Rules of Living (ルール・オブ・リビング, Greg Dale, 2023)

Posted on by

A lost tourist finds a begrudging sanctuary in the home of a reluctant middle-aged woman in Greg Dale’s cross-cultural comedy, Rules of Living (ルール・オブ・リビング). Well intentioned as it may be, the film has some outdated humour and suffers from an unbalanced perspective that prioritises that of the American hero and at times uncomfortably pushes a message of Western individualism as he somehow “liberates” there heroine, Mikako (Kaho Minami), from her sense of obligation to her family and wider community. 

In a case in point, Mikako doesn’t want a roommate because her well-appointed home is a private sanctuary from the outside world and its constant judgement but is more or less forced to let Vincent (Greg Dale) in out of guilt and politeness. For his part fleeing a messy divorce and his own dissatisfaction with life under capitalism, Vincent arrives in Japan only to be somehow surprised that everything’s in Japanese and he can’t communicate with anyone because they are all too embarrassed about their English ability to respond to his questions. This results in a little well-worn humour in which his asking a portly middle-aged lady about a cheap place to stay is misunderstood and leads to an awkward situation as the apparently sexually insatiable older woman drags the naive and wholesome Vincent to a love hotel. Yet Vincent, an aficionado of Lafcadio Hearn, continues to wander round with wide-eyed wonder before rocking up Mikako’s office for more language-barrier banter and subsequently at her house despite not having made any attempt to contact her to make arrangements having befriended her daughter Chieko in Bali.

The film seems to directly contrast Mikako with her daughter who has given up a prestigious job and corporate career to go travelling leaving Mikako overstretched trying to care for her own mother alone as her health declines. Chieko’s decision is to a degree selfish in that she doesn’t answer her mother’s calls and does not even return home for her grandmother’s funeral while ironically looking down on Mikako for being a doormat who always puts the needs of others above her own as, the films argues, is expected by Japanese society. That’s not entirely wrong, though there must be a middle ground between total abandonment and selfless sacrifice in which not everything would simply be left for Mikako alone to deal with and she would have more freedom to fulfil herself outside of the expectations of others including those of Vincent. It’s notable that Mikako also seems to be dissatisfied in her career because of persistent sexism and office mores in which, at 49, she’s been more or less demoted to the ranks of office ladies after spending the rest of her working life in accounts and likely won’t be offered any further promotions, therefore justifying Chieko’s decision to quit. At the office, Mikako is treated as a maternal figure unfairly over relied upon by the boss because of her advanced skills while the younger women make too many mistakes and are slapdash in their work because they aren’t planning to stay in these jobs long term.

Meanwhile, Mikako is also under pressure to remarry especially as many seem to remark on the fact her family home is too large for her as a single woman. She’s been in a semi-serious relationship with a divorced childhood friend for some time but neither of them seem keen to give marriage another go until he too is pressured by his father to find another wife in order to take over the family business. Koichi (Kippei Shiina) is apparently the perfect man, nice, polite, well turned out and professionally successful yet there’s no real spark and Mikako feels guilty that she can’t learn to love Koichi in the way everyone else seems to love him for her. If she marries him, it will be for convenience and companionship along with the expectations of others much more than for herself. 

Her romance with Vincent is not all that convincing but born of frustration with these same social expectations and desire to put herself and her feelings first as manifested in her sudden desire to learn English. Vincent teaches English around the neighbourhood and spreads these individualist ideas around while enlivening the community through the simple act of communication as if no one had ever thought to speak to anyone else before. Yet he meets a more cynical force in the head of the language school he eventually gets a job at who is from India and offers yoga classes on the side despite never having practiced it before coming to Japan in another example of the pernicious qualities of these “expectations”. Vincent partially falls victim to them too in assuming a young woman in the staffroom is a lost student rather than a teacher simply because she looks Japanese. Nana complains no one takes her seriously because of her appearance despite her native level English and American accent. Before arriving at Mikako’s Vincent had tried to rent an apartment only to be told they don’t rent to foreigners and those that do either offer inappropriate accommodation or ask for a series of spurious additional fees. A man in the street also yells at him to go out with his own kind when seeing him with Mikako.

Essentially, Mikako’s choice is between two men, Vincent who apparently represents “freedom”, and Koichi who represents conventionality. This rather undermines the central thesis of Mikako rediscovering herself and taking agency over her life rather than as her daughter had said devoting herself entirely to the service of others. The film’s title is taken from a series of rules Mikako pastes up as condition for Vincent staying with her which included not using the bathroom or disturbing her while she’s in the living room, symbolising her desire for privacy and reluctance to let the relentlessly friendly Vincent into her life (even though being reluctant to let a total stranger and especially a man you’ve never met before stay in your house with you is completely understandable), but also hints at the “rules” that govern her own life in a conformist and patriarchal society. Some of these at least she may escape in deciding to follow her heart even if the place it leads her to has rules of its own that may not in the end be all that better.

Rules of Living screened as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Sunset Over the Horizon (夕陽西下, Lin Fu-Ti, 1968)

Posted on by

Shot at the same time as The Love in Okinawa, Sunset Over the Horizon (夕陽西下) is another Okinawan and Taiwanese co-production directed by Lin Fu-ti assumed lost until its discovery in San Francisco’s Chinatown in a Mandarin-dubbed print. Unsurprisingly, it features many of the same cast members and locations and even has a similar theme of impossible love but is more ambitious in scope incorporating both dream sequences and flashbacks to explore the changing relationship between Japan and Taiwan.

Lin opens the film with its conclusion as Shizuko watches a boat silently depart carrying away her love, the much older pastor/penniless painter Ching-wen who has made the decision to return to Taiwan having finally faced, if not quite come to terms with, his traumatic past at the end of the war and Taiwan’s “liberation” from Japanese colonisation. Japan had conquered Taiwan by force in 1895, but otherwise ruled with much less of an iron fist than it did in other areas of its empire. Lin seems to be making a minor point in dramatising the moment of “liberation” as one of conflicting emotions as the Japanese flag is slowly lowered and that of the KMT, another colonising force, rises in its place meaning that the island is not really “liberated” at all, merely changing hands and to a regime that became more oppressive than that which preceded it had been. 

The irony is that it’s this “liberation” that disrupted his romantic future as a young Taiwanese student in love with the daughter of a Japanese general. With the end of the war, the Japanese must leave Taiwan and so his love must go with them and return to the mainland. She asks Ching-wen to come with her, but he refuses. He is unwilling to leave his nation and his family, though we can see he did so years later and traveled to her hometown of Okinawa though she ultimately chose to take her own life out of a sense of despair and futility. She could not return to Japan with Ching-wen nor stay with him in Taiwan either and so to her the only answer, the only real “liberation,” lay in death.

Shizuko later posits something similar even if her dilemma is different. Her businessman father wants her to marry the son of a local factory owner so that he will support his business but Shizuko refuses because she wants to fall in love and does not seem to like her father’s chosen suitor. The situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that Shizuko is a child of her father’s first marriage and is therefore resented by her stepmother who wants her to leave the family as quickly as possible. In some ways this dynastic union represents a decision to embrace the more consumerist future that Japan in the later 1960s represents. Ching-wen on the other hand despite his ruination represents something purer and more spiritual that is less materialistic and rooted in sincere emotion. Shizuko insists that the businessman may buy her body but never her heart, but that seems perfectly fine to him because it seems he’s not all that bothered about her heart and just wants to possess her like a trophy. Frustrated by her objections, he continues to offer greater sums of money and later tells his underling, who looks horrified, that he plans to keep her locked up at home.

But there are other forces which stand in the couple’s way such as the inappropriate 18-year age gap considering that Shizuko is only 19 years old meaning she was born around the time Ching-wen’s first love died (probably at around the same age). It appears that Ching-wen is protestant preacher and so there’s no religious reason why he should not be married, but it’s clear that he has a serious alcohol problem and is a broken, ruined shell of a man unable to bear the romantic heartbreak he endured as a student and has presumably been atoning for ever since. Given all of this, there is no real explanation for the love that exists between them in the first place save for physical attraction (which is less likely given Ching-wen’s unkempt appearance) or a meeting of souls. In the end the theme seems to be moving on from the past and we realise that the lovers cannot be together because Japan and Taiwan must in effect go their separate ways. Though Shizuko too says she longs to return to Taiwan (when she lived there is not explained), she must fulfil her duty to her father by marrying the Japanese businessman. Over the horizon, there is only ever a sunset with no real indication of a happier future in the distance only futility and endurance if also a new beginning in moving on from the traumatic past.

Sunset Over the Horizon screened as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance (目中无人2, Yang Bingjia, 2024)

Posted on by

The wandering swordsman returns but this time to a world much more in disarray than when we last left it in the sequel to the surprise hit streaming movie An Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman, An Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance (目中无人2, mùzhōngwúrén 2). Less origin story than endgame, the film finds bounty hunter Cheng Yi living in another dusty town and working for Youzhou Prefecture to bring in wanted criminals dead or alive but finally forced into the role of protector for a little girl dead set on vengeance against this world.

Richer in scope and ambition, this time around we’re given a little more backstory about the former lieutenant who is now using his martial skills to enact justice in an otherwise lawless society if only when he’s paid to do so. One of his targets turns out to be a man who served under him in the war and is disillusioned about its aftermath. “What did we gain in the end?” he asks, justifying himself that he may have killed a few people and taken some money but he was only claiming what he was owed. The argument doesn’t wash with Cheng Yi, but the war also took his sight from him and he too is a disillusioned exile from his home in Chang’an living a nihilistic life of drink of killing on the behalf of a distant and compromised authority. 

His wilful isolation may be why he is not originally motivated to help the orphan little girl Xiaoyu (Yang Enyou) who says her mother starved to death during their escape. Xiaoyu had tried to protect her little brother who seemed to be mute only to see him trampled beneath the hooves of a debauched nobleman who had just murdered an entire family because they had dared to tell on him to his father. The family had been planning to flee at dawn but Li Jiulang (Huang Tao) got there first. Xiaoyu witnessed his crime after sneaking in to steal the bread they were baking and was then freely given to her by a young woman Li later killed, further stirring her desire for revenge. Cheng Yi ends up saving her from Li on two separate occasions, though the second time it isn’t overly clear whether it was intentional or a drunken coincidence. Nevertheless, he continues to counsel her against pursuing her revenge, especially towards a man like Li who is wealthy and connected and has no compunctions about killing children. 

Li is also seen to abuse drugs and have a sadistic streak though no real explanation is given for his cruelty save that he is evil and has enough money and power to do as he pleases. No one except the little girl is going to put a bounty out on him, as she naively tries to do by selling her brother’s silver whistle to get a poster mocked up though Li simply offers a double bounty on her and it seems plenty are desperate enough to consider killing a defenceless girl to get their hands on it. Perhaps it’s this that eventually moves Cheng Yi’s heart as she continues to insist on an impossible justice even at the cost of her own life. Like him, she no longer has any family nor any place to call home and is displaced within the chaos of late Tang. Through bonding with her, he begins to rediscover his humanity and considers leaving the world of the bounty hunter behind to become an “ordinary person” in Chang’an to raise her away from this nihilistic way of life.

Building on the success of the first film, Yang Bingjia makes the most of an increased production budget to fully recreate the atmosphere of a bustling frontier town while continuing the Western influence as Cheng Yi hunts down wrongdoers in an otherwise lawless place. The connection between the cynical swordsman and his tiny charge has genuine poignancy as he continues to caution her against the path of revenge, reminding her that it is a continuous cycle and one act of vengeance merely sets another in motion, yet finally deciding that he must teach her what he knows anyway because like him she has no other way to live. Still, what he envisions for her is a peaceful life in Chang’an, far away from the chaos of the frontiers in a world that may not quite exist anymore but may yet come again if not, perhaps, for all.

Eye for an Eye 2: Blind Vengeance is released in the US on Digital, Blu-ray & DVD March 4 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Project Silence (탈출: 프로젝트 사일런스, Kim Tae-gon, 2023)

Posted on by

“It’s a nation’s duty to protect its citizens wherever they are,” according to a more earnest politician, though Blue House security advisor Jung-won (Lee Sun-kyun) counters him that actually their duty only extends to those who voted for them, and they expect wise political judgment. Jung-won is a classic political lackey in that he’s intensely cynical and his every living thought is about how best to spin any given circumstances so that his boss, Hyun-baek (Kim Tae-woo), will become Korea’s next president.

There’s something quite remarkable about the extent to which Jung-won has erased himself from this equation and dedicated his life to making Hyun-baek’s a success while otherwise leaving conventional human morality at the door and pursuing a doctrine of doing only that which is most politically expedient. Some of his detachment might be explained by the fact he lost his wife some time ago to a lengthy illness and is about to send his daughter, who views him with contempt, to study abroad in Australia thanks to a few strings pulled by Hyun-baek. 

But as he later says, if Hyun-baek were actually there and seeing this for himself, he would make a different decision. Despite his cynicism, Jung-won eventually becomes a voice of authority during a moment of crisis and determines to set about rescuing the survivors rather than communicating with Hyun-baek about how best to turn this situation to their advantage. Paradoxically, he redeems the government in the eyes of those stranded on a bridge after a multi-car pileup in the middle of a particularly thick fog who come to realise that the authorities are not all that invested in rescuing them and may even be partly responsible for putting them in danger.

The Project Silence of the film’s title turns out to be one of creating genetically enhanced attack dogs who can chase a target with a specific voice. Apparently developed originally by the US and EU, the project is being researched in Korea but rendered a failure with the current batch of dogs set for “disposal”. That is, if they hadn’t been set loose by the accident and the possibly malicious actions of their handler who claims he was researching rescue dogs but was forced to reprogramme them to kill on the orders of the military. As he points out, the leader of the dogs, who has a head injury suggesting their programming has been disrupted, is only taking their revenge for their constant mistreatment at the hands of humans.

Then again, one of the ironies of Project Silence is that there is quite a lot going on from the unusually thick fog, the multi-car pileup caused by a live streamer driving recklessly for views, the toxic gas flowing from a crashed lorry, to the fact the bridge itself may collapse after the military helicopter sent to retrieve the dogs crashes and damages the support cables. All things considered, it is too much all at once considering the outlandishness of the evil dog plot. Though there are an assortment of survivors to become invested in as is usual in these kinds of films, we don’t always get to know them well enough with a series of subplots left unresolved such as the creepy behaviour of a Buffalo Bill-esque trucker who nevertheless becomes a kind of comic relief figure and eventual saviour of the group while becoming a reluctant buddy to Jung-won. Similarly, the dementia of an elderly woman (Ye Soo-jung) is intermittently brought up but never for any real reason nor is it ever fully explored, not even in her relationship with her husband who is responsible for her care. The younger of two bickering sister’s golf career does however turn out to have a practical application.

The conflict between Jung-won and his daughter, meanwhile, is largely mediated through her contempt for his callousness and resentment towards him for failing to address her mother’s death. Of course, saving the passengers is also a way to redeem himself in Kyoung-min’s (Kim Su-an) eyes much like the father in the similarly themed Train to Busan, though the awakening that Jung-won undergoes is more like the fog gradually lifting as he realises he is also being played by political manipulators while it is as he said different if you’re actually there and much harder to make the “sensible” decision to let the bridge collapse and take the potentially embarrassing evidence of their rogue science experiment with it. Perhaps that’s the real meaning of “project silence,” making sure there’s no one left to speak. But Jung-won is used to playing this game from the other side so he’s a few steps ahead and knows his best weapon is noise, tell everyone and do it right away so they don’t have time to shut you down nor can they deny it later. He may have been party to lingering authoritarianism, but has now realised that a nation’s primary duty is to protect its citizens after all, even if they voted for the other guy. 

Project Silence is available in the UK on 4K UHD courtesy of Altitude.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Asian Pop-Up Cinema Returns for 19th Edition

Posted on by

Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema returns for its 19th edition March 20 to April 13 in a new format featuring a juried competition with 16 films vying for the coveted inaugural prize. Taiwanese horror comedy Dead Talents Society will open the festival with director John Hsu and star Chen Bo-lin, also the recipient of the Bright Star Award, attending to present the film. Producer Daisuke Sato will also be attending the closing film Brush of God to collect the posthumous lifetime achievement award for late director Keizo Murase, while actress Michelle Wai and director Anselm Chan will be in attendance for the Centrepiece Film, the director’s cut of The Last Dance.

Here are the East Asian films included in this year’s programme:

China

  • Like a Rolling Stone (出走的决心) – powerful drama inspired by the real life story of a middle-aged woman who decided to go travelling in order to escape her oppressive marriage.
  • A Long Shot (老枪) – a former sharpshooter finds himself unbalanced amid the corruptions of China’s 90s economic reforms in Gao Peng’s intense social drama. Review.

Hong Kong

Indonesia

  • Crocodile Tears (Air Mata Buaya) – the intensely claustrophobic relationship between a mother and son is disrupted when the boy meets a girl in Tumpal Tampubolon’s eerie maternal drama. Review.

Japan

Malaysia

  • Indera – horror film in which a father takes his daughter to the countryside to cure her illness after a stand off between villagers and government forces in 1985.

Mongolia

Singapore

  • Stranger Eyes (默視錄) – 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.

South Korea

Taiwan

  • {“ARInfo”:{“IsUseAR”:false},”Version”:”1.0.0″,”MakeupInfo”:{“IsUseMakeup”:false},”FaceliftInfo”:{“IsChangeEyeLift”:false,”IsChangeFacelift”:false,”IsChangePostureLift”:false,”IsChangeNose”:false,”IsChangeFaceChin”:false,”IsChangeMouth”:false,”IsChangeThinFace”:false},”BeautyInfo”:{“IsAIBeauty”:false,”OldBeautyCount”:1,”IsSharpen”:false,”SwitchMedicatedAcne”:false,”IsBrightEyes”:false,”IsOldBeauty”:false,”IsReduceBlackEyes”:false},”HandlerInfo”:{“AppName”:2},”FilterInfo”:{“IsUseFilter”:false}}
  • Dead Talents Society (鬼才之道) – faced with disintegration a teenage ghost must learn how to seize the stage in John Hsu’s zany horror comedy. Review.
  • Doubles Match (乒乓男孩) – two little boys dream of making the national table tennis team but their friendship is disrupted when one is sent to school in the city.
  • Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) – Yuci’s peaceful life is disrupted when his brother is released from prison after serving time for the hunting accident that killed their father.
  • Old Fox (老狐狸) – a young boy begins to absorb all the wrong lessons while drawn to his enigmatic landlord in Hsiao Ya-chuan’s 80-set coming-of-age drama. Review.
  • Yen & 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.
  • The Uniform (夜校女生) – drama set in 1997 in which a girl is forced to attend an elite high school as a night student but becomes friends with one of the day pupils.

Thailand

Asian Pop-Up Cinema Season 19 runs in Chicago March 20 to April 13. Further details are available via the official website and you can also keep up with all the latest news by following Asian Pop-up Cinema on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter),  Instagram, and Vimeo.

Tale of the Land (Loeloe Hendra, 2024)

Posted on by

After witnessing her parents’ murder, a young woman is forced into an isolated way of life in Loeloe Hendra’s indie drama, Tale of the Land. Land is, at least according to grandfather Tuha, a place where nothing good happens which might be why he insists on keeping May on the boat. Or then again, perhaps as May is beginning to suspect, he is willingly constraining her and ensuring that she will remain at sea though she now wants a little more out of life.

On one of his ventures out, Tuha is passed by a huge and impressive coal liner while plagued by visions of the house sinking. May asks him if the house will last, but he replies that it surely will for the ancestors will protect them. Yet this is why land has become such a contentious issue to Tuha. The family was forced off their ancestral land by the arrival of the mine. Tuha isn’t lying when he tells May that the land is dangerous because the mine appears of have acquired the consent of the villagers through threat and violence. He no longer speaks to his surviving son because he views him as a traitor for having given in and thrown his lot in with the miners.

But May isn’t sure she believes her grandfather anymore. Perhaps he’s only saying that because he fears being alone and means to trap her with him. Tuha told her that she’s the victim of an incurable curse and is in effect allergic to the land. Every time she touches ground, she collapses. Her fate is echoed in the wounded buffalo she sees on the shore, longing for freedom yet tethered and caught between two worlds. The buffalo turns out to belong to Lawa, a local soldier who seems to have taken a liking to May but a sworn enemy of Tuha in representing the modern nation  mired in authoritarianism and destructive capitalism. 

Thus May is caught between the two men, the grandfather with his certain faith in the power of the ancestors, and the modern man who swears he’ll cure her and also take her to the site of her parents’ graves. Tuha tells her that this is the only place left to them and they must accept it, that she should give up any thought of returning to the land and learn to be happy with the self-sufficient life they’ve built at sea. The film is then a kind of parable for the fate of the Dayak people who have been displaced from their ancestral lands by the incursion of modernity in the form of violent corporatism as manifested in the destructive mining industry which ruins the environment. Whether May’s condition really is a “curse”, or a trauma response to witnessing the deaths of her parents, the land is a dangerous place and most particularly for people like her. Yet the sea isn’t really safe either and offers her little prospect of safety or happiness.

She tries to fight her curse with modernity by simply wearing shoes so that the soles of her feet don’t touch the earth, but discovers that it isn’t really that simple. Dreams and reality become indistinct, May performing a traditional folk dance on the house on the water and also taking part in a folk ritual with Lawa on land. She experiences echoes of the life that’s been taken from her, but finds little in its place already fed up with the monotony of life on the sea but torn between her grandfather’s warnings and Lawa’s promises. Tuha constantly berates her for doing the wrong thing, claiming it’s her fault they’ve no fish because she upset the ancestors by forcing him to kill a chicken in order to appease her curse but she can’t be sure he’s wrong, or that his stubbornness isn’t justified. He was right when they said they had nowhere else to go because their people have been exiled from their own lands and can no longer wander freely but are trapped within a liminal space literally floating in the ocean between the land and the horizon while unable to travel in either direction. May may be on the move and trying to reclaim what is hers by right, stepping ashore onto an uncertain land little knowing whether it will accept her or she it.

Tale of the Land screens as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Boy in the Pool (보이 인 더 풀, Ryu Yeon-su, 2024)

Posted on by

If you know you’ll never be the best, is it better to give up right there and then or to continue but out of simple enjoyment rather than ambition? For Seok-young, the second option doesn’t make any sense. It’s just a waste of time to pursue something that you have no aptitude for when there are those born with natural abilities that you could not hope to equal no matter how hard you tried. But as much as she claims quitting doesn’t make you a loser, there is something a little sad in the idea of abandoning something you once loved simply because other people were better at it than you were.

At 13 years old, Seok-young is a swimming obsessive and very proud of the fact that she recently won a trophy. One of the reasons she’s so upset she and her family are moving back to her mother’s hometown following her parents’ divorce is that she’ll have to leave her swimming club and is worried there either won’t be one in the rural backwater or that the other kids won’t be at her level. Unable to make headway at the pool, she goes swimming in the sea instead only to be struck by a foot cramp and rescued from drowning by sullen local boy Woo-joo. Though he angrily runs away from her and says he hates swimming, the two later bond over their shared love of the sport and outsider status. But Woo-joo turns out to be a prodigy and much better than Seok-young meaning that he’s soon picked up by a coach to train in Seoul and Seok-young quits swimming in a fit of pique.

There’s a gentle yet contradictory theme running through the film of allowing your fear of not being good enough to rob you of the joy of doing something just because you enjoyed it. Seok-young seems to quit a lot of things, and as a high schooler is left home alone when her sister too goes to Seoul to train as a concert pianist. She is diffident and aloof in her relationship with Woo-joo, never revealing her true feelings but pushing him away and needling him in his own insecurity as a backwards way of reassuring him that he has the talent to succeed. Meanwhile, he is carrying a secret that makes him doubt his talent and feel self-conscious in the pool, afraid to reveal himself and as it turns out with good reason. Only Seok-young knows and is completely unfazed by his difference, recognising it as the thing that makes him unique while stopping short of admitting that she does indeed think there’s something more to him than swimming and would like him even if never swam again. 

Nevertheless, there’s something quite upsetting about the idea that Woo-joo would have to sacrifice what makes him unique not only to succeed but simply to be able to fit in. He lives with a sense of being different, and is perhaps also bullied and discriminated against because he’s being raised by his grandmother, something else which Seok-young just accepts without question. Seok-young, meanwhile, is displaced amid her parents divorce and humbled by the realisation that she may have overestimated her talent for swimming. She continues to vacillate and unlike those around her flounders for direction. Another boy who’s interested in her reveals that he kept going to the swimming club just for fun even after realising there was no way he could be as good as someone like Woo-joo, but Seok-young seems to retreat into herself in her insecurity. She’s afraid to keep going or try new things out of fear she won’t be good enough rather than simply doing her best and having a good time. 

But as she says, quitting doesn’t make you a loser and giving up something that isn’t making you happy can be a victory in itself as she perhaps discovers in returning home less in defeat than in search of something more. Woo-joo too seems to have found his niche, now whole again and all of himself while no longer submitting to the pressure of needing to achieve something more for others than himself that had ruined whatever joy he may have found in swimming. The message of Ryu’s gentle drama is less one of knowing your limitations than avoiding letting the fear of failure prevent you from doing something you love or conversely walking away from something that isn’t working while finally gaining the courage to chase after what it is you really want.

Boy in the Pool screens as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Next Stop, Somewhere (別來無恙, James Lee, 2025)

Posted on by

What does “freedom” actually mean? Will money buy it for you or just result in another kind of prison in which you cannot really say you’re free because you don’t feel like you have the choice to leave? Leaving is really at the centre of James Lee’s sensitive drama Next Stop, Somewhere (別來無恙, biéláiwúyàng) in which the protagonists of parallel stories have both left their homelands not altogether by choice in search of a greater freedom that they nevertheless struggle to find.

Hong Kong actor Huang (Anthony Wong Chau-sang) has left Hong Kong in search of political freedom in the wake of the Umbrella Movement, but is immediately constrained by coronavirus quarantine on his arrival in Taiwan. He is constantly trying to get in contact with a man called James who also seems to be in some political trouble and is not always able to answer, which is a problem because James is supposed to be handling the transfer of his money out of Hong Kong. Huang might be “free” of political oppression, but in reality one is never “free” without money and arguably not even then because of the necessity of acquiring it. That seems to be part of the problem for his maid at the hotel, Xiao Qian (Angel Lee), who feels trapped in a relationship that no longer seems to be working while unable to leave it because neither of them can afford the rent on their own.

Xiao Qian’s relationship is with another woman and perhaps it could be argued that in Taipei she at least has the freedom to live with the person she loved, though on the other hand she pointedly refuses to explain when her girlfriend Bae shows up at the hotel looking for her after she stops answering her calls or messages. Bae also seems to have mental health issues that also perhaps prevent Qian from leaving her, though she continues to treat her coldly and repeatedly refuses her requests for intimacy. It seems that Qian wanted to study abroad in America, but so far has been unable to go. A $100 bill to her represents another kind of freedom, though as she later says to Huang in the end freedom about having the choice to leave.

A $100 bill meant freedom for Kim (Kendra Sow) too, but like Huang she finds herself trapped by the realisation that the note did not represent what she was led to believe it would. Not entirely of her own choice, Kim leaves Vietnam to become the mail order bride of a Malaysian man who claimed to be a wealthy businessman in his 40s but in reality is a market trader quite a bit older than that. Mr Li (Mike Chuah) is totally besotted with his new brides, telling his friends that there were cheaper girls available but his is the prettiest. But in the end he’s trapped by this situation too. It’s clear he hadn’t thought through the reality and was acting out a kind of romantic fantasy. Young and naive, Kim recoils from his touch and building a relationship with her is impossible because she doesn’t speak Mandarin and he doesn’t know Vietnamese. They’re hassled by immigration officials and Mr Li’s irate mother who berates Kim insisting that they only brought her here to have a son and heir so she’s not fulfilling her obligations. For his part, Mr Li is partly sympathetic in that it’s clear he has no desire to force himself on Kim and hurt, if understanding, that she rejects him. When he eventually does try to force her, he can’t go through with it because of the sight of her tears. 

As her mother-in-law feared she might, Kim finds release though a growing relationship with the immigration officer who’s closer to her in age and also an outsider, rejected by Mr Li’s mother on the grounds of his ethnicity. Through love, she finds another kind of “freedom”, but with it constraint and it remains unclear how this situation will play out even as, like Huang, she surrenders the $100 bill to someone who needs it more. To pass time in quarantine, Huang orders a copy of Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion, a book about a young monk who sets fire to the temple because he can’t bear the existence of something so beautiful in this profane world. Having not yet finished the book after Huang lent it to her, Qian asks him why the boy did it and he replies that perhaps he felt trapped and that only by burning the temple down could he be free. To that extent, for each of them “freedom” means burning the world behind you and never looking back, if only in a purely symbolic sense in finding the courage to leave a dissatisfying situation, no matter how impossible that might seem, along with the willingness to look for happiness somewhere else. 

Next Stop, Somewhere screens as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

International trailer

Chang’an (长安三万里, Xie Junwei & Zou Jing, 2023)

Posted on by

It’s a strange thought, in a way, that poetry could save a nation. In reality, it didn’t quite. The An Lushan rebellion significantly weakened the Tang dynasty and contributed to its rapid decline. Nevertheless, Tang was an era in which art, culture, and freedom of thought all flourished. Animated feature Chang’an (长安三万里, Cháng’ān Sānwànlǐ), named for the imperial capital of that time, attempts dramatise the era through the lives of its poets and the eyes of Gao Shi (Yang Tianxiang) reflecting on his youthful and often distant friendship with the legendary Li Bai (Ling Zhenhe) whose poems are still recited by the school children of today.

As the film opens, Gao Shi is an old man and embattled general staring down inevitable defeat at the hands of the invading Tubos emboldened by the weakening of borders following the failed An Lushan rebellion. But that’s not the reason he’s being visited by an imperial inspector who is far more interested in his relationship with Li Bai and the political importance it may have gained. Through this framing sequence, Geo Shi narrates the previous 40 years of history as he and Li Bai each age and take different paths in life while maintaining a distant if deeply felt friendship.

To that extent, Guo Shi is the earnest and practical son of a once noble house attempting to resurrect his family legacy, while Li Bai is a free spirited libertine attempting to overcome his lowly birth as the son of a wealthy merchant to gain government office through his skill as a poet. Then again, as future great poet Du Fu (Liu Jiaoyu / Sun Lulu) remarks, in this age poetry is something anyone can do and distinguishing oneself through it is no mean feat. It is however the only option for a man like Li Bai and the film in part seems to be an advocation for meritocracy in which those of ability would be free to prosper without needing to rely on social standing or personal connections. Despite the supposedly classless society of the modern day, this world may not yet have emerged. Another hopeful laments that she alone of her brothers inherited military skill yet as a woman there’s no door that is open to her to serve her country. 

Serving one’s country is the virtue that Gao Shi praises most highly and in effect his life’s purpose while Li Bai’s is more personal advancement and the perfection of his art. His poems are often melancholy and reflect on a sense of loneliness and longing for home, or else raucous celebrations of the art of drinking. Gao Shi does not approve of Li Bai’s party lifestyle and his debauchery later places a strain on their friendship. The film tacitly implies that this decadent behaviour is behind the decline of Tang, but also the reason that art and culture flourished amid a sense of destruction and despair. Having learned a few lessons in underhandedness from Li Bai, Geo Shi in effect restores order, albeit temporarily, through strategy and courage, while Li Bai first chooses isolation and then in its opposite after being pardoned for an apparently accidental and entirely thoughtless act of treason.

But what the film is keen to emphasise is the deep-seated friendship, or perhaps more, between the two men that makes the victory possible suggesting that a society needs both practicality and art to survive, not that Gao Shi was not a great poet himself if one well aware that Li Bai surpassed him in skill and keen support his success. Even so, as Gao Shi points out, a poet is not always an easy thing to be and in his old age those who once drank with Li Bai are either dead, one beaten to death at the age of 70, exiled or imprisoned. In a sense, both men achieve their aims if perhaps not in the way they intended. Gao restores his family name, and Li Bai finds a kind of immortality in his work that he otherwise failed to find spiritually in devoting himself to Taoism. The often beautifully rendered backgrounds capture a sense of a society on the brink of eclipse, such as the striking beauty of Gao Shi’s first entry to Yongzhou with its blossoming cherry trees lit by the warm light of lanterns under a full moon, only to turn to darkness on his return amid the twilight of the Tang dynasty. 

Dazzler Media presents Chang’an in UK and Irish cinemas from 28th February.

UK trailer (Mandarin with English subtitles)

River Returns (光る川, Masakazu Kaneko, 2024)

Posted on by

At the beginning of Masakazu Kaneko’s River Returns (光る川, Hikaru Kawa), a little boy asks his father where water comes from. It’s one of those questions that children ask but adults find difficult to answer. In any case, his father tells him that it comes from the sky, travels down leaves and branches, and then makes its way to the river. But what if all the trees are felled, the boy asks. His father tells him not to worry, they only cut down “useless” trees in order to plant “money-making” ones in their place.

This is the conflict at the centre of the film and to some extent that at the centre of all of Kaneko’s films so far in the changing relationships between man and landscape. The boy, Yucha (Sanetoshi Ariyama), is too young to fully understand what’s going on but has an inkling that might not be good for his beloved mountain which is somehow linked with the fate of his sickly mother, Ayumi (Kinuo Yamada). His father, Haruo (Tomomitsu Adachi), is one of the younger men in the village in favour of a plan to sell off the mountain for industrial construction with the building of a modern roadway and a dam project which he says will make everyone in the village rich. It’s 1958, and the nation is fast recovering from post-war privation. The population is increasing. New homes will need to be built so there’s money in timber. He wants to use some of it to treat Ayumi’s illness, but his mother has her doubts even if her son dismisses them as backward superstition. 

Haruo worries that their old-fashioned, rundown home may not survive a severe typhoon nor the flooding that often accompanies them. If you fear floods, then cutting down trees is obviously not a good idea and there is something quite unsettling about the imposition of the dam that would interfere in this ancient and natural process that keeps the rivers flowing. Yet this particular river also has a quasi-mystical quality that Yucha learns of from his grandmother and a kamishibai storyteller who recounts a local folktale about a girl who drowned herself in the pool at the river’s source after falling in love with a nomadic mountain woodcutter. It is said the girl’s despair sometimes brings about terrible floods and that the one who receives a wooden bowl from the river must return it full or a loved one will be taken by the waters.

Yucha had been worried about this before, frightened that his mother would not be able to escape the rising waters because of her illness. What he learns is that time flows differently at the source and in temporal terms, this river also flows backwards. He becomes a kind of conduit and saviour of the mountain in going back to right a wrong, ensuring that man and landscape are joined once again and can live in a more natural harmony. By saving the mountain, he can also save his mother whose condition it is implied is partly caused by a corrupted modernity. Haruo could not save her with money gained by nature’s destruction, only by restoring nature itself and making a commitment to keep the pool as clear and blue as the cormorant’s eye. 

The nomadic woodcutters after all know that too much felling ruins the mountain which would take generations to recover. They kneel and pray after felling their trees and respectfully move on at the full moon. Kaneko structures his tale elliptically, like a river that constantly returns in which all is a harmonious cycle that man threatens to interrupt, arrogantly thinking that it can improve upon nature. The middle part of the film is a lengthy flashback transitioning out of the kamishibai folktale set sometime in the feudal past in which even then there was division between the “civilisation” represented by the village and the natural world of the mountains which would be healed in the union of Oyo and the woodcutter Saku and is opposed both by the mountain nomads and Oyo’s widowed father Tsunekichi (Ken Yasuda). Only the mute boy can in the end resolve this romantic tragedy and ensure the river continues to flow. Elegantly lensed to capture the majestic quality of the mountain landscape, River Returns is a timely reminder of the importance of protecting the natural environment which in return will also protect us. 

River Returns screens as part of this year’s Cinema at Sea.

Trailer (English subtitles)