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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)

Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から, Hideo Nakata, 2002)

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dark-water

Review of Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water first published by UK Anime Network.

For good or ill, the J-horror boom came to dominate Japanese cinema at the turn of the century and if anyone can be said to have been instrumental in ushering it in, director Hideo Nakata and novelist Koji Suzuki, whose landmark collaboration on The Ring has become symbolic of the entire genre, must be at the head of the list. Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から, Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara) finds the pair working together again on another supernaturally tinged, creepy psychological thriller. Neatly marrying the classic J-horror tropes of freaky children and dripping wet ghosts, Dark Water also embraces aspects of the uniquely Japanese “hahamono” or mother movie which prizes maternal sacrifice and suffering above all else.

Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki), a nervous middle aged woman, is in the middle of a messy divorce with her exceedingly smug salaryman husband. Despite having been less than present during the marriage, Yoshimi’s husband now wants full custody of the couple’s five year old daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). In order to aid her case, Yoshimi quickly finds an apartment and starts looking for a job. All seems to be going well except for the mysterious dripping stain on the ceiling which the building manager doesn’t seem very interested in fixing. Before long, strange events begin unfolding including unexplained puddles, a mysterious red children’s shoulder bag which keeps reappearing after being thrown out, and brief sightings of a little girl in a yellow raincoat….

Nakata opens the film with what is in effect a flashback sequence as Yoshimi waits for her own mother to pick her up from primary school. It quickly becomes apparent that Yoshimi’s relationship with her birth mother was an imperfect one which later ended in neglect and abandonment. Yoshimi continues to have frequent flashbacks to her childhood and harbours and intense fear of inflicting the same kind of damage her mother inflicted on her onto her own daughter. Ikuko is also left waiting at school when Yoshimi is kept late at a job interview – something which is eventually used against her in the court case. Though Yoshimi’s aunt reassures her that she’s doing a much better job than her mother did for her, Yoshimi is filled with doubts as to her suitability as a mother which are only further compounded by her intense love for her daughter and fear of losing her.

On top of her maternal worries and residual abandonment issues, Yoshimi also has a history of mental distress which her ex-husband uses to discredit her. It’s open to debate exactly how much of what appears to be happening is actually happening and how much a manifestation of a possible nervous breakdown, but aside from the supernatural shenanigans there are also real world dangers to consider including the missing posters for a girl who was around Ikuko’s age when she disappeared two years previously. The primary school headmaster is convinced that the girl was abducted by a third party but it also transpires that Mitsuko, like Yoshimi and as Yoshimi fears for Ikuko, was abandoned by her mother.

When it comes right down to it, Dark Water lays the blame for its supernaturally tinged evil firmly at the feet of divorce and family breakdown. The supposedly progressive primary school in which the main aim is to allow children freedom of expression is quick to tell the already overwrought Yoshimi that the “strange behaviour” they’ve been witnessing in Ikuko is essentially all her fault because of the divorce and disruption to Ikuko’s home life. Similarly, the central supernatural threat is born of maternal neglect, a symptom of the selfish individualism of the mother who has chosen to leave her child behind. Yoshimi has been jettisoned by her controlling ex-husband and her only thought is to keep her daughter with her, yet she is being made to pay for a social prejudice against atypical families such as those resulting from a “selfish” decision to dissolve a marriage.

Dark Water cleverly recasts Yoshimi as an idealised mother willing to sacrifice all to protect her child. As the situation intensifies, Yoshimi begins to feel as if she’s becoming a toxic presence in her daughter’s life. Rather than risk the same fate befalling her own daughter as has befallen her, Yoshimi opts to make herself the last link in the chain of abuse, freeing her daughter from her own baggage. In contrast with both Yoshimi and Mitsuko, Ikuko will always know that her mother loved her and will always be with her even if protecting her from afar.

Nakata conjures up a supremely creepy atmosphere filled with everyday horrors. The run down apartment complex in which Yoshimi finds her (presumably very reasonably priced) apartment is an unsettling world of its own with its strangely moist, dripping walls, eccentric residents, and rapidly decaying exterior. One of the most effective and visually interesting entries in the J-horror genre, Dark Water perfectly mixes creepy, supernatural horror with psychological drama culminating in a final sequence which doesn’t stint on the scares but proves emotionally devastating in the process.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Vanished Murderer (消失的凶手, Law Chi-leung, 2015)

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vanished-murderWhen The Bullet Vanishes was first released back in 2012, the film received unfair criticism in some quarters due to its enormous debt to Guy Richie’s then popular Sherlock Holmes. Derivative or not, The Bullet Vanishes remains an innovative and intricately plotted cerebral thriller, primed to launch the return of its central detective, former prison warden, Inspector Song (Sean Lau). Only slightly late, Song is finally back to address another series of baffling deaths and conspiracies in 1930s China only this time he’s landed in a pulpy LA noir rather than the cowboy-tinged action of the previous film.

The Murderer Vanishes (消失的凶手, Xiāoshī de Xiōngshōu) revolves around Song’s Irene Adler figure, Fu Yuan (Jiang Yiyan), whom we saw Song making frequent prison visits to in The Bullet Vanishes. Song is called to the prison because Fu Yuan has mysteriously disappeared from her cell leaving only a Shawshank Redemption inspired red herring behind her. The strange bond between Song and Fu Yuan in which they chastely dance around each other in the ultimate long distance romance, dictates that Fu Yuan send him a letter to tell him exactly where she is so he can come and arrest her all over again.

After a hot date at the cemetery, Fu Yuan takes Song to a philosophy lecture in which the speaker, Professor Hua (Gordon Lam), muses on a thought experiment in which he discusses the ethical problem of making an active choice to sacrifice one life in order to save multiple lives and whether making such a choice is any different from committing a murder – i.e. pushing another person in front of a moving train to stop it hitting a crowd further up the track. The experiment is eerily echoed when a body falls out of the sky just as Song is about to re-arrest Fu Yuan, allowing her to once again slip away.

Song investigates and is arrested only to be recruited to solve the mystery of why so many of the workers at evil corporate boss Gao Minxiong’s (Guo Xiaodong) string of factories are suddenly leaping to their deaths whilst wearing shirts bearing slogans which decry him as a slave driver.  Song is assisted by the girl he jilted at the alter eight years ago with whom he was improbably reunited on the train, Chang Sheng (Li Xiaolu), and a local policeman, Mao Jin (Rhydian Vaughan), as well as the philosophy professor but somehow this must all be linked to Fu Yuan’s mysteriously timed prison escape.

The biggest departure The Vanished Murderer has to deal with is the absence of co-star Nicholas Tse. Rather than give Song a new partner or attempt to ditch the buddy format altogether, Tse’s role has been awkwardly split into four with Song surrounded by his cohorts of varying stripes but never achieving the same kind of bond that made The Bullet Vanishes so satisfying. Many of the first film’s plot elements are also ported over wholesale, rehashing the same political subplots and betrayals but without the subtlety.

One again we have an exploited work force of factory workers suffering at the hands of a heartless capitalistic sociopath. Gao Minxiong is seen early on collaborating with a British businessman who warns him about the effects of the depression only for Gao to explain the “measures” he’s taken which include burning harvests to increase demand and therefore drive prices up, as well as closing factories to increase competition for jobs and therefore drive wages down. Gao also has a private militia he uses for strike breaking and indiscriminate massacre. The people suffer while the elites prosper, it’s an old story.

The Bullet Vanishes may have had one foot in the Old West, but The Vanished Murderer has stayed in the same geographical area whilst jumping fifty years into the future in terms of tone. Gone are the lawless, dingy back alleys and saloons – The Murderer Vanishes takes place under bright sunlight, in an airy city surrounded by green country estates. Song has even switched up his zany bowler hat from the first film for a wide brimmed fedora and the musical score also pulls in some Spanish guitar to ram home that West coast style. This is a land of flappers and jazz babies, filled with art deco elegance and international flair.

For all that it’s a pulp world too and as such exempts itself from the need to make any kind of real sense. The central mystery is nowhere near as compelling as that of The Bullet Vanishes and resolves in a less than satisfactory manner. In the great pulp tradition action set pieces become increasingly ridiculous until the point Song and Fu Yuan attempt to escape by riding a horse through a building. The film’s finale takes place entirely on a train and does at least make good use of its CGI budget even if it’s a disappointingly simple way to conclude.

A slight misstep after the well plotted charm of The Bullet Vanishes, The Vanished Murderer can’t live up to the promise of the first film. The relationship between Song and Fu Yuan ought to take centre stage but the pair spend too much time apart to make it work and the film kills off a promising ongoing plot strand for the sake of cheap melodrama in the closing moments. Still, The Vanished Murderer provides enough thrills of its own even if lighter in tone and with a weaker central mystery to make the continuing adventures of Inspector Song worth investigating.

Original trailer (Mandarin with English subtitles)

A Mother’s Love (母情, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1950)

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mothers-loveShimizu’s depression era work was not lacking in down on their luck single mothers forced into difficult positions as they fiercely fought for their children’s future, but 1950’s A Mother’s Love (母情, Bojo) takes an entirely different approach to the problem. Once again Shimizu displays his customary sympathy for all but this particular mother, Toshiko, does not immediately seem to be the self sacrificing embodiment of maternal virtues that the genre usually favours.

Tellingly, when we first meet Toshiko she’s asleep on a bus as her three children badger a friendly artist who’s entertaining them by drawing a picture of their pretty mother. The boys are quick correct themselves when talking about the woman they’re with – she’s their “aunt” not their mother, but the artist sees through the ruse. Toshiko is heading to visit her brother in the country in the hope that he will look after her children for awhile offering the explanation that she wants to get married again. Her brother is sympathetic to her problems, but has six children of his own already (and perhaps a seventh on the way) so taking in three extra mouths to feed is not really an option. Agreeing to look after the youngest girl, they suggest trying an elderly uncle but remind her that he has a rather conservative mindset and may ask all sorts of questions about Toshiko’s recent past which she might not want to answer.

Not to worry, the uncle seems to have mellowed with age though he can’t take in two growing boys either and suggests asking a friend of his who’s been trying for a baby for years but has been unable to have one. When that doesn’t work out Toshiko deposits her second son at the uncle’s and travels on with just her oldest boy, Fusao, but as time goes on Toshiko begins to rethink her decision to have her children fostered out and wonders if just being together might be worth more than a stable economic life founded on the pain of abandonment.

The protagonists of “hahamono” which praise the idea of the noble, self sacrificing mother are not universally saintly but the one thing they never do is consider leaving their children. In this regard Toshiko is not immediately sympathetic. Rejecting the name “mother” for “aunt” in the hope of hooking a prospective husband, Toshiko has already marked herself as falling outside of the idealised mother standards and her rather cool, snappy way of addressing the children does not go in her favour either. Her brother greets her warmly (even if he seems to suspect that she’s probably come because she wants something) and has no desire to drag up the past but points out that other people might not be so charitable given that all three children have different fathers and Toshiko has never revealed how she supported herself towards the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath. Nevertheless, Shimizu refuses to judge her. Her life has been a hard one and she herself was fostered out herself as a child. Toshiko’s decision may not be one everyone would agree with but that doesn’t mean it was an easy one for her to make, or that she feels nothing in giving up her children.

The biggest tragedy is that the kids will be separated. Apparently often left to fend for themselves at home whilst Toshiko works, the children are a mini band of three and it seems even more cruel that they will be deprived not only of a mother but of their siblings too. Though the youngest girl tries to run after her mother and brothers, and the second son cries so much that his brother goes back to give him one of his comic books to cheer him up, Fusao is even more upset and anxious as the last remaining child. Constantly wetting the bed which costs him his place at a few prospective new homes, Fusao is plagued by the idea that his mother is about to abandon him and finally pleads with her that he can take care of his siblings by himself if only they can all stay together.

Fusao’s pleas eventually soften his mother’s heart though she begins to think again after coming across a band of itinerant performers, one of whom is nursing an infant despite her poverty and the harshness of her life. The young woman seems devoted to her child and is determined to take care of it even though she has no husband to help her. The child’s grandmother urged her daughter to give the baby up to someone with more resources to raise it but the girl refused, no matter how hard it may turn out to be. Moved, and feeling even more guilty in witnessing the hardships another mother is bearing for her child, Toshiko’s resolve begins to weaken.

When Toshiko is taken ill at an inn and her friend from the city, Mitsuko, comes to visit her it is revealed that Toshiko’s plan is not another marriage but that the two women are in the process of opening a bar – hence why she needs to farm out her children. Mitsuko has also sent her daughter to a relative so that she can plow all her time and money into the enterprise though no one knows how long it will take until the place is successful enough to support the full families of both women. It may be, therefore, that Toshiko’s desire to run her own business is for the ultimate benefit of her children who will finally have a degree of economic security. On thinking again, she wonders if it isn’t selfish vanity and that she’s sacrificing her children to fulfil her own desires.

Shimizu takes a more conservative viewpoint than that found in his other work by encouraging Toshiko to reject the prospect of being her own boss to embrace the traditional values of her natural maternity. The old nurse Toshiko visits in the hope that she will take in Fusao (which she almost certainly would have done) remarks that a full belly isn’t everything and being together might be enough, but that doesn’t quite explain what the obviously desperate Toshiko is going to do to survive from here on in. One can only hope that she somehow finds a way to make the bar work (even if it takes a little longer) rather than be left with nothing all over again. Focusing less on the children than on the maternal conflict as Toshiko becomes torn by the traditional values as seen in her rural hometown and the less forgiving modernism of the city, Shimizu retains an understanding tone but also eschews the concessions to pragmatism which so often went hand in hand with his forward looking idealism, for a reassertion of conservative values which fly in the face of his usually compassionate acceptance of the very real difficulties faced by women in a conformist and male dominated society.

 

The Discarnates (異人たちとの夏, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1988)

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discarnatesNobuhiko Obayashi is no stranger to a ghost story whether literal or figural but never has his pre-occupation with being pre-occupied about the past been more delicately expressed than in his 1988 horror-tinged supernatural adventure, The Discarnates (異人たちとの夏, Ijintachi to no Natsu). Nostalgia is a central pillar of Obayashi’s world, as drenched in melancholy as it often is, but it can also be pernicious – an anchor which pins a person in a certain spot and forever impedes their progress.

Hidemi Harada (Morio Kazama) is a successful TV scriptwriter whose career is on the slide. He’s just gotten a divorce and seems to be conflicted about the nature of his new found bachelordom. As if he didn’t have enough despair in his life, the closest thing he has to a friend – his boss at the TV station, tells him he thinks it’s better if they end their professional relationship because he plans to start dating Harada’s ex-wife and it would all get very awkward.

Feeling unloved, Harada takes a trip to his hometown on a location scout for another project and takes in a few familiar sights along the way. It’s here that he runs into a youngish man who looks just like Harada’s father did when he was a boy. Not only that, accompanying his new found friend home, the man’s wife looks just like his mother, but Harada’s parents died when he was just twelve years old. The mysterious couple are glad to have him in their house and treat him with the warmth and kindness that seemed to have been missing in his life, leaving him the happiest and most cheerful he’s been in years.

Now in a much better mood, Harada feels guilty about rudely dismissing the woman from upstairs who’d come to visit him the day before. Apologising, Harada strikes up a friendship and then a romance with the equally damaged Kei (Yuko Natori) but even if his mental health is improving, his physical strength begins to deteriorate. Looking pale and old, Harada’s teeth rot and fall out while his hair loses its color. Even so, Harada cannot bear to pull himself away from the warmth and security that was so cruelly taken away from him when he was just a child.

Harada doesn’t start off believing that the mysterious couple really are his late parents, but if even if they weren’t these two people who are actually younger than him take him in as a son, feeding and entertaining him. When Harada returns a little while later confused by what exactly has happened, his mother immediately treats him as a mother would – physically taking off his polo shirt and urging him to remove his trousers lest they get wrinkled from sitting on the floor. Having lost his parents at such a young age, Harada has been a adrift all his life, unable to form true, lasting emotional bonds with other people. Lamenting his failure as a husband and a father, this very ordinary kindness provides the kind of warmth that he’s been craving.

However, there is always a price to be paid. Harada’s visits become increasing tiring, taking a physical toll on his ageing body. Each hour spent in the past is an hour lost to the dead. His parents are both dead and alive, existing in a strange, golden hued bubble filled with the comforting innocence of childhood free from the concerns of the adult world. Yet each time Harada succumbs to his weakness and goes to visit them, he is doing so as a way of avoiding all of his real world problems. According to one of Harada’s scripts, the past becomes a part of you and is never lost, but memory can be an overly seductive drug and an overdose can prove fatal.

Contrasted with the warm glow of the post-war world of Harada’s childhood home, his life in bubble era Tokyo is one filled with blues and a constant sense of the sinister. Harada believes himself to mostly be alone in the apartment block save for a mysterious third floor light that hints at another resident who also favours late nights over early mornings. The light turns out to belong to a lonely middle-aged woman, Kei, who is also a fan of Harada’s work. Kei has her own set of problems including a wound on her chest that she is too ashamed to let anyone see. Ultimately, Harada’s self-centred inability to lay the past to rest and fully take other people’s feelings into account will deal Kei a cruel blow.

Harada sees everything with a writer’s eye. His childhood world is a dream, but his life is a film noir filled with shadows and misery. His environments appear too perfectly composed, like a TV stage set and, as if to underline the fact, at the end of each “scene” the colour drains from the screen to leave a blue tinted black and white image shrinking into a rectangle and disappearing like the dot going out in the days when television really did close down overnight. Whether any of this happened outside of Harada’s mind or reflects a constructed reality he wrote for himself in the midst of a mental breakdown, his dilemma is an existential one – return to childhood and the side of his parents by accepting the death of his present self, or say goodbye to remnants of the abandoned child inside him and start living an adult, fully “fleshed” life by killing off this unattainable dream of a long forgotten past which never took place.

Filled with melancholy, longing and regret, The Discarnates is the story of a hollow man made whole by coming to terms with his traumatic past and all of the ways it’s influenced the way in which he’s lived his life. Harada’s parents treat him as their twelve year old son, barely acknowledging that he’s a middle aged man with a teenage son of his own. They feel regret for all of the thousand things they were never able to teach him though they are unable to see the full depths of his inability to escape his interior bubble for the wider world. Unsettling, though not as obviously surreal as some of Obayashi’s other efforts, The Discarnates is one of his most melancholic works speaking of the danger of nostalgia and all of its false promises whilst also acknowledging its seductive appeal.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Grasshopper (グラスホッパー, Tomoyuki Takimoto, 2015)

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grasshopperThe best revenge is living well, but the three damaged individuals at the centre of Tomoyuki Takimoto’s Grasshopper (グラスホッパー) might need some space before they can figure that out. Reuniting with Brain Man star Toma Ikuta, Takimoto moves away from the more overtly sci-fi elements but maintains a level of everyday strangeness that adds weight to this standard B-movie affair. A revenge thriller in which revenge itself is shown to be a fallacy, Grasshopper manages to mix its grimy grind house violence aesthetic with an oddly hopeful view of human nature.

One tragedy connects three very different people. Halloween, Shibuya – a crazed man at the wheel of a 4×4 receives a phone call instructing him to “crush all those bugs”, because he’s “the saviour”. The man obeys and plows into the holiday revellers crushing them like insects under his wheels. One victim, Yuriko (Haru), who died pushing a child out of harm’s way happened to be the fiancée of middle school science teacher, Suzuki (Toma Ikuta). Revisiting the spot where she fell, Suzuki unexpectedly receives a letter informing him that the events which occurred at Halloween were not as straightforward as the media asserts and he should set about investigating the father and son working at “Fraulein”. His mind burning with thoughts of vengeance, Suzuki abandons his old life and launches himself headlong into the criminal underworld in search of answers.

Meanwhile, the evil kingpins at the centre of things have sent their ace hitman with a difference, Kujira (Tadanobu Asano), to silence a troublesome reporter. Kujira’s unusual assassination method involves a kind of hypnosis in which he forces his victims to acknowledge their darkest sins and eventually commit suicide. Though this sounds like the ideal plan for evading detection, the gangsters are nervous that Kujira has learned to much through his near death conversations with his targets and send a duo of slightly less competent killers on his trail. This leads us to our third strand – sociopathic blade wielding killer, Semi (Ryosuke Yamada), and his stray cat rescuing handler, Iwanishi (Jun Murakami).

Suzuki finds himself out of his depth in the murky, crime ridden underworld. Talking to yet another hitman he crosses paths with, Suzuki is offered the grasshopper analogy which lies at the centre of the film. Pusher (Hidetaka Yoshioka) tells him that unlike regular migratory locusts which are generally green, there is a mutant breed which undergoes a “swarm phase” in which their wings grown darker and longer, becoming ever more destructive in the quest to feed themselves in a crowded environment. People, Pusher claims, are no different. The film is filled with these mutant insects, crushing their fellow humans like roaches under boots, yet there’s something to be said for the migratory guys who keep moving and oppose the mutant breed through stealth and cunning.

Each of the three men is looking for a kind of revenge even if it’s ultimately self inflicted. Unusual hitman Kujira has hit the assassin’s version of angel wings in that he can see the faces of all the men and women he has killed, quite literally haunting his every move and offering a running commentary on his life. Setting out for vengeance against the men who’ve ordered his death, Kujira knows he’s nearing the end of his path yet before he gets there he will have to face off against Semi with whom he has no particular quarrel despite having just given Semi a reason to seek vengeance against him. Semi’s quest for revenge is pointed at Kujira but their mutual need for satisfaction will destroy each of them whilst also bringing them together as equals.

Everything prior to the fateful Halloween is bathed in golden light where warm colours predominate in Suzuki’s fond memories of his fiancée, but everything after is dark, reds and blacks tinged with insect green as grasshoppers swarm like harbingers of a great evil. Revenge itself is constantly frustrated and ultimately swept away from each party by shadowy forces secretly working against the darkness. Nothing is quite as it seems, no one is quite telling the truth. Yet as deep as the original conspiracy goes, the counter conspiracy consistently exceeds it.

Filled with impressive action sequences from Semi’s well choreographed balletic knife displays to large scale crowd scenes and good old fashioned fist fights, Grasshopper owns its down and dirty origins but reinvigorates them with a degree of modern sophistication. Yuriko, a soup chef, insists that the true secret ingredient in her cooking is genuine emotion – that this is what’s left behind when everything else is gone. Suzuki could choose to dive inside his cocoon of unresolved vengeance for the rest of his life but that would not have been what Yuriko wanted for him. In this anti-revenge drama, vengeance is the fallacy that detracts from the truth – that the ultimate form of revenge is learning to live with the past rather than wasting time settling scores.

Original trailer (no subtitles)