Decision to Leave (헤어질 결심, Park Chan-wook, 2022)

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“I went through hell for you but without you my life would be empty” a fugitive murderer asks an insomniac detective to tell the woman he loves, making his own Decision to Leave (헤어질 결심, Heojil kyolshim) which will in fact be one of many in Park Chan-wook’s achingly romantic noir. Tinged with fatalism, the pursuit of love is also one of death and leads inevitably to a kind of haunting from which there is no real escape though you wouldn’t really want one anyway. 

In any case, the detective Park Hae-joon’s (Park Hae-il) sense of reality is already fracturing under the strain of his incurable insomnia. As he tells his partner, it’s not that he can’t sleep because of his obsessive stakeouts, it’s that he goes on stakeouts because he cannot sleep. Unfortunately for him, there have been relatively few murders lately. He wonders if it’s because of the nice weather, as if homicidal rage were being held in check by the gentle art of picnicking which it has to be said has a strange logic to it. Living apart from his wife who is a nuclear engineer in provincial Ipo, Hae-joon prides himself on being a good policeman and is preoccupied by his failure to catch two suspects currently on the run for a vicious murder. When he’s called to the scene of a dead body lying below a cliff, most are ready to rule it a tragic accident or perhaps a suicide but Hae-joon isn’t so sure especially given the unusual behaviour of the man’s much younger widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), who appears almost indifferent to her husband’s death and giggles to herself during an interrogation a habit she later claims is born of nervousness and a lack of confidence in her ability to speak Korean having migrated from China. 

Seo-rae’s Korean is perhaps a little better than she makes out, but still we see her repeating lines from romantic dramas on television, lines she later repeats to Hae-joon, while he wonders if her taste for historical romance has lent her Korean its archaic quality. They are each in a way out of time, she remarking that he strikes her as “dignified” to a degree she didn’t expect in a “modern” man while he ironically tells her that he was drawn to her because like him she liked to look at things directly. Yet there’s nothing at all direct about the mysterious Seo-rae whom he suspects of murdering her husband, and though there might be something unspoken directly understood between them their attempts at communication are always frustrated. Not only is there an ever shifting language barrier, but a mediation through text message and voice note or else through the act of being observed at a distance. As they grow closer, Hae-joon allows Seo-rae to listen to his surveillance tapes recorded as he voyeuristically watched her apartment from the rooftop opposite. She immediately deletes them but later does something similar herself, and is finally undone by her inability to delete a potentially incriminating recording because it has come to mean too much to her. 

The pair are in a sense perfectly matched. Hae-joon’s melancholy wife finally exclaims that he needs murder and violence in order to be happy, while Seo-rae admits that she ends up with terrible men like husband because it would take something extreme such as a murder for a good man like Hae-joon to take notice of her. As the couple dance around each other, Park colours their non-romance with shades of the gothic in the repeated motif of the crow feathers each of them find as they work their way towards the apotheosis of their love. As they say every love story is a ghost story and what is love if not an unsolvable mystery? Hae-joon’s sense of reality is forever in flux, Park playfully dressing Hae-joon’s new team and his old team in similar outfits as he segues between fantasy, reality, and memory while trying to parse out an objective truth. Hae-joon’s tragedy may be that he discovers more than he ought to know but not enough to solve the mystery, destined to be haunted by his unresolved cases and the elusive silhouette of lost love lingering silently in the mists of memory. 

Decision to Leave screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival and is now on general release in US & UK cinemas courtesy of MUBI.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Angae (Mist) by Jung Hoon-hee (1967) which is also the title song for Kim Soo-yong’s 1967 film of the same name.

Shiro – Hero of Heroes (諸葛四郎 – 英雄的英雄, Lin Yu-chun & Chuang Yung-hsin & Liu Yu-shu, 2022)

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An earnest young man, grieving son, and feisty princess team up to stop the evil Demon Society from becoming all-powerful rulers of their land in an adaptation of classic Taiwanese comic book Shiro – Hero of Heroes (諸葛四郎 – 英雄的英雄, Zhūgě Sìláng – yīngxióng de yīngxióng). Created by Yeh Hong-Chia in the late 1950s, the series has become a nostalgic touchstone for generations of children and is about to reach new ones with a feature-length 3D CGI animation following Zhuge Shiro (Wang Chen-hua) on another exciting adventure to reunite the magical Dragon and Phoenix swords and stop their awesome power from falling into the wrong hands. 

Unfortunately the Dragon Sword has already been lost, much to the king’s regret. When Demon Society raid the palace during a festival and place a mask over the princess’ face, the king puts the land on lockdown and summons the nation’s locksmiths to try and free her only to realise there’s no way to unpick Demon Society’s diabolical locks without giving in to their demands to surrender the Phoenix Sword. Luckily hero of heroes Zhuge Shiro just happens to be in town on the invitation of his locksmith uncle and pledges to help the king salvage his fracturing relationship with his daughter who resents his hesitation to exchange the sword for her wellbeing and make sure Demon Society doesn’t get its hands on the swords’ unleashed power. 

Though this is in many ways a tale aimed at younger audiences, the incredibly witty script moving to the rhythms of traditional opera includes a series of meta jokes for grownups from a silly reference to a limited edition dart and workplace exploitation to subtle digs at societal authoritarianism along with a small cameo from a wandering cartoonist whose work is censored by the powers that be. Having faced Demon Society several times before, Zhuge Shiro is a pure hearted young man wise beyond his years with a strong sense of justice. His first act of goodness is standing up to an officious guard, General Shan, who won’t let a worried father with a sick child enter the town to find a doctor, while he soon earns the respect of the king through his compassion and emotional intelligence in trying to explain the king’s dilemma to the princess. He does however engage in a little sexism which the princess herself is quick to push back against, pointng out that she’s a skilled fighter herself and does not need protecting but will be joining him on this mission whether he likes it or not. 

Similarly, Zhuge Shiro gains another comrade in Zhen Ping (Chiang Tieh-Cheng) who is originally under the misapprehension that Zhuge Shiro is responsible for his father’s death only to later realise it was all the fault of Demon Society. To reunite the swords and save the kingdom, the trio find themselves battling through the villain’s booby trapped lair and discovering that the swords’ power lies in a different place than they first might have assumed, one Demon Society is largely unable to appreciate and therefore to benefit from even if they had managed to hold both swords in tandem. In other words, it’s brotherhood and justice which eventually enable the trio to prosper while the bumbling masked demons only make fools of themselves in their intense greed and villainy. 

Staying close to the aesthetic of the comic book, the film’s highly stylised designs closely match those of the original characters from back in the late 1950s if perhaps a little cuter and rounder in keeping with contemporary CGI animation while it moves to a comic beat inspired by traditional opera interspersed with a few song and dance numbers and exciting martial arts fight scenes as the trio face off against the minions of Demon Society while standing up for justice. Just as the king learns the real meaning of treasure, the trio discover a brotherly bond and a new mission to rid the land of the evils of Demon Society while accepting that even villains can change their ways and should be allowed a chance to redeem themselves, and those who may seem obviously villainous might be alright on the inside. In any case, Zhuge Shiro embarks on what could be the first of many adventures in charming style taking down the bad guys with good humour and righteousness fuelled by the power of friendship.

Shiro – Hero of Heroes screens in Chicago on Oct. 23 as part of the 15th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Fallen Blossoms (花ちりぬ, Tamizo Ishida, 1938)

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By the late 1930s, film censorship had tightened and it was perhaps all but impossible to rebuke the militarist regime through the silver screen. Nevertheless, as always setting your film in the past can make the impossible possible through thinly veiled allegory. This may not have been its primary intention, but it’s impossible to ignore the subtext of Tamizo Ishida’s Fallen Blossoms (花ちりぬ, Hana Chirinu) which sets itself entirely within the confines of a geisha house on the night of the Kinmon incident or Hamaguri Gate Rebellion in 1864 during which anti-Shogunate forces from Choshu marched on Kyoto with the intention of kidnapping the emperor in order to restore imperial rule. The incident ended in devastating defeat for Choshu with rebel forces setting fire to the city as they bid their retreat. 

There is therefore an uncomfortable anxiety in the context of the Japan of 1938 as the women trapped inside the teahouse remark on the chaos outside with unfamiliar soldiers on the streets and townspeople deciding to remain at home which is of course very bad for their business. Aside from the sense of danger, the major problems inside the house are economic with constant talk of declining revenues and the recent closure of similar establishments while even the guests that have come have done so to drown their sorrows as their own business is also going badly because of the rumours of imminent unrest. The situation is all the more acute for Akira (Ranko Hanai), daughter of the house’s madam, because she’s secretly fallen in love with a young man of Choshu she fears may be marching on the city which is one reason she deflects her mother’s attempts to encourage her to accept an offer of marriage from a wealthy associate. 

As Akira later puts it, her mother was born in the teahouse, became a geisha and then its madam. She sees herself sharing the same fate but wants to experience a different kind of life, curious about what lies outside the pleasure district. Maid Miyako (Kimiko Hayashi) was sold to the geisha house as a child because her family was poor, she doesn’t think the life outside is anything worth seeing. Yet she too wonders what her fate might be, believing herself to be too plain to make it as a geisha and particularly to attract the kind of wealthy patron who could provide an escape route. Matsuba (Ayako Ichinose), a former geisha, did just that but now she’s come back apparently regretting her decision because she’s neither wife not maid in her new home but also occupies a liminal status in the teahouse, her actions deliberate or otherwise reinforcing the idea that she is no longer a geisha in her inability to tie Akira’s obi and claims to have forgotten the words when asked to rehearse a piece of music with another of the women. “Surely it’s OK for a girl to dream, even in the Kuruwa” Akira fires back but perhaps on some level knowing that her mother has a point when she says that samurai don’t marry young women of the pleasure district. 


Even so Akira’s romantic fantasy takes on even greater import when a man begins loudly banging on their door and demanding to be let in, presumably in fear for his life. Akira rushes forward to open it, but is held back by her mother and the other women. After a while the sound of fighting stops and it’s assumed the man has been killed. Akira doesn’t know if the man was her lover or not, but it makes no difference. Someone called for her help and she refused it. Guilt and shame overwhelm her. Her mother’s decision may prove to be a prudent one, though she is in any case later arrested by the pro-shogunate Shinsengumi police presumably suspicious the geisha house may have harboured rebel soldiers. Akira’s double sense of guilt that what’s happened to her mother is partly her own fault prevents her from leaving with the others when it becomes certain that their only choice is to evacuate the city. Her only point of refuge is on the watchtower, apparently unique to her geisha house and said to be haunted by someone murdered by the Shinsengumi, where she sees the smoke of fires glowing on the horizon. Her lover’s poem falls from her hand as if in admission that her dream is ended and there will be no escape for her from the environs of the Kuruwa.

The moment is therefore one of eclipse and endings, a city a falling but not as the invaders are beaten back and defeated. Prophetic and chilling in its import as bells strike ominously in the background while the city burns, the film paints a bleak prognosis for a Japan of mounting imperialist ambitions. Drunken geisha Tanehachi (Reiko Minakami), herself trapped in the Kuruwa apparently because of a bad man she cannot escape, reveals that her father was beheaded in the street for disrespecting a samurai and if this is the beginning of their end then so be it, but even so “Kyoto is finished. No matter who loses it will make no difference.” Adapted from a stage play by Kaoru Morimoto, Ishida’s increasingly anxious drama never leaves the geisha house or repeats a shot and situates itself entirely within a world of women where men are heard but never seen, but finally leaves its heroine all alone watching helplessly as the fires creep closer. 

Go Through the Dark (盲弈, Pu Yunhong, 2021)

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“You should rely on yourself not on others. Success comes from your own efforts” a father tells his son, yet his words have a particular irony given the complicated nature of their relationship. Pu Yunhong’s mostly observational documentary Go Through the Dark (盲弈, máng yì) follows an 11-year-old boy who unwittingly became a social media star after winning a regional Go contest despite the fact that he is blind. At first Guanglin’s father seems supportive and caring, yet the boy often appears to be on the brink of tears and is near silent giving no real indication whether or not he actually likes the game of Go or is only doing it to please the father who has told him he has no other future solely because of his blindness. 

In any case, Guanglin has already achieved level four status after only two years and at a relatively young age even for a sighted child who devoted themselves solely to studying the game. Using a specially adapted board that allows him to play by touch, he seems genuinely heartbroken on losing out in the final match of a tournament, crying into his father’s shirt, but later events lead us to wonder if it’s merely disappointment that has him so upset or guilt mixed with fear in being unable to live up to his father’s expectations. It seems that Guanglin’s father has decided that his future lies in becoming a professional Go player, explaining that he had previously considered sending him away to train as a masseur expressing a rather outdated and prejudicial view of blindness in insisting there are no other possibilities for him, but there is an ongoing conflict of interest that sees him attempt to micromanage the boy’s affairs as if making a bid for vicarious success rather than earnestly supporting his son in order to see him fulfil his dreams. 

He first explains that they were offered a place at a Go school in Beijing but then that the school messed them around, accusing them of exploiting Guanglin to boost their image while having no real intention of helping him. Then they travel south to Xiamen following an offer from Mrs Wang who provides them with an apartment and offers to train Guanglin for free. But it’s still not enough for his father who complains endlessly that he feels ripped off and exploited, irritated by Mrs Wang’s suggestion he help out at the school while she seems to have some concerns about their potentially toxic co-dependency. Though his father is always pointing out that Guanglin will have to become independent someday, he takes frequent steps to prevent him doing so. Apparently suffering from severe separation anxiety, Guanglin does not attend school and is getting no conventional education nor does he have the opportunity to mix with other children of his own age and has poor social skills. Mrs Wang is concerned that he never chooses his own food to eat but accepts only what his father gives him, while there is something worrying in his tendency to simply eat a few bites and declare himself full with his father then finishing off his meal. 

The cause of Guanglin’s blindness, according to his father, is malnutrition caused by their poverty though Mrs Wang in particular is convinced that he may never have attempted to get proper medical care for his son. When she tries to encourage him to take Guanglin to a specialist who suggests that it might be possible for him to regain at least some of his sight, his father becomes indignant. His anxiety may be born of a genuine fear that surgery may make things worse or cause additional injury because of the affects of the anaesthetic but behind it all there’s the uncomfortable suggestion that he simply doesn’t want Guanglin to be cured because that would reduce his dependency on him while rendering him “ordinary”, no longer the blind Go player with no guarantee that he can learn to play the game the way that others play it. 

Even when his father puts him in a school in Beijing, the coach seems to agree with him that it would be “better” if Guanglin could delay the treatment on his eyes so the school would have the cachet of training the blind Go champion. Yet when he had put him in a school in his hometown, the coach there had humiliated Guanglin in front of the whole class calling his moves “cabbage-headed” and unacceptable for someone at his level. “No one wants to play with a loser” his father cruelly tells him, as Guanglin wanders around on his own rejected by the other kids who are mostly reading or playing video games yet often appearing at his most happy running around and standing behind his classmates listening to them play even when not included. Though often withdrawn, stressed and close to tears, Guanglin does his best without complaint while his father runs him down and rants about people not supporting their dream. It may be that pretty much everyone is exploiting Guanglin in one way or another, no one really thinking about his quality of life or future independence, but he is left with nowhere else to turn and only Go to cling to as an uncertain lifeline towards a better future. 

Go Through the Dark screens on 21st October as part of Cambridge Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Cabbie (運転手之戀, Chen Yi-wen & Chang Hwa-kun, 2000)

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The crazy freewheeling life of a lovestruck taxi driver eventually takes a turn for the contemplative in Chen Yi-wen & Chang Hwa-kun’s infinitely charming comedy, The Cabbie (運転手之戀, yùn zhuǎn shǒu zhī liàn). Despite the film’s sunny atmosphere, darkness does indeed hang around the edges in the frequent references to car accidents and dismemberment yet it seems to be something that the affable hero can live with as he narrates a series of strange incidents from his ordinary life while meditating on his zany family when faced with mortal anxiety. 

As taxi driver Quan (Chu Chung-heng) points out, life can be pretty strange. His taxi can sometimes act as an unofficial confessional as his fares take the opportunity to unburden themselves to a complete stranger in a confined space, confessing the embarrassing details of their lives and even at one point seemingly confessing to a murder. Quan takes it in his stride, feeling as if he is one with his cab, Ah Di, and duty-bound to deliver his charges to their rightful destinations physical and emotional. Yet in an odd way it’s almost as if we’ve become the driver in this story and Quan is our fare, breaking the the fourth wall to speak to us directly of his strange life and the circumstances which led to this present turn of events. 

Quan is however unusual in that he tells his mother and father quite directly that he has no intention of marrying, giving a fairly logical reasoning based on the fact he believes women do not like him and he is not apparently much interested in them. This is of course a source of anxiety for his parents, his taxi driver father also turning fare in ranting at an old lady at the convenience store about his wayward son before trying to awaken something within him by gifting him porn. His mother meanwhile, the local coroner, decides to give up on him while ordering Quan to freeze his sperm so she can have a grandchild with or without his direct involvement at some point down the line. 

In any case, Quan changes his mind on falling in love at first sight with grumpy policewoman Jingwen (Japanese actress Rie Miyazawa, dubbed into Mandarin). Taking his mother’s advice about making an impression (not necessarily a good one) to heart, Quan decides the best way to woo his crush is to get fined by her as many times as possible. Even so there’s an undeniable Romeo and Juliet vibe to their relationship given the natural animosity between taxi drivers and traffic cops, along with a sense of cosmic irony that feeds directly back into the film’s darker themes. So much of life for Quan is coincidence, an act of cosmic collision not unlike the car crashes that occur so frequently outside the taxi depot. Quan encounters Jingwen by chance and then continues to push his luck by meeting her again in similar circumstances until she gives in to his unusual ardour. Yet not all of these accidents end well. One of Quan’s neighbours earns extra cash turning up at crash sites and making sure that the family gets all of the deceased’s body parts, reaching under twisted metal to retrieve pieces of severed flesh while his mother is indeed a coroner with a severed head in a jar sitting proudly in her office. 

In the end it might be that Quan is a mere passenger of fate, relating his life to us as it flashes before his eyes while threatened by a weird fare. What begins as absurd nonsense comedy as Quan tells us about his crazy family and the strangers who climb into his cab eventually takes an unexpected, poignant turn for the existential even as Quan continues to closely identify himself with Ah Di which might beg the question of who is driving who. Madcap and anarchic, there is something genuinely cheerful in Quan’s often simple existence governed both by chance and the rules of the road lending a fatalistic pall to all of his otherwise freewheeling adventures. Things don’t always always go right for him, but even when they go wrong it’s generally in the right way. Fast-forwarding though the “boring bits”, Quan races us through his life in the cab before taking us where we need to go keeping it cheerful while preparing for the inevitable collision with cosmic irony. 

The Cabbie screens 20th October as part of this year’s Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

The Man from Island West (西部來的人, Huang Ming-chuan, 1991)

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Two indigenous men find themselves searching for a place to belong in a changing Taiwan in Huang Ming-chuan’s poetic drama The Man From Island West (西部來的人, xībù lái de rén). A folktale told at intervals throughout the film sees a curious young man leave his community and find another only to be cast out, return, and be cast out again. While one young man dreams of escaping the village he sees as backwards and restrictive, another who had left longs to return but finds that one place is much like another and neither have much place for him. 

Beginning and ending in a fiery crash, the film opens with a limping Ah-Ming (Wu Hong-ming) having survived a car accident assumed to be a suicide attempt. Keeping himself to himself, Ah-Ming finds refuge with a local man and his hotheaded son, Ah-Chuan (Chen Yi-wen), who has a job at the local quarry as do most of the men of the indigenous community who have not already left for the city. Though the pair generate something like an awkward friendship, it is soon disrupted by the return of Hsiu Mei (Shaw Tswe-fen), Ah-Chuan’s former girlfriend, who has returned after five years in Taipei now apparently a rich woman. 

“There’s only one thing that mountain girls can do in Taipei” Ah-Chuan explains, “They never come home to stay. It affects them all in the same way”. Ah-Chuan may long to go to Taipei himself, but cannot accept the returned Hsiu Mei, reminding her that she is not the same girl she was five years ago rejecting her both because of her involvement with sex work and because of her urbanisation. As we discover, Hsiu Mei is on the run from trouble in the city and had perhaps thought to find refuge back in the village free from the corruptions of urban life only she gradually realises that she doesn’t fit in there anymore either. As Ah-Chuan had said, she’s not the girl she was before and the men of the Atayal community are not so different from those in Taipei who refused to recognise her humanity seeing her only as a commodity to be used and discarded. 

“There’s no difference between here and Taipei” Ah-Ming agrees, “all cold, loneliness, dreams of faraway places, one always awakes to harsh realities”. Telling his own story through that of the folktale, Ah-Ming reflects on his mountain childhood, sent away to the city by a father who wanted a better life for his son but is said to have wasted away with his eyes open waiting his return. For whatever reason, it seems that city life did not suit Ah-Ming and he longs to return to the simplicity of the village but is still seen as somehow other unable to reintegrate into its society living first in a chicken coup and then symbolically in a disused tunnel trapped between one place and another. 

When she makes the decision to leave, Hsiu Mei gives her red scooter to Ah-Ming in some sense giving him the possibility of movement which it seems he does not really take up but is in any case prevented from doing so when Ah-Chuan steals the bike from him. Yet as his father points out, Ah-Chuan does not think things through. All he knows is quarrying, he is not the sort of boy who could survive in the city but nor is he an Atayal man. As his father laments, they used to hunt in the forests all day long but now all they do is cut stone, caught between tradition and modernity but discovering only ruin and exploitation. Ah-Chuan snatches a basket weaved by his father which is also like that in which Ah-Ming used to ride on his father’s back and takes off in anger but on re-encountering Hsiu Mei is forced into the realisation that he will not leave the village and this life is all that he will have. A poetic, lo-fi epic, Huang’s indie drama is also perhaps in its way about Taiwan after martial law, seeking a home and an identity in searching for its roots though it seems for Ah-Chuan and Ah-Ming all there may be is a kind of restless wandering in the yearning for an elusive sense of belonging. 

The Man from Island West screens 17th October as part of this year’s Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh.

Original trailer English subtitles

When the Dawn Comes (黎明到來的那一天, Zhang Hong-Jie, 2021)

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When Chi Chia-Wei appealed to the Legislative Yuan for marriage equality in 1986, he was told that “homosexuals are perverted minorities that seek to disrupt social morals for their own sexual desires”. 33 years later in 2019, Taiwan became the first Asian nation to legalise same-sex marriage. Zhang Hong-Jie’s documentary When the Dawn Comes (黎明到來的那一天, límíng dàolái de nà yī tiān) follows Chi during the final days of the campaign amid a counter offensive from conservative groups who hoped to prevent the legislative change going ahead. 

Chi has been a literal flag bearer for the LGBTQ+ community, a familiar sight at protests and pride parades well known for climbing to the highest point available and waving a rainbow flag where no one can miss it. Indeed the documentary captures him doing just this despite his advancing age and the efforts of the authorities to prevent him. His campaign has been a long one, beginning when he was just a young man as the opening sequence points out with dark hair who held a press conference and came out publicly as a gay man becoming the first in Taiwan to do so. Now his hair is grey, and he is still fighting the same the battle though when this battle is done he knows there will be others still to fight. 

When he first began his campaign for marriage equality Chi was battling the stigmatisation of the gay community during the AIDS crisis, continuing to argue that advocacy for gay rights and AIDS prevention should be carried out at the same time. In some ways subverting the prejudice shown against him, Chi became a well known figure handing condoms out in the streets wearing a series of striking outfits as a kind of performance art. As another advocate points out, what made his approach different was that it refused to submit to internalised shame in normalising the idea of gay sex while encouraging safe practice and educating both the gay and straight communities about the importance of sexual health. 

Nevertheless, Chi was not uncontroversial. Though he took a hands on approach in AIDS activism, setting up a hospice for those with nowhere else to go, he was criticised for inviting the press to cover it leading some of the patients to leave resenting Chi for breaching their privacy. He then went on to sue three men whom he accused of hiding their diagnosis and going on to knowingly infect others, something that was also widely criticised in the community for essentially outing these men and their partners publicly and potentially setting a dangerous precedent when it comes to medical privacy. One fellow activist speculates that Chi may have justified his actions on the grounds of discouraging others from doing the same but points out that it in part had the reverse effect with some unwilling to be tested at all fearful that they might end up getting sued too if the test came back positive. On the other hand, he also regularly submitted blood samples on behalf of men who were too afraid to go in person lest their private lives be exposed. At one point Chi became such a thorn in the authorities’ side that they tried to frame him for a random crime and eventually sent him to prison for five months for “misappropriating waste”. 

As for himself, Chi is also in a somewhat difficult position in that his longterm partner (who is never seen in the documentary) is still in effect closeted and facing pressure from his family to marry. Asked if they personally plan to marry once the law goes into effect, Chi can’t really answer suggesting only that they may do once his partner’s father passes away explaining that he is an only child. In one of the hearings, a lawmaker brings up an anxiety about what to do with ancestral tablets while the question of the family line still seems to lie behind prejudice towards same sex relationships. Meanwhile, his partner has long been taking anti-depressants to cope with the pressure of his family’s lack of acceptance, while Chi too is also on numerous kinds of medication for conditions caused by the stress of his work. Even so, once marriage equality is fulfilled, Chi immediately files for a paper marriage with a Malaysian man to challenge the new legislation’s failure to account for international marriages, determined to continue fighting for fully equal rights. Zhang’s documentary never shies away from some of the more controversial aspects of his activism, but nevertheless celebrates the determination of a man who dedicated his life to a cause for which he was never afraid to stand out and proud.

When the Dawn Comes screens 16th October as part of this year’s Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Island Closest to Heaven (天国にいちばん近い島, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1984)

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On its publication in the mid-1960s, Katsura Morimura’s autobiographical travelogue The Island Closest to Heaven (天国にいちばん近い島, Tengoku ni Ichiban Chikai Shima) became something of a publishing phenomenon and is credited with creating a romanticised image of the Pacific islands in the post-war Japanese imagination. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1984 film adaptation in fact prominently features adverts for the UTA New Caledonia tour and acts as something like a tourist information video showcasing the idyllic island scenery and well appointed resort accommodation if also later featuring the decidedly less well appointed establishments on the other side of town where the locals live and and work. 

It is however first and foremost a vehicle for Kadokawa idol star Tomoyo Harada who had made her debut in Obayashi’s The Little Girl Who Conquered Time and was now onto her third lead having starred in Curtain Call earlier in the year which Haruki Kadokawa had directed himself. As such, the film is only loosely based on Morimura’s novel, recasting the heroine as a recently bereaved 16-year-old embarking on a coming-of-age adventure while travelling overseas looking for herself and a sense of the safety and stability she experienced before her father’s death. 

In the prologue sequence which opens the film, shot with a muted, pink-tinted colour filter, a younger Mari sits on the edge of a bridge with her father holding her from behind. As both she and her father are dressed in yukata, as are others who pass them on the bridge, we can assume that it is summer and possibly around the time of Bon festival which adds an extra degree of poignancy to their conversation in which her father quietly clearly anticipates his own death. He tells her about a distant island far to the south and close enough to Heaven for God to call on where it is always warm and sunny and the people always happy. Mari asks for the name of the place and is told it is called New Caledonia, possibly a name her father picked out of the air without thinking but becomes to her a symbol of the bond that existed between them and place she must visit now that her father is no longer physically present in her life. 

What she’s looking for is in a sense a path back to her father or at least a means a coming to terms with his absence. Her mother (Kayo Matsuo) may appear somewhat indifferent, but it’s clear that it’s a kind of pride she feels in her daughter’s first steps into adulthood knowing that she has raised a determined young woman if one with her head in the clouds like her father. Her sentiment is later echoed by an older woman (Nobuko Otowa) who has come to New Caledonia in order to make peace with the death of her husband 39 years previously when his submarine was sunk during the war, stating that all these years later her abiding memory is pride that she fell in love with someone she could be proud of. “Love is the story of your whole life” she tells Mari, who is herself just beginning to understand that life is a process of love and loss as she searches for her island and eventually finds it in the eyes of a local boy who yearns for an island far to the north where it’s always bright and sunny and the people are always happy. 

Mari’s interactions on the island are torn between two men, the young Taro (Ryoichi Takayanagi) who is fascinated by the idea of Japan where his grandfather first came from to dig nickel, and a much older man, Yuichi (Toru Minegishi), who seems to be arrested, stuck on the island and unable to move forward with his life because of a youthful broken heart. Mari reminds him of the young woman he loved and lost, trying to recapture the magic with a moment that seems to reference Jules Verne’s The Green Ray, but of course failing to do so. There is something uncomfortable in their relationship given that Mari is only 16 and this man is perhaps already in his 40s, yet her decision to leave the safety of the tour group and venture astray with him to find what she is looking for rather than what the tour guide wants to show her demonstrates her independent spirt and impending adulthood in taking an active control over her life and future. 

In this way the island is a liminal space in more ways than one, symbolically connecting the mortal world and the other while allowing Mari to transition into adulthood as symbolised by her return home now no longer wearing her glasses in having opened her eyes to a fuller reality. Nevertheless, the film does follow the line of the book which is very of its time in its presentation of the indigenous community which is bound up with the idea of a smiling island people lazing in the sun of a tropical paradise while possessing profound spiritual knowledge. Mari’s literal coming of age is symbolised by a fever she endures after being stung by a sting ray, coming to during a tribal dance and then collapsing again to awaken as if reborn into adulthood.  

After this transition it’s implied that her relationship with Taro will have to end, that this brief summer adventure like so many in Obayashi’s films was just about making memories to carry forward in the further course of life. But then as her seemingly unburdened tour group friend had pointed out, Mari found Taro by chance twice before and so may someday find him again just as Mari’s intervention has earned Yuichi and his first love a second chance no longer so enthral to the illusionary power of the green ray but making choices informed by the realities of love that may still be “romantic” if no longer quite so naive. Shifting into a more contemplative register than other similarly themed Kadokawa idol movies, The Island Closest to Heaven is one of Obayashi’s most straightforward features save for its brief use of colour filters in the opening and closing scenes and the lengthy title sequence which draws inspiration from classic Hollywood melodrama, but engages with some of his key themes in the romantic nostalgia of love and loss as his heroine comes to a new understanding of herself while bidding goodbye to the past. 

The Island Closest to Heaven is released on blu-ray on 17th October courtesy of Third Window Films as part of the Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 80s Kadokawa Years box set alongside School in the Crosshairs, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and His Motorbike, Her Island.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Theme song performed by Tomoyo Harada

Shrieking in the Rain (雨に叫べば, Eiji Uchida, 2021)

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“Let’s change Japanese film” a duplicitous distributor tries to convince a diffident director though his “creators first” stance predictably turns out to be somewhat disingenuous. Inhabiting the same territory as Netflix’s Naked Director, Eiji Uchida’s meta dramedy Shrieking in the Rain (雨に叫べば, Ame ni Sakebeba) finds a young woman struggling to take charge of her artistic vision while plagued by workplace sexism, commercial concerns, and absurd censorship regulations but finally claiming her space and along with it her right to make art even if not quite everyone understands it, 

Set entirely on a Toei lot in the summer of 1988, the film opens with rookie director Hanako (Marika Matsumoto) locking herself inside a car with her hands clamped over her ears, fed up with the chaos that seems to surround her. How Hanako got the job in the first place is anyone’s guess, but it later becomes clear that she is in a sense being exploited by the producer, Tachibana (Kazuya Takahashi), who thinks a pretty young girl directing a softcore porno is a selling point in itself. Meanwhile, he’s teamed up with an US-based production company and its Japanese producer, Inoue (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), who seems fairly exasperated by the Japanese-style shoot and despite his pretty words is all about the business. For him, the main selling points are the actors, one a young idol star intending to boost his profile by getting into films and the other a veteran actress stripping off for the first time in an attempt to revitalise her fading career. 

Surrounded by male industry veterans, Hanako struggles to get her voice heard and feels under confident on set as they encircle her and bark orders she doesn’t quite understand. Her decisions are continually overruled by the male AD, cameraman, and finally Tachibana who always has his mind on the bottom line while Hanako’s inability to express herself to the crew results in endless takes of scenes that others tell her are “pointless” and should be cut despite her protestations that they are essential to the piece. A forthright female makeup artist (Chika Uchida) asks if filmmaking should really be this heartless as she watches Hanako humiliated by the chauvinistic cameraman who forces her to get on her knees and beg for help, while a more sympathetic grip (Gaku Hamada) later tells her that becoming a successful director has little to do with talent and a lot to do with the art of compromise. 

Nevertheless, Hanako tries to hold on to her artistic vision even while some roll their eyes considering the project is a softcore romantic melodrama revolving around a love triangle involving two brothers in love with same woman. Inoue claps back that film is a business, admitting that when he said creators first he just meant the ones that make money. According to him, anyone could direct the film because all anyone’s interested in is the actress’ bared breasts and the teenybopper appeal of top idol Shinji. Or in other words, it doesn’t really need to be good, it’s going to sell anyway. In any case, it seems incongruous to cast a squeaky clean idol in an edgy erotic drama especially considering that if they want to market it to his fans then they need to secure a rating which allows them to see it without adult supervision. Business concerns and censorship eventually collide when the rather befuddled censor puts a red line through some of their kink and explains that the actress’ third hip thrust has just earned them an X rating. 

Unlike Hanako and her similarly troubled junior camerawoman Yoshie (Serena Motola), veteran actress Kaede at least knows how to advocate for herself and get what she wants on set so that she can do her best work. Only in this case doing her best work means she wants to go for real with arrogant idol star Shinji who refuses to wear a modesty sock or trim his pubic hair to fit in with the arcane regulations of the censors board. Shinji is brought to task by aspiring actor Kazuto who is pissed off by his unprofessional behaviour while struggling to get a foothold in a difficult industry and apparently finding one through a romantic relationship with the producer which otherwise seems to be a secret from cast and crew. 

In any case a final confrontation prompts a rebellion against Inoue’s production line metaphor as the crew reaffirm that they are a team working together on an artistic endeavour not mere cogs in his machine. Reemerging in bright red lipstick, Hanako returns to retake what’s hers boldly claiming her artistic vision and taking charge on set before descending into an unexpected musical number. With a retro sensibility, the film neatly echoes late 80s production style with a cutesy background score often heard in movies of the era while posters for top Toei movies from the 70s and 80s such as Yukihiro Sawada’s No Grave for Us line the walls. A meta rebuke against the constraints placed on filmmakers by those who shout “creators first” to bolster their image but never follow through Shrieking in the Rain, is at once a homage to the classic days of low budget Toei erotica and an inspirational tale of an artist finding her voice in a sometimes repressive industry.

Shrieking in the Rain screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

I am More (모어, Lee Il-ha, 2021)

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I am More (모어, More) is as much a mission statement as it is a simple piece of biographical information in Lee Il-ha’s musical documentary following transgender drag artist More. Born in Korea but based in Japan since 2000, Lee’s previous documentaries focused on the position of Zainichi Koreans but with I am More he explores the position of minorities within Korea itself while providing a platform for More to express herself fluently through music and performance art. 

More describes herself as having a love hate relationship with drag which she has been performing for over 20 years in the bars and clubs of Itaewon. She relates that she still has a gun in her heart and that going to perform is like going on duty while throwing shade on the Western customers at her bar and their $1 tips. Even so, drag was a liberating experience for her on arriving in the city in which attitudes towards gender norms were much stricter than they had been in the small town where she grew up even if they had not exactly been much warmer there. Embarking on her studies at Seoul University of the Arts, a fellow student punched her in the face and told her to lose her feminity while when forced to do military service she was briefly placed in a mental hospital. 

More’s warmhearted and completely accepting mother claims that there was no bullying during More’s childhood and that nobody thought much of her atypical gender presentation, but More also reveals that she once tried to take her own life during high school but survived and in fact went straight to an exam to avoid getting in trouble for missing classes. Her teacher also recalls another student whom he describes as “effeminate” and apologises for the way they were treated by their classmates while More seems to have developed a friendship with one of the bullies who tormented her but also showed her kindness. He reflects on the various ways their perspective was “limited” by their small-town upbringing remembering how small he felt on going to the city and realising he was no longer at the top of the social hierarchy. 

The situation may be very different than it was during More’s childhood, but the LGBTQ+ community still faces prejudice and discrimination from religious groups who are seen protesting pride events and harassing attendees while a patriotic song from the era of dictatorship singing of “our Korea” ironically plays in the background. More is in a longterm relationship with a Russian man, Zhenya, whose immigration status is precarious as he is stuck on a job seeker’s visa. Same sex marriage is not recognised in Korea meaning that he is unable to apply as a spouse and is in the midst of trying to gain Korean citizenship. Meanwhile despite having a PhD in chemistry he is currently unemployed and losing himself in the comparatively tranquil world of Pokémon Go where he says the monsters are kinder than people. Though they have been together a long time, some of it on and off as Zhenya later implies, Lee follows More as she introduces Zhenya to her parents who welcome him with open arms and make sure to invite him to all the major celebrations as More’s partner seeing as he obviously has no other family in Korea to spend them with. 

Meanwhile, Lee spends much of the documentary focussing on More’s rehearsals for a show in New York celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall during which she develops a friendship with Hedwig and the Angry Inch star John Cameron Mitchell who later travels to Korea and remarks on how difficult it can be to be yourself in a conformist society where individuality can sometimes be read as selfishness. Hedwig in a sense brings things full circle with a reference back to More’s own Wig in a Box moment discovering drag in Itaewon while Lee is careful to give her her own space to express herself as she lip syncs to iconic pop songs and performs poetry and performance art in elaborate outfits at Seoul landmarks as if beckoning towards a new and more inclusive culture. A vibrant portrait of a queer artist who is absolutely herself I am More more than lives up to its name in its electric advocation for a world of love and joy. 

I am More screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. It will also be screening in London on 13th November as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Festival trailer (dialogue free)

Though the film’s subtitles refer to More as “he”, she has confirmed with festival organisers that she prefers feminine pronouns.

Images: ⓒ2021 EXPOSED FILM, All Rights Reserved