The Burden of the Past (過去負う者, Atsushi Funahashi, 2023)

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Japan has a relatively high recidivism rate with 50% of those released from prison convicted of reoffending within five years. To some this figure simply proves that “criminals“ are, as one woman puts it, “an entirely different race” who have no place in mainstream society and can never be rehabilitated. In many ways it’s a vicious circle, those who’ve spent time in prison are rejected on their release and unable to find steady employment have no other option than to return to criminality in order to support themselves. Atsushi Funahashi’s socially-minded docudrama The Burden of the Past (過去負う者, Kako Ou Mono) explores this contradiction through the stories of a series of former prisoners and the organisation that attempts to help them reintegrate into mainstream society, Change. 

“Change” might in some ways be an ironic name, placing a demand on the people they’re trying to help that implies they are necessarily at fault for their involvement with criminality. The well-meaning staff members are committed to helping the former prisoners reform, but are otherwise powerless to address the systemic social circumstances that led them into crime while prioritising the individual and advocating for conventionality as the only path towards a settled life. That said, each of the people the film spotlights are involved in quite specific kinds of crimes which lean towards the individualistic with only the backstories of Taku, who killed a teenage boy in a hit and run but is also revealed to be dealing with unresolved trauma from childhood physical abuse, and Ai who turned to drug use to overcome her problems with interpersonal communication, loosely explored. 

It is however Ai who suffers most from the hypocritical attitudes of mainstream society. After being taken on as a cleaner she encounters a man smoking who ironically reveals to her that he used to smoke pot but was never caught which is perhaps the only difference between them but on explaining that she spent time in prison for possession of crystal meth he calls her “a real mess” and a “junkie”, telling her that she has no right to hope for a future and should have stayed in jail. His rant results in Ai going temporarily missing with a fear that she may being using drugs again to overcome her sense of hopelessness. Her circumstances are dictated by her existing sense of alienation in her inability to communicate, something which could have been better addressed either by finding ways for her to communicate more effectively or for encouraging others to accommodate her way of communicating rather than insist she conform to theirs. 

Yet it’s clear that the issue is more to do with the stigmatisation of criminality than it is about any fear of potential reoffending as the team from Change discover on talking to a man hoping to recruit a large number of people quickly for pandemic-related cleaning services. The first issue is that he specifically mentions hiring women seeing as it’s a job in cleaning, but also that he says he’ll have to discuss with his boss about hiring people who’ve been involved with sexual or drug-related crimes rather than those which might present a more practical anxiety such as theft, violence, or fraud. 

Close to the end of the film, Change stages a play featuring some of the former prisoners which ends in a confrontational Q&A session in which members of the audience direct their anger towards not only the cast but Change itself for helping them rather than focussing on the welfare of victims of crime. Change also receives a fair amount of harassment, as do a couple who live close by and complain that they feel personally uncomfortable knowing that people with criminal pasts are wandering around where they live while also bringing up that it’s bringing down the price of their property. One of the case workers tries to explain that they’re trying to stop the cycle of recidivism, which would result in lower crime all round and less chance of becoming a victim, but the audience members cannot see her point. They simply feel that these people are not quite human by virtue of their transgression and are in some way weak or defective for being unable to control their impulses or emotions. It may be a comforting thought, to believe these people are so different from oneself is to deny that anyone at anytime could become involved with a crime for a variety of different reasons. After all, laws are socially constructed device for defining conventional morality and what’s considered “criminal” today may not be tomorrow or vice vera. 

But then how do we deal with those whose crimes are so deeply offensive to a conventionally held morality that they cannot really be forgiven? Misumi is a former teacher convicted of an indecent act with a child and fears that he may end up reoffending. He obviously cannot return to his previous employment, and given the nature of his crime can find no other but also must find a way to live. Many at the Q&A session seem to feel that those who’ve been convicted of crimes should be segregated into an alternate prison society so that they do not corrupt the mainstream, but this is in its own way a social death sentence that effectively says they no longer deserve to live even if unlike the extreme case of Misumi their “crimes” were relatively minor and of the sort many others may have committed and faced no penalty for. 

Still, Funahashi doesn’t exactly let Change off the hook suggesting that they are overly idealistic and fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with some of the more serious problems the former prisoners face especially those that would benefit from more comprehensive psychological care. He does though criticise the justice system in which the prison sentence is essentially a fine that’s paid in time and is geared towards punishment rather than rehabilitation leaving the prisoners no different on their release than they were when incarcerated some like Taku still not having fully addressed or accepted their crime and therefore unable to move on with their lives. In any case, the conclusion seems to imply that simple acts of human trust and compassion can go a long way helping to restore a former prisoner’s self-esteem and allowing them to process the realities of their crimes so that they can avoid committing them again even if it is also society which must change. 

The Burden of the Past had its World Premiere as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

XX+XY (Lee Soh-Yoon, 2022)

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According to the voiceover narration that opens Lee Soh-yoon’s lighthearted teen drama XX+XY, we live in an age of choices yet sometimes choice can itself be a burden. At least that’s how Jay comes to see it having been born intersex but encouraged to think that at some point they’re going to have to choose whether to live as a man or a woman as if those are the only options or the choice to continuing living just as they are is not available to them. 

In essence many of their problems could be solved by reducing social dependence on the gender binary. Having been mainly home schooled, Jay has decided to attend a regular high school in part to help them figure out who they are through interacting with other teenagers who, they discover, are also struggling with many of the same questions in trying to decide who they’ll be. Yet for Jay, there’s also the issue of social stigma surrounding the reality of their life as an intersex person which is little understood by the world around them. When their identity is exposed by a malicious person, Jay’s teacher sighs and asks “Why didn’t you hide it better?”, prompting their response that their identity is not something shameful that needs to be concealed while suggesting that the school is on one level at least failing in their duty of care in refusing to protect them from the fallout of being outed which is in part their fault in stemming from the indiscretion of a teacher. 

The idea that they have something to hide is also particularly hurtful to Jay because of their unusual family circumstances given that they were adopted by a couple in a happy marriage of convenience between a closeted gay man and a woman otherwise uninterested in marriage. Their father’s partner now also lives with them and is very much a part of the family as can be seen in cheerful family photo they have hanging on their living room wall. Jay’s father tells them that he wants them to live in a world where they can love freely without fear of judgement or of feeling forced into the kind of arrangement he and their mother have made, their happy partnership not withstanding. On the other hand, it’s also he who first raises the potentially problematic idea that Jay should decide their binary gender based on their sexual orientation only to be firmly slapped down by their mother. 

This is partly the thesis of the film, that Jay is figuring themselves out based on their feelings towards two potential suitors in childhood best friend Sera who’s always known that Jay is intersex and the smitten Wooram who fell for Jay thinking they were a girl and then confused by their more masculine presentation on arrival at school. As Sera later points out, Jay never directly states they are a boy but everyone assumes them to be one because they are wearing a boy’s school uniform and have short hair. It is the school that force Jay to make a concrete choice because of its persistent gender segregation which extends from uniforms, single sex bathrooms, and classroom cliques to different activities for boys and girls in PE. Jay has to make a choice because they have to pick a bathroom, only using the men’s means there’s no bins to dispose of sanitary pads forcing Jay to carry them around until they can find a place to discreetly dispose of them. The boys in Jay’s class are jealous of their popularity with girls, while immaturely gossiping about another boy they regard as effeminate and possibly gay because he is “small” and hangs out with the girls a lot. 

Meanwhile, the conservative attitudes towards sex and romance held by the school and society at large are also in themselves counterproductive. Teens try to buy condoms to be responsible but are turned away because they don’t have ID or a note from their parents and are even shouted at by a nosy old lady at the checkout all of which has them wondering if they should just go ahead without protection rather than giving up on the idea. When Jay’s intersex identity is revealed online, the teachers are more concerned about the concurrent rumour that they and Sera have slept together rather than the breaching of Jay’s privacy, only interested in what the other parents might say or that Jay’s identity on its own may negatively affect their reputation aside from the developing sex scandal. 

In any case supported by their new friends, Jay gains the confidence to believe that they, and everyone else, are good enough as they are and that there isn’t any point in worrying about the people who won’t accept them as they are now. The film may still imply that there’s a binary choice to be made and that whoever Jay decides to pursue romantically has a large impact on it, but nevertheless affirms Jay’s identity as it is and makes clear that it’s they who have a free right to define themselves independently of any social mores or commonly held beliefs. Warmhearted and generous of spirit, Lee’s teen drama finds that largely the kids alright treating each other with kindness and respect when given the opportunity to do so and only waiting for the adult world to catch up. 

XX+XY screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Ping Pong (乒乓, Leong Po-Chih, 1986)

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A young woman wrestles with her cultural identity when tasked with executing a will she can’t even read in Leong Po-Chih’s 1986 diaspora drama, Ping Pong (乒乓). The dead man’s family members can agree on only one thing, that they hate the will and won’t sign it, but are also constantly reminding themselves that “the third principle” of being Chinese, according to uncle Siu Loong (Victor Kan), is to obey the elders’ wishes and never question them. 

Sam Wong (K. C. Leong) is found dead in a telephone box still clasping the receiver not far from his incredibly successful Chinatown restaurant. Elaine Choi (Lucy Sheen) is a young British-Chinese lawyer who arrived in the UK from Macao around the age of seven following the deaths of her parents. Her first problem is that she no longer remembers any Chinese and is unable to read the will she’s been charged with executing, eventually getting a family member to help her decode it while realising that it’s going to set the cat amongst the pigeons. Her sense of cultural dislocation is only deepened when she attends Sam’s Taoist funeral and admits to the British wife of Sam’s son Alan (Ric Young) that she has no idea what’s going on either. Sam’s wife Ying (Lam Fung), who came to the UK at 17 for an arranged marriage, hurriedly shoos her daughter-in-law out while berating her son for not knowing how inappropriate it is for a pregnant woman to attend a funeral. Elaine is also told that her presence is inappropriate and invited instead to a dinner at Sam’s restaurant the following day to read out the will. 

Of course, it’s not unusual to encounter discord among family members when it comes to settling an estate, but Sam seems to have either entirely misunderstood his relatives or else deliberately set out to teach them a lesson, one that will help them recover the Chinese identity they may each be in danger of losing. Alan has become a professor and married an upper middle-class British woman (Victoria Wicks). Their home is the epitome of a certain kind of stereotypical Englishness while Alan appears to show little interest in his cultural legacy. The absent Michael (David Yip) who doesn’t even attend the funeral or will reading runs a flashy fusion-style “Chinese” restaurant which is entirely staffed by Italians and holds regular cream pie parties. Michael is an embodiment of the spirit of the age. Educated in expensive boarding schools, he’s become an obnoxious English gentlemen in cricket jumpers and sharp suits who plans to build a seven-storey leisure complex on Gerrard Street with money from a Hong Kong millionaire looking to escape Handover anxiety. For Michael, his Chinese heritage is just something to be sold and repackaged to people to who don’t know any better. The design for the leisure centre is like some orientalist fever dream, a fairytale pagoda channeling Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and Cinderella’s Castle. 

Sam left him the restaurant on the condition he run it “the Chinese way”, which obviously isn’t something Michael was particularly keen on doing. Michael’s older half-sister, Cherry (Barbara Yu Ling), a child of Sam’s first marriage in China, is also resentful that her father left the warehouse she’d been managing to her step-mother Ying along with the family home, while leaving a farm they owned growing Chinese vegetables to family friend, Mr Chen (Robert Lee), rather than to one of the descendants. Her husband Siu Loong, a former Hong Kong cop, tries to teach their children “Chineseness” through rote learning and casual violence including the instruction that children should obey without question, but otherwise supports his wife’s hope of firing Elaine in favour of someone who knows the way Chinatown works and can be relied upon to reinterpret the will in their favour. 

That she wasn’t from “Chinatown” might be why Sam chose Elaine in the first place, realising that she’d carry out his wishes rather than her own interpretation of them. She becomes preoccupied with the identity of the person on the other end of the phone when Sam died while herself growing to like the Wongs and trying to smooth over their familial discord. What she comes to understand is that Sam knew exactly what he was doing, trying to engineer a course correction in the lives of his overly Westernised children to force them to get back in touch with their roots rather than lose their Chinese heritage. But then China is also changing. Sam wanted to be buried in his hometown back on the Mainland, and so Elaine heads to the embassy only to met by an ironic civil servant who has pictures of pandas and pagodas on the wall of his office. He hands Elaine a bunch of tourism pamphlets while instructing her that she should learn her Chinese so she can go back to her “homeland”. “Which one?” she scoffs, chuckling at the newly open China now also commodifying its cultural heritage as a destination for curious Westerners as she chucks the pamphlets in the bin directly outside the embassy. 

Sam’s will may be the ultimate act of patriarchal manipulation, not least in his passing over of his daughter in favour of the prodigal son who had seemingly rejected everything he stood for, but does ultimately allow the family to begin repairing itself while reclaiming their cultural identity. Elaine, who had deftly fended off the patronising overtures from her sleazy boss who refers to her as his “pretty little Chinese lawyer”, also gains a sense of herself as a female warrior like the wuxia comics she loved as a child in Macao while doing her best to protect Sam’s legacy in executing his wishes. An atmospheric evocation of  smokey ‘80s London Chinatown on the brink of change, Ping Pong allows its heroine to begin to find her answers only to discover they lead her right back to source. “Everything moves in cycles” Elaine philosophises envisaging her own new beginning in a changing society. 

Ping Pong screened as part of this year’s Hong Kong Film Festival UK.

Side by Side (サイド バイ サイド 隣にいる人, Chihiro Ito, 2023)

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The unresolved past conspires against present happiness in the supernaturally-tinged second feature from Chihiro Ito, Side By Side (サイド バイ サイド 隣にいる人, Side by Side: Tonari ni Iru Hito). Ito began her career as a screenwriter often working with director Isao Yukisada penning the screenplay for his 2004 junai mega hit Crying Out Love in the Center of the World before making directorial debut just last year with In Her Room, produced by Yukisada and selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival. Like many of the films Ito scripted, Side by Side bears an unusual sensitivity and gentleness of spirit in the way it sees the world which may in its way be filled with pain and longing but also warmth and light even if some may ultimately feel that they can never become a part of it. 

Miyama (Kentaro Sakaguchi) is indeed a haunted man in more ways that one, though the most obvious is that he’s continually followed around by a blond man dressed in black (Kodai Asaka) who says nothing but just stares blankly much like Miyama himself. Working as a physiotherapist, Miyama travels the country and often discovers that the physical pain his patients experience is linked to an emotional trauma as manifested in the various ghosts he sees around them which don’t seem to speak to him. Having left the city of Tokyo where he was raised, he wandered around before eventually finding a home with the welcoming nurse Shiori (Mikako Ichikawa) and her young daughter Mimi (Ameri Isomura) in a tranquil rural village in picturesque Nagano. Yet there are ways in which Miyama doesn’t seem to fit inside the familial environment, almost like a ghost himself somehow there and also not. 

The ghosts are in their way a visual representation of the unresolved past that endangers the new family Miyama has begun to build with Shiori and Mimi but fears he can never really be a part of. Shiori recalls seeing a light fitting in a film that she wants to hang over their dinner table to bathe it in the warm light of family, but is unable to find it even with Miyama’s help. It’s she that makes the rather unusual decision to invite a another ghost of Miyama’s past into their home in the gothic vision that is Riko (Asuka Saito), a woman Miyama “abandoned” who has since experienced some kind of breakdown and is then “abandoned” once again by another man who may or may not be the father of the child she is carrying. The unconditional love and support of Shiori and her daughter begin to bring Riko back to life, no longer dressing all in black and eating only white-coloured foods as colour and warmth are slowly returned to her. 

Even so, there are times it becomes difficult to tell the living from the “dead” when even Miyama seems like a ghost dressed all in white haunting his own life with his eerie stillness and not quite vacant eyes but those which express, as someone later puts it, a deep regret in his past. Like everyone else he struggles to emerge from past trauma in parental abandonment and physical abuse while acknowledging that his father suffered as a child and passed that suffering on to him because he did not know how to be a father. Miyama doesn’t know how to be a father either which is perhaps why he fears the depths of his new relationships and his role as a paternal figure while filled with shame and regret for those he failed in the past. 

But then there are others so undeniably alive such as Shiori and her daughter, often dressed in a vibrant yellow and basking in the warm sunshine which streams through the large windows of Shiori’s beautifully designed home. The family take solace in the beauty and comfort of the natural world, protected by its rhythms and the serenity it often offers them. Miyama may feel that he can never recover from his past and has no right to be drawn to this one solitary source of light, as Shiori describes it, like the bugs he is forever trying to keep out of the house but in the end gives them something else in the unconventional family that arises founded on human compassion and unconditional love that asks few questions and simply accepts those who are willing to accept it.

Side by Side had its World Premiere as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: (C) 2023 “Side by Side” Film Partners

The Pledge (博奕打ち外伝, Kosaku Yamashita, 1972)

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The gangster code slowly consumes series of men each trying to do the right thing but hamstrung by the actions of others in Kosaku Yamashita’s yakuza tragedy, The Pledge (博奕打ち外伝, Bakuchiuchi Gaiden). It is indeed a promise between brothers which damns them all, but the roots of it lie in repressed emotion and a desire to protect other people’s feelings by keeping a destructive secret while trying to satisfy oneself that one has behaved properly even if no one else understands. 

The battleground is Wakamatsu, Kyushu, where outsider Egawa (Koji Tsuruta) has united the local boatmen and is undercutting the prices of a rival gang led by Omuro (Tomisaburo Wakayama). While Omuro is out of town, his right-hand man Taki (Hiroki Matsukata) has decided to take advantage of a minor squabble between some of his guys and Egawa’s to initiate a small scale turf war hoping to take the river back under their control. He does this by kidnapping Egawa’s younger brother Masakazu (Goro Ibuki) to lure him to their headquarters alone, something of which Omuro does not approve on his return but decides to go with as an excuse to bring his rivalry with Egawa to a head. Just as the pair are squaring off, a mutual friend, Hanai (Ken Takakura), arrives and intervenes convincing the two men to lay down their arms for the moment at least.

It could be argued that it is this interrupted fight that is resolved in the film’s conclusion if only by inexorable fate. In a repeated motif, Omuro keeps to the code and is exasperated and disapproving of Taki’s underhanded tactics but accepts the responsibility for them himself knowing that Taki acted only on his behalf and his recklessness is only an expression of his love for him. There is indeed something homoerotic in the relationship between the two men as Omuro cradles a wounded Taki and attempts to comfort him that the fault is all his own, while resolving to accept Taki’s actions and build on them rather than try to deescalate or try to apologise. 

The real crisis occurs when the boss, approaching 60 which represents the full circle of a life, decides to name Omuro as a successor rather than the anticipated Hanai. Hanai stoically accepts though intending to leave the gang and travel to another part of Japan but other members of the clan are perplexed, little understanding the boss’ decision in feeling that Omuro is not of good character whereas Hanai is easily the better choice. As it transpires, the boss has made his decision deliberately in order to mitigate the fact that Hanai is secretly his illegitimate son whose origins he has kept secret in deference to his legal wife. He chooses not to name him as a successor in order to avoid causing him problems in his later life while justifying himself that he has not made the decision for dynastic reasons or out of simple favouritism. Yet the relationship between the two men, father and son, is raw and painful if founded on a deep understanding that leaves them unable to meet each other directly with emotional honesty. 

Because of his father’s decision, Hanai forces Egawa to promise that he will not antagonise Omuro which leads to problems in his own gang with his men angry and confused, unable to understand why Egawa is letting Omuro walk all over him. Compounding the problem, Egawa’s errant brother Tetsu (Bunta Sugawara) returns unexpectedly and as Egawa cannot tell him about the pledge without disclosing Hanai’s secret, thinks his brother is being messed around and raids Omuro’s offices to reclaim money he had extorted from Egawa. He learns the truth from devoted geisha Hideko (Yuko Hama) who is deeply in love with Egawa yet largely unable to act on it again because of the gangster code while pledging that she’d sooner die and prove her devotion to him than summit herself to Taki, who is also in love with her, even when he threatens her with a knife. 

The yakuza code dictates that Omuro must die though he is little more than a passive antagonist all too willing to accept the evil deeds that Taki did on his behalf because of the code of loyalty though he would not have dared to do them himself. Secrecy and repressed emotion drag all into a dark web of self-destructive violence until reaching their inevitable conclusion and perhaps bringing one cycle to a close if only in the birth of another. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Lost Love (流水落花, Ka Sing Fung, 2022)

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A grieving mother attempts to redefine her life by caring for the children of others in Ka Sing Fung’s poignant maternal drama, Lost Love (流水落花). Filled with boundless compassion, the film in part explores the sense of otherness felt by lonely children often rejected by the society around them, while allowing the wounded heroine to find a way to love again in the midst of her heartbreak, even if what she’s signed up for amounts to a cycle of perpetual loss. 

Mei (Sammi Cheng Sau-Man) lives an ordinary life working a series of unsatisfying and poorly paid jobs while her husband Bun works as a driver. Gazing at an empty room that might once have belonged to a child, we can feel a sense of loss and absence in the couple’s apartment while another young woman, Miss Mok (Hedwig Tam Sin-Yin), takes a cursory look around and seems to find everything in order pausing only to advise they give up smoking, at least in front of the children. Mei has decided that she wants to become a foster mother, but Bun does not seem entirely onboard complaining that he’s only really been “advised” of her decision rather than actively asked for his opinion. 

As is later revealed, Bun and Mei lost their three year-old son to illness and though Bun would have preferred to continue trying to have another child of their own, Mei is afraid to in case the same thing happens again. Yet the irony is that in becoming a foster mother she has signed herself up for repeated loss. The children who come to her do so temporarily and only until such time as they can be returned to their guardians or adopted by other families. After bonding with one little girl, Mei considers adoption but is told that it is not really permitted within the fostering system and she will have to resign herself to letting the child the go. 

Meanwhile, many of the children have specific needs and are often struggling to deal with the circumstances which led to them needing foster care. The first little boy Mei takes in, Sam, barely says a word and wets himself in stressful situations. When he stands up to a bully in school, he’s the one who gets into trouble with the teacher who makes prejudicial statements about “these kinds of kids” as if he’s already written him off. Sam poignantly reveals that the other kids were making fun of him for not having any parents leaving him additionally isolated and further damaging his already disrupted education. Another little girl, Hana, says something similar unwilling to go to school as the other children reject her because she has cleft palate. Ching, by contrast, is rejected by her own mother who seems to have remarried and had other children, palming her off on a grandmother who is unable to care for her while hospitalised. Two other children stay with Mei while their father is in prison, later describing Bun as the kindest man they’ve ever met while explaining that they were previously pushed from pillar to post bounced around between relatives who grew tired of caring for them. 

Even so, the foster care arrangement places a further strain on the couple’s marriage. Bun is at times resentful of the attention Mei gives to the children while still on the fence about fostering even at one point suggesting they simply get a dog instead. Yet despite everything Mei remains committed to caring for the children who come her way some of whom have no one else to care for them, helping them to gain the strength to keep living in the world and to feel less alone even in the face of unfair social prejudice. Ka tells her tale in elliptical fashion, pushing forward over a number of summers as different children occupy Mei’s spare room while she herself grows old but still determined to continue looking after kids in need. A repeated motif of falling petals hints at the temporality of all things, but also as they fall into the river a poignant sense of generational flow as Mei gently supports the children until they can support themselves and she can give no more leaving love behind her even in her absence.

Lost Love screens in Chicago April 1 as part of the 16th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

A Home from Home (아이를 위한 아이, Lee Seung-hwan, 2022)

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Unexpectedly reunited with his estranged father, a young man is confronted with a series of choices on leaving the care system in Lee Seung-hwan’s darkly comic coming-of-age drama A Home from Home (아이를 위한 아이, Ayireul Wihan Ayi). The Korean title may mean something more like a child looking after a child, but the English also neatly encapsulates the hero’s dilemma on being ejected from the orphanage where he has lived for most of his life into a new “family” home with two strangers he hardly knows at all. 

Do-yun (Hyeon Woo-Seok) is about to come of age. In less than a month he will have to leave the orphanage where he lives and has nowhere else to go. Working as a takeaway delivery driver, he is acutely aware of the prejudice directed towards those who have no families with both his boss and unreasonable customers making jibes about how they expect no better from someone who “wasn’t raised properly”. Prejudice is one reason he longs to leave Korea for the promise of Australia, explaining that there he’ll simply be “Korean” rather than an “orphan” and will be able to build an independent life for himself. All his plans are scuppered, however, when a man turns up at the orphanage claiming to be his estranged father and offering to take him in. 

Understandably resentful, Do-yun is persuaded to accept the offer and discovers that he has a younger half-brother, Jae-min (Park Sang-Hoon). Seung-won (Jung Woong-In), his father, claims that he gave up Do-yun for Jae-min wanting to remarry after his first wife died but apparently unable to take his first son with him. That might be reason enough to resent Jae-min, but Do-yun doesn’t particularly only wanting to save enough money to get to Australia and leave the family behind. The problem is that Seung-won soon passes away leaving Do-yun with a still deeper sense of loss and resentment while wondering if Seung-won only returned to claim him because he needed someone to look after Jae-min in his absence. Only 20 years old, he ends up becoming Jae-min’s guardian and despite himself decides to put his Australian dreams on hold to look him. 

Becoming an accidental “father” so young does indeed force Do-yun to grow up quickly, learning to cook (well, divide a microwave dinner onto plates) and keep the apartment Seung-won left them tidy. Perhaps he’d have had to figure all that out for himself alone on leaving the orphanage and having to manage on his wages from the delivery job, but there is also a lingering resentment that he’s putting his life on hold for a “brother” he didn’t know until a few weeks previously wondering what sort of responsibility he really bears for him even as he begins to ease into a sense of familial comfort he had never known before. Even so, an unexpected revelation sees him questioning himself further and trying to figure out whether he really belongs with Jae-min at all or should cut his losses and go to Australia anyway. 

In an odd way, he comes to view his new familial relationship as “just another prison” while jealous of Jae-min’s opportunities and yearning for independent freedom. Meanwhile, he finds himself targeted once again by exploitative adults in the form of a gold-digging aunt and her obnoxious husband intent on getting their hands on Jae-min’s inheritance, and scammed out of money he’d saved for his new life abroad by another “brother” he’d grown up with in the orphanage. What he wants is to make a decision that’s his own rather than being railroaded by the circumstances of his life or manipulated by forces beyond his control but also begins to develop a genuine familial connection with Jae-min even while remaining mildly distrustful and trying to figure out where it is that he truly belongs. Exploring the effects of a societal prejudice against orphanhood as well as the practical and emotional difficulties faced by those who are abruptly ejected from the care system into an uncaring world, Lee’s strangely cheerful drama finds two young men searching for support but finally discovering they may have only themselves to rely on. 

A Home from Home streams in the US until March 31st as part of Asian Pop-Up Cinema Season 16.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Grass is Greener on the Other Side (野草不盡, Crystal Wong, 2022)

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Following the crackdown on the protest movement, many Hong Kongers began to think about seeking freer futures abroad, but what was it that those who decided to leave found there? Crystal Wong’s documentary the Grass is Greener on the Other Side (野草不盡) follows a collection of Hong Kongers who moved to the UK and explores the emotional complexity of life in exile as they attempt to hang on to their cultural identity in a society largely ignorant of their struggle. 

Wong mainly follows two protagonists, one a graphic designer about to become a father and the other a young student still fearing repercussions from his role in the protests whose friend is currently awaiting trial in Hong Kong. Both are clear that they reject a “Chinese” identity and defiantly describe themselves as Hong Kongers. Yet in the UK they are repeatedly asked to fill in forms asking for their ethnicity which generally offer only the choice of “Chinese” or a nebulous “other”, each time they write in Hong Kong as an alternative answer. One of the reasons the expectant father chose to leave is that he didn’t want his child growing up speaking Mandarin (both men are also ironically greeted with “ni hao” before explaining that they speak Cantonese in Hong Kong) but others ask him if he won’t end up losing his language to English instead, a removals man bringing up the case of his Australian niece who now refuses to answer her grandparents in Cantonese even when she understands what they’re saying. He and his wife insist they won’t let that happen, but even in job interviews they seem more interested in his ability to speak Mandarin than his design skills.  

Before he left, he attended a housewarming party for another friend who decided to stay and was able to buy a home thanks to a motivated seller emigrating in a hurry. Everyone seems to be leaving, even a shop attendant guesses that the student she’s serving is probably leaving soon when he mentions that he’s not sure if his card’s topped up enough. Yet another of the older men had said that it’s mainly those of their age who are planning to go abroad, the student protestors are deciding to stay and fight some of them resentful that the previous generation is dropping the ball by abandoning ship. The student, however, has taken the opportunity to study abroad to protect himself from repercussions from participating in the protests in Hong Kong heading to the UK while his friend prepares to leave for Germany vowing only to return should a war break out. 

Yet the designer asks himself if he’s really satisfied while a friend of his who’s been in the UK for a while cautions that he may get bored moving to a town like his which he says is better suited to retirees. He struggles to secure employment and considers moving out of London to save money but describes leaving Hong Kong as akin to an acrimonious divorce. He’s offended when someone asks him what he misses because what he misses is a disappeared Hong Kong to which he can never return. Some of his friends had described Hong Kong as like Goose Town in the 2010 Mainland comedy Let the Bullets Fly, a place completely oppressed by a corrupt authority. “You need to whole heartedly hate a place to decide to leave it permanently” he explains. 

Both he and the student attend the central London protests attempting to raise awareness of Hong Kong’s plight while carrying on the fight even in exile. One encounters a man who asks him what the protest is about and if he really “hates” China while stating that it reminds him of the situation in Sri Lanka and expressing solidarity with his struggle. The student meanwhile makes his way towards Trafalgar Square where the protest merges with another one hosted by Nigerians protesting political oppression in Nigeria. He regrets that he won’t be able to return to Hong Kong in time for his friend’s trial (especially considering the quarantine procedures during the pandemic) while trying to get on with his studies. Each of them struggle with their decision, wondering if they’ve done the right thing and if they will ever return to a free Hong Kong while trying to hang on to their cultural identity as they forge new lives in an unfamiliar society.

The Grass is Greener on the Other Side screens in London 31st March as part of this year’s Hong Kong Film Festival UK.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Good morning (안녕하세요, Cha Bong-ju, 2022)

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A lonely young woman finds a new place to belong while discovering the meaning of life after being taken in by a cheerful community of patients at a hospice for those with terminal illness in Cha Bong-ju’s lighthearted drama Good Morning (안녕하세요, Annyeonghaseyo). “Good morning” is to the patients an affirmation of life and way of greeting the new day as gift rather than a burden as the heroine had come to see it while unable to escape her sense of hopelessness and futility.

High schooler Su-mi’s (Kim Hwan-hee) desire to end her life is born largely of the circumstances she finds herself in as an orphan. Not only is she rejected by others her age who mock her for having no family, but she is trapped in an exploitative situation at a care facility where she is molested by the man who’s supposed to be taking care of her and also forced to work in his restaurant where she is expected to put up with inappropriate behaviour by drunken customers. Even if she were able to continue enduring it, she knows that she will soon come of age at which point she will be roughly ejected from the care system and expected to support herself with no further help available to her. It’s this sense of hopelessness that brings her to a nearby bridge from which she intends to jump only to be stopped by a middle-aged woman, Seo-jin (Yoo Sun), who manages to talk her down largely by promising that she will show her how to die.

That is in a sense what she does. Seo-jin works in a hospice caring for those with terminal illnesses who have each come to an acceptance of death and their path towards it. The patients are determined to live out their remaining days as best they can, remaining cheerful and committing themselves to accomplishing something be it learning English, writing a book, or finishing a painting. Su-mi bonds most closely with an elderly man (Lee Soon-jae) who had been illiterate and is working hard to learn to read and write while he still has time. What she discovers is that it is possible to find meaning in life even in the shadow of death, and that what gives her own life meaning is the sense of community she experiences at the hospice allowing her to feel part of a large family which had been denied to her during her time in the care system. 

“You just need to give them a little attention” Su-mi advises of some struggling plants at Seo-jin’s apartment, herself blossoming under the attention Seo-jin and the patients are paying to her, though there may be something a little uncomfortable in the suggestion that Seo-jin may have been partly at fault for a traumatic event in her past in assuming that things grow on their own as long you provide adequate nutrition. She blames herself for not paying enough attention and failing to realise that there was something wrong until it was too late only latterly understanding that like the plants people need more than simple sustenance to grow. Nevertheless, she and Su-mi gradually help each other to rediscover joy and happiness in life while forming a familial bond that restores something to each of them and grants them the ability to move forward into a happier future. 

Su-mi does learn “how to die” from the patients at the hospice, but what she’s really learning is how to live. The elderly man reminds her to live well and die without regret, making the most of every day doing what she wants to do and being happy while Su-mi gains a new perspective on life and death as she begins to step into herself gaining new confidence as a member of a community. Gentle and heartfelt, Cha’s lighthearted drama necessarily tackles some dark themes from suicide and terminal illness to the stigmatisation of orphanhood, difficulties experienced by those placed into the care system, and the inertia that can take hold while dealing with grief and loss but manages to lean towards the sunlight in embracing the healing qualities of relationships between people which give life its meaning.

Good morning streams in the US until March 31st as part of Asian Pop-Up Cinema Season 16.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Peafowl (공작새, Byun Sung-bin, 2022)

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A trans woman begins to step into herself after reclaiming her traditional culture to make peace with the past in Byun Sung-bin’s poignant indie drama, Peafowl (공작새, Gongjaksae). At once situating itself in the heartland of a society struggling to adapt to the pace of change, the film suggests that only by reintegrating her Koreanness can the heroine become fully herself even as the spirit of the father who rejected her softly tells her to dance her dance.

Myung (Choi Hae-jun), whose name as she later says means “not too light not too dark”, is a trans woman living in Seoul hoping to earn a large amount of money to pay for her surgery through winning a waacking dance competition. Shortly before she performs, she receives an unsettling telephone call and narrowly loses the dance off against a Taiwanese competitor while a judge explains that she lacks a colour of her own. It’s then that a childhood friend, Woo-gi (Kim Woo-kyum), contacts her to let her know that her estranged father Duk-gil (Ki Joo-bong) has passed away and asks her to come to the funeral. Myung first says she won’t go, but later does only to be berated by her overbearing, conservative uncle who ironically causes a scene by loudly exclaiming that a man shouldn’t be going around with long hair or wearing makeup. He even introduces her as Duk-gil’s son to an older relative who is otherwise much more sympathetic and even asks her with surprise why she’s wearing a male mourning outfit rather than the more appropriate one for women. 

It’s the uncle, a symbol of oppressive middle-aged patriarchal power, that is the real problem. Most other people are either broadly supportive or too polite to say anything of Myung’s changed appearance while her teenage nephew Bo-suk (Go Jae-hyun) simply accepts her and quickly refers to Myung as “sis” despite his mother’s obvious discomfort. It is however the uncle who is in charge, continuing to misgender and insult Myung especially once Woo-gi reveals that it was Duk-gil’s dying wish for Myung to lead the funerary rites at his 49th day memorial service. Myung doesn’t really want to participate but is tempted after Woo-gi suggests there’s a sizeable inheritance to be had if she agrees. 

It’s clear that Myung had good reason to resent her father, holding up her hand and revealing a large burn scar she’s since had tattooed with with a beautiful peacock feather. The feather motif is repeated throughout as a kind of symbol of Myung’s hidden beauty which she will eventually learn to reveal through the fusion of the traditional art of shamanistic ritual and her contemporary waacker dance moves, yet it’s also linked to the image of her father as a man she never understood and may never have really known whose relationship with her was shaped by the legacy of homophobic prejudice in ways she could never have imagined. The truth that she discovers reminds her that there have always been people like her even within this very “traditional” society, while the twin revelation that her cousin is gay and struggling in many of the same ways she has proves there always will be. As Woo-gi reminds her, her grandfather’s tree looks like it’s dead but is kept alive by its connections with others much like people are, pointing out that rituals accept everyone without prejudice or exception. 

Only after making peace with her conflicted aunt and showing her overbearing uncle the error of his ways can Myung begin to reclaim herself in reintegrating her traditional culture to gain the colour she was lacking and become fully herself as she performs the ritual along with a waacker dance that quite literally sets fire to the oppressive quality of tradition as mediated by men like her uncle who weaponise it to preserve their own privilege. Shot in classic 4:3, Byun neatly contrasts the vibrancy of Seoul nightlife with the oppressive dullness of life in the village, but also highlights the various similarities in the colour and noise of a shamanistic ceremony which as Myung discovers moves to a beat not dissimilar to waacker as she watches her friends dance in a club with the movements of traditional shamanism. In a way, Myung does indeed burn it all down but does so positively, finally coming to an understanding of her father and her history while reclaiming her traditional culture along with the right to do with it whatever she wishes.

Peafowl screened as part of BFI Flare 2023. It will also be screening at Genesis Cinema, London on April 20 as part of this year’s Queer East.

Trailer (English subtitles)