Category: Festivals

Eye of the Storm (疫起, Lin Chun-Yang, 2023)

Posted on by

In the early days of the pandemic, Taiwan was thought of as kind of safe haven which had largely managed to keep the disease a bay allowing many to live their lives more or less normally while much of the rest of the world contended with intermittent lockdowns of varying severity. The reasons for their success are said to lie in their experience during the SARS crisis of 2003. 

To that extent, there’s a kind of eeriness in Lin Chung-Yang’s poignant drama Eye of the Storm (疫起, yì qǐ) in watching the early days of this present pandemic play out 20 years earlier as medical personnel attempt to deal with a new illness about which they know almost nothing save that it appears to have a frighteningly high mortality rate. As the film opens, self-involved surgeon Xia (Wang Po-chieh) is clocking off a few minutes early in an attempt to make it to his daughter’s birthday party, rudely brushing off the complaints of warmhearted male nurse Tai-he (Tseng Ching-hua) and dismissing requests from his colleagues. Leaving in a taxi, however, he’s soon called back to deal with an emergency operation and becomes trapped when the hospital is placed into lockdown after the report of a possible SARS case. 

Unlike so many dramas centring on frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, :Lin does not necessarily portray the medical staff in the best light. As the suspected case was being treated in B Wing it is the first to be shut down and some of the doctors and nurses start a protest refusing to treat patients with SARS resentful that they’ve been locked up with the disease. Meanwhile, in A Wing some of the nurses also go on strike holing themselves up in the rec room and refusing to come out. As Tai-he had been helping out in B-Wing, he is quickly rejected by his peers and exiled there despite having no symptoms while the nursing staff otherwise know that they maybe condemning him to death in sending him to the frontline battle against the disease.

Also on the frontline is journalist Yu-zhong (Hsueh Shih-ling) who snuck into the hospital after a tip off and is determined to let the people know by capturing the chaotic scenes at the hospital first hand. He and Xia eventually end up going through old records to figure out how the virus took hold while Xia mainly spends his time hiding in a storage cupboard and trying not to come into contact with anyone who might have SARS which is not very doctorly. Though originally desperate to get out of the hospital, Xia’s mindset begins to change when he sees how bad things are in B Wing after being charged with transporting food supplies while he later comes to realise that he may bear some responsibility in the rather cavalier treatment of a patient he recently operated on.

Then again, perhaps there is something also a little on the nose in the constant references to the disease’s origins in China while it’s the hospitals choice to use a Mainland construction firm that directly leads to the infection. In any case, Xia eventually beggins to come around realising that it’s selfish of him to refuse to help when the hospital is already so short staffed with some medical personnel on strike and others already falling ill and even dying. Lin lends the tunnel connecting the two wings an eerie quality in the ominous opening and closing of its oversize doors, as if Xia were really descending into hell dressed in a makeshift hazmat suit of yellow overalls. 

Xia had appeared to be a narcissistic surgeon with little interest in his patients. Criticised by Tai-he he clapped back that it’s the nurse’s job to care for them, not his, while continuing to keep his distance and fixating on being allowed to leave the hospital before beginning to empathise with the sick. Yet many other medical staff react in a similar way, overwhelmed by the fear and chaos of the situation while resentful in feeling that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned only later coming to accept the situation and returning to caring for the patients as best they can. Eerily echoing our present times, Lin’s poignant drama eventually finds a kind of serenity even among so much panic in quiet moments of small victories and human solidarity.

Eye of the Storm screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Netflix trailer (English subtitles)

Lonely Eighteen (我們的十八歲, Tracy Choi Ian-Sin, 2023)

Posted on by

Looseley inspired by the experiences of star Irene Wan, Tracy Choi’s meandering drama Lonely Eighteen (我們的十八歲) charts the friendship between a pair of women trying to make their way in the ‘80s Hong Kong entertainment industry. Somewhat incoherent, the film positions itself awkwardly in its complicated gender politics while also ambivalent about the heroine’s commitment to her art and the things it may have cost her if also selling a mild message about female empowerment and independence.

Elaine and Ying meet as children, each from poor families and bonding in a shared sense of frustration. While Ying later moves away, Elaine’s family plan to sell her to a wealthy man though this does not appear to actually take place and she remains under the roof of her incredibly moody and abusive father. It’s her father who wanted to sell her and who makes her life a misery, yet the later part of the film will focus heavily on her love for him and guilt that her job prevented her from getting to the hospital in time when he passed away. In any case, after reuniting as teenagers, Ying introduces Elaine to a film producer she’s met through her clubland connections and the pair are signed as fledging starlets at a studio that mainly produces Cat III erotic movies. 

The film is very clear on the dichotomy between Elaine, wholesome and transcending her humble origins, and Ying who is earthier and trapped by the bad patterns of her childhood. Elaine soon progresses towards success as an actress, but Ying is somewhat traumatised by being cajoled into full frontal nudity by producer Ben and thereafter unable to shake off the label of erotic actress. Meanwhile she’s also trapped by her relationship with Shing, a guy she met at the club and wants to spend her life with but has a destructive gambling problem that disrupts her career.

In the film’s present day, it’s Elaine (now in her 50s) who is vacillating over marriage and what it might mean for her work as an actress and independence as a woman. Her manager seems to imply she won’t be getting work after the wedding, though her fiancé also seems rather controlling and disapproving of her career preferring she become a stereotypical housewife. It’s this that Elaine begins to rebel against, wanting to rediscover herself as an actress by taking on more challenging work even if her agent would prefer she stick to the commercial, while uncertain if she really wants to get married at the price of her career. The film ends with a fantasy wedding that reechoes the film’s lowkey conservative attitudes as Elaine’s fiancé effectively gives her permission to continue acting but only if she’s “transparent” with him. 

Elaine keeps saying that she wasn’t successful as an actress and feels guilty about letting her father down, though she appears to be working steadily and lives in a well appointed home whereas Ying has struggled with mental health issues and now works part time in a supermarket. The pair of them are subject to a hypocritical double standard and the vagaries of a sexist, largely unregulated industry. Ying never escapes the label of erotic actress, while Elaine’s attempt to break out of stereotypical roles in TV drama by agreeing to appear nude in a CATIII slasher backfires and leaves her exasperatiedly explaining that what she’s made is art and not porno. 

There are rumblings in the background, mentions of the Handover and the clearing of the slum where Elaine grew up which her father defiantly resists, yet the film can’t seem to find much of a through line or sense of purpose save the implication that the two women’s lives were largely defined by their family background with the perhaps unpalatable suggestion that Elaine used hers to propel herself forward while Ying’s continued to drag her down. Meanwhile, it’s also implied that Elaine’s “obsession” with acting has cost her in terms of her relationships, not only with Ying but not having said goodbye to her father because she needed to finish a scene while also remaining childless and unmarried at a comparatively late age. The resolution may point to her gaining the best of both worlds, claiming happiness on her own terms but also skews somewhat conservative in her fiancé’s chauvinism and the notion that she should be married even if she doesn’t really want to be. Even so, it does gesture at the enduring qualities of female friendship as Elaine and Ying patch up their differences while preparing to move on to a happier future.

Lonely Eighteen screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

INGtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls (잉투기, Um Tae-hwa, 2013)

Posted on by

A keyboard warrior enters a masculinity crisis after being ambushed in real life and taking a beating from an online rival in Um Tae-hwa’s graduation film, Ingtoogi: The Battle of the Internet Trolls (잉투기, Ingtoogi). Though the title may promise something more like a slacker comedy, Um subtly hints at the loserville of the contemporary Korean society which is, as the hero’s mother suggests, “only for the select few” leaving men like Tae-sik (Uhm Tae-goo), in contrast to the film’s title, losing the will to fight.

20-something and unemployed, Tae-sik still lives at home with his mother and fills his life with online fighting games. Lured to a park on the pretext of selling an online game item, Tae-sik is unexpectedly attacked by fellow gamer ManBoobs and becomes a laughing stock for getting beaten up in the street. Vowing revenge, Tae-sik makes his way to a mixed martial arts gym named Ingtoogi which as the coach explains means “we’re still fighting” and begins training in preparation to publicly call out Man Boobs for a fair fight on safer ground.

But Tae-sik is now traumatised and has become frightened of everything, hallucinating being punched in the face and in fact afraid of getting hit. It’s this sense of fear along with his wounded masculinity that he’s trying to avenge through violence and male dominance, but in order to do so has to resort to carrying around a kitchen knife as rather phallic replacement for his fractured manhood while otherwise trained by an equally disaffected teenage girl herself a former mixed martial arts champion.

Young-ja’s (Ryu Hye-young) high school class is perhaps surprisingly asked to debate capitalism in broadly positive terms only for her best friend to shock her by giving a detailed, text book answer about the loss of individuality later explaining that her nagging mother bribed the teacher to get the topic in advance so she could prepare. Young-ja is an orphan living alone though watched over by her martial arts expert uncle, Wook, but Tae-sik too has a nagging mother who is particularly disappointed in him for embarrassing himself by getting beaten up and going viral online. She wants to emigrate to Costa Rica vowing that it’s too hard to live in Korean society which is only for the elites. Tae-sik has no desire to move and in a pointed criticism states that though he and his mother live in the same space he does not feel as if they “live together” suggesting that the demands of contemporary capitalism and her job as an estate agent have placed a divide between them.

Indeed, when she suggests that Tae-sik learn the trade from her she in fact ends up in a physical altercation with a homeowner that is observed by the entire neighbourhood just standing and watching much as they’d watched Tae-sik getting beaten up online. The film seems keen to present his generation as one already beaten into submission and retreating behind the shield of their computer screens rather than taking risks in real life while those like Man Boobs who is later revealed to have been suffering with poor mental health are perhaps looking for something more “real” offline but have few ways to express themselves outside of violence. Even Man Boobs’ friend who set up the attack and filmed it is revealed to be a failed boy band star whose bid for fame in a capitalist society has crashed and burned leaving him with nothing. 

Yet for all that Tae-sik and his friend Hee-jun (Kwon Yul) who learns to take his knocks faster are fairly skeevy each attempting to ask out the teenage Young-ja despite being in their 20s, Hee-jun following up on a tip off from one of the other “loser” fighters about how to set up a date to take advantage of girl. Far from overcoming his powerlessness, what Tae-sik has to get used to is being beaten and effectively accept his “loserdom” if continuing a futile attempt to fight his dismal circumstances by less than productive means in simply not giving in and grinning through the blood no matter how many knocks he takes. The inane insults of online commenters present themselves as a kind of Greek chorus enshrouding Tae-sik in his self-loathing and powerlessness but do so only as a means of masking their own, ranting against the darkness from the comparative safety of their anonymous online personas. Though underlined by a quiet irony, Um paints a bleak picture of the contemporary city in which masochistic violence has become the only escape from an oppressive society.

INGtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Immersion (忌怪島／きかいじま, Takashi Shimizu, 2023)

Posted on by

Technological anxiety was at the heart of millennial J-horror, but perhaps the more things change the more they stay the same. Takashi Shimizu’s latest ghost story Immersion (忌怪島／きかいじま, Kikaijima) sees a grudge-bearing spirit cross over from the virtual world neatly suggesting we take our monsters with us into our simulacra and to that extent the brave new world is not so new at all. Then again, the hero thinks he desires a private world but paradoxically wants to share it and eventually discovers that what he craves is connection.

Tomohiko (Daigo Nishihata) has accepted a job as a programmer helping to build a new virtual world exactly replicating a remote island. He is greeted by his boss, Ide, in the digital space, but shortly after his arrival discovers that she died some time previously along side a man she may have been experimenting on in a project exploring brain syncronicity. When Tomohiko enters the virtual world he is confronted by strange and dangerous visions which suggest there’s a threatening bug in the system. Soon enough, the data breaks loose and somehow awakens in our world.

What no one knows is how a vengeful ghost got in the machine in the first place, though a shinto priestess later likens the new digital space to the “over there”, a perfect simulacrum of our world existing on another plane where spirits and their victims gather. Then again, it seems the problems are mainly on this side with an old man mocked by children and shunned by society because his mother suffered some kind of mental illness and was filled with a lust that was taboo at the time. The man’s mother is linked to the legend of Imajin, a slave raped by her master whose wife then took against her causing her to become a vengeful spirit who drove people out of their minds.

The purpose of the new world Tomohiko is creating isn’t clear, but it’s certainly very well resourced. The implication seems to be that the virtual is already haunting us and we can’t be sure of what we’re “really” experiencing and what we’ve been primed to experience. Tomohiko increases “the reality” of the virtual space by coding to it to activate “real” sense memories such as the smell of the sea or the feel of the sand. He can’t be sure if he’s the ghost in this world or the other while remaining aloof and diffident, unable to communicate effectively with his teammates. Tamaki, the estranged daughter of the dead man asks him if he doesn’t like people, to which he has no real answer though she replies that she doesn’t really like them either. What he realises is that doesn’t really want a world of solitude, but to be with others though it seems it might not matter whether in a “real” or virtual space.

But in contrast to all this modernity, the island is a traditional community with a strong interest in shamanistic lore and ritual. Tomohiko says he doesn’t really believe in any of that stuff, but is still prepared to go along with the shamaness’ advice in order confine the vengeful spirit to another world even if it means sacrificing the virtual space they are trying to build. Perhaps the message is that this kind of technological advance is dangerous and hubristic, unleashing forces we are ill-equipped to understand and would not be able to quell. As the shaman implies, you have to close the door from this side and not the other, which is a serious problem for the engineers who find themselves struggling to destroy the portal of a Torii gate in both spaces while the ghost continues to wreak watery vengeance.

Shimizu conjures an atmosphere of lurking dread in which digital ghosts haunt us in reflections of the ancient past even as our reality is destabilised by the overlay of the virtual. Tamaki reflects that the island is like a ghost town with few figures on the streets save themselves though they too sometimes appear like lingering spirits. What they discover may be a kind of refuge or escape, but perhaps not in the way we might expect while vengeful ghosts aren’t quite so easy to exorcise as they might once have been.

Immersion screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Soulmate (소울메이트, Min Yong-keun, 2023)

Posted on by

“Why should you step out for him?” one friend asks another, seemingly cutting to the quick of the fracture point in their relationship though ultimately unwilling to carry the conversation to its natural conclusion. A remake of Derek Tsang’s Soul Mate, Min Yong-keun’s frustrated love story is warmer and shorn of the icy angst which defined the original if also less certain in its implications and in the end profoundly melancholy in the missed opportunities and awkwardness of an unspoken affection. 

In the present day, a near 40-year-old Mi-so (Kim Da-mi) is called to a gallery to witness a giant and intricately drawn photorealistic portrait of herself attributed only to “Ha-eun.” The gallery owner has reason to believe the two women are friends and asks Mi-so to help her contact the reclusive artist, though she says that she knew only briefly in childhood and hasn’t been in contact with her for many years. This surprises the gallery owner as she’s uncovered a lengthy blog that outlines the entirety of their friendship in sometimes painful detail. 

The portrait staring back at her with her own gaze which is also the gaze of Ha-eun (Jeon So-nee) the artist confronts her with the painful realities of her past and the continuing absence of Ha-eun from her life. All we can know for the moment is that at some point they were separated and that Ha-eun has seemingly disappeared, though the Mi-so we see now seems so different from the one we encounter in childhood who is as Ha-eun describes her “free and also very delicate”. 

Inseparable for much of their youth, the relationship between the two women begins to fracture in adolescence as their paths begin to diverge. Ha-eun meets a boy, Jin-woo (Byeon Woo-seok), which necessarily disturbs their friendship by disrupting its dynamic. Unlike Tsang’s original in which it becomes clear that perhaps neither woman was in the end very interested in the boy who was himself a kind of proxy for the mutual attraction they could not articulate, Min presents him as a more conventional romantic rival albeit one who represents the sense of conventionality that the more conservative Ha-eun continues to cling to in contrast to the free spiritedness represented by Mi-so and her love of Janis Joplin. 

Ha-eun is confronted by the darker sides of Mi-so’s unconventionality during a trip in which she witnesses Mi-so get a bottle of wine out of a collection of drunk businessmen by offering to mix them drinks. An argument about money and power dynamics soon returns them to the fault line in their relationship, Jin-woo and their complex feelings for each other. Wilful misunderstandings lead to irresolvable resentments, each believing they are somehow in the way while equally hurt by the dissolution of their friendship and too proud to say so.

Min’s drama decreases the homoerotic undertones of Tsang’s original and opts instead for the defence of a deeply felt platonic friendship that may have developed into an unconventional family unit if given the opportunity. An exchange of earrings on two separate occasions seems much more convincing as an act of marriage than the more literal union between Ha-eun and Jin-woo. Yet maybe that’s the message the portrait was trying to deliver, a sign of an unspoken love that reunites Mi-so with the childhood self who knew it was possible to draw one’s feelings while seeing herself as Ha-eun saw her, Ha-eun’s own eyes reflected back at her. The two women in a sense switch places, becoming one while split in two and eternally connected if physically separated. 

The irony is that it’s the fear of losing it that erodes their relationship, and pride more than shame that divides them even if it’s ultimately the unwillingness to confront their feelings and the inability to articulate them that keeps them apart. Nevertheless, they eventually come to an acceptance of themselves as sun and moon, two halves one whole continually incomplete happiest only in each other’s company. Then again, there are some very unreliable narrators in play and perhaps we can’t be sure that everything we’ve been told is true yet even if not literally so still speaks of a deeper emotional truth and the deepening wound of lost love comforted only by memory and the act of recapturing it. 

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

Trailer (English & Korean subtitles)

Snow Leopard (གསའ།, Pema Tseden, 2023)

Posted on by

When a snow leopard breaks into a herder’s pen and kills nine of his castrated rams, the herder traps it and effectively holds the animal hostage in the hope of gaining compensation in Pema Tseden’s mystical drama Snow Leopard (གསའ།). He is reminded that the snow leopard is a “first class protected animal” but understandably asks who’s going to protect him, why is the snow leopard’s life so much more important than his own?

Prone to angry rants, Jinpa (Jinpa) is more often than not portrayed as a snow leopard himself grunting and struggling to get free when the forestry police attempt to restrain him. He says that the herders and local wildlife used to live in harmony. If a snow leopard eats one or two sheep, then they just accept it but as climate change and other environmental forces have pushed them further down the mountain Jinpa feels the snow leopards in particular have become greedy and must be stopped. He wants to kill the snow leopard in revenge and refuses to let it go until the government agrees to compensate him for his financial loss. His rage is such that it’s economically irresponsible, calling in a local man with a digger to rescue the remaining sheep and telling him that it’s fine if one or two die while agreeing to pay the same price as the sheep is worth to have him try to rescue them. 

Jinpa’s brother, a monk obsessed with photographing snow leopards, and father are each of the opinion that it’s spiritually irresponsible to keep the snow leopard bound up as it is the embodiment of the spirit of the mountains. It’s possible to read Jinpa’s animosity towards it as rage against the natural world and his fierce, almost mad diatribes against it as a kind of irrational hatred. Yet like him the snow leopard contains dualities. The one in the pen has a cub on the mountainside and seems to be capable of true tenderness though also violent carnality in its attack on the sheep. Jinpa more than anyone seems to be aware that the snow leopard is simply being what it is, but cannot forgive it for this very personal act of betrayal. 

The monk, meanwhile, has a unique relationship with the captive snow leopard segueing into a surreal black and white sequence in which he eventually sets it free and is rewarded for his act of kindness. This seems to hint at the ways in which human life and animal could coexist but also at the essential spiritual quality of the snow leopard as a symbol of something elemental along with the roots of traditional Tibetan culture which are now on the brink of eclipse. A TV news crew tipped off by the monk with whom the reporter went to school turn up to capture these bizarre events but appear uncertain as to what they’re actually filming. The cameraman is frequently so awestruck that he forgets to film anything while the reporter is constantly fending off calls from his girlfriend.

A farcical stand off occurs when representatives from the government turn up, seemingly looking down on Jinpa and irritated by his demands for compensation while insisting that the snow leopard must be released. He refuses to give in even as they remind him that if anything happens to it, it’s him that will be held legally responsible. The forces of authority are also intruders, making an incursion from the world of modernity much as the snow leopard descends from the mountain and the ancient past. Men like Jinpa occupy a liminal space, caught between the old and the new while their way of life is increasingly threatened by the forces of modernity. 

In a way, perhaps you could say the monk is trying to capture the snow leopard too even as he shares a special affiliation with it that connects him to the land and his culture along with something deeper and older that the modern world may lack. Yet what they need to do is set it free and restore an order that’s natural rather than manmade. Director Pema Tseden sadly passed away at the young age of 55 shortly after completing the film but offers a sense of the eternal in the snow-covered expanses of mountains and the cruel tenderness of those who live there.

Snow Leopard screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Ninja vs Shark (妖獣綺譚 ニンジャVSシャーク, Koichi Sakamoto, 2023)

Posted on by

There’s a lot going on in formerly peaceful village Okitsu. Not only are villagers washing up in bits after being attacked by a mysterious Sea God, but they’re also being abducted by a gang of devil-worshipping bandits. Koichi Sakamoto’s Ninja Vs Sharks (妖獣綺譚 ニンジャVSシャーク, Youjuu Kitan Ninja vs Shark) is exactly what it sounds like only with added zombies and black magic along with a more prosaic darkness in the legacy of domestic violence, entrenched patriarchy, and social prejudice. 

The twin threats are the reason that the village chief decides to employ Kotaro (Koshu Hirano), a drifter with a good reputation as a bodyguard but a bad one as a man. In the last village, he raped the wife of the man that hired him, Tae, on learning that they did not in fact have the money to pay. This fact seems to be forgotten as the film progresses and Kotaro is seen in a much more sympathetic light as someone who has a genuine interest in protecting the village rather than a heartless rapist and mercenary. In any case, on his arrival in Okitsu he walks in the attempted rape of Sayo (Juria Nagano), a woman ostracised by the village for having killed her abusive father after he murdered her mother. Her father was also the Mayor’s brother, which would make him her uncle though he thinks nothing of declaring her “cursed” and offering her up as a sacrifice to bandits and supernatural enemies alike. 

As Kotoaro remarks, some people only feel safe through oppressing others. The pair immediately bond over their shared outsider status and a sense of loss having been instructed by those they could not save that above all else they should live. There is however a minor love triangle in the determination of villager Shinsuke (Shun Nishime), otherwise fairly ineffectual, to protect Sayo from bandits, curses, and the stigmatisation of the village. Nevertheless the trio end up becoming fast friends even as Kotaro’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of roving ninja Kikuma (Kanon Miyahara) who is set on tracking him down as a traitor to their clan. 

Meanwhile, the leader of the devil-worshipping clan has figured out that he can gain eternal youth by eating pearls and vampirising handsome young men after sucking on their chests and licking their faces. Becoming a many-toothed shark-man in the process he has a pact with a giant shark demon which has been slowly killing off the villagers which is counterproductive because he needs them to produce more pearls. Kikuma also has some kind of dark ninja magic which allows her to create zombies, killing and bringing back the woman Kotaro raped as an undead retainer still hoping for vengeance though Kotaro’s dark past seems to be otherwise forgotten in his newfound sense of righteousness. 

It’s obviously a lot, but Sakamoto mostly makes it work as simply a part of this strange feudal world though the real villain is obviously the Mayor who is not sufficiently dealt with and yes, he probably should have closed the beach not to mention looking for a better way to deal with the Sea God if not the bandits. The titular shark does not appear all that much though there are plenty of other fights and action sequences not to mention severed heads and giant blood sprays along with gory dismembered body parts. Less a contest between man and nature, the battle is between the supernatural force of the shark and classic ninja training which Kotaro is forced to re-embrace in his quest to save Sayo having sworn off it because of inherent corruption in the ninja world. In any case, though they might have defeated the shark and struck a partial blow against the devil-worshippers, the trio each find themselves exiled from mainstream society, unable to remain in the village and seeking a life of independence elsewhere. A post-credits sequence hints a sequel suggesting that trouble is, however, likely to follow them as they do their best to survive in Edo-era society where vampire shark-men may actually be the least of their worries.

Ninja vs Shark screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (천박사 퇴마 연구소: 설경의 비밀, Kim Seong-sik, 2023)

Posted on by

The titular Dr. Cheon (Gang Dong-won) doesn’t believe in ghosts. Some may see him as a scammer or a conman, but he is a real doctor and sees what he’s doing as a kind of role-play therapy exorcising the demons that disrupt human relationships through, essentially, giving people what they want but were unable ask to ask for. Inspired by a popular webtoon, Kim Seong-sik’s charmingly quirky supernatural adventure Dr. Cheon and the Last Talisman (천박사 퇴마 연구소: 설경의 비밀, Cheonbaksa Toema Yeonguso: Seolgyeongui Bimil) has a pleasing retro quality that recalls classic serials along with the wisecracking heroes of old as Cheon exorcises a few demons of his own while trying to constrain a great evil. 

In a strange way, Cheon’s cynicism maybe a direct result of knowing that ghosts are real and one of them killed his brother and grandfather who was in fact the chief shaman. These days, Cheon is YouTube celebrity exorcist who runs what he calls a “high tech psych” company carrying out fake rituals with the aid of a series of special effects designed by “Apprentice Gang”, or more accurately his assistant In-bae (Lee Dong-hwi), featuring ominous wind and more dynamite than seems advisable. Kim has some fun casting the couple from the bunker in Parasite, on which he served as an AD, as wealthy homeowners with more money than sense convinced they’ve got a ghost largely because because their teenage daughter has recently become moody. Using Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction, Cheon assesses what’s at the heart problem in the family and gives each of them some spiritually endorsed advice such as that the husband should stop buying ugly statues his wife doesn’t like and the parents should cut the teenage daughter some slack. 

As he suggests, every one is happy so it doesn’t really matter that he lied to them or that the ritual was fake because they’ve still been cured of what ails them albeit through some psychological manipulation rather than religious reassurance. Then again, those around Cheon may find it somewhat embarrassing that their teachings are being exploited to make money out of desperate people even if Cheon seems to think it was alright to scam the wealthy family because they can after all afford it. Conversely, he tries to turn down a young woman who comes to the office judging from her clothes that she wouldn’t be able to pay only to change his mind when she flashes a bag full of cash. 

Unlike Cheon, Yoo-kyoung (Esom) actually can see ghosts and ought to be able to see through Cheon but perhaps chooses not to while he, refreshingly, does not take too long to re-accept the fact that ghosts are real after all and this one has a particular bone to pick with him personally. Kim casts the ghost world in shades of blue and gives them untold power, able to fly around in spirit form and possess one person after another in quick succession, while otherwise lending the empty streets a kind of warmth in the orange glow of the flares In-Bae uses to survey the landscape. With gorgeous production design and impressive effects, the film incorporates the trappings of shamanism from drums to lines of prohibition but deepens its lore with a series of key artifacts as Cheon finds himself reaccepting his destiny as a shaman while weilding the sword of justice.

In any case, the film seems to ask why not both, suggesting that Cheon’s fake shaman business is sort of real anyway and in its way provides healing not least to himself. They are all haunted by ghosts of the past whether they see them or not, while Cheon’s eventual quest is one of vengeance that would also allow him to lock away his trauma in a sealed room deep underground and bound by the chains of hell. The sight of the many sutras the villain had placed to possess and control the townspeople suddenly bursting into flames implies a kind of liberation or purification in which the dark presence has finally been lifted even if it may not be for long. Hugely entertaining and fantastically witty, Kim ends the film with a post-credits sequence teasing a potential series and the irresistably intriguing further adventures of Dr. Cheon, fake shaman and real exorcist, showman and swordsman battling evils both ancient and modern.

Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Concrete Utopia (콘크리트 유토피아, Um Tae-hwa, 2023)

Posted on by

“They were just ordinary people” the heroine of Um Tae-hwa’s Concrete Utopia (콘크리트 유토피아) replies when asked about those who once lived in her apartment block. Considering what happened there, her words have a chilling quality hinting at the ways society breaks down and doesn’t in the wake of disaster and fear brings out our worst instincts. Yet on the other hand, perhaps it’s not so far from where we are now as Um’s housing crisis satire makes plain in a patriarchal and status-obsessed society.

“There’s no high and now low now. Everyone is equal,” according to Keum-ai (Kim Sun-young), head of the women’s association at the Hwang Gung apartment block, but of course that’s not true. An opening sequence featuring stock footage hints at the aspirational nature of post-war high rises that as one woman said were designed to give regular people a chance at homeownership though what most people enjoy is the convenience. The irony is that this is quite literally hierarchal living, though there are hierarchies even within hierarchies. When disaster strikes the city, Hwang Gung is inexplicably the only apartment complex left standing in what was previously a forest of concrete. Refugees from other other apartment blocks have made their way into the building, but some want to evict them and not least because they come from “Dream Palace” a more expensive and snooty complex across the way the residents of Hwang Gun believed looked down on them. 

With all these “outsiders” in the building, tensions begin to bubble. One couple wants to evict the non-residents because it took them 23 years to buy an apartment so they’re incredibly resentful that someone might usurp their privilege. Chaired by Keum-ai, a debate develops as what to what residency means with some firmly believing only home ownership is good enough, questioning the rights of civil servant Min-sung (Park Seo-joon) because he is still repaying his mortgage and therefore isn’t technically the owner of this home. In any case, most are unwilling to share despite knowing that many of the non-residents will die if left out in the post-disaster sub-zero temperatures. 

It’s also telling that when pressed to elect a leader, someone says that it has to be a man. Within the new system that emerges, the residents are divided along strict gender lines with the men serving in a kind of militia under the increasingly authoritarian rule of “Delegate” Young-tak (Lee Byung-hun) and women remaining in the building doing stereotypical female tasks. The rules state that the apartments are for residents only, while rations are awarded in proportion the perceived contribution to the community and it is forbidden to go outside. The residents develop a sense of themselves as chosen people, but are also feared by those around them for their cruelty with the rumour that their raiding parties are practicing cannibalism. 

The moral centre of the film, Min-sung’s wife Myeong-hwa (Park Bo-young) was against evicting the non-residents but largely goes along with the status quo until noticing the ways in which Young-tak’s authoritarianism is changing her husband, destroying his humanity and turning him into an obsequious lackey too afraid to resist. Then again, Min-sung was already a little more selfish and conservative than she may have been, secretly wanting to evict the non-residents in the hope of holding on to his property while unwilling to share the spoils with them. It’s this fear, their fear of displacement on losing the social status that comes with homeownership, that drives some towards cruelty even though in a world like this things like property values and job titles are obviously no longer relevant. 

This is may also explain Young-tak’s short term thinking, sending raiding parties out to find more food in the ruins and rubble rather than exploring options for growing new crops or securing water supplies. Flashbacks to conversations with his family reveal that this may have been a longterm problem for him with his wife criticising that he “never solved anything”. Her criticism undermines his sense of manhood in his inability to protect his family, not only unable to provide financial stability but even to keep a roof over their heads having apparently been swindled out of a house purchase. Male failure and insecurity by turns fuel his need for authoritarian power while the men under him, like Min-sung, mistakenly look to him as a leader and seek to emulate his code of masculinity in the desire to claim their own role as patriarchs protecting their families. 

As another member of the apartment block points out, no matter how bad the situation is there are things you should do and things you shouldn’t. Myeong-hwa does her best to maintain her humanity and is perhaps rewarded for it on encountering another group of good people much like herself while others find only more violence and misery. If they had only agreed to share in the beginning, come together and thought seriously about solutions for a better future all this could have been avoided but in the end traditional social values prove hard to abandon with homeownership still afforded special status amid the ruins of society even as Young-tak institutes a mini authoritarian fiefdom complete with secret police and public self-criticism sessions. Darkly comic in its satirical absurdity, Um’s drama is keen to point out what a crisis can do to “ordinary people” but also offers a ray of hope that there will in the end always be those less inclined to selfish cruelty than to an altruistic desire to find solutions that work for everyone.

Concrete Utopia screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Rest of Our Lives (ラストターン　福山健二71歳、二度目の青春, Shinji Kuma, 2023)

Posted on by

A pair of elderly men struggle to find meaning in their lives in the face of well-meaning infantilism and health anxiety in Shinji Kuma’s warmhearted ageing drama, The Rest of Our Lives (ラストターン　福山健二71歳、二度目の青春,, Last Turn: Fukuyama Kenji 71-sai, Nidome no Seishun). They are not, however, the only ones as even younger people find themselves consumed by existential confusion when reaching a natural turning point and accepting that their lives will have to change. Yet through their various relationships each begins to come to a new accommodation with the present and accept that though their lives may be different than before there are still many things for them to do. 

Kenji lost his wife two years previously having cared for her as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. These days he likes to take a walk around the neighbourhood and then get on with his usual business though even he begins to realise that he’s become forgetful and is prone to doing strange things like leaving the remote control for the TV in the freezer. His son lives far away but is worried enough about him to install an iPad on the wall so they can call each other any time and he can also check in on him to make sure Kenji hasn’t had a fall or anything like that. But to Kenji it obviously seems like an imposition, his son’s basically spying on him and taking away his privacy along with a little of his independence. Satoru has also been checking out homes and recommends an organisation for elderly people where he can get health advice, stay active, and avoid social isolation. 

Only at the centre he starts to feel insulted, irritated that the staff members talk to them as if there were small children while getting them to do weird exercise regimes that make him feel silly. One elderly gentleman, Hashimoto, eventually storms out exclaiming that they aren’t in kindergarten anymore instantly earning Kenji’s admiration. Even so, as it turns out they are very different men. While Kenji is somewhat reserved and polite, Hashimoto is a chatterbox who makes constant inappropriate comments about women he probably only (just) gets away with because of his age and otherwise loudmouth personality. The friendship between them is slow to develop for this reason, but also because Kenji seems to have forgotten what it’s like to have a friend and accidentally upsets him leading Hashimoto to think that perhaps he is just annoying Kenji and should leave him alone. 

At the swimming pool they’re encouraged to go to, the pair run into Kaori, a former competitive swimmer like them struggling to accept the physical decline of her body along the end of her sporting career. Now working as an instructor she finds teaching an uphill battle partly in her buried resentment but also through a lack of empathy for her students unable to remember what it was like to not be able to swim and impatient with those lagging behind. They are all looking for ways to reorient themselves, not so much because of their age because of the immense changes in their lives along with a sense of loneliness. Kenji lives alone, but even Hashimoto who has moved in with his son confesses that the often feels in the way and once again infantilised seeing as they’ve given him a traditional Japanese room which lacks a locking door. 

Yet the realisation Kenji comes to is that their fear of becoming a burden is misplaced. It’s alright to ask for help when you need it and even better to offer it where you can such as in his thoughtful decision to walk a neighbourhood dog that barks all the time because the elderly lady who owned him passed away and her son’s out all day at work. Shining a light on the lives of the elderly in an increasingly ageing Japan, the film is makes a gentle plea for intergenerational solidarity and a more compassionate society that is responsive to the needs of others and cares for everyone equally. Kenji and Hashimoto marvel that even in their old age they still take pleasure in learning new things while allowing themselves to accept help as a gesture of love while making sure to return the favour wherever they can. 

The Rest of Our Lives screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.