“Drugs and pimping are outdated. We’re in the age of “moe”” according to a surprisingly progressive gang boss who takes his son to task for his sexism and insists that even the yakuza has a duty to create a comfortable working environment for women. Yugo Sakamoto’s anarchic deadpan action comedy Baby Assassins (ベイビーわるきゅーれ, Baby Valkyrie) is at heart a slice of life slacker drama about two young women reluctantly trying to make their way towards adulthood only the two young women are also elite assassins recently graduated from high school having been raised as coldblooded killers.
For whatever reason it’s decided that the shy and socially awkward Mahiro (Saori Izawa) and the manic extrovert Chisato (Akari Takaishi) should become roommates occupying a furnished apartment paid for by their handler while they cover their other expenses through part-time jobs that will help them figure out how to live as “members of society”. The problems they face are perhaps those faced by many in the contemporary era just trying to make it through an unfulfilling side gig without killing anyone only for them the stakes are higher as Chisato discovers on braining a customer and strangling a moody coworker without realising she’s not just fantasising. Mahiro meanwhile finds herself entering a daydream in which she offs the combini manger interviewing her after his boring rant about kids today who think they can earn a living playing video games only to realise the store is staffed by yakuza-esque minions determined to avenge their boss.
Already very efficient in their killing game, the girls never need to worry about cleaning up after themselves even if Chisato does get a lengthy lecture from the long suffering Mr. Tasaka who as it turns out has a lot of unsolicited advice about how she’s doing her job wrong or at least in ways which are inconvenient to him. Nevertheless while trying to live their normal lives they wind up sucked into gangland intrigue having accidentally offed a major supplier and thereafter engaged in a vendetta with equally crazed yakuza daughter Himari (Mone Akitani) who in a recurring motif proves much more in tune with contemporary gangsterdom than her “sexist” bother Kazuaki (Satoshi Uekiya).
Gangsterdom has indeed changed, the boss declaring that they need to find a more “female-centric” business which is what brings them to a maid cafe as they declare themselves mystified by “moe”, rapidly becoming extremely irritated by the sickly sweet aesthetic of the cafe which requires them to order food through a series of annoyingly cutesy codewords while young women in ridiculous outfits call them “master” and satisfy their every whim. In some ways the Baby Assassins are a subversion of the kawaii ideal while also to some extent embodying its essential traits in their mix of infinite competence and adorable cluelessness, Chisato forever forgetting what’s she’s done with her weapons while Mahiro constantly mutters to herself under her breath.
For them, killing is just another job which they mostly enjoy but can also be annoying, just like each other’s company. A mismatched pair, their dynamic strangely recalls Saint Young Men only they’re highly trained assassins trying to perfect a cover identity rather than peaced-out deities engaged in an ethnological study of life on Earth. They have a brief falling out over the same thing most roommates fight about, one feeling the other is not pulling their weight, Chisato irritated by Mahiro’s inability to find a job and Mahiro frustrated that Chisato devotes too much time to her side gig and not enough to their main job as killers for hire. Meanwhile, they’re suddenly plunged into a very adult world of bills and taxes and insurance, their handler promising to handle some of that for them because ironically enough they’re much more afraid of the taxman than they’ve ever been of the police.
Surreal and filled with deadpan humour not to mention expertly choreographed fight sequences by Hydra’s Kensuke Sonomura, Baby Assassins is a perfectly pitched coming-of-age tale in which two young women attempt to find a place for themselves while contending with a still patriarchal society, eventually discovering a complementary sense of solidarity in their opposing natures as they come together to clean up their own mess while defiantly striking out for their futures as “members of society” whatever that may mean.
A struggling female filmmaker finds herself haunted by a ghost of the silver screen in Shin Su-won’s strangely moving ode to cinema, Hommage (오마주). As much about the difficulties faced by women in the predominantly male film industry as those faced by women in general in the still patriarchal society, Shin’s drama looks back to a cinematic golden age and the pale shadows of those history has seen fit to forget. “You will vanish one day like I did” according an ominous note discovered in a never finished screenplay, but through a gentle process of restoration the forgotten figures of the past can perhaps be resurrected as the frustrated director begins to find new hope in a departed kindred spirit.
Dressed very much like Shin herself, struggling director Ji-wan (Lee Jung-eun) has hit a creative rut. Her third film, Ghost Man, has recently been released but is not exactly setting the box office on fire while the latest tentpole blockbuster continues to pack them in. With her confidence at rock bottom and financial worries hovering on the horizon, Ji-wan is offered an unusual job which although it might not pay much will be very worthwhile in helping to restore Hong Eun-won’s 1962 melodrama A Woman Judge starring the great Moon Jeong-seok to its former glory. Unfortunately like many films of its era the negative is in poor condition with sound missing from several scenes which Ji-wan is supposed to re-dub only she’s not much to go on beginning by tracking down the director’s daughter in the hope of retrieving a script before embarking on a kind of scavenger hunt in the search for Hong herself.
As the film opens and indeed closes, Ji-wan is in the middle of a swimming lesson quite literally attempting to keep herself afloat mimicking the despair she is beginning to feel in her personal life as regards her career. She identifies strongly with Hong who, in the film’s slightly fictionalised history, was forced to give up filmmaking after her third film, as Ji-wan herself fears she may have to do, having toiled away for 10 years just waiting for the opportunity while Ji-wan is also approaching the 10th anniversary of her decision to pivot into filmmaking as a married wife and mother. Though she had taken the job only reluctantly, the desire to restore the film is partly born of her need to rebuild her confidence as a filmmaker but also to honour Hong’s legacy and restore her rightful place in Korean film history.
Playing out like a ghost story, Ji-wan is almost literally haunted by Hong’s silhouette in her elegant trench coat and hat, at several moments hearing someone shout “let me out” as if pleading with her to release Hong’s spirit from within the sealed film cans of her almost forgotten feature. Meanwhile she’s spiritually haunted by the discovery of a woman’s body in a car parked outside her apartment building which had not been discovered for some months, a pretty photo of a young woman sitting on her dashboard perhaps of the woman herself or of a daughter, sister, friend but either way a poignant reminder of a life extinguished which Ji-won worries may have been that of her next-door neighbour whose crying she sometimes heard through the walls. On meeting some of those who once knew Hong, each at some point laments that they are the only ones left who remember that time while Ji-wan gets her epiphany in a soon to be torn down cinema with a hole in the roof raining down light into an empty auditorium,.
Surrounded by unsupportive men from her grumpy husband (Kwon Hae-hyo) to surprisingly chauvinistic son (Tang Jun-sang) who declares himself “love-starved” while echoing the words of those around him that her desire to chase her dreams is “selfish”, Ji-wan is beginning to feel as if she’s disappearing too while finding herself forced to re-confront her notions of femininity in approaching the menopause combined with an unexpected medical crisis. Things aren’t quite as bad for her as they were for Hong, at least no one’s ever thrown salt at her as Miss Lee (Lee Joo-Sil), Hong’s friend and editor, recounts, but she’s less than surprised on hearing that Hong had kept the existence of her daughter secret from her colleagues fearful they’d never let her direct if they knew she was a mother. The film Ji-wan is trying restore is based on the true story of Korea’s first female judge who was in fact murdered by her husband, though the film envisages a more positive ending if within the limits of contemporary patriarchy in insisting that a career is not incompatible with fulfilling the expectations of traditional femininity in caring for her in-laws, husband, and children. Ironically enough, Korea’s first film director Park Nam-ok had been forced to film with her baby on her back but completed just one feature which survives only in incomplete form.
Many films are presumed lost from Korea’s golden age not just those directed by women, but the particular lack of respect shown towards the films of Park and Hong is particularly upsetting to Ji-wan who later discovers that to add insult to injury old film stock was often mined for its silver content and then sold off to be used as hatbands other such frivolous material. No one really valued these films very much when they were made, so no one made much of an effort to preserve them just like no one is making much of an effort to save the ruined the cinema where she chases the ghost of Hong, the embittered projectionist eventually giving in to Ji-wan’s enthusiasm as she holds up the 8mm film she’s discovered to the light pouring though its ceiling. A beautifully haunting cinematic mystery, Shin’s melancholy drama eventually allows its heroine to reclaim her love for cinema along with her self-confidence as a filmmaker through the restoration of the past finding a kindred spirit in the long departed Hong unfairly denied not only the acclaim she deserved but the artistic possibility to which she should have been entitled.
“I wonder how many people are like us, dare to like yet too frightened to love?” the heroine of Yeung Chiu-Hoi & Candy Ng Wing-Shan’s youth nostalgia romance The First Girl I Loved (喜歡妳是妳) reflects having made peace with youthful romantic disappointment. As the title implies, Yeung & Ng’s melancholy love story finds a young woman looking back on her first love while beginning to wonder if she may have misunderstood or overly mythologised her high school romance.
Now in her late 20s, Wing (Hedwig Tam Sin-Yin) is called back to the past by a phone call from her high school best friend Sylvia (Renci Yeung) who unexpectedly asks her to be the Maid of Honour at her wedding. Wing explains that she doesn’t like wearing dresses and would usually turn the invitation down but on this occasion she can’t because Sylvia was the first girl she ever loved. Long years of friendship eventually blossomed into teenage romance but while same sex relationships might have been more acceptable than they once were, they are not condoned by the private catholic girl’s high school the pair attend which calls their parents in after they’re spotted kissing on a bus by a passing teacher.
Though Wing’s mother is a little taken aback, neither of the girls’ fathers thinks it’s a particularly big deal if for less than progressive reasons in that as Sylvia’s father puts it nothing “bad” can happen between two girls and he’d be much less relaxed if she’d been hanging around with a boy while Wing’s agrees that it’s probably just a phase and they “won’t look back” once they’ve met the right guy. The girls meanwhile seem to flit between despair and youthful romantic idealism, Sylvia who’d earlier been the more proactive in pursuing a relationship later conceding that perhaps it is a phase after all when her otherwise sympathetic father advises her to keep a low profile in order to avoid losing her scholarship because their family is poor. More secure in her middle-class comfort, Wing is minded to fight for love, saving up to buy a ring Sylvia had admired on a shopping trip and insisting that if growing up means denying their feelings for each other she’d rather remain a child. But then for unclear reasons Wing is the one who later betrays their love in agreeing to perform a public apology admitting that her relationship with Sylvia is “shameful and unacceptable” while Sylvia tears hers up and simply leaves having planned to take full responsibility while refusing to apologise for her feelings.
The relationship between the two women continues to ebb and flow, leaving the older Wing wondering if they were ever really in the same story or if they simply remember their high school relationship differently. Perhaps to Sylvia they really were just admittedly intense “good friends” as she was fond of saying rather than the doomed lovers Wing has branded them as in her mind. Then again could it just be that Sylvia has chosen conventionality out of a lack of courage to fight for love, Wing wondering if Sylvia has decided to marry now in order to escape a pact they’d made to reunite if neither of them had married by 30 implying that Sylvia had never been able to let of the idea that anything other than a heteronormative marriage is necessarily a failure.
Time does indeed seem to be a factor, the girls recreating the one minute scene from Days of Being Wild with a clock which has no second hand symbolising the timelessness of their youthful love while forever afterwards they seem to be haunted by ticking clocks implying that their romance has a shelf life. Even so, Yeung & Ng try to have their cake and eat it too, the climactic wedding taking place on a symbolic level between Sylvia and Wing echoing their mock high school wedding as they walk down the aisle together with Sylvia pained and conflicted in her choice while Wing reflects that they will always be “best friends” no matter what happens in the future having reclaimed her happy memories of her high school love reassured by Sylvia’s coded reactions that love is really what it was that existed between them. Replete with early 2000s nostalgia, Yeung & Ng’s tragic romance nevertheless ends on a hopeful note in managing to salvage the friendship from a faded love even if lacking the courage to fight for authenticity in an often conservative society.
The Japan Academy Film Prize, Japan’s equivalent of the Oscars awarded by the Nippon Academy-sho Association of industry professionals, has announced the winners for its 45th edition which honours films released Jan. 1 – Dec. 31, 2021 that played in a Tokyo cinema at least three times a day for more than two weeks. International festival hit Drive My Car achieves a clean sweep winning in all eight categories for which it was nominated while Kasumi Arimura takes Best Actress for We Made a Beautiful Bouquet.
A chronically ill thief and a “poetic fugitive” find themselves on the run from a “philosophical gangster” whose money they unwittingly stole after driving off with his hearse in Im Sang-soo’s playful existential drama, Heaven: To the Land of Happiness (행복의 나라로, Haengbokeui Nararo). In one way or another, all of our heroes are sick or dying, pushed into a moment of introspection which forces them to consider how it is they wanted to live and what for them night constitute a good death while pursued by pettiness and injustice squabbling over the most meaningless but equally impossible to live without thing imaginable, money.
Our narrator, Nam-sik (Park Hae-il), is a youngish man suffering with a chronic illness which has forced him into a life of wandering taking menial jobs at hospitals in order to steal the medicine he needs to treat his condition which otherwise costs more than the average annual salary for a month’s supply. On the day his cover’s about to be blown, he runs into Prisoner 203 (Choi Min-sik) who has been brought in by the local prison only to be told that his brain tumour is now inoperable and in their estimation he has as little as two weeks left to live. Unwilling to die behind bars and longing to see his estranged daughter again, 203 manages to mount an escape attempt with the help of Nam-sik who ends up on the run with him after getting accidentally tasered.
Not only are Nam-sik and 203 each suffering from life-limiting medical conditions, but even the elderly female gang boss, Madame Yoon (Youn Yuh-jung), is also bedridden and apparently at death’s door while in an extreme irony the casino money the guys have accidentally run off with was stored inside an ornate black coffin. Rich man or thug we’re all the same when we die, 203 remarks as he and Nam-sik prepare to bury the coffin before discovering what’s inside, hinting perhaps at the utter pointlessness of the gangsters’ quest to retrieve it. After, all you can’t take it with you and 203 has little need of vast riches now which is another irony seeing as he’d been in prison for embezzlement.
All of those around him constantly describe 203 as a “decent man”, his guard quickly shutting down the outlandish suggestions of a bumbling cop that he may have murdered the owner of an abandoned truck by exclaiming that 203 isn’t the sort of person who would do something like that. In fact, Nam-sik and 203 are responsible fugitives, often giving away large sums of money to those they meet in exchange for the use of a vehicle or some other kind of assistance. 203 doesn’t even want his share of the loot, partly because he rightly assumes it’s only going to bring them trouble, and partly because he no longer has need for it. Nam-sik meanwhile seems to relish the idea of being rich, but quite literally needs money to survive in order buy his medication (as well as potentially help out the impoverished mother who rings him asking for financial assistance). Even Madame Yoon seems to want the money as a kind of survival mechanism, suddenly reviving after hearing her stylish but inept gangster protege daughter (Lee El) report she’s found the missing cash while otherwise explaining to her that she needs to be “tough, persistent, and almost merciless in order to beat the insignificants and become rich”.
But you can’t buy your way out of death with money, even if as the philosophical gangster says everyone has to go some way, don’t take it personally. Caught in existential limbo, the two men generate a kind of absurdist brotherhood, a wandering Vladimir and Estragon, or the Rosencrantz and Guildernstern of Stoppard’s play blinking in and out of existence while caring for each other altruistically for no other reason than the connection they’ve developed in shared mortal anxiety. “It was warm and it made me feel happy” Nam-sik reflects somewhat incongruously on a death that was in its own way good and just amid so much injustice. Swapping the provocation which defines much of his earlier work for cheerful melancholy, Im’s strangely moving existential dramedy suggests that happiness lies in simple human connection and the power of redemption while money only leads in one direction.
A dejected middle-aged former footballer rediscovers both a love for the game and his self respect while coaching a trio of hopeless amateurs towards competition glory in Yi Sung-il’s underdog sporting drama, Sunday League (선데이리그). A testament to the restorative power of team sports, Yi’s gentle comedy allows each of its troubled heroes to discover a positive outlet, gaining a sense of confidence that isn’t about winning or losing but mutual support and community spirit.
As a young man, Joon-il (Lee Seong-uk) had been primed for sporting success but an injury soon brought his career on the pitch to an end. Sullen and embittered, he is a now middle-aged man with a drinking problem and a part-time job working for an old friend coaching a kids’ team while in the middle of an acrimonious divorce. As will become apparent, he is temperamentally unsuited to coaching young children, his coaching style somewhere between drill sergeant and dictatorial PE teacher essentially amounting to little more than bullying. His ill-tempered rant even reduces one small boy to tears proving the last straw for head coach Sang-man who has to field the complaints from understandably upset parents. Otherwise at a loss, he fires Joon-il from the kids team but asks him to help out on a new sideline coaching amateur players, an offer he originally turns down but later reconsiders when faced with the realities of his impending divorce and desire to maintain contact with his son.
Each of the new students is like him in their own way stuck, looking for a way forward while blowing off steam through team games. While Bok-nam’s fried chicken shop is struggling in a difficult economy, the otherwise superrich Mr Kim is considering running for public office but privately insecure, while the last recruit Hyun-su is a shy and fragile man recently diagnosed with bi-polar who has been signed up by his wife after losing his job. It has to be said that Hyun-su’s mental health is sometimes treated as the butt of a joke in which he is often simply told to “man up” while his tendency to burst into tears on the field becomes a running gag, yet through training with the other guys he does at least begin to find a sense of purpose and contentment both on the field and off through working in Bok-nam’s chicken shop with his wages paid by the ever generous Mr Kim.
As for Joon-il, meanwhile, he struggles both as a coach and as a father unable to get over his own sense of regret and resentment in the loss of his sporting career while his son goes quietly off the rails. Though originally reluctant and irritated by the dilettantism of his pupils, Joon-il is finally forced to face himself in realising that his own stubbornness has been the cause of all his problems and that his tendency to run away from unpleasantness rather than face it head on has only made his life more difficult. Picking up a series of innovative new coaching techniques such as using videogames to demonstrate otherwise confusing strategies while rediscovering the power of positive reinforcement he begins to coach himself back towards his best self finding a new sense of purpose on the pitch.
Meanwhile, Yi throws in a series of of surreal gags including a lengthy sequence in which the team square off against the squad from the local church led by a football-mad pastor while a chorus of hallelujah rings out over the match as the guys finally begin to find their footing. Joon-il only took the job on the promise of a full-time salaried position if he managed to get them into the finals of a local competition, but in the end it isn’t really about winning or losing so much as self-improvement and gentle camaraderie, the guys each facing themselves while playing the game and discovering a new sense of pride in their progress Bok-nam cheerfully exclaiming that they are all footballers simply by virtue of playing the game. A warmhearted sports dramedy about positive male bonding and positivity for the future, Sunday League discovers new sides to the beautiful game in its restorative abilities affording each of the guys a new lease on life as members of a small team of plucky underdogs less interested in the winning than the taking part.
Asian Pop-Up Cinema returns for its 14th season March 13 to April 10 bringing some of the best in East Asian cinema to screens across Chicago and streaming online to homes across the US with a limited selection available in Illinois only. Season 14’s Bright Star Award goes to Taiwanese actor Kai Ko who stars in quirky crime dramedy Grit screening on April 10 immediately before closing film Waiting for My Cup of Tea.
Sunday, March 13, 1:30 PM: Sunday League(선데이리그, Yi Sung-il, South Korea, 2020)
AMC Niles 12 (301 Golf Mill Ctr, Niles, IL 60714 inside the Golf Mill Shopping Center). Writer-Director Yi Sung-il scheduled to attend in person
Washed up former football prodigy Jun-il makes ends meet as a temporary coach at a kids’ training centre but is about to be fired because he’s temperamentally unsuited to teaching small children. Offered the chance to coach three seemingly hopeless players for a new futsal team he unenthusiastically agrees and is promised a permanent position if only he can take the new side all the way to the league finals in Yi Sung-il’s sporting comedy.
The latest film from Im Sang-soo stars Youn Yuh-Jung alongside Choi Min-sik and Park Hae-il as a man with an incurable illness (Park) who cannot afford his treatment goes on the run with a white collar criminal (Choi) who has less than two weeks to live.
Saturday, March 19, 1:30PM: Aloners(혼자 사는 사람들, Hong Sung-eun, South Korea, 2021)
Tower Auditorium at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) (10 W 35th Street, Chicago)
A solitary call centre employee is forced into a reconsideration of her way of life when a neighbour dies a lonely death in Hong Sung-eun’s melancholy character study
Friday, March 26, 6:30PM:Tokyo Shaking(Olivier Peyon, France/Japan, 2019)
Alliance Française de Chicago (54 W Chicago Ave)
A French woman recently transferred to Tokyo finds herself torn between her corporate and personal responsibilities during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Saturday, April 2, 1:30PM:Bamboo Theatre(戲棚, Cheuk Cheung, Hong Kong, 2019)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois)
Cheuk Cheung’s artful documentary explores the dying culture of Hong Kong’s itinerant bamboo theatres constructed entirely by hand without a single nail only to be continually torn down and rebuilt.
Saturday, April 2, 4:30PM:Mama’s Affair(阿媽有咗第二個, Kearen Pang, Hong Kong, 2022)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois)
Latest drama from Kearen Pang (29+1) starring Teresa Mo as a former record producer who gave up work to raise her son but decides to restart her career when he prepares to study abroad.
Sunday, April 3, 1:30PM:ARC(アーク, Kei Ishikawa, Japan, 2021)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois)
Inspired by a Ken Liu short story, Kei Ishikawa’s sci-fi drama follows a drifting young woman in search of immortality who encounters a mysterious cosmetics company that specialises in dead body sculptures while her mentor’s brother begins using same the technology in order to prevent ageing among the living.
Saturday, April 9, 1.30PM: Increasing Echo(修行, Chienn Hsiang, Taiwan, 2021)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois)
The already strained marriage of a middle-aged couple is brought to crisis point by a phone call from the sister of the husband’s former mistress begging him to visit her in a care home where she has been for many years in director Chienn Hsiang’s eerie pandemic-era drama.
Saturday, April 9, 4:30PM:Treat or Trick(詭扯, Hsu Fu-Hsiang, Taiwan, 2021)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois)
Earnest cop Feng is left with no choice but to chase after his corrupt partner Chiang when he takes off with a bunch of gang diamonds but finds himself in an eerie rural village where he is dragged into local intrigue while plagued by a mysterious female ghost in this Taiwanese crime comedy.
Sunday, April 10, 1:30 PM: GRIT(鱷魚, Chen Ta-Pu, 2021)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois)
A young gangster named Croc goes back to work for his old boss at the city councillor’s office after his release from prison and is tasked with taking care of a stubborn farmer who flat out refuses to give up her land for redevelopment in a quirky rom-com from director-cinematographer Chen Ta-pu.
Taiwanese romance which begins on a cold Valentine’s Day when a fed-up university student hands a warm milk tea to a boy shivering outside waiting for his girlfriend only to find herself swept into her classmate’s complicated love life and an unexpected romance of her own.
Saturday, March 19 2:00 PM @ Korean Culture Center of Chicago (KCCOC) (9930 Capital Drive, Wheeling)
Sunday, March 20 1:30 PM @ Tower Auditorium at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) (10 W 35th St., Chicago)
A film student dreaming of becoming an action star teams up with a nerdy classmate to make a movie planning to capture their teacher’s exposure for admission’s fraud but the plan soon gets out of hand.
Also screening physically: Tuesday, 15th March, 10:30 AM @ Korean Culture Center of Chicago (KCCOC) (9930 Capital Drive, Wheeling)
Fed up with being expected to cook the meals every holiday, family matriarch Yeong-hui packs her daughter-in-laws in a van and takes off leaving the men to fend for themselves in this ensemble comedy.
Friday, March, 18, 6:00 PM @ Korean Culture Center of Chicago (KCCOC)
Saturday, March 19, 4:30 PM @ Tower Auditorium at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
Coming-of-age drama in which a Taiwanese-Korean student born in Seoul struggles with his identity while facing discrimination and bullying which intensifies when he transfers to a regular public high school from a school for overseas Chinese students.
A lonely robot scientist who doubts his own existence creates an android identical to himself only to be confronted with an estranged half-brother arriving in search his inheritance in this sci-fi drama from Junji Sakamoto.
A 36-year-old writer who scored a big hit in her 20s about the joy to be found in independence finds herself in the midst of crisis when her recent work no longer sells and she begins to worry that it may be too late for romantic fulfilment in Momoko Fukuda’s adaptation of the manga by Mari Okazaki.
Believing his father’s obsession with rally driving hastened his mother’s death, a young man returns to his hometown after he dies and gains new understanding after getting to know the locals in this warmhearted drama from the director of Bento Harassment.
Musicophilia (ミュジコフィリア –, Masaaki Taniguchi, Japan 2021)
Drama inspired by Akira Saso’s 2011 webcomic in which a young man with a special ability to understand sounds in nature whose father and brother are successful composers overcomes an internal inferiority complex that causes him to stay away from music.
Written, directed by, and starring NON, Ribbon follows art student Itsuka who finds herself at a loss when her graduation project cannot be displayed as planned because of COVID-19.
A shy second generation Filipino-Canadian who has always lived in the comfort of his parents’ home begins to fear for his future as their health declines and resolves to find a partner in Martin Edralin’s sensitive drama.
Adapted from a novel by Eileen Chang, the latest from Ann Hui stars Sandra Ma Sichun as a young woman who travels from Shanghai to colonial Hong Kong in search of an education but is drawn into the turbulent upperclass world of a flighty aunt and embarks on a doomed love affair with a wealthy yet inconstant suitor (Eddie Peng).
Madalena(馬達.蓮娜, Chan Nga-Lei, Hong Kong/Macau, 2021)
An amnesiac taxi driver gains new hope for the future after picking up a young woman who works as a restaurant receptionist by day and a hostess by night little knowing that she too has has a secret past she is struggling to overcome.
Hilarity ensues when a luxury hotel is declared a COVID-19 hotspot and forced into a sudden lockdown in Vincent Kok’s ensemble comedy featuring a host of A-list Hong Kong stars.
A police officer despatched to investigate the murder of his girlfriend attempts to interrogate the suspect who has confessed only to hear that she herself may have instigated the killing in a twisty crime thriller adapted from Feng Shi’s novel, Love.
“Unity demands order” according to an ambitious politician near the end of Masaaki Yuasa’s stunning anime prog rock opera, Inu-Oh (犬王). Inspired by Hideo Furukawa’s novel Heike Monogatari Inu-Oh no Maki, Yuasa’s spirited drama is as much about the liberating power of artistic expression as it is about the danger it presents to those in power, while reclaiming the stories wilfully hidden in history or as the narrator puts it “stolen and forgotten” in order to exorcise a degree of historical trauma lingering in the cultural aura.
Set in the Muromachi period in which two imperial courts contested hegemony, the tale opens with the retrieval of a set of cursed remnants buried at the bottom of the sea after the battle of Dan-no-ura in which the Heike clan were famously defeated. Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (Tasuku Emoto) is convinced that possessing imperial treasures would lend credence to his claim, but their resurfacing creates nothing but misery leaving the boy who discovered them, Tomona (Mirai Moriyama), blind and his father dead. Setting off for Kyoto in search of revenge, Tomona is taken in by an elderly Biwa player and eventually runs into a strange creature wearing a gourd mask and behaving like a dog, striking up a friendship that later leads to the realisation that the boy is also cursed, haunted by the spirits of fallen Heike warriors desperate for their stories to be told.
In true fairytale fashion, curse later begins to dissipate as the pair exorcise the ghosts by telling their stories never singing the same song twice but always in search of new songs to be sung. Tomona changes his name several times, adopting that of “Tomoichi” in keeping with the requirements of his Biwa school and later choosing for himself that of “Tomoari” in his partnership with Inu-Oh in emphasis of the fact that “we are here”. Yet as the ghost of his father reminds him, changing his name makes him difficult to find literally losing touch with his roots in becoming invisible to friendly spirits. He and the cursed boy Inu-Oh are interested in a new kind of Biwa that is opposed by the Biwa priests for its transgressive modernity some feeling that Tomona’s transformation with his long hair and makeup brings the profession into disrepute though the act proves undeniably popular with Inu-Oh the biggest star of the age.
Having begun in the classical register with images resembling ink painting and a score inspired by traditional noh, Yuasa introduces electric guitar as the film shifts into rock opera, the pair’s stagecraft incredibly modern as they adopt all kinds of elaborate staging to add atmosphere to their tales including at one point a large lantern silhouette mimicking the big screen graphics of the present day. Yet Inu-Oh’s fame comes with a price. His popularity threatens both the pride of a jealous rival and the ambitions of the Ashikaga clan who fear his tales of the Heike are simply too bold and radical, later condemning them as an affront to the glory of the shogun and insisting that their official version must be the only record of the Heika warriors.
The sense of freedom the pair had felt in their ability to express themselves through music and dance is quickly crushed by cultural authoritarianism, Inu-Oh reduced to a kind of court jester performing only for the lord while as the closing credits tell us becoming the biggest popular star of his age though now too forgotten along with his songs while his more elegant counterpart, Fujiwaka, is remembered for shaping the art of contemporary noh though there is perhaps something in Tomona’s defiant reclaimation of his name along with the essential right to choose it for himself that grants him a greater liberty in simply refusing to allow himself to be subjugated by feudal power. A psychedelic rock opera set in 14th century Japan that remembers even noh was once new and malleable, Inu-Oh insists on art’s danger in its capacity to challenge the status quo not only directly but through a series of internal revolutions born of the masks we choose to wear and those we choose to remove in the radical act of self-expression which is in its own way the truest form of liberty.
“Marriage is a blessing”, according to a wise old grandma, “we shouldn’t refuse a blessing, no?” expressing a commonly held belief in the traditional small town where the titular Yuni (Arawinda Kirana) resides in Kamila Andini’s melancholy social drama. Yuni meanwhile isn’t so sure, if marriage is a blessing then why does it feel like a trap and how can you call something a blessing if as it seems to have been for some of her friends it only results in violence and misery?
At 17 Yuni is a talented student, her progressive female teacher urging her to consider going to college while offering various pamphlets about applying for scholarships which Yuni feels might make it easier for her parents to accept. Yet in addition to the academic criteria, the rules are clear that married women are not eligible which is a problem because Yuni has just received her first marriage proposal from a man recently relocated to the village who is handsome enough and thought a catch because he has a good job in a local factory.
While everything in Yuni screams no, she finds it difficult to articulate her resistance constantly second guessing herself wondering if she’s doing the right thing or if as some of the other girls suggest she is lucky to have received such a generous offer and ought to accept it. Her obsession with the colour purple, the colour both of a wedding dress and according to another girl widow’s weeds, which causes her to steal any purple item she sees is an expression of her alienation yearning for colour and vibrancy in a culture which seems to deny her both. Dressing in purple under her green school uniform, she rejects the idea of marriage and wants to continue her education, spending time with an older woman who takes her to clubs to dance enjoying the illicit freedom of a modern society which has otherwise been kept from her.
Even at school, her freedom begins to shrink. The Islamic Club seems to dominate everything, planning to introduce virginity tests for the female students to prevent the inconvenience and shame of teenage pregnancy though it does not seem as if the boys are given the same talk. The girls are all convinced that one of their classmates is pregnant because she wears a baggy jacket and has become withdrawn, but later wonder if she may have been raped no one seemingly very interested in helping her. Later after embarking on an escapist romance with diffident and sensitive classmate Yoga (Kevin Ardillova), Yuni is also asked if was raped when confessing that she is no longer a virgin in order to escape a second marriage proposal to become the second wife of a wealthy old man who not so subtly tries to buy her from her grandmother while implying that she might be considered damaged goods as a woman who’s already rejected a suitor.
Yuni is warned that turning down a second proposal is bad luck and struggles with herself in her decision, her internal confusion ironically interfering with her studying making it harder for her to escape through education. Meanwhile she hears of a woman who married young but experienced domestic violence after her husband blamed her for a series of miscarriages only to be disowned by her family following a divorce they again telling her she ought to have counted herself lucky that her husband still put up with her despite her “condition”. Another friend’s husband has abandoned her with a young son and she isn’t sure if she should divorce him and look for someone else, while one of Yuni’s classmates ends up having to marry a teenage boyfriend when a gang of blackmailers threatens to ruin their reputations after discovering them taking photos at a well known hookup spot.
With most of the other women largely complicit, Yuni feels she has no one to talk to or turn to for advice eventually pouring her heart out to the sensitive Yoga who offers to run away with her knowing that nothing will change as long as she stays in the conservative environment of their hometown. Even the teacher whom she’d once admired, Mr. Damar (Dimas Aditya), proves no ally attempting to use her to escape his own sense of impossibility after she catches him trying on women’s clothes at a local department store. Mr. Damar’s own desperation causes him to act in the most insidious of ways, in effect barring Yuni’s path out of her repressive life in inappropriately wielding his power as a teacher against her. Having lost all confidence, Yuni no longer knows what she wants out of life and is growing weary of fighting the same battles in attempting to struggle free of the constraints of traditional patriarchy but is left with little choice once all her dreams are shattered. A tragedy of modern day Indonesia, Yuni sees its heroine’s spirit gradually crushed by the world in which she lives in which she has only the choice of lonely exile or resigned misery.
New York’s Museum of the Moving Image has announced the complete programme for this year’s First Look which takes place in person March 16 – 20. As usual there are a number of East Asian films on offer including the latest short from Tsai Ming-Liang, an absurdist voyage through mid-20th century China as seen through the eyes of a Sichuan Opera performer, a documentary focusing on the lives of Burmese oil drillers, and a surreal Indonesian parable about the corrosive effects of toxic masculinity and its links to oppressive authoritarianism.
(Screening alongside opening night feature Murina)
This 20-minute short from Tsai Ming-Liang captures the atmosphere of nighttime Hong Kong during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement protests.
Qiu Jiongjiong’s absurdist epic charts China’s mid-20th century history through the eyes of a Sichuan Opera performer on his way to the afterlife beginning with his childhood in post-Imperial china through to the dark days of the Cultural Revolution.
Director Saeed Taji Farouky will be attending in person March 19
Saeed Taji Farouky’s beautifully shot documentary explores the lives of a family of independent oil drillers in Myanmar as a mother and father consider whether or not their son might be better off playing for a youth football team in the city.
Lead Actress Ladya Cheryl will be attending in person March 19
An absurdist parable about the corrosive effects of toxic masculinity and its links to oppressive authoritarianism, Edwin’s outlandish retro grindhouse drama sees a young man contend with literal and societal impotence through the medium of violence while falling in love with a woman equally in desire of revenge against her misuses at the hands of a misogynistic society.
First Look runs March 16 – 20 at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image. Full details for all the films as well as the complete programme can be found on the official website where tickets are already on sale. You can also keep up with all the latest news by following the Museum on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Windows on Worlds 