the women are drowning amid the floods of a patriarchal culture, no different from the fish in Thanh’s tank that he randomly buries in their houseplants and then simply replaces when they die. As the soothsayer had told her, Tam does indeed live a thankless life in which all her efforts are on the behalf of others leaving nothing for herself while slow poisoned by the mould in her ceiling that eventually threatens to consume her whole or else suck her back to time that at least seemed happier but in retrospect may not have been even at its most idealised.

Don’t Cry, Butterfly screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Living in Two Worlds (ぼくが生きてる、ふたつの世界, Mipo O, 2024)

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Mipo O had been quietly building a reputation as one of Japan’s most promising young indie directors with such lauded films as The Light Shines Only There but has been on an extended hiatus since 2015’s Being Good. Living in Two Worlds (ぼくが生きてる、ふたつの世界, Boku ga Ikiteru, Futatsu no Sekai) marks her return to filmmaking after taking a break to raise a family and, adapted from from an autobiographical book by Daisuke Igarashi, not only explores the realities faced by the deaf community but the complicated relationship between a son and his mother.

Indeed, at times the issue is less that both of Daisuke’s (Ryo Yoshizawa) parents are deaf as it is that he does not listen. When he becomes a teenager, his mother Akiko (Akiko Oshidari) spends a huge amount of money on a high tech hearing aid because she wants to hear his voice, though most of what he says to her is hurtful and unpleasant. His older self is probably regretful, ashamed of the way he treated his mother in particular but also in regards to his rejection of his family because he felt embarrassed by their difference in what is a fiercely conformist culture. He doesn’t give his mother a letter about parents’ day because he doesn’t want her to come and also thinks it would be pointless because she wouldn’t be able to hear anything anyway. Later he tries to get his grandmother to come with him to a parent teacher meeting about his plans for high school and beyond, telling his mother she’d only be in the way. In fact, the meeting is quite awkward because the teacher talks directly to him without trying to include Akiko while Daisuke makes infrequent signs under the table as if embarrassed to have the teacher see them.

As a young child, Daisuke had interpreted for his mother using sign language publicly despite the awkward attitude towards it at home. His grandmother writes things down on paper instead, telling him that it’s too difficult for her to learn. That doesn’t make sense to his young brain as after all he’s picked it up since birth. But this early tension perhaps contributes to his increasingly conflicted feelings. When he brings a friend home, he asks him why his mother speaks in such a funny way but of course it’s normal to Daisuke and this perhaps innocent question begins to cement for him that his family isn’t “normal” and he isn’t like the other children. Resentment towards his mother only grows to the point he begins to blame all of his problems on her including his failure to get into the better high school though she has done nothing but support and encourage him. As she points out, she never had any choice about her schooling and received little education because her parents thought she’d recover her hearing and refused to send her to a specialist school until she was 14 meaning she was just sat there all day twiddling her thumbs while unable to make friends with hearing children who mostly ignored her.

The parents were also against the idea of her marrying her husband Yosuke (Akito Imai) because he was also deaf, nor did they support their decision to have a child believing two deaf parents would not be able to raise one safely or effectively. Such attitudes lay bare the lingering stigma towards disability which remains even within the family unit. Unable to separate himself from being the child of working class deaf parents, the teenage Daisuke abruptly moves to Tokyo with a vague idea of becoming an actor signalling his internal search for an independent identity. The film hints that his liminal status existing between the worlds of the hearing and the deaf has left him with subpar communication skills as seen in his repeated faux pas at job interviews until he finally tells the truth and is offered a job on the spot. There’s an intimacy involved in his interactions with his parents which often can’t be understood by others, but also a less pleasant undercurrent in the way these interplay with speech and his own decisions of when to switch between dialogue and sign. 

Having gone to Tokyo to escape being the child of deaf parents, he discovers that being “ordinary” doesn’t really suit him either and only begins to accept his identity after meeting a deaf woman at a pachinko parlour who invites him to her class for learning sign language in a more a formal way while another of her pupils gently explains to him that though he means well he sometimes does them a disservice by taking over as a hearing person when he should let them do the things they can do for themselves. The absence of musical score and variation in the sound mix emphasise Daisuke’s transition between worlds and his own attempts to locate himself within them eventually discovering the equilibrium that allows him to realise he was the one who couldn’t hear along though his mother had always been talking to him. Touching but resisting sentimentality, O’s poignant drama never shies away from the failings of its protagonist but equally from those of the society within which he lives that can itself be unwelcoming of difference.

Living in Two Worlds screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival

International trailer (English subtitles)