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Luck-key (럭키, Lee Gye-Byeok, 2016)

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luck-keyWhen it comes to intelligent farce, Kenji Uchida is Japan’s undisputed master so remaking his 2012 tale of love, crime, and mistaken identity Key of Life was always going to be a tall order. Thankfully it’s one Lee Gye-byeok largely manages to meet as he skilfully relocates the tale to South Korea and swaps Uchida’s complicated farce for a more lateral double sided comedy. While not as accomplished as Uchida’s hilariously intricate original, Luck-key (럭키) manages to charm with its thoroughly romantic, comically absurd, approach.

On one side of town, hitman Hyung-wook (Yu Hae-jin) finishes off his latest assignment and disappears into the night, while on another out of work actor Jae-sung (Lee Joon) contemplates suicide only to be interrupted by his landlady’s exasperated pleas for the back rent. In a fairly hopeless state, Jae-Sung heads out to the local bath house, intending to bid the world goodbye in a more dignified state. Hyung-wook also ends up at the same destination to wash the blood off his hands, only to embarrassingly slip on an errant piece of soap and knock himself out cold. Remembering admiring Hyung-wook’s expensive watch on the way in, Jae-sung makes a split second decision and switches locker keys with the unconscious rich guy.

Jae-sung decides to put his affairs in order by using Hyung-wook’s money to pay off old debts as well as experience one day as wealthy man before doing himself in. When Jae-sung discovers Hyung-wook has lost his memory and assumed Jae-sung’s identity, he decides against giving back Hyung-wook’s belongings in favour of trying on life in the fast stream. Jae-sung has also grown attached to a young woman who inexplicably appears on Hyung-wook’s TV, though he does wonder why Hyung-wook has all of these weapons and telephones, not to mention a big board of investigation material, stored away in a hidden room…

Each man begins to live a different life thanks to assuming the contents of the wrong locker. Hyung-wook has the rawer deal as he can’t remember anything about himself and ends up at Jae-sung’s apartment to find it covered in old food cartons and beer cans with his hangman’s noose still lying in the middle of the floor. With only two bucks in his wallet and no cards, he even has to ask the paramedic who brought him in, Lina (Jo Yoon-hee), to lend him the medical fees. Somewhat improbably Jae-sung’s identity card tells him that he is 32 years old (coincidentally the same as Lina) which can only make one think that he must have had a very hard life. Nevertheless, Lina decides to help him by taking him home and getting him a job in her mother’s restaurant.

Even though he can’t remember who he was before, Hyung-wook gradually reveals a different side to himself as Jae-sung, enjoying being a part of Lina’s busy family life. Jae-sung, by contrast, moves further towards the shadows as he becomes increasingly determined to protected the woman on Hyung-wook’s TV screen who turns out to be a whistleblower in a high profile fraud case. Eun-ju (Lim Ji-yeon) is a woman afraid for her life who leaves her apartment as little as possible, but eventually Jae-sung tracks her down and begins to woo her in impressively romantic ways, only to discover he’s made everything worse by misunderstanding the nature of the situation she finds herself in.

Experiencing a different sort of life highlights for each of the men what was making them so unhappy – Hyung-wook realises the value of a warm and supportive family life whilst Jae-sung finds purpose and drive in his desire to protect Eun-ju. Both men had, in a sense been “acting” as a part of their daily lives, living a kind of half life which frustrated their attempts to move forward. Through living in someone else’s world, these hidden parts of themselves – Hyung-wook’s softer, more feminine side, and Jae-sung’s masculine desire to charge of his life, become “unlocked” and allow them to become the people they always meant to be all along.

Dispensing with Uchida’s farce structure, Lee Gye-byeok more or less eliminates the third major character from the original script in order to more neatly split the action between the two guys who then mirror each other as they each begin to move more towards the centre whilst also making tentative moves towards romance. Filled with gentle, often absurd humour and taking pot shots at everything from gangster clichés to diva TV stars, Luck-key makes all the right moves in its relocation to Korea, bringing both amusing comedy and genuine romantic warmth with it.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

De Lan (德蘭, Liu Jie, 2015)

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Set in 1984 in a rural Chinese backwater, De Lan (德蘭) is named not for its central character, but for his first love – a mountain woman far from home in search of a missing relative. Tasked with following De Lan (De Ji), Wang (Dong Zijian) finds himself entering a strange new world which he is incapable of fully understanding, not least because he doesn’t speak the language. A wordless love story between the tragic De Lan and the adolescent Wang is destined to end unhappily, but will affect both of them in quite profound ways.

Wang’s father has been missing for three months, and what’s worse is that around 2000 yuan went missing with him. Mr. Wang had been the loans officer for the local party office in this dreary mountain town and now the best idea anyone has come up with is for Wang to take over the position and pay back the missing money with deductions from his wages (this should take around ten years). Hardly fair, but what can you do? Wang’s first assignment is to take an audit of a mountain town where the residents have a lot of outstanding payments. Seeing as they’re heading to the same place, Wang is to accompany a mountain woman, De Lan, who had been travelling around local towns looking for a missing person but has now run out of money and must go home alone.

Wang is told to trust De Lan when it comes to the terrain, but that he should keep control of the food supplies in case she tries to run off. All things considered, the people at the foot of the mountains, aren’t very well disposed to those at the top. Wang is young and unused to walking such long distances, frustrating De Lan with his inability to keep up and frequent needs to rest. Nevertheless a kind of mutual affection seems to build up between them but largely goes unspoken and unacknowledged. Finding himself installed in De Lan’s home, Wang begins to feel very awkward indeed, unable to work out the strange family dynamic between the gruff man with the lame leg, ancient blind old woman, and the feisty De Lan.

Wang has, after all, been sent to the town to collect on loans – an entirely pointless enterprise as no one here has any money. Wang’s father was a much loved presence, mostly because he always came with cash and never pressed them on repayments. His son, with a father’s debt around his neck, is not quite so nonchalant. Calling a village meeting with no notice, Wang makes it clear he won’t be following his father’s lax approach and will not be issuing any new loans, rather he will be calling in the old ones. This does not make him popular in the village.

Eventually he changes his mind and decides to flash some cash but his worst assumptions are confirmed when the villagers, far from using the money they claimed to so desperately need to survive to invest in their businesses, club together to buy all the booze in the surrounding area and have a giant party. Originally put out by their trickery and De Lan’s ongoing unavailability, Wang suddenly finds himself trying some of their liquor and joining in with a dance around the fire. Perhaps learning to adjust to the Earthy, less ordered way of life, Wang has embraced the new found freedom of the place, but he will also discover that it only runs so deep.

De Lan’s life has undoubtedly been a difficult one which she faces with stoic resignation. Shared between two men and longing only for a child, De Lan has very little say in anything that happens to her yet she was able to set off all alone to look for her missing person. During the trip, De Lan is dismayed when a teenage boy in a home they spend a night in makes a vulgar comment about her body, leading her to try to leave as soon as possible only for Wang to pledge his protection. De Lan is aware of the dangers of the road, as well as the constraints placed on her life, whereas as Wang is still naive enough to think his physical strength and government position would be enough to keep De Lan any safer than she would be alone.

As Wang’s feelings for De Lan grow he fantasises about saving her from this strange, cold household though he barely stops to ask himself if saving is really what she wants. Unable to speak the local dialect, Wang necessarily needs to rely on look and gesture which is largely how he and De Lan have come to communicate – a pure kind of dialogue without need of words. Wang’s love for De Lan is destined to cost him dearly both in financial and emotional terms. A beautifully sad tale of frustrated first love set against the picturesque Chinese countryside and inside it’s much less pretty political system, De Lan is the story of one man’s transition from adolescence to manhood through heartbreak, filled with quiet, yet intense, emotion.

Reviewed at the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Spirits’ Homecoming (귀향, Cho Jung-rae, 2016)

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sprits-homecomingOf all the awful things that happened in the middle part of the 20th century, the trafficking, incarceration, enslavement and forced prostitution of women and girls from across Asia (including at least 65 Dutch women in what is now known as Indonesia) who were abducted for use as “comfort women” by the Japanese military remains one of the least discussed and most controversial. The issue (arguably) runs most deeply in Korea which had been experiencing a prolonged and often brutal era of colonial rule even prior to the intensification of hostilities in the early 1940s. The torment these women faced did not end with the ceasefire as entrenched social attitudes left them not only with a lifetime of physical and psychological trauma but also internalised shame which made it difficult for them to talk about their experiences even to those closest to them. Now more than ever, it is important that this story be told and the long suffering of these women, many of whom are no longer with us, is finally acknowledged.

In 1943, fourteen year old Jung-min (Kang Hana) is an only child living with her cheerful father and stern mother somewhere in rural Korea. Energetic and headstrong, Jung-min thinks it sport to take a handmade amulet from one of her friends in a game despite her friend’s obvious distress. This earns her another switch beating from her disappointed mother who, regretfully, later makes her a similar amulet of her own. However, the amulet does Jung-min little good in the short term as the soldiers finally arrive and take her away with them to an uncertain destination.

Packed into a freight train with other similarly aged girls in the same situation, Jung-min is able to keep her cool and bonds with the girl next to her, Young-hee (Seo Mi-ji), who is already physically ill aside from the additional stress. Far from the shoe factory one of the girls had imagined, this collection of children is bound for a military brothel where they will be required to speak only Japanese, remaining within their tiny rooms which store only a mattress and water bucket, and endure repeated rape and violence at the hands of their captors.

Running parallel to the 1943 narrative is a jump forward to 1991 around the time in which the government finally decides to address the comfort woman issue with calls for registration so that all women affected may apply for any available compensation. Young-ok (Son Sook), now an older woman making a living from textiles and sewing amulets just like Jung-min’s, is only one of these women. Through her friendship with a shaman and her protege Eun-kyung (Choi Ri), Young-ok finds her thoughts returning to the past once again.

The younger Koreans of 1943 had known only the Japanese occupation, were educated in Japanese, and had been taught that they were “true countrymen” as one Jung-min’s friends puts it. Jung-min’s carefree, rural town is almost untouched by politics as Korean is spoken freely, folk traditions permitted, Arirang sung in the fields, and teenage girls wander around freely with no one to say to much about it. All this ends one day when the soldiers arrive, forcibly abducting Jung-min and any other young woman in the area without even a word of explanation to their parents or families. Despite the gradual erosion of their cultural identity, these women are now members of a subjugated nation so far below those of mainland birth that they barely qualify as people at all.

The treatment that these women undergo, many of them only children, is truly horrific from repeated rape to physical violence, starvation, and the ever present threat of death. Only Japanese is to be spoken in the camp which houses women and girls from both Korea and China, watched over by a Korean middle man and a Japanese madam. Allowed out of their fetid rooms for brief periods of respite (or later different kinds of work) the girls attempt to make the most of things, singing folk songs and remembering happier times. There is no real possibility of escape other than that found by one of the girls who has already gone mad after one of the visiting troops brought her own brother with it.

Indeed, there is no true escape even after the war’s end. Seeing the testimony of another former comfort woman on the television and hearing news of the programme to register women affected by wartime atrocity both for purposes of research and possible compensation, Young-ok is motivated to speak out. When she approaches a young man at the post-office to ask for the relevant forms, her nerves fail her, only to overhear the behind the counter conversation about the comfort women programme. It seems, there have been no claimants so far. The man behind the desk is unsurprised but also childishly amused. “You’d have to be some kind of loony to come out with all that kind of thing” he says, “it’s a bit…well…isn’t it?”. Not only have these women suffered immense physical and psychological trauma, they’ve also been forced into internalised shame thanks to conservative social attitudes regarding purity and surrender.

In this way, Spirits’ Homecoming (귀향, Kwihyang) stops being about Japan and Korea but becomes a wider commentary about the place of women in society and, more specifically, what happens to women in time of war. Many of the soldiers remark that the girls remind them of their sisters, yet they still go ahead with the things they do, treating these women as little more than receptacles for the fluids of their lust and rage, not much more sentient than a metal bucket. The Japanese soldiers are fairly one dimensional in their evilness, save for one who has the courage to say no, but his decision to help the girls brings only disaster for all, himself included. Berated as “bitches” for the Japanese army, the girls are denied any kind of agency and, should they outlive their usefulness, are taken off to a “better place” which smacks of the old lie told to children whose beloved dog has been taken to live a happier life “on a farm”.

Nothing can be said or done to repair what was done to these young women or return any of the things which were taken from them, but at least in telling their story there can be a kind of restitution and an end to the ongoing shame which continues to engulf their lives even though they themselves were always blameless. In reality many of these girls never got to come home, a fact which the shamanistic rites at the film’s conclusion intend to rectify, allowing Young-ok a chance to reconnect with a fallen friend whose spirit is finally guided homeward to the peaceful family life of the pre-war years. A necessarily difficult watch, Spirits’ Homecoming is a sensitive treatment of its horrific subject matter which, even if edging towards the sentimental, is resolutely unafraid to lay bare the degree of suffering inflicted on these women not only during the wartime years but throughout the rest of their lives.

Reviewed at the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Hee (火, Kaori Momoi, 2016)

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heeOne of Japan’s best known actresses with a career spanning over forty years, Kaori Momoi is perhaps just as well known for her outspoken and refreshingly direct approach to interviews as she is for her work with such esteemed directors as Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa, Yoji Yamada, and Shohei Imamura. One of the few Japanese actors to have made a successful international career starring in Hollywood movies such as Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha and international art house fare in Alexander Sukurov’s The Sun, Momoi currently lives in LA and is even reportedly preparing to play Scarlett Johansson’s mother in the upcoming US live action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. It’s perhaps less surprising then that in choosing to adapt a short story by one of Japan’s best young writers, Fuminori Nakamura, Momoi has chosen to shift the story to LA whilst maintaining its Japanese characters.

We first meet Azusa (Kaori Momoi) as she’s washing her foot in a public sink near a beach. A strange conversation with an American man implies that she’s involved in some kind of sex work and the pair head into a hotel where they’re stuck in a crowded lift with a collection of noisy strangers. Aside from this lift scene which is replayed with slightly different emphasises throughout the film, the narrative, such as it is, is provided by Azusa’s two sessions with passive psychiatrist, Dr. Sanada (Yugo Saso). In the first of these she discusses her feelings of guilt over the death of her family, killed in a fire started (perhaps not) by accident as she carelessly played with matches as a child. Later sessions see her accompanied by an official looking American man, seated in the corner but unable to understand much of what’s going on. Now Azusa is suspected of a violent crime but finds herself confessing to various other moral and criminal transgressions, but then again perhaps “confessing” is the wrong word.

Transposing the story from Japan to LA brings an additional layer of alienation to Azusa’s story as she finds herself alone and set adrift far from home. The slightly rundown, beachside faded glamour of the outside world contrasts neatly with the cool, ordered interior of the psychiatrist’s office where Sanada appears almost indifferent to Azusa’s monologue as he makes coffee in a vacuum pot and stares blankly straight ahead. It’s little wonder why Azusa remarks that perhaps he’s just not suited to this kind of work during her first session and even later states that he’s really just a sounding board for her – she’s monologuing for real, applying the talking cure to herself.

Intercut with Azusa’s monologues and the reoccurring lift scene in which Sanada also appears, Sanada is seen with his own, not quite happy, family. Married to a fellow doctor working at the same clinic, Sanada seems a little uncomfortable with his confident, dominant wife. Conversing in English at home the couple share extravagant meals prepared by their housekeeper with their little daughter but as Azusa’s monologues continue the family scenes become ever more strange and disjointed and Sanada is even seen wolfing down a plate of high grade beef in his pyjamas whilst sitting next to a bright burning fire inside a patio chimney heater. Azusa maintains control, both in the room and out, with Sanada left behind as passive observer.

Expertly played by director and lead actress Momoi, Azusa is a necessarily unreliable narrator as she offers her series of sad stories each of which leads towards a fire. Betrayed by men from her father onwards leading to a failed marriage, inappropriate relationship with another Japanese man in the US, and an ill fated assignation with an American possibly more interested in her daughter, Azusa’s only constant has been the fire but it also seems to spark her madness. It’s impossible to tell how much of what Azusa is saying is “true” at any given time as her oddly circular narratives fracture off yet return to the same point but what she appears to crave from Sanada is the simple act of acknowledgement – of being seen, understood, and respected as a human being.

Reportedly shot in just ten days for a minuscule budget, Hee is anchored by a strong performance from its leading lady but is occasionally undercut by Sanada’s passivity which leaves her without the necessary pushback. The English language actors offer their lines in a slightly surreal manner which adds to the heightened atmosphere of the piece but does not always gel with the other theatrical elements and, at times, proves jarring. Though sometimes too obtuse for its own good, Hee takes an interesting, experimental approach to its material and displays a nice flair for composition even if the cinematography itself remains more conventional. A frustrating, if sometimes fascinating, experience, Hee is the story of woman trapped in flames with only the last remaining hope that we will be able to see through the smoke and heat haze to finally acknowledge her presence.

Reviewed at the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Gojoe (五条霊戦記, Sogo Ishii, 2000)

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gojoe-2Not your mama’s jidaigeki – the punk messiah who brought us such landmarks of energetic, surreal filmmaking as Crazy Family and Burst City casts himself back to the Middle Ages for an experimental take on the samurai genre. In Gojoe (五条霊戦記, Gojo reisenki), Sogo Ishii remains a radical even within this often most conservative of genres through reinterpreting one of the best loved Japanese historical legends – the battle at Kyoto’s Gojoe Bridge . Far from the firm friends of the legends, this Benkei and this Shanao (Yoshitsune in waiting) are mortal enemies, bound to each other by cosmic fate but locked in combat.

Following a war between the Heike and Genji clans, the Heike have assumed power sending the Genji into retreat and exile. All should be well, but a mysterious force is taking the lives of Heike guardsmen. Around this time, former bloody warrior turned Buddhist monk Benkei (Daisuke Ryu) has received a prophecy that his path to enlightenment lies in vanquishing the “demon” which is killing soldiers in needlessly bloodthirsty ways. The Heike are not so much afraid of a supernatural threat as they are of a predictable one – the first son of the Genji whom they intended to murder as a child but later set free. Shanao (Tadanobu Asano ), only just come of age, wants his right and just revenge to restore his clan to its rightful place, but this is a dark time and there are more powerful forces at play than traumatised monks and disinherited princes.

The world of the jidaigeki, though often violent, has its own degree of careful order – rules which must be followed, pledges which must be honoured, and causes which must be seen through at any cost. The world of Gojoe is a necessarily chaotic one in which a fragile peace has been forged through violence and trickery but the sins of the past weigh heavy on those trying to forge ahead in the new era.

The Benkei of the legends is fiercely loyal to his lord, but this Benkei is very much a lone wolf, standing apart in his desire to expiate his sins. Though his fellow monk tries to convince him that the prophecy he’s been given is nothing but a delusion, Benkei is determined to find his peace through killing a literal demon rather than tackle the ones inside his mind. Nevertheless, the past is ever present through flashbacks, even at one point revisiting one of the darker elements of the Benkei story – the killing of a child who might be his own.

The “demon” which Benkei seeks turns out to be three orphaned children who have been trained by the remnants of their clan to seek nothing other than revenge. Shanao is more killing machine than man, thinking of nothing other than assuming his rightful role as the head of the Genji and restoring his family honour. When the two meet, each regards the other as “demonic” but Shanao has a point when he asks Benkei if it’s not his own heart which is unquiet. Where Benkei is contained rage, Shanao is calmness and refinement personified.

Benkei is joined for some of his journey by the comparatively more everyman presence of Tetsukichi (Masatoshi Nagase), formerly a master sword maker who’s taken to robbing corpses after growing disillusioned with his craft which often saw his beautiful handiwork in the hands of hypocritical warrior monks. “What’s so great about being alive anyway?” he asks at one point, not long after reminding Benkei that “this hell” is all of his making. Hell this is, Ishii’s world is bathed in fire and blood as petty clan conflict burns the villages of ordinary peasants who are so far removed from this sword bearing society as to be otherwise unaware of it. The peasants have their own problems to deal with as a shaman calls for the brutal beating to death of a pregnant woman supposedly infected by a “demon” and about to give birth to a “demon child”, but even if Benkei is moved to counter this instance of injustice, he is not willing to follow through when it comes to the larger implications of his decision.

The supernatural elements are more a means of cosmological explanation than they are of real threat yet Ishii conjures a dark and creepy world of ominous shadows and ever present danger. Fantasy tinged action allows for giant blood sprays as heads come off with abandon, but the sword fights themselves are both beautifully choreographed and filled with intensity. The final battle between Shanao and Benkei heads off in an unexpectedly experimental direction as swords spark against a starless sky until a cosmic event allows their fierce conflict to erupt into a raging fire, destroying the bridge and everything it stands for. There is no resolution here, only a passage of one state to the next as Benkei and Shanao live on in altered forms. Conducted to the pulsing, warlike drumbeats of a typically exhilarating Ishii score (composed by Ishii’s own band, Mach 1.67), Gojoe is jidaigeki reimagined for the modern era bringing all of the genre’s anxiety and spiritual conflict with it.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Familyhood (굿바이 싱글, Kim Tae-gon, 2016)

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familyhoodThere are three kinds of actors – those who wait for roles, those who choose roles, and those who make roles for themselves. Ageing actress Go Ju-yeon (Kim Hye-soo) claims to be the third type, but at any rate she’s currently between gigs and facing professional scandals and personal crises from each and every direction. An unusual family drama, Familyhood (굿바이 싱글, Gotbai Singkeul, AKA Goodbye Single) is the coming of age story of a middle aged woman finally forced into adulthood through an unlikely friendship with a pregnant teenage girl.

A veteran TV star of over twenty years, Go Ju-yeon is perhaps better known for her scandalous relationships with younger men than her onscreen performance. Having worked hard to get where she is, perhaps Ju-yeon is entitled to play the diva, but her “difficult” personality alienates all but her most loyal staff. However, there’s one thing Ju-yeon has been missing – a traditional family life with a loving husband and children. She thinks her latest boyfriend, Ji-hoon (Kwak Si-yang),  a fellow TV star twelve years her junior, may the “the one”, but as it turns out he’s a no good two timing louse using her for her money and star status.

Heartbroken Ju-yeon swears off men forever and decides to buy herself a slice of unconditional love by becoming a mother. Turned down for an adoption because of her obvious unsuitability as evidenced by her appearances in the tabloids and by the fact that she just made this decision a few seconds ago, Ju-yeon figures it’s worth the nine month waiting period to do things the old fashioned way. Unfortunately she’s left it too late as a doctor’s appointment reveals she’s already heading into the menopause. Ju-yeon’s luck changes when she comes to the rescue of a teenage mother in the lift when a more conservative family decides it’s OK to lay into a vulnerable child they don’t even know.

Ju-yeon hits on an idea – buy the girl’s baby and raise it as her own. Dan-ji (Kim Hyun-soo) is an orphan living with her tough as nails older sister so it doesn’t take her long to agree to Ju-yeon’s suggestion even if she has her misgivings. Coming with her own contract prepared detailing her monetary compensation, Dan-ji has given this a lot more thought than the mother in waiting Ju-yeon but a sisterly bond eventually begins to develop between the two women despite the clear instruction to avoid getting attached. However, as Dan-ji’s presence begins to reinvigorate her fortunes, Ju-yeon begins to forget about her original career/romance replacer mission and has less and less time for the surrogate teenage daughter she irresponsibly promised to take care of.

Having lost her mother at a young age and spent all of her adult life in the pampered showbiz arena, Ju-yeon is a forty year old awkward woman child with a severe case of tunnel vision. As Dan-ji points out, Ju-yeon is a pure hearted sort but she’s also selfish and immature, jumping from one thing to the next and never stopping to consider the effect of her actions on those around her. Ju-yeon’s decision to become a mother is a similarly rash and selfish one as she only considers the upside of the boundless love she’s about to receive from this tiny bundle who is duty bound to love her, whilst failing to think about the practicalities of child rearing from the impact on her career and social life to the negative publicity she will receive as a single mother in a still relatively conservative society.

It’s these kinds of double standards which the film seems to want to lay bare as Ju-yeon attempts to come to the rescue of Dan-ji, albeit for selfish motives. Dan-ji, planning to get an abortion, has told no one other than her best friend about the pregnancy and is worried about the school finding out, not least because she is their representative at an inter school art contest. The boy who fathered her child had the temerity to ask if it was his before stealing a ring belonging to his mother to pay for an abortion. He is now off on an international golfing trip representing the country, but Dan-ji is imprisoned, kept out of sight so that Ju-yeon can claim the child is hers. Ju-yeon and Dan-ji first meet when Ju-yeon takes a smug family to task over their decision to loudly criticise Ju-yeon for her “immoral” ways in a hospital lift. After a long journey Ju-yeon will do the same again, only more loudly and even help to win over a few supporters from the collection of conservative mothers waiting for their kids after the art contest.

Kim creates a cosy world filled with calming pastel colours almost as if Ju-yeon really does live in a nursery. Ju-yeon wants to be a mother but still needs mothering herself and mostly gets it from her best friend and stylist Pyung-gu (Ma Dong-seok). Despite vowing to look after Dan-ji at least until her baby is born, it’s Dan-ji who mostly ends up looking after Ju-yeon, providing comfort and comparatively grown up advice whilst Ju-yeon mopes and eats ice-cream. Only when her schemes backfire and Ju-yeon faces losing everything does she finally begin to realise how she’s taken the people in her life for granted. What emerges is a new kind of family in which good friends enjoy food together because they want to eat rather than because someone insisted on cooking. Taking in everything from the ageist sexism of the entertainment industry to teenage pregnancy and neglected children, Kim Tae-gon’s Familyhood is a smart, socially conscious comedy making a heartfelt plea for a more understanding world.

Reviewed at the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Worst Woman (최악의 하루, Kim Jong-kwan, 2016)

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movie_imageKim Jong-kwan’s award winning unexpected indie box office hit has been given the rather odd English title of Worst Woman (최악의 하루, Choeakui Haru) in contrast with the original Korean which simply means “The Worst Day”. In fact, the film is about two people – an aspiring Korean actress with problems in her personal life, and a Japanese writer visiting for the launch of the Korean translation of his novel, each of whom is indeed having an exceptionally unlucky day. Part walking and talking, part split focus romantic comedy, Worst Woman is a polished piece of indie filmmaking anchored by quality performances and an interesting approach to its material.

Eun-hee (Han Ye-ri) is supposed to be rehearsing for a play but somehow she’s not really into it, much to the consternation of her coach. Heading off to meet up with her vacuous soap star boyfriend, Hyun-Oh (Kwon Yool ), Eun-hee runs into a hopelessly lost Japanese man who asks her for directions but mangles the pronunciation of the address leaving her with little idea of the destination. Nevertheless, Eun-hee eventually helps the mysterious traveller, Ryohei (Ryo Iwase), find the place he’s looking for only to realise he’s been given the completely the wrong time and there’s no one there to meet him. The pair then decide to have coffee together in a nearby cafe before Eun-hee leaves to track down Hyun-oh.

At this point their paths diverge but each is in for a disastrous day. Eun-hee argues with Hyun-oh about a previous (married) boyfriend before teasing him about his decision to wear a face mask and sunglasses “in case someone recognises him” (hilariously, he still gets snapped when a passing woman realises only a celebrity would be wearing such an attention seeking disguise). The playful argument suddenly turns ugly when Hyun-oh calls Eun-hee by another girl’s name leading her to dump him on the spot and leave as quickly as possible. Moping around, she posts a picture of the view from the park on Twitter which “concerns” the aforementioned married ex-boyfriend, Woon-Chul (Lee Hee-joon), who also wants to take Eun-hee for coffee in an attempt to rehash the past.

Meanwhile, Ryohei has finally met up with his publisher but quickly discovers his book launch is not all that it seemed to be. Not only has the venue changed, but only two people have turned up (and even that was an accident). Making the best of things, Ryohei takes the “guests” to a nearby coffee shop and attempts to talk to them about literature with mixed results. The apologetic publisher is Ryohei’s biggest supporter, translating the book himself and determined to share it with his fellow countrymen, but has problems of his own which mean that the Korean edition of Ryohei’s novel is set to remain on the shelf a little longer.

Chatting awkwardly in English in the cafe, Eun-hee asks Ryohei what he does for a living to which he jokingly replies that he “lies”. His job is, in essence, to make things up – he’s a novelist, albeit one with only a single book to his name. Eun-hee laughs and says she’s same, only she’s an actress, and like Ryohei she is not yet famous or even particularly successful. In fact, Eun-hee has been giving the performance of her life off stage where lying has become something of a bad habit. Though she had told Hyun-oh about her relationship with Woon-chul, even explaining that he was a married man, it appears that perhaps she hadn’t been sharing the whole truth with either man. Needless to say, her taste in men has not served her well and the choice between the petty and self obsessed Hyun-oh and the possessive, persistent and obsessive Woon-chul may not be worth making.

If Eun-hee’s romantic difficulties undermine her sense of self confidence, Ryohei gets a professional dressing down from a bilingual journalist (Choi Yu-hwa) who claims to be a fan of his work but has serious questions about his approach to character. Why, she asks him, does he create such violent and sadistic scenarios and then allow his characters to suffer within them. If the writer is god, does he not owe it to his creations to show a little benevolence? Ryohei is a put out to receive such an underhanded criticism during an interview, especially as he doesn’t consider himself to be a cruel person, but now realises that perhaps his world view is a little bleaker than he’d previously thought.

Both having experienced one of those days which throw everything else into stark relief, the pair run into each other again at twilight in the picturesque Namsan Park. Eun-hee revisits the opening monologue from her play, now managing to breathe life into the lines informed by her recent experiences, before reuniting with Ryohei and making another surprising suggestion – that they set off on a long walk along the park trail which she has never managed to complete. The opening narration from Ryohei told us that he’d been dreaming a lot of his home town and had, unusually, come up with a story idea whilst travelling. Smarting from the criticisms of the journalist and realising many of the characters he’s denied a happy ending to are slightly lost, essentially nice women just like Eun-hee, Ryohei decides that it’s time to make an exception. He imagines the same place he is right now, only it’s snowing and a woman is looking nervously back along the path. This time there is no need to worry, he doesn’t know all the details yet, but this woman is definitely going to be happy, at least someday.

Featuring a light jazz score and indie-style straightforward direction, Worst Woman recalls both the distant irony of Hong Sang-soo and other recent cross-cultural romances such as A Midsummer’s Fantasia (which also starred leading man Ryo Iwase) and Hong’s own Hill of Freedom. A tale of city serendipity, the film makes use of constant reoccurring motifs from coffee shops and national parks to professional insecurity and confused relationships but even if Eun-hee has been playing the role of herself with both of the men in her life, her connection with Ryohei seems to have a more authentic quality. Light yet poignant and filled with sophisticated comic touches, Worst Woman is a delightful late summer romance which ends on a refreshingly upbeat, open ended, note careful to leave the door open for these two frustrated artists to make the best of their worst day.

Reviewed at the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Mission Milano (王牌逗王牌, Wong Jing, 2016)

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mission-milanoDespite its title, Mission Milano (王牌逗王牌, Wángpái Dòu Wángpái) spends relatively little time in the Northern Italian city and otherwise bounces back and forth over several worldwide locations as bumbling Interpol agent Sampan Hung (Andy Lau) chases down a gang of international crooks trying to harness a new, potentially world changing technology. Inspired by the classic spy parodies of old, Wong Jing’s latest effort proves another tiresome attempt at the comedy caper as its nonsensical plot and overplayed broad humour resolutely fail to capture attention.

The film opens with its strongest scene as Andy Lau’s bumbling Interpol agent Sampan Hung escapes from a Parisian hotel room after being attacked by a machine-gun wielding, cross-dressing French maid. Like much of the rest of the film this sequence is not particularly connected to the subsequent goings on, but on his return to China Hung begins investigating reports that a top technology firm run by the descendants of a famous Robin Hood inspired criminal is about to unveil a new bio product known as Seed of God. During the meeting, the Swedish professor presenting the research is kidnapped by a Japanese vigilante group known as Crescent which Hung believes is working for the evil worldwide organisation KMAX. Teaming up with the tech firm’s CEO Louis Luo (Huang Xiaoming), Luo’s sister (Nana Ouyang), and sidekick (Wong Cho-lam), Hung sets out to retrieve the technology before it falls into the wrong hands.

Seed of God is a bioengineered crop which can flower even if thrown on stony ground. All it needs is water and away you go – instant mango tree wherever and whenever you want. This discovery could end world hunger, but it would also be very bad news for anyone involved in traditional agriculture. Hung and Luo recognise the danger and neither want to see this new technology end up with KMAX who would not be particularly interested in applying it ethically.

Originally reluctant teammates, Hung and Luo build up a buddy buddy relationship through competitive games before eventually agreeing to work together. Luo does most of the hardline fighting while Lau’s Hung backs him up with splapstick-style comic relief. Though often mildly exciting, the action sequences have a comedy vibe dominated by Hung getting thrown into ladies’ bathrooms or knocked back on his behind by a skilled lady assassin while Luo keeps losing his glasses to a particularly mean opponent. Unfortunately, Wong relies heavily on CGI for many of the action set pieces beginning with the obvious rooftops of Paris backdrop, right up to the sports car meets heavy duty lorry incident in the middle and aeroplane based finale.

The humour itself has a heavily retro feel filled with sexist jokes such as Hung crashing into hotel bedroom containing a confused topless woman in the opening sequence and a seduction section in the middle in which a key asset is wooed using her teenage love of Alain Delon and supposed desperation for male attention. Hung is clearly modelled on Bond and even has the agent number 119 though in truth he’s more like Maxwell Smart meets Inspector Gadget with his clean cut nerdiness and ubiquitous trench coat. He even has a Q-style tech specialist (named Bing Bing so we have the “classic” Li vs Fan joke) who’s made him a killer phone with every kind of spy feature conceivable including lightsaber, but can’t actually make a phone call. Add in genre tropes of unusual weaponry and laser filled corridors, and Mission Milano is looking very uninspired.

Despite its Italian destination, Mission Milano employs a frequent musical motif that it is distinctly Spanish – another clue to how all at sea the film is in terms of coherence. A minimal stab at romance between Luo and a friendly agent on the other side, and Hung’s ongoing pining for his ex-wife who left him because his world saving habit was just too stressful, attempt to add some character drama to the piece which remains lukewarm in approach to its cast. Lau turns in an uncharacteristically large performance, grinning and gurning his way through the lacklustre script,  but not even his presence can heal the many problems plaguing the film. Never as funny as it desperately wants to be Mission Milano is a trying experience which, although intermittently amusing, (thankfully) proves instantly forgettable.

Original trailer (English/Traditional Chinese subtitles)

The Man Who Left His Will on Film (東京戰争戦後秘話, Nagisa Oshima, 1970)

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man-who-left-his-will-on-filmEvery story is a ghost story in a sense. In every photograph there’s a presence which cannot be seen but is always felt. The filmmaker is a phantom and an enigma, but can we understand the spirit from what we see? Whose viewpoint are seeing, and can we ever separate that subjective vision from the one we create for ourselves within our own minds? The Man Who Left his Will on Film (東京戰争戦後秘話, Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa) is an oblique examination of identity but more specifically how that identity is repurposed through cinema as cinema is repurposed as a political weapon.

The film begins with an anarchic scene in which two men argue over use of an 8mm Bolex camera. The man whose voice we can hear is angry with the cameraman who he claims has stolen his camera only to use it for “trivial” street scenes and landscapes whereas he needs it to “capture the struggle” by filming a nearby student protest. Eventually we can verify that there are two men as the protagonist, Motoki (Kazuo Goto), briefly moves in front of the camera in order to try and snatch it away from the filmmaker. The man holding the camera then runs off as breathless, handheld camera takes over. Motoki follows him and we follow Motoki as the scene takes on an ominous quality. The cameraman reappears atop a nearby building before plunging to his death camera in hand. Stunned, Motoki approaches the bloody scene and, noticing the camera is still intact, tries to retrieve it only to be picked up by the police who confiscate the camera as evidence.

Motoki then wakes up back at his left wing commune with his friends eager to know what happened. Strangely, they do not seem to be aware that one of their number has died and are more worried about the police being in control of one of their “means of production”. Even the dead man’s girlfriend, Yasuko (Emiko Iwasaki), begins to doubt the fact that he ever existed at all. Motoki and Yasuko begin investigating the mysterious presence together, chasing their elusive filmmaker and each taking possession of his form on more than one occasion but the question who owns these images, whose identity defines the narrative, proves an elliptical and ethical dilemma.

Oshima, evidently, was no right wing stooge but even if The Man who left His Will on Film takes the world of the student protests as its milieu, it does so to undermine them. Motoki’s comrades view filmmaking as a revolutionary act. They claim to turn the camera into a weapon by using it confront reality, but as Yasuko later admits much of this is a rationalisation which allows them to continue a “bourgeois” art form without abandoning their left wing principles. The cadre members spout marxist dogma and argue about who has the highest political consciousness, but all they ever do is film the ongoing struggle. Their fight is empty, their vision blank.

Notably, the first of several arguments over dogma relates to “ownership” of the camera itself and whether Motoki and another comrade fought hard enough to retrieve it from the oppressive state. Did Motoki chase after “his” camera, meaning he condones the idea of “private” property which is contrary to the communal nature of the group, or “their” camera which is a revolutionary tool? The camera itself is singular, but the group is plural. This commune is intended to work as a hive mind, the people as one with one vision and one identity but Oshima exposes this as an impossibility. The group is a collective of individuals with different ideas and opinions which do not necessarily conform to a common point of view.

This is further brought out when the camera is retrieved and revealed to contain a collection of seemingly apolitical landscapes and street scenes. The group members are quickly bored with the static shots of everyday subjects, some berating the filmmaker for his “bankrupt” politics and lack of artistry while others vow they must honour their comrade’s struggle by watching the film to its conclusion in order to derive the meaning. The unseen filmmaker has indeed left his “will” on film, not as a testament or embodiment of future policy, but his literal “will”. His individual spirit and vision are contained within the seemingly innocuous shots in a political act of revolutionary individualism. He is the film, the film is him.  His vision dominates, we must accept it or remake it as our own.

Motoki, constantly chasing shadows, attempts to remake the film in the mould of the original filmmaker but unexpectedly encounters aspects of his own life already existing within it. Yasuko’s approach is more proactive. She inserts herself into the film, makes her presence known and refuses to be invisible. She picks up the camera and fights for her place within the frame. Hers is the struggle of the true revolutionary filmmaker, imprinting herself and her vision onto the film.

Where does this leave us? We’re in the film too. We see the film and, in a sense, recreate it in our own minds, recasting ourselves as director and protagonist. We see the film subjectively yet we cannot divorce ourselves from the original vision. Motoki’s venture fails because he only sees the landscapes, whereas Yasuko takes the same images but repossesses them, remaking them in her own image in a true act of cinematic revolution. Yasuko has seized the means of production and overthrown the tyranny of anonymous images in refusing to be constrained by someone else’s will. The camera is a weapon, but it is we who choose what it sees, and in turn what it sees in us.

Original trailer (English subtitles, NSFW)

What’s in the Darkness (黑处有什么, Wang Yichun, 2015)

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whats-in-the-darknessFirst time writer/director Wang Yichun draws on her own experiences for What’s in the Darkness (黑处有什么, Hei chu you shenme), a beautifully shot coming of age piece with serial killer intrigue running in the background. Seen through the eyes of its protagonist, What’s in the Darkness neatly matches the heroine’s journey into adolescence with the changing nature of Chinese society.

In May 1991 a series of horrific killings rock a small, rural town. Schoolgirl Qu Jing (Su Xiaotong) learns of the first murder of young and popular girl from the village when her policeman father Zhicheng (Guo Xiao) is called to investigate. A crowd has gathered around the crime scene where local women gossip and speculate, assuming the poor girl must have been raped and then murdered to prevent her going to the authorities.

Unaccustomed to such violent crimes, the police get busy but predictably lack the expertise to properly investigate. Zhicheng is unusual among his peers as he has a university degree and is keen on deduction, but his colleagues think his efforts are just going to make trouble for everyone and quickly decide on a suspect to beat a confession out of so that they will be seen to have done something. This plan goes haywire when a second murder occurs whilst the accused is in custody leaving the police with no option other than to allow him to “escape”. When one of Jing’s friends, whose estranged father is also a policeman, goes missing the stakes are raised but the possibility of successfully solving the crime seems increasingly remote.

Many things were changing in 1991, even in small rural towns. Jing is a wide eyed, naive and innocent girl with an intense curiosity and an ethereal nature which sets her apart from her more ordinary schoolmates. Her best friend, Zhang Xue (Lu Qiwei), is a slightly older, more mature girl ostracised by her peers who have decided that she is, in some way, immoral. Living within an extremely repressed society, Jing has very little concrete knowledge about sex or relationships – she even had to look up the word “rape” in a dictionary after hearing it at the crime scene because she’d never heard it before. Her only other information comes from pamphlets about pregnancy (with which she seems to be strangely fascinated) and her attempts to get more information out of the supposedly more experienced Xue backfire when she realises they’re both as clueless as each other.

Jing’s big hobby involves heading out to a disused factory area and singing pop songs to an imaginary crowd (and a boy who’s secretly watching her from the shadows). When she and Xue visit a hair salon there are pictures of movie stars all over the walls and the TV shows the fluffy pop entertainment of the day rather the propaganda films Jing’s parents might be more used to. Having lived through the Cultural Revolution, Jing’s mother and father have experienced far more hardship than she could ever know. Jing can’t understand their preoccupation with food, but to those who’ve experienced the threat of starvation, the presence of a full rice bowl makes almost anything endurable. Trained to keep their heads down and make sure they eat, the villagers of Jing’s parents’ generation are determined to maintain the status quo, even if it means continuing to reinforce the old values in order to avoid reprisal.

The trappings of communism are everywhere from the school room where the kids rehearse patriotic songs under banners of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and of course Mao, to the security forces lurking in the background. Representing the state, the police force is staffed by a collection of lazy, corrupt petty officials content to throw their weight around in the absence of any real crime to deal with. Zhicheng refuses to engage in the same level of corruption as his comrades, but his honesty and steadfastness only arise resentment. Jing finds herself experiencing the same phenomenon when the headmaster finds out about her volunteering at the old people’s home and decides to give her an award thereby singling her out in front of her friends and irritating her harsh and grumpy teacher.

It’s at the old people’s home that Jing encounters her first randy old man when one of the residents she’s been asked to read to suddenly swaps out the book she’s been assigned for a probably banned erotic classical text with the only saving grace that Jing, even if she can read all the characters, does not quite understand what she’s reading.

Through Wang’s camera every man in town begins to look suspicious from the ice lolly seller eying up the behinds of the school girls as they walk away from him with their frozen treats, to an odd looking man with physical ailments who is often seen lurking in the background behind Jing. Visiting a friend’s house, Jing is unceremoniously dumped into a backroom when the older brother turns up with a porn film only for the house to be raided and everyone arrested. In a quest to finally find out what all of this is about, Jing buys a ticket for an adult movie from a man positively overjoyed at the idea of sending an underage girl into a room full of sweaty guys who all instantly turn away from the onscreen action to stare at the anomaly of Jing as she openly weeps at what she sees.

One of the benefits that communism claimed to bring was equality between the sexes. Women may hold up half the sky, but they still have to conform to an arcane set of social mores whilst they do so. Zhicheng forces Jing to ride sidesaddle on his bicycle rather than sit with her legs open and when she complains to him about the guy watching her sing, he tells her it’s all her fault for dressing in too alluring a manner. The murdered women are posthumously berated for their decision to be out on their own despite the fact that at least one of the killings must have occurred in broad daylight and when one of Jing’s schoolmates is feared to be the latest victim, their teacher reminds them that this is the kind of thing that happens when you fall in with a bad crowd. The police avoid serious investigation not only because they are lazy and corrupt, but because this kind of state sanctioned sexism is a tool they themselves (even if unwittingly) use to keep their womenfolk where they want them.

The identity of the murderer becomes irrelevant, this world is killing young women and it’s getting away with it because nobody cares. The women who die are written off as tainted, a lesson in failed femininity and evidence of what can happen if you don’t play by the rules. Little attention is paid to the perpetrator of the crimes who may also be a victim of this repressive environment as his desires are refused any other outlet than violence.

Although beginning in the vein of a serial killer movie, What’s in the Darkness is, at heart, a coming of age tale and social issue film. The era has shifted as the fear and austerity of the Cultural Revolution gives way to rising consumerism, placing a wedge between Jing’s generation and that of her parents. Wang rejects the classic procedural ending, leaving only questions in place of answers. As Jing stands alone with a little dog in her arms in the film’s final scene, she looks almost like Dorothy before the Emerald city as she plunges deeper into the reeds in search of answers, most definitely not in Kansas anymore. Jing’s eyes have been opened, her curiosity remains intact and unsated, as she alone remains unafraid to look at what’s really waiting for her out in the dark.

Reviewed at the BFI London Film Festival 2016

Original trailer (Chinese subtitles only)