Deep in the Mountains (如意饭店, Li Yongyi, 2025)

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Such in the confusion in mid-90s China that the chaos has penetrated all the way to a remote village in Li Yongyi’s satirical farce Deep in the Mountains (如意饭店, rúyì fàndiàn). What begins as gritty Sino-noir soon turns into black comedy as the unfairly demoted policeman hero finds himself chasing a serial killer right into a traditional village community that seems to be home to some of the nation’s least astute people who are themselves caught between the old China and the New but also obsessed with their own status and petty vendettas.

The problems begin when middle-aged former detective Yao (Qiao Shan), now working as a vehicle checker after being demoted for chasing a woman he thought was a missing person while in his underpants which frightened her so much she ran into traffic, is knocked out by criminal mastermind Ge Wenyong (Wang Yanhui) and the pair are taken into custody by the current village chief’’s daughter. She hopes that by catching the “thief” before the public security representative she can secure her succession to the role. As such, she’s inclined to believe Ge Wenyong when he says that he caught Yao breaking into his restaurant while as Yao came out in search of his missing friend on his off hours, he doesn’t have anything on him that proves he works in law enforcement. The villagers’ inability to believe him signals their declining faith in the authorities, while Ge Wenyong signals the rise of the new merchant class which is in this case quite literally bludgeoning the workers to death. 

As a vehicle checker, Yao is immediately suspicious when one of the fog light caps he fitted on a now-missing lorry turns up on another one. The increasingly nervous driver tells him there’s an out of the way place where people sell parts from scrapped vehicles on the black market. Amid the economic reforms of the 90s as the nation transitioned away from the planned economy to a market one, many lost their jobs along with, at least as far as the film goes, their moral compass. Infected by greed, they climb over each other in search of material wealth. In some ways repentant lorry driver Yang is symbol of this newly materialistic impulse. His business went bust and he’s racked up massive debts which is why he ended up becoming a long-distance lorry driver. Even if his gift of pretty white shoes for his wife hints at this new consumerist society in their frivolity, the fact that Yang is dying of pancreatic cancer suggest that he too has been poisoned by the corrupting influence of capitalism. Now his only wish is to clear his debts so that his wife and daughter won’t be burdened by them when he’s gone. 

There are a series of family photos that appear in the film besides the one that Yang keeps in his lorry beginning with the wedding photo which is dramatically shattered in the opening sequence. The “missing” woman we’re first introduced to is perhaps of this new China and looking for a more modern “freedom” in fleeing an abusive marriage to a man who tells the police that he didn’t hit her “that hard”. But unfortunately, she ends up running into Ge Wenyong who takes her prisoner and forces her to be a tool in his dark and exploitative criminal enterprise which involves knocking off lorry drivers and stealing their vehicles which are often carrying new consumerist goods such as televisions and video players. Yet, suave and manipulative, he manages to convince the villagers that he is actually an undercover public security agent while Yao is just a thief. 

Meanwhile, they squabble amongst themselves while ironically preparing to accept an award as a “civilised advanced village”. The title cards at the end of the film assure us they were all punished too for “obstructing official duties, picking quarrels and provoking troubles”, though they are perhaps symptomatic of the problems of the old China, which have not exactly gone away, in their petty politicking at the expense of the people they’re supposed to be protecting. Yao, however, is redeemed by solving the case, if not without a few casualties, and is rewarded with reinstatement as a detective. He continues to be plagued by anxiety about the “missing persons” of China’s transitionary period as a representative of an authority almost certainly a little less benevolent than it’s being made out to be if also positioned as the only real force of resistance towards the rise of rampant capitalism and heartless “entrepreneurs” like Ge Wenyong.

Deep in the Mountains screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Montages of a Modern Motherhood (虎毒不, Oliver Chan Siu-kuen, 2024)

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A title card at the end of Oliver Chan’s Montages of a Modern Motherhood (虎毒不) dedicates the film to all women who chose not to become mothers, and it’s true enough that the picture it paints of contemporary child rearing is relentlessly bleak. Governments in much of the developed world are fiercely trying to encourage more couples to have children, but few are really addressing the reasons why they aren’t while the ways people live their lives have undeniably changed rendering commonly held notions about parenting incompatible with the contemporary reality.

A case in point, Jing (Hedwig Tam) lives a long way from her birth family and is not surrounded by a supportive community network of other women in similar positions. Though her mother-in-law lives next-door and offers to help with the baby, it soon proves more trouble than it’s worth as she more or less takes over and runs Jing down in the process. Jing describes her to friends as “conservative,” and it’s clear that she disagrees with Jing’s parenting choices while also trying to exclude her from the family as if the baby were only her and her son’s. Ching, a fussy newborn who cries nonstop from morning to night, isn’t gaining weight and the mother-in-law immediately jumps straight to the conclusion that it’s because Jing’s milk isn’t good enough. According to her she doesn’t eat right, and going back to work may also have somehow caused a problem. Her unilateral decision to switch formula milk, tipping away all the breast milk Jing has been painstakingly expressing, without telling either of the parents is a huge overstepping of the boundaries and a betrayal of the trust Jing placed in her to look after her child, though of course the mother-in-law insists that she was only trying to do what’s best for the baby despite also having bathed her in burnt sutras.

The problem is compounded by the fact the in-laws seem to own the apartment they live in, which is why her husband, Wai, is reluctant to move closer to her family when she suggests it. As the oldest son, he is also supposed to be caring for his parents though in reality this of course also falls to Jing. As Ching’s crying is so loud and piercing, they begin receiving complaints from neighbours which eventually leaves Jing forced to take the baby outside in the middle of the night. This might not have been so much of a problem in the past before urban living environments became so cramped and people began having less children making the noise more obvious, but it’s nevertheless an unavoidable obstacle for the new parents who find themselves additionally pressured by the necessity of maintaining good relationships with their neighbours. 

To make matters worse, Jing’s husband Wai pats himself on the back for “helping” with the baby, which is after all also his responsibility so he should be doing his fair share. He still seems to operate with a patriarchal mindset that tells him the home and flat are Jing’s to take care of while his job is to earn the money. Both he and his mother seem to hold it against Jing that their baby is a girl. She asks him for more help, but he responds by getting a job that pays more but requires further hours. He spends evenings out with his friends and repeatedly fails to get the breast milk pump fixed despite frequent reminders before accusing her of “whining” too much when she tries to tell him how difficult it’s been for her stuck at home all day with the baby. Like his mother, his ideal solution is for her to give up work and devote herself to their home because they don’t “need” her money and her working is perhaps a suggestion that they might which offends his sense of masculinity.

But Jing wants to work for reasons of personal fulfilment and safety. As other women remind her, you need your own money in case there comes a time you need to leave, but also because some men keep a tight grip on the purse strings and often won’t give their wives enough housekeeping money. Jing was paying for a lot of the baby stuff herself out of the money from her job at a bakery, but after she loses it and her savings run out she has to ask Wai who isn’t keen to chip in. Ironically, her boss chooses to make her redundant when the bakery hits a bad patch because her colleague is single and at least she has her husband’s wage to rely on. Jing continues applying for similar jobs, but they all fall through when she reveals she is married with a newborn child. In the end, she lies that she’s single but the job only offers night work which is obviously no good for her situation.  

Her job was the last thing that Jing felt connected her to her old self. With no one to talk to but the baby, she fears the erasure of her identity and tells her mother that she misses the time that she was a daughter rather than a mother. She gets some support from a kind retired lady who looks after Ching and tries to encourage her, reminding her that it was different for their generation because they could just leave the kids in the house and ask a neighbour to check in on them and no one thought anything of it. But Jing still feels herself inadequate, as if she’s failing at motherhood or breaking a taboo by asking to have some sort of life for herself without being completely subsumed by the image of “motherhood”. The in-laws keep a little bird in a cage with which Jing seems to identify, even as its chirping adds to the noise and the constant thrumming of the breast pump raises her stress levels. Left with no real support, there is only really one way that Jing can escape from a world of sleeplessness and anxiety as she tries to find the smallest moment of peace and tranquility free of social expectation and the crushing guilt of maternity.

Montages of a Modern Motherhood screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Fragment (파편, Kim Sung-yoon, 2024) [Fantasia 2025]

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People often think of crime as something linear that ties together villain and victim but is otherwise an isolated event. The truth is that crime reverberates through the world around it, shattering the lives of others in the backdraught of its irrational violence. Son of the murdered couple, Gi-su is fond of saying that he’s the victim as if trying to reclaim this role and make it his identity while it remains to that Jun-gang and his sister Jun-hui are victims too for they have also lost their father who is now in prison.

Indeed, while Gi-su may face overbearing care from his well-meaning relatives, Jun-gang is burdened with the stigma of being a murderer’s son while trying to protect his sister from the fallout of this awful situation. His most pressing problem is that they don’t have any money. His father did not appear to have any before either, but now their utilities are about to be cut off and their landlady’s sick of being strung along. Yet these aren’t problems a 15-year-old boy can fix on his own. He tries to get a job in a local convenience store but is first turned away because boys his age should be in school, and then offered a job but only on parental consent which he can’t get for obvious reasons. His teacher, Mr Park, is one of the few people to know the truth and keen to help him but has few real ways of doing so. As the son of the murderer, most are content to leave him to his fate and believe that he simply doesn’t deserve support because of what his father has done.

Jun-gang too feels guilty, though none of this is his fault. He knew what kind of man his father was and is always eager to prove that he is different. But the fact that he seems nice, honest, and polite doesn’t really matter. He’s still chased and bullied with kids at school going on about killer genes and actively singling him out for a beating. Jun-hui too is ostracised by her friends who’ve been told not to play with her because of what her father did. Gi-su tries to ease his frustration on him, breaking into their apartment and smashing the place up after coming to school to find him. As much as Gi-su tries to insist that he’s the victim, Jun-gang is a victim too and unlike Gi-su has no further family to support him and no one else to turn to for help. He fights back with decency, but largely finds it thrown in his fate.

Gi-su, meanwhile, is broken by his trauma and in the midst of a nervous breakdown exacerbated by exam stress. Like Jun-gang he blames himself as a means of asserting control over the situation and struggles to accept the new world he now inhabits following his parents’ deaths. His sympathetic aunt tries her best to get through to him, but his well-meaning uncle is a font of toxic masculinity screaming at him that he’s wallowed in his grief long enough and needs to man up and get over it. Though they’re cast in the roles of killer and victim, the boys are really much the same, each having lost their homes and families and now being essentially displaced from within their new lives.

The battle is really whether they can hang in there long enough to begin to see the other side and that there are still possibilities in their lives. The reason for the killing is never revealed, nor is it particularly important, if hinting at the constant pressures of the outward society. Jun-gang’s father’s behaviour implies long years of paternal failure, domination, and abuse from which Jun-gang is trying to emerge unscathed while Gi-su must on the other hand come to terms with the implosion of a seemingly perfect family life. That they each come to recognise that none of this is their fault and they’re really just the same is testament the boys’ innate goodness and growing sense of solidarity in the midst of so much acrimony. Hard-hitting though it may be in its exploration of how societal prejudice can allow people to slip through the cracks, Kim Sung-yoon’s film is also in its way uplifting in the presence of those are willing to help and Jun-gang’s refusal to give in to what the world tells him he should be,

Fragment screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Smashing Frank (搗破法蘭克, Trevor Choi, 2025)

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Youth’s attempt to televise its revolution results in unforeseen consequences in Trevor Choi’s crime thriller Smashing Frank (搗破法蘭克). Giving Hong Kong a kind of comic book gloss, Choi locates the source of corruption in a thuggish gangster posing as a businessman and laundering his ill-gotten gains through a fake church all while claiming to be working for the prosperity of the city. Fed up with a world so obviously corrupt, Ayla (Hedwig Tam) and her friends attempt to fight back through theft and their mission of becoming robbery influencers in social media. 

It later becomes apparent that Ayla is doing most of this as a kind of revenge. Her sister took her own life after being sexually assaulted and becoming pregnant, while Ayla sacrificed her own bright future by assaulting a “rich pervert”. Despite having gained a first-class degree and being on track for a job as a hotel manager, Ayla now appears to have gone rogue and has lost faith in mainstream society and law enforcement which turns a blind eye to certain crimes to keep the peace. After being sentenced to community service, she teams up with childhood friend Hugo (Locker Lam) and Tao Chun (Kaki Sham), a man convicted of voyeurism who becomes their getaway driver, to do crime she describes as a kind of performance art.

Yet Ayla claims she’s no kind of Robin Hood and mainly in this for herself and the glory, explaining that she uploads the videos for “fun”. Nevertheless, she eventually realises that everything links back to the Unity Haven Church and its shady CEO, Ho (Ben Yuen). Ho has already been featured in the news having been accused of misusing church funds and as the gang discover may have links to human trafficking and child exploitation. But he’s also pretty well entrenched within the infrastructure of the city and otherwise untouchable. As such, he comes to represent the corrupt authoritarianism of the contemporary society while Ayla and Frank echo the protestors of recent years. Given the opportunity for a giant payout, Ayla tells Ho where to go and explains that her generation never got to have nice things, so the reason she robbed his jewellery shop was to show them that luxurious mansions were being built in the slums. 

He may be one of the old men that’s ruining the world, but despite herself, Ayla seems to be consumed with a sense of injustice that the rich get away with their crimes while people like her sister and grandmother are left to suffer. Through her influencer revolution, she intends Frank to become a kind of militia resisting the hyper capitalistic society on behalf of the youth it has betrayed. As Hugo says, if he had a regular job he’d never be able to buy a house anyway while others seem equally fed up with disappointing corporate existences that no longer provide a decent quality of life. Ho may be all about making the city prosper, but it’s mostly for himself and his friends rather than the wider society. 

Chelsea (Renci Yeung), Chun’s former associate running badger games, even says that they didn’t really care that she blackmailed them because they had bigger things to worry about. There is then a kind of solidarity that exists between the team in their shared victimisation under men like Ho and desire for the liberation of those like them that gives their mission a weight beyond simple rebellion, even if the constant flirtation between Chelsea and Ayla dangles like an unresolved plot thread. Even so, Ayla’s recklessness reeks of desperation as Hugo points out they may all die the following day but perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad as continuing to live like this. The nihilism that colours their lives is all pervasive, and perhaps a reaction to the imposition of authoritarianism and failure of the protest movement that causes Ayla to launch her revolution in the distinctly youthful space of the internet and spread the word through social media which those like Ho cannot fully control. Hong Kong media does not, she claims, report on certain crimes in the interests of making the city feel safe and stable for men like Ho which is why she had to televise her revolution herself. It may be a forlorn hope, but it’s all she appears to have while otherwise trapped in a world of constant corruption.

Smashing Frank screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Taiwan Film Festival in Australia Returns for 2025

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The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia returns for its 8th edition 24th July to 6th September 2025, travelling to six cities across the country. This year’s festival puts women at the forefront with female-led dramas featuring family relationships, pregnancy, IVF, and nuanced explorations of sexuality and desire.

Daughter’s Daughter

Sylvia Chang stars as an ageing woman trying to come to terms with motherhood through the prism of the daughters she did and didn’t raise. When the daughter she raised in Taiwan is killed while receiving fertility treatment in New York, she becomes the guardian of a viable embryo and is presented with a choice. Review.

Flower of Shanghai

The Closing Night Gala presented at the Sydney Opera House is the 4K restoration of the Hou Hsio-Hsien classic set in the “flower houses” of the British concession in late 19th century Shanghai.

The Chronicles of Libidoists

Latest from Yang Ya-Che loosely based on the Little Mermaid in which four people adrift in pursuit of sexual gratification are united by their desire for something more.

Unexpected Courage

Romantic drama in which a long-term couple who had been leading parallel lives is forced into a recontemplation of their relationship when one of them is hospitalised and they spend every moment together in their hospital room.

Yen and Ai-Lee

Gritty drama in which a young woman is released from prison after killing her abusive father only to learn her mother (played by the iconic Yang Kuei-mei) is dating another abusive man.

Worth the Wait

Asian-American romantic drama revolving around four couples who are each contending with the scars of the past.

Organ Child

Taut action thriller in which a father purses revenge against those whom he believes stole and trafficked his baby daughter. Review.

Stranger Eyes

A fracturing family is confronted with the cracks in its foundations when they begin receiving strange DVDs after the disappearance of their daughter in Yeo Siew Hua’s elliptical drama. Review.

Dancing Home

Documentary focusing on Paiwan choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava.

The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia runs 24th July to 6th September in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. Full details for all the films as well as ticketing links can be found on the official website while you can also follow the festival on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for all the latest news.

Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards (赤羽骨子のボディガード, Junichi Ishikawa, 2024) [Fantasia 2025]

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Unbeknownst to her, a high school girl’s entire class is actually made up of bodyguards hired by her distant father, whom she doesn’t know either, to keep her safe because his work makes her an easy target for international criminals. Adapted from the manga by Masamitsu Nigatsu, Junichi Ishikawa’s Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards (赤羽骨子のボディガード, Akabane Honeko no Bodyguard) is in some ways fairly typical of the genre in its parade of unrealistic hairstyles and over-the-top humour, but also anchors itself in a genuine sense of friendship and youth solidarity as the class come together under a charismatic leader not only to protect Akabane but each other too.

That charismatic leader would be Ibuki, a cocksure delinquent and childhood friend of Akabane’s who’s also been carrying a torch for her all these years. Nevertheless, it comes as quite a surprise when he’s officially hired by Jingu (Kenichi Endo), a man who claims to be the head of Japan’s Security Services. After his wife died, he decided to place Akabane for adoption to keep her safe from the duplicitous world in which he lived. But now there’s a 10 million yen bounty on her head and every criminal enterprise he’s ever been after is desperate to get their hands on her. What Ibuki doesn’t know is that he’s hired the rest of the class too who all have various skills from rhythmic gymnastics to torture. It’s imperative that Akabane never find out that she’s a target, nor that Jingu is her biological father, and continues to live a “normal” carefree life.

She certainly appears to have no skills of her own other than her ability to quote legal infractions in her desire to become a lawyer like her adopted parents. While this may on some level remove her agency in making her dependent on her classmates for protection, it’s also Akabane that takes the initiative in romance by making overtures to the otherwise diffident Ibuki. Other the other hand, she’s painted as the mirror image of her sister, Masachika (Tao Tsuchiya), who has been raised as a boy and taught to be an assassin but craves the kind of love and affection Jingu pours on Akabane. 

This is one reason that she is eventually able to find unexpected common ground as she and Akabane are obviously both firmly on team Ibuki with Akabane thankful that someone else can see Ibuki’s good side even if most people mistake him for being a scary and dangerous person. Like his father, the late policeman, he believes that to protect someone you must protect everything they love which is why he’s desperate to protect the whole of the class too so that Akabane’s world remains consistent. Most of the other students aren’t too invested in their jobs and are only doing this for the paycheque, but eventually end up coming together thanks to Ibuki’s insistence that he won’t leave them behind. Not only does he need their help to protect Akabane, but genuinely respects their friendship and wants to save them too.

Then again, we’re presented with a series of images of paternal and hierarchal failure. Ibuki’s own father was killed in the line of duty and while alive had little time for his son, if like Jingu trying to keep his child out of the dangerous world in which he lives. Jingu gave up one daughter to keep her safe, but has a strained relationship with the second who feels like a failure and is desperate for a chance. Even the head of the class is compromised as he first proves himself willing to sacrifice the lives of his men in achieving their goal of protecting Akabane and then seems to commit several blunders including being unable to unmask a mole. Ibuki becomes a de facto leader, but at the same time what emerges under him is a relationship of equals and solidarity between those in a similar situation. They are no longer working for Jingu or following their leader’s orders but thinking for themselves and actively protecting each other. 

Ishikawa puts together some excellent action sequences that demonstrate what a well-oiled machine the students can be in standing up against criminality while maintaining the zany humour and making Ibuki an oddly pure figure of warmth and integrity as he resolves to protect all of those around him if most especially Akabane to whom he is unable to voice his real feelings. She meanwhile, admittedly a damsel in distress, is at least taking the lead when it comes to their romance even if she continues to needle him about his rough and uncouth behaviour. Honeko Akabane is it seems very well protected from any threats that come her way save perhaps that of her hidden past.                                                                                                                                    

Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Babanbabanban Vampire (ババンババンバンバンパイア, Shinji Hamasaki, 2025)

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It turns out immortality’s not all it’s cracked up to be in Shinji Hamasaki’s adaptation of the manga by Hiromasa Okujima, Baban Baban Ban Vampire (ババンババンバンバンパイア). At 450 years old, Mori Ranmaru (Ryo Yoshizawa), one-time lover of Oda Nobunaga (Shinichi Tsutsumi), is working as an attendant in a bathhouse in an attempt to, as he says, “live an ordinary life earnestly,” while staving off the darkness of an existence free of the spectre of death. 

Yet, there is an uncomfortable darkness at the centre of this otherwise humorous and ironic tale in that what Mori Ran is actually doing is grooming a child so that he can enjoy him when he judges that he is “ready.” There’s an obviously unpalatable reading of the film that renders it as an allegory for paedophilia, while there’s also an undeniable poignancy in likening the figure of the vampire of that of a gay man in an oppressive society. Mori Ran accosts his victims in dark alleyways and his assignations with other men are necessarily short and secretive. They also result in death, while Mori Ran describes most of his victims as tainted and disgusting as if echoing an internalised sense of self-loathing. He continues to hold up Rihito (Rihito Itagaki) as a figure of innocence and purity because he once saved his life when he was baking in the heat of an usually hot spring when the boy was only five years old. 

Mori Ran’s internalised homophobia is somewhat mirrored in that of the teacher Sakamoto (Shinnosuke Mitsushima) who is also a vampire hunter but bewitched by Mori Ran and longing to be initiated by him, though Mori Ran declines to give him what he sees as a curse. Imbued with a gothic sensibility, Mori Ran believes that humans are beautiful because they die, while vampirism is debased and ugly. He refuses to condemn someone he admires to his own fate which he describes as a kind of inescapable hell in which he is unable to die. He no longer believes in love, though is haunted by his loss of Nobunaga, and sees humans merely as food. 

Nevertheless, it seems he has found purpose in his present life of living with Rihito’s family and working in their bathhouse despite convincing himself that he’s only biding his time until Rihito is ripe for the picking. According to Mori Ran, the sweetest blood belongs to that of 18-year-old male virgins which is why his goal of ensuring that Rihito remains virginal and pure is becoming more difficult now that he has entered adolescence. Much of the comedy derives from Mori Ran’s emotional cluelessness and paranoia on discovering that Rihito has fallen for a girl, Aoi (Nanoka Hara), with whom he had a stereotypical meet cute on his way to his high school entrance ceremony. Knowing that he has to nip this in the bud as soon as possible, he pays a visit to Aoi to warn her off but fails to realise that not only did she barely notice Rihito let alone fall in love with him, but that she is actually obsessed with vampires and is keener on him. 

But then again, there’s something additionally troubling about Rihito’s immediate classification of Mori Ran as a “love rival” in the mistaken belief he’s after Aoi too rather than as someone who should probably be reported to some kind of authority. After all, even if he were not 450 years old but the 25 he claims to be, hanging around exclusively with high schoolers is odd and bordering on inappropriate in itself. Having misunderstood his intentions, Aoi also believes that Mori Ran is waiting for her to be “ready,” in a partial recognition that this is wrong because she’s a child but also prepared to wait for the mysterious vampire without considering the implications of his being interested in a 15-year-old girl if that actually were the case. 

Nevertheless, what Mori Ran discovers is really a different kind of love in his gradual integration into the human world and the the friendships he forms not only with Rihito, but Aoi, her muscular brother Franken (Mandy Sekiguchi) who also has a crush on Mori Ran, and the lovelorn teacher Sakamoto, even if he’s still focused on his mission of keeping Rihito pure so he can drink his blood on his 18th birthday. His attempts to prevent a relationship forming between Rihito and Aoi are all countrerprodcuteive and would like end up bringing them together if it were not for the fact of Aoi’s crush on him of which he remains oblivious. The inherently zany humour of the situation with its series of concentric love triangles along with the warmheartedness of Rihito’s homelife when contrasted with the “mysterious” serial killings on the news cannot completely overcome the unpalatable undercurrent of Mori Ran’s pederastic quest, if glossing over it with admittedly delicious irony and absurdism.

Babanbabanban Vampire screens 27th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Noise (노이즈, Kim Soo-jin, 2024) [Fantasia 2025]

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There are things you have to put up with if you live in an apartment block, and if you live in a city an apartment is often your only option. The question is, how much is it reasonable to expect someone to accept and what are the limits that can reasonably be placed on your own behaviour. What does it really mean to be a “good neighbour”? It’s clear the “noise” at the centre of Kim Soo-jin’s apartment block horror is not simply the sound of other people living, but a swarming cacophony of societal anxiety and persistent judgement.

There’s a large banner hanging off the side of this particular building that says residents don’t want to die inside their collapsing apartment block. Their fear hints the indifference of a society driven by capitalistic desires in which things like building regulations that ensure people’s safety and quality of life have become a thing of the past. The chairwoman of the residents’ association (Baek Joo-hee) is fiercely petitioning for the block to be knocked down and rebuilt properly, but that won’t happen if they don’t think they’ll be able to sell units in the new build because of untoward rumours about the old one. For those reasons, she doesn’t want people causing trouble or dragging up unpleasantness, which is why she’s not minded to help when Ju-young’s (Lee Sun-bin) sister Ju-hee (Han Su-a) goes missing after declaring that she was going to find the source of the “noise” within the apartment block that’s driving her and others out of their minds.

The interesting thing is that Ju-young is originally not particularly bothered by noise as she has a hearing impairment from a childhood accident and can simply remove her hearing aid to avoid it. Ju-hee asks her if she really can’t hear anything, or if it’s more like she chooses not to hear and goes about her life deliberately avoiding the “noise” of the contemporary society. There may be something in her criticism in that Ju-young, who works in a noisy factory, eventually moves out into the workers’ dorms to escape her sister’s increasingly erratic behaviour rather than stay to help her through her anxiety or actively look for somewhere less “noisy” they could live together in peace.

Hearing noise from above, Ju-hee bangs on the ceiling but inadvertently spreads the noise below as if a great flow of frustration and resentment were trickling down from top to bottom so that those nearest to the ground can barely hear themselves think. But there’s also a great stink rising from below given that the basement is home to a decade’s worth of illegally dumped rubbish. Rather than dispose of it, the security guard has simply chained up the doors but complains that for unclear reasons people are still dumping things through the broken window at the back, which no one is making an effort to fix. There’s so much “noise” that no one is really paying attention to the bigger things like missing women and fugitive killers, in part because they’re inconveniences that would prevent them upgrading their block or being able to sell up and move on. Yet paradoxically, the owner-residents blame everything of the renters insisting that they are inconsiderate because they don’t have a stake in the building’s future. 

The block itself becomes a kind of metaphor for a lingering authoritarianism with constant reminders that everyone can hear what everyone else is saying and is making less than silent judgements about the way their fellow residents live their lives. A woman drives herself crazy believing that she’s being a good neighbour by letting her child play outside so the noise won’t disturb anyone, only for them to be hit by a car and killed. The building has a haunted quality, as if everyone here were already dead and living in a kind of limbo. They complain about the noise, but ignore it when their neighbours are desperately asking for help. As Ju-young later advises, the way to continue living is not to listen and live your own life in your own way rather than give in to the petty demands of those around you who try to control your life because they know they can’t control their own. Driven out of their minds by the constant thrumming of social pressure, acts of violence are inevitable but as Ju-young traverses the dingy corridors and ill-lit stairways in search of her missing sister all while venturing deeper inside her own buried trauma, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where exactly the threat may lie.

Noise screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Rewrite (リライト, Daigo Matsui, 2025) [Fantasia 2025]

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A mysterious transfer student arrives from the future. You have 20 wonderful days with him, but then he must return to his own time. He tells you that he came back to meet you and experience your time because of a book you will write, and your future self also shows you the book, tells you you did indeed write it, and that everything’s going to be okay. But in 10 years’ time, when you’re your “future self”, you from the past does not show up to get any of this information. Did something go wrong? Is the timeline crumbling? Or did you just imagine all this as a manifestation of “youth”?

When this happened to her, Miyuki (Elaiza Ikeda) believed that she was “the heroine of that summer,” but the truth is of course that she was always the heroine of her own life and had the right and power to make her own choices. Adapted from the novel by Haruka Honjo, Daigo Matsui’s Rewrite (リライト) is, like Obayashi’s The Little Girl Who Conquered Time, about the dangers of nostalgia and the over romanticisation of youth. What Miyuki gradually comes to realise is that one of the formative experiences of her teenage years may not have been unique or special but happened to literally everyone and changed them too in ways that were not always good. Because she met Yasuhiko (Kei Adachi) from 300 years in the future, she became a writer. But it remains true that her first few books weren’t about him at all. She always had the talent and the inclination. The impetus of destiny was only what gave her the confidence to pursue it. She knew she could, because she already had.

Yet, she’s in her hometown to close a loop on this unresolved romance of her youth despite having built a good life for herself as a successful author with a nice husband she met during the course of her work who is caring and supportive of her career. At the high school reunion she’s cajoled into going to, her former classmates sing the song they were practising for choir, “Cherry” by Spitz, which is also about “rediscovering each other, some day, same place,” echoing Yasuhiko’s cryptic claim that they’d meet again “in the future” (whose he doesn’t say) hinting at the way these feelings have been left hanging with only a yearning for the past and a painful nostalgia in their place. What Miyuki really has to ask herself is if she’s the person she wants to be in the present and is who she is because of the choices she made independently rather than solely because she was trying to fulfil the destiny given to her Yasuhiko.

To do so, she must face the fallacy of the “chosen one” mentality. The film rams this home in the parallel story of one of Miyuki’s classmates who tells her that she wasn’t chosen but actively chose to accept a kind of destiny rather than simply going along with it and that Miyuki too could “rewrite” the past if she wanted. In effect, this is what she’s already done as her husband implies when he repeatedly asks her if the book is “fiction”. Of course, it is, though she believed it not to be because it’s rooted in nostalgia and the personal myth making of the idealised romance of her youth. Matsui too plays with this sense of nostalgia in moving the setting of the story to Onomichi to mimic that of Obayashi’s The Little Girl Who Conquered Time and making frequent visual references to the 1983 film along with casting Toshinori Omi, the original boy who leapt through time, as the class teacher at the 10 years later reunion.

But the truth remains that Miyuki must learn to let go of the past, or else take mastery over it by rewriting her own story to accept that, as her husband says, the past and present are all hers. She can write anything and can finally leave her own time loop by writing her way out of youthful nostalgia and accepting something more like an objective reality along with the life she has now which appears to be happy and successful. Scripted by Makoto Ueda who has a long history of time-travel themed movies from Summer Time Machine Blues to River, Matsui’s poignant drama is shot through with irony and in constant dialogue with pop culture touchstones from the Obayashi film to Shunji Iwai’s Love Letter, while at the same time insisting that while you are the main character in your own life, you’re not the only one and a hundred stories are going on at the same time as yours. What really matters is not hanging on to the memories of an idealised past, but to live the life you want in the present for as long as this particular loop lasts.

Rewrite screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Organ Child (器子, Chieh Shueh Bin, 2024)

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How far would a father go for his daughter? There’s an ironic duality at the centre of Organ Child (器子, qìzǐ) in that the vengeful man at its centre and the man he is chasing are basically the same and may have made the same choices were the situation reversed. Nevertheless, a terrible and morally indefensible crime has taken place which will lead to many more of the same as bereaved father Qi-mao (Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan) stealthily tracks down all those who stole his newborn daughter and sold her to an organ trafficking ring. 

The film is keen to paint Qi-mao as a figure of uncompromised fatherhood through his association with a group of orphaned boys. Working as a baseball coach at the orphanage, he becomes a surrogate father to them and provides a familial environment as he and his wife frequently invite the boys for dinner. When his daughter is born, she automatically gets a whole baseball team of overprotective brothers, but that doesn’t stop her being snatched one day when her mother turns her back for an instant to pick up her bottle. The more Qi-mao searches for his daughter, the more he becomes convinced that she was stolen to order and the hospital is somehow involved. After getting too close to the truth, he’s framed for murder and sent to prison for 18 years during which he plans his bloody revenge.

What he uncovers is a vast ring of human trafficking run through the dark web in which rich people can buy poor ones and harvest their organs to save those they love rather than waiting for a good candidate to present themselves. This is apparently what filthy rich businessman Xu did when his newborn daughter needed a heart, so Qi-mao is led to believe his daughter must be dead but is after answers and the location of her body more than to expose the network which appears deeply entrenched among the elite because it so very lucrative. Yet if Qi-mao is going to all this trouble now, perhaps he may have done the same as Xu if the situation were reversed. He appears blasé about putting other people’s children in danger while torturing their parents to get to the truth even if as it turns out he may not have actually intended to harm them. Just like him desperate to save their child, the parents largely give in when they are threatened and promise to tell him everything he wants to know if only he let them go. 

But there is something quite insidious in Xu’s plan given that it may be one thing to buy a living body off a website and never have to think about the person whose life will sacrificed, but quite another to be prepared to kill someone that trusts and loves you. Xu uses his money to employ a poor yet oblivious family while collaborating with a hospital to fake medical records and manipulate his daughter Qiao who thinks the biggest problem in her life is her forbidden romance with the son of one of their servants, again echoing the class divide that makes Xu think he can do what he likes with those he feels to be lesser than himself. The real “family” turns out to be that created by the orphans which is then spread to the younger generation who are eventually freed from their parents’ corruption and the boundaries of class to live in a freer world less bound by capitalistic imperative than simple solidarity. 

But for all that, Qi-mao is orphaned too in realising that even if his daughter were alive and he could still save her, she likely wouldn’t accept the man he’s become. Qi-mao is man of rage and vengeance. He brutally tortures those connected with his daughter’s disappearance and commits acts of heinous violence that render him unable to return to mainstream society despite his position as an idealised father figure to the orphan boys. A subplot about sexual abuse at the orphanage is under explored, but hints at the institutionalised corruption in which the powerless can be exploited by those in power when no one cares enough to stop them. Qi-mao may not really care that much about opposing the system, but certainly does about the boys and his missing daughter as he wades into hell in search of answers but also retribution. 

Organ Child screens 27th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)