Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

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Towards the end of Lino Brocka’s Bona (Nora Aunor), the heroine recounts a dream she had in which she tries to escape a fire but finds herself met only by more flames. The inferno she attempts to outrun is that of the oppressive patriarchy of a fiercely Catholic society in which men can do as they please, but women are held to a different standard and in the end have little freedom or independence. 

Brocka opens with a lengthy sequence of a religious festival in which the suffering Mary is carried through the streets on the shoulders of men. Teenager Bona looks on but worships at a different altar, that of Gardo (Phillip Salvador), a struggling bit-player trying to make it in the Philippine film industry. What becomes apparent is that her fascination with Gardo is borne of her desire to escape her family home and the tyrannical reign of her authoritarian father (Venchito Galvez) who berates her for not helping her mother out enough with her business and later whips her with his belt because she stayed out too late. 

Though her family is quite middle class, Bona instals herself in Gardo’s home in the slums in search of greater freedom but ends up becoming his skivvy or perhaps even a kind of maternal figure patiently taking care of him while he continues to bring other women home and even charges her with taking another teenage girl he’s got pregnant to the doctor (who charges him “the same as before”) for an abortion. It’s possible that in Gardo she sees a different kind of masculinity, a performance of manliness, but gradually comes to realise he’s nothing more than an opportunistic lothario with no emotional interest in women let alone her. 

But by then, it’s too late. She’s stuck in a kind of limbo barred from returning home to her family because of her status as a fallen woman who has shamed them by living with a man she is not married to. Even once her father dies, her mother warns her to avoid her brother because his rage is indescribable and he does indeed drag her out of the funeral by her hair while issuing threats of violence. Perhaps what she was looking for was greater independence or an accelerated adulthood with the illusion of freedom, but she can only find it by relying on Gardo rather than attempting to chart her future alone. We can see that other women in the slum are in much the same position, loudly arguing with their husbands who cheat, laze around drinking, and permit them little possibility for any kind of individual fulfilment. 

Yet there is a moment where Bona seems free, ironically dancing at the wedding of a young man, Nilo (Nanding Josef), who she’d turned down but now perhaps regrets it comparing the conventional married life she might have had with him to the prison she’s designed for herself in her life with Gardo. Nilo may be the film’s nicest man, but at the same time he’s still a part of the system that Bona can’t escape. In fact, the only woman fully in charge of herself is a wealthy widow who later buys Gardo’s, not exactly affections, but perhaps loyalty. “She’ll do,” he less than romantically explains after admitting to marrying her for the convenience of her money oblivious of the effect the news may have on the by now thoroughly humiliated Bona whose rage is just about to boil over. 

Unable to free herself from this fanatical devotion or to find possibility outside it, Bona is trapped by her desires and marooned in a kind of no man’s land in which she cannot exist as an independent person but only as servant to a man. “I’ll just serve you,” she explains on moving in and thereafter slavishly catering to all of Gardo’s whims while he largely ignores her. She hasn’t so much escaped her father’s house, but built a prison for herself from which she cannot escape despite her oncoming displacement. A creeping character study, the film finds the titular heroine searching for a way out of the fire only to find herself engulfed by flames with no real prospect of salvation amid the ingrained misogyny of a fiercely patriarchal society.

Bona screens Nov. 14 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Homeless (無宿 やどなし, Koichi Saito, 1974)

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Two men are released from prison on the same day. One, dressed in a 1920s-style white suit and straw hat, tries to befriend the other, in black kimono and geta, but he ignores him. Soon, they arrive at a fork in the road. The man in the kimono walks down a well worn grass path cut between the fields while the man in white, looking back and a little disappointed, continues along the modern roadway making his way towards civilisation.

In some ways, the heroes of Koichi Saito’s The Homeless (無宿 やどなし, Yadonashi) are embodiments of past and future. Jokichi (Ken Takakura), the kimonoed man in black, chooses the path of vengeance. On his release from prison, he learns that his gang leader older brother has been killed while his sister was sold to a brothel. He goes there to find her, but is told that she is already dead. The madam says she died of a chronic illness and that she did for her what she could but treating such a cruel disease is only throwing good money after bad. Sakie (Meiko Kaji), a sex worker who appears to have a childlike quality and possibly impaired mental state, tells a different story claiming the madam had Jokichi’s sister killed for reasons she doesn’t explain but may have more to do with the drama going on with Jokichi’s gang than a desire to cut costs and her losses. 

Gen (Shintaro Katsu), meanwhile, seemingly chooses the path of prosperity. He returns to his wife, Ume (Murasaki Fujima), who is a member of a moribund theatrical troupe, and asks her to return to him what he believes is a treasure map marking the location where his father saw a ship sink during the Russo-Japanese war that may be filled with gold. On finding out Jokichi used to be a diver, Gen becomes determined to bring him onto his mission but Jokichi is set on revenge firstly on a man called Senzo (Noboru Ando) he thinks killed his sister and then on whoever ordered the hit on his brother. This bad news for Gen who realises that if he achieves his vengeance, Jokichi won’t be available to help retrieve the gold because he’ll be in prison so he starts by warning Senzo that his past’s about to catch up with him. 

But it’s also Gen that helps Jokichi escape from the rival gang by suggesting he help rescue Sakie from her indentured servitude as sex worker. Childlike and ethereal, Sakie claims not to remember where she was from and has a simple desire to see the sea which represents to her a kind of freedom while for each of the men it may in fact form a kind of border they will eventually be backed up against and unable to escape. Though Sakie develops a fondness for Jokichi, and then begins to love Gen after he ends up taking care of her along the road, the three form a relationship that seems more fraternal or perhaps even forged on the homoerotic tension between the two men who light their cigarettes one from the other and finally find a home on an idyllic beach where they devote themselves to the search for buried treasure.

Sakie may say that the real treasure is her new life of freedom and warmth, but the hint of riches the two men find is itself rooted in warfare and imperialism which are the same forces by which they were each displaced amid the rising militarism of the 1930s. The three of them remain homeless in this environment, unable to fit into the changing society and by degrees exiled from it. An early title of the film was apparently Jingi no Okite (仁義の掟) which means “the law of honour and humanity” and that is in a way what Jokichi is bound by in his desire for vengeance, while Gen is clearly an anarchistic force unable to submit himself to authority and lusting after a more prosperous modernity. Sakie meanwhile is powerless as a woman with few rights, sold into sex work and technically a fugitive from the gang-backed brothel that owned her contract.

As beautiful as the beach is, we have the feeling that in some senses the three of them are already dead and living in their temporary paradise. Indeed, the past eventually catches up with them as if these three homeless fugitives cannot be allowed to survive in resistance to an authoritarian culture. Their existence is elegised by the beautifully composed cinematography along with the childlike rapport between the two men and the sense of domesticity which arises between the trio before reality bites and even their beachside idyll is invaded by the forces of darkness.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Shanghai Blues (上海之夜, Tsui Hark, 1984)

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There’s a strange kind of melancholy optimism born of false courage and desperation that colours Tsui Hark’s Shanghai Blues (上海之夜). A clown soon to become a soldier tells a woman he meets in the dark under a bridge as the city burns and Shanghai falls to the Japanese to remember that they will win. 10 years later the wounded of that same war reassure each other that their time will come, they didn’t survive just to die here now seemingly cast out by the society they risked their lives to save.

The Shanghai Stool (Sally Yeh Chian-Wen) arrives in is in a moment of euphoric liberation caught between cataclysmic revolutions with the civil war and eventual coming of the communists hovering on the horizon. A wide-eyed country girl, she’s almost lost amid the hustle and bustle of the city in which the motion never stops. Like many, she is immediately displaced on her arrival, discovering that the relatives with whom she hoped to stay are no longer at their address and she is therefore homeless and alone. The clown, Do-re-mi (Kenny Bee), now a member of a marching band unable to play his instrument, thinks she’s the girl from the bridge in part because she’s wearing the same outfit but mainly because she has the same short hair cut and so he follows but loses her. Meanwhile, she has a kind of meet cute with Shushu (Sylvia Chang Ai-Chia), now a jaded nightclub showgirl still pining for the clown, in which they each believe the other is trying to take their own life but end up becoming best friends and roommates unwittingly living directly below Do-re-mi. 

In this 30s-style screwball world, identities are always uncertain and often obscured by darkness or else the continual march of the crowd. Yet there’s a kind of romanticism in this act of seeing and not seeing. Only in darkness do Shushu and Do-re-mi finally recognise each other and when their romantic moment is interrupted by the end of a power cut, they smash the neon lights opposite to reclaim it as if to reject the intrusion of this glaring modernity. To that extent, the implication may be that this innocent kind of romantic connection can’t survive the bright lights of the big city or that light blinds as much as it illuminates. In several sequences, the characters inhabit the same space but cannot see each other while a nefarious thief lurks on the edges of the frame unseen by all. On realising that Do-re-mi is the clown/soldier for whom she’s been waiting for the last 10 years, Shushu knows that she will have to break her friend’s heart or her own and that Stool’s dream of a family of three is unrealisable amid the constant rootlessness of this transient city. 

To that extent, Stool is an echo of herself as the innocent young woman she was on meeting Do-re-mi under the bridge rather than the more cynical figure she’s become due to her experiences in the wartime city. In the film’s closing moments, Stool meets another version of herself in the form of a wide-eyed young woman in a plain dress who asks her if this is Shanghai but the only reply she can give is that she wishes her luck because for her Shanghai is now a city of heartbreak just it has been one of sadness and futility for Shushu. “I have one hope, if I give it to you I won’t have any,” Shushu tells her lovelorn boss as an expression of the despair that colours her existence in which the distant possibility of romantic fulfilment is all she has to live for. 

The fact that the lovers later flee Shanghai for Hong Kong seems to take on additional import as those in Hong Kong consider a similar trajectory with their own revolution looming while adding to the sense of continual displacement, disrupted communities, and worlds on the brink of eclipse. This Shanghai is a bleak place too with its lecherous gangsters and seedy businessmen but has a sense of warmth even amid its constant motion in its serendipitous meetings and friendships born of the desire for comfort and company in the face of so much hopelessness. In the end, perhaps romanticism is the only cure for futility just as the only thing to do in a world of chaos is to become a clown.

Shanghai Blues screens Nov. 13 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

The Last Dance (破·地獄, Anselm Chan, 2024)

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When serving the living doesn’t pay, why not make money from the dead? That’s the advice that’s given to former wedding-planner Dominic (Dayo Wong) in Anselm Chan’s touching spiritual drama The Last Dance (破·地獄), but after pivoting towards organising death rituals it’s the living he continues to serve. In many ways, Dominic stands at the borders of life and death, but he’s also an onlooker in a wider debate about tradition and modernity, what we inherit and what we choose to pass on, along with the departing soul of an older Hong Kong as the young flee abroad leaving those who stay behind to carry what may seem to them a burden too heavy to bear alone.

The irony is that though Dominic had been a wedding planner until the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic killed his business, he is not in fact himself married and according to his long-term girlfriend Jade (Catherine Chau) did not see the point in a marriage certificate. One might infer that if he thought weddings were essentially meaningless exercises in vanity then he might feel the same way about funerals and his initial behaviour after taking over the funeral parlour run by Jade’s ageing Uncle Ming (Paul Chun) might confirm that suspicion. Not only does he start selling tacky trinkets as some kind of funeral favours, but makes a huge faux pas with an ostentatious stunt at his first funeral that causes upset and offence to the family. At the very least, it would have been useful to confirm how the deceased passed away before trawling their instagram account in an attempt to reconstruct their personality.

It’s this kind of insensitivity that irritates intensely grumpy Taoist priest “Hello” Man (Michael Hui) who brands Dominic an “amateur” believing that he’s only obsessed with money and intent on exploiting the grief of bereaved families. But on the other hand, Man is only really interested in the sanctity of ritual and doesn’t get involved with the living nor is he very sensitive to the emotional needs of those in the process of sending off a loved one. His entire life has been in service of the ancestors to the point that it’s soured his relationships with his two children. He has no faith in his son Ben (Chu Pak Hong) to inherit his position as a Taoist priest, while Ben resents being forced to inherit a burden he has no desire to carry. Daughter Yuet (Michelle Wai), perhaps ironically a paramedic, would have happily have carried it, but has endured years of being told that “women are filthy” and is prevented from inheriting these traditions because there is a taboo against women undertaking the role of a Taoist priest. The continual sense of rejection has left her with huge resentment towards her father and resulting low self-esteem that sees her engage in a no strings relationship with a married doctor.

Ultimately the film suggests that these traditions themselves are too large to bear, at least in their entirety, and do nothing more than crush and oppress the young. In part, they embody the spirit of an older Hong Kong which is itself in danger of fading away as seen in Dominic’s innovative new bespoke funeral planning services which to traditionalists might seem like they play fast and loose with ancient ritual, but the resolution that each Dominic and Man come to is that funerals are for those who remain behind and while Man liberates the souls of the dead Dominic does the same for the living in taking a more compassionate approach to dealing with those grieving a loss. Not only does his acceptance of the strange requests of a heartbroken mother (Rosa Maria Velasco) branded a “nutcase” and rejected by the local area bring her a degree of comfort, but his decision to allow what seems to be the same sex partner (Rachel Leung) barred from a funeral service the right to say goodbye albeit in secret demonstrates the necessity of doing right by both the living and dead.

As Man later says, in some ways he’s shown him how to do funerals and awakened him to the ways his oppressiveness in his adherence to tradition has prevented him from being a better father. His decision to wear a western suit for his own funeral might indicate a desire not to take this rigidity into the next world while hoping to liberate his children from the burden of tradition and show them that they were each loved and accepted even if it did not always seem that way. Which is not to say that the tradition should not be saved or that this is itself a funeral for the soul of an older Hong Kong, but only that if you let some of it, such as its inherent sexism, go it will be easier to carry when everyone carries it together. “Living can be hell,” Dominic admits and the funeral is a liberation both for the living and the dead. A touching yet surprisingly lighthearted meditation on life and death, what it comes down to really is that death is coming to us all but there’s no point spending your life worrying about it when you should just try to enjoy the dance until the music stops.

The Last Dance is in UK cinemas from 15th November courtesy of CineAsia.

UK trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Victory (빅토리, Park Beom-su, 2024)

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At the end of Park Beom-su’s millennial coming-of-age drama Victory (빅토리) there’s a title card quoting scientific data that people perform better with encouragement. In order to get the headmaster to agree to their starting a cheerleading squad so they can use the clubroom for dance practice, the heroine comes up with a ruse that the moribund football team will play 50% better with the cheerleaders encouraging the crowd to shout their support. But of course it’s really the girls who prosper through a process of mutual encouragement and solidarity.

Set in a small town in 1999, the film’s heroines dream of becoming K-pop dancers in glamorous Seoul. Feisty Pin-sun (Lee Hye-ri) doesn’t see much of a future for herself in Geoje much to her father’s consternation and is forever asking to transfer to a high school in the capital though in truth all she wants to do is dance. The deputy-head seems to have it in for her, taking the clubroom away from them and belittling their dancing while Pil-sun and her best friend Mi-na (Park Se-wan) are older than the other kids having been forced to repeat a year after getting into a fight with a rival school at a disco. Cheerleading’s not something they had much interest in until meeting snooty new student Se-hyun (Jo Ah-ram) who’s moved to their rural backwater with her brother who has been lured their as a top scorer for the school’s football team by the football-crazy headmaster. 

The fortunes of the makeshift team are directly contrasted with the protestors at the shipyard where Pil-sun’s father works. Pil-sun’s father seems to be a man beaten down by life. He’s taken a managerial position but finds himself conflicted in the midst of a labour dispute with his bosses pressuring him to name the ringleaders of the strike so they can shut the protests down. Faced with unfair and exploitative conditions, the men are protesting for basic rights such as not being forced to work overtime  and weekends and having a right to time off. Pil-sun’s father may agree with them, but doesn’t want to risk his job and tries to placate both sides with a spinelessness that later appears cowardly to his daughter Pil-sun. Perhaps as a single-father, he’s mindful of the necessity of keeping his job but otherwise appears obsequious and willing to debase himself in the service of a quiet life. When Pil-sun is once again in trouble in school, her father drops to his knees and apologises much to Pil-sun’s embarrassment.

Yet like the shipyard workers, the girls fight in unity if in this case for cheerleading success. This is after all a synchronised sport that requires the team to act as one. Though they may not universally get on initially, interactions with the team help each to realise their special talents and give them additional confidence to dance their way into a future of their choosing. Meanwhile, they’re each faced with a millennial dread that now seems nostalgic in its references to Y2K and the end of the world. There may not be very much for them in this small town, but there is at least each other along with their burning desire to succeed. 

It’s this  infectious sense of determination that really does seem to improve the atmosphere in this gloomy environment, the protestors also joining in their routine while Pil-sun’s father eventually gains the courage to reassess his loyalties. They are each sustained by the community around them, supported and encouraged by their friends and comrades. The point is rammed home by the fact that Se-hyun’s striker brother Dong-hyun (Lee Chan-hyeong) turns out to be something of a disappointment, while goofy goalie Chi-hyung (Lee Jung-ha) proves unexpectedly reliable telling Pil-sun that he prefers to be the last line of defence rather than the pre-emptive strike as he proves by defending her when the gang is hassled by older kids from another school. With a series of knowing meta jokes (“Girls’ Generation.” “That sounds so dumb.”), Park piles on the sense of nostalgia for a perhaps more innocent turn-of-the century world but equally for the gentle days of youth as the teens dance their way through hardship and heartbreak bolstered by their unbreakable bonds and sense of hopeful determination for brighter futures that are theirs for the taking.

Victory screens Nov. 12 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Concerning My Daughter (딸에 대하여, Lee Mi-rang, 2023)

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The unnamed mother (Oh Min-ae) at the centre of Lee Mi-rang’s Concerning My Daughter (딸에 대하여) has only one wish, that her daughter will find a nice man to marry and have a few grandchildren. But Green (Im Se-mi) is gay and has been in a relationship with her partner Rain (Ha Yoon-kyung) for the last seven years though her mother doesn’t seem to accept that what they have together is “real” believing it to be some kind of delusion that’s holding Green back from her happy maternal future. 

When she suggests Green move back in with her after her attempt to secure a loan to help her out with the rising cost of housing is denied, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that Rain would be coming too while it perhaps seemed so natural to Green that it didn’t occur to spell it out. Green can at times be obtuse and insensitive, unfair both to her mother and to Rain who bears the unpleasant atmosphere with grace and tries her best to get along with her new mother-in-law who is openly hostile towards her and makes no secret of the fact she would prefer her to leave. Of course, some of these issues may be the same were it a heterosexual relationship as the mother-in-law struggles to accept the presence of the new spouse in the family home and the changing dynamics that involves, but Green’s mother’s resentment is so acute precisely because her daughter’s partner is a woman. She cannot understand the nature of their relationship because it will produce no children and to her therefore seems pointless. 

While her attitude is in part determined by prejudice and a sense of embarrassment that her daughter is different, it’s the question of children which seems to be foremost in her mind. Another woman of a similar age at her job at a care home remarks on her maternal success having raised her daughter to become a professor, but she also says that only by leaving children and grandchildren behind you can die with honour. Green’s mother is the primary carer for an elderly lady, Mrs Lee (Heo Jin), who had no children of her own though sponsored several orphans none of whom appear to have remained in touch with her. Now ironically orphaned herself in her old age, Green’s mother is the only one who cares for her while the manager berates her for using too many resources and eventually degrades Mrs Lee’s access to care Green’s mother suspects precisely because she has no family and therefore no one to advocate for her. 

It’s this fate that she fears for her daughter, that without biological children she will become a kind of non-person whose existence is rendered meaningless. Of course, it’s also a fear that she has for herself and her tenderness towards Mrs Lee is also a salve for her own loneliness and increasing awareness of mortality. Green is her only child, and she may also fear that she will not want to look after her as she might traditionally be expected to because her life is so much more modern as exemplified by the bread and pasta the girls bring into her otherwise fairly traditional Korean-style home. On some level she is probably aware that if she continues to pressure Green to accept a traditional marriage they may end up becoming estranged and she will be in the same position as Mrs Lee, wilfully misused by a cost-cutting care industry because they know there’s no one to kick up a fuss about her standard of care.

Even so, it doesn’t seem to occur to her that Rain could care for her daughter into their old age. Resentfully asking her why they “have to” to live together, Rain patiently explains that in a society which rejects their existence, in which they are unable to marry or adopt children, togetherness is all that they have. Green is currently engaged in a battle with her institution which has fired her colleague on spurious grounds but really because of her sexuality with claims that some students are “uncomfortable” with her classes. The violence with which the women are attacked is emblematic of that they endure from their society while even colleagues interviewing her invalidate Green’s concerns because she too is “one of them,” in their prejudicial way of speaking. 

Green’s mother had also, rather oddly, said that her daughter wasn’t like that when Rain reluctantly explained her difficulties at work and again resents that she’s making waves rather than keeping her head down and getting on with her career. Her decision to jump in a car with boxes of biscuits intending to smooth things over with Green’s boss by apologising on her behalf bares out her old-fashioned attitudes, though she too is shocked by the violence directed at Green and her colleague. When her lodgers ask about Rain, she tells them she’s her daughter’s friend, while she avoids the question when her colleagues ask, still embarrassed that her daughter has not followed the conventional path as if it reflected badly on her parenting. 

Yet through her experiences with Mrs Lee and Rain’s constant, caring patience she perhaps comes to understand that her daughter won’t be alone when she’s old and that she too does not need to be so lonely now. There’s something a little a sad in the various ways Green’s mother is told that her attachment to Mrs Lee is somehow inappropriate as if taking an interest in the lives of those not related to us by blood were taboo even if it’s also sadly true that it’s also in Mrs Lee’s best interests to ask those questions to protect her from those who might not have her best interests at heart. What the film seems to say in the end is that we should all take better care of each other, something which Green’s mother too may come to realise in coming to a gradual, belated acceptance of her daughter-in-law if in part through recognising that they aren’t alone and that it’s a blessing that her daughter is loved and will be cared for until the end of her days.

Concerning My Daughter screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Dead Talents Society (鬼才之道, John Hsu, 2024)

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“Why is it more tiring to be dead than alive?” A fed up ghost asks themselves and with good reason. If you thought you’d be able to rest easy in the afterlife, you’ve got another thing coming because it’s just as much of a capitalist hellscape on the other side as it is here. The central conceit of John Hsu’s Dead Talents Society (鬼才之道, guǐcái zhī dào) is that a ghost must must earn their keep by haunting the living in order to provoke large-scale appeasement rituals and the burning of vast amounts of ghost money or risk disintegration and finally disappearing from this world.

In a certain way, this is the paradox of the ghost. They fear being forgotten and only want to be seen mostly by the living but also by the dead in order to feel the validation that they exist and are appreciated. For Rookie (Gingle Wang) , a teenage girl who it later turns out was almost literally crushed by the weight of parental expectation, this was something she was never able to feel in life partly because of her father’s well-meaning attempts to boost her confidence by telling her she was “special”.  He even went so far as to mock up a fake certificate for her while leaving her to feel inadequate that her sister’s trophy shelves were full while hers were empty. It’s this certificate that’s gone missing during her family’s literal attempt to move on from her death and start again leaving her behind. With no place to return to, Rookie will disintegrate in 30 days if she can’t win a haunting licence which is a problem given her mousey personality and the lack of talent that left her feeling so inadequate in life.

Yet many of the pro ghosts are in the same position. Cathy (Sandrine Pinna) used to be the reigning queen, but her thunder was stolen by a former prodigy, Jessica (Eleven Yao), a very modern ghost who’s figured out how to haunt the internet and go viral for scaring influencers to death. In some ways, the living too are ghosts online haunting an alternate plane of reality while it’s through these online personas that we make ourselves seen. After all, in the modern world, there’s no better way to be “remembered” than by achieving internet fame. By contrast, all Cathy has is her decades old trick of backflipping on guests staying in the hotel room where she died in a lover’s suicide over a man who cared little for her. In a hilarious twist, the gang set up the trick on a harried businessman but he’s so busy he doesn’t even really notice any of their ghost stuff and remains entirely focussed on his work. 

Taken in by the gang, the realisation that rookie begins to come to is that she never really needed to be “special” but only herself and for someone to see her as she really was. Her anxieties are those of contemporary youth burdened by the weight of parental expectation and fearing they can’t live up to it. Manager Makoto (Chen Bolin) experienced something similar in life, struck by anxiety while struggling to make it as a early ‘90s popstar while unable to make his mark in the ghost world by virtue of being unable to scare anyone because he’s too good looking. As he tells it, the best thing about being dead is that you no longer need to worry about what other people think and Rookie is therefore free to become herself or else disappear forever. 

Even so, the irony is that the finale sees the central gangs take on unified appearances as if becoming one with one side doing better than the other in their genuine sense of mutual solidarity as a ghost world family. They watch J-horror-esque movies for tips and muse of the contradictions of fame that perhaps we accord those talented that are merely the most visible while these ghosts struggle to be seen in an increasingly haunted world of hollow influencers and illusionary online avatars. Rookie still doesn’t know what being seen means but has perhaps learned to see and accept herself thanks to her experiences in the afterlife. Charming and somehow warm in its lived-in universe of celebrity ghosts and professional hauntings, Hsu’s zany horror comedy may suggest there’s no escape from the living hell of capitalism but that dead or alive you might as well enjoy the ride as best you can before it all suddenly blinks out.

Dead Talents Society screens Nov. 9/10 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Handsome Guys (핸섬가이즈, Nam Dong-hyub, 2024)

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The malicious inequalities of the contemporary society are manifested in an angry goat demon who wants to burn the world in Nam Dong-Hyub’s zany horror comedy, Handsome Guys (핸섬가이즈). Adapted from the American film Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, the film plays with prejudice and superficiality along with the pernicious snobbishness of a society founded on status in which, as a would-be-exorcist later says, some have lost the ability to distinguish good from evil.

Step-brothers Sanggu (Lee Hee-joon) and Jaepil (Lee Sung-min) often suffer precisely because of this inability. They are actually nice, sweet guys who are always trying to do the right thing but somehow their behaviour always comes off as creepy giving rise to a series of misunderstandings. That might be why they’ve decided to buy a cottage in the woods in order to live a rustic life, only the house they’ve purchased is a little more rundown than the estate agent implied and was previously home to a Catholic priest which doesn’t altogether explain the goat-themed pentagram in the basement. 

Like the brothers, Mina (Gong Seung-yeon) is also a nice person as we can tell because she’s the only one of her friends who wanted to give the goat they hit with their car a proper burial while the others decide to just leave it in the road and drive off. She too thought the brothers were creepy, but is also awakening to the fact that Sungbin (Jang Dong-joo), a rising star of the golf world, is a bit of a twit who wields his privilege like a weapon and has essentially invited her on this country weekend as entertainment. He also bullies his friend/minion Byung-jo (Kang Ki-doong) whom they regard as a loser and is evidently willing to bear humiliation merely to be in the same orbit as a man like Sungbin who with his good looks, refined manners and modern manliness projects an idealised image of contemporary masculinity that is the exact opposite of the brothers. 

In many ways, he is the demonic presence of privileged youth damaging the hopes and prospects of ordinary youngsters like Mina. Believing that she has been kidnapped by the brothers, the three guys set out to “rescue” her but Sungbin doesn’t care about Mina at all and in fact only wants to retrieve his phone which contains evidence of his sordid lifestyle which would destroy his prospects of becoming a celebrity through achieving success in his golfing career. Nevertheless, they decide to attack the brothers with mostly disastrous results believing them to be nothing other than idiotic hillbillies if also depraved backwoods serial killers living an animalistic, uncivilised existence that is far too close to the land for city slickers like Sungbin. 

Once again, the brothers are plagued by a series of bizarre misunderstandings based on the perception of their “ugliness” which aligns them with “evil” and demands they be exiled from a society that equates physical “beauty” with moral goodness. To that extent, having been rescued from falling in a pond, Mina becomes a kind of Snow White ensconced in the home of the brothers and coming to understand that they are actually nice, if a bit strange, and merely have difficulty expressing themselves while their down-to-earth homeliness only seems suspicious to those who are a little less honest with emotions.

Their niceness, however, seems to be perfectly primed to face off against the Goat Demon as they become determined to protect their homestead from the likes of Sungbin who has only contempt for them and thinks they’re merely fodder for his heroic fantasy of retrieving his phone and proving his manliness at the same time. In essence, it’s Sungbin who embodies the ugliness of the contemporary society with its hypocrisy and superficiality, its casual misogyny and petty prejudice, while the brothers later vindicated as angelic presences of altruistic goodness. Slapstick humour mingles with a sense of malevolence and an inescapable cosmic irony that plagues the brother’s with misunderstandings and has kept them isolated, “handsome guys” too beautiful for a profane world and attempting to find refuge in their remote homestead and homoerotic relationship but eventually discovering unexpected solidarity with the equally exiled Mina as she delivers a silver bullet to privilege and patriarchy, sending ancient evil back to whence it came.

Handsome Guys screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Love Child (Jonathan Jurilla, 2024)

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A young couple find themselves struggling in an uncompromising society while trying to raise their young autistic son who has complex needs in Jonathan Jurilla’s semi-autobiographical drama, Love Child. Inspired by the director’s own experiences of raising an autistic son, the film never shies away from the inherent difficulties involved but is as interested in the wider social context that makes life particularly hard for parents Ayla (Jane Oineza) and Pao (RK Bagatsing).

The first issue they face is their youth which though termed a “superpower” by a well-meaning older woman makes it difficult for them to raise a child without having had time to generate a financial buffer. Meanwhile, they also face a mild degree of prejudice because they are not actually married nor do they have a religion in a fiercely Catholic culture. The pair were still in university when Kali (John Tyrron Ramos) was conceived and subsequently had to break off their studies meaning not only that they’ve had to change course in life but that they’re locked out of the better paying jobs their degrees would have led to. Ayla was studying to become a lawyer but now has a part-time remote office job that is increasingly incompatible with raising Kali. Her unsympathetic boss complains about the noise and later lays into her about her priorities, claiming that she’s a mother too and she manages so Ayla’s on notice for the next time she infringes on workplace mores. 

Though Kali is now old enough to be enrolled in school, they struggle to find a place for him and are at a loss when he suffers bullying from one of the neighbourhood children after they send him to a government-run special school. It seems their only option is an expensive private institution, but it’s obviously a struggle for them on their already compromised incomes. Meanwhile, they’re constantly recommended other treatments and services that might help Kali’s development and made to feel like bad parents for not being able to afford them. Neither of them can rely on family support as Ayla’s mother disapproved of them having Kali in the first place and is hostile towards him because of his disability while Pao carries a degree of resentment towards his estranged father who abandoned the family and now lives in Australia. 

Pao’s relationship with his father informs the kind of father he’d like to be in his desire to protect his family, but the solutions that present themselves are those familiar to other struggling youngsters and would result in splitting the family up with one or both parents living abroad to earn higher salaries so they can afford the best education and treatment for Kali. Meanwhile, Ayla looks around her former friendship groups and realises that most people her age have either rejected or postponed the idea of starting a family and are instead spending their money on things like travel and entertainment or patiently saving to achieve financial stability. She wonders if they did the right thing or were naive to believe in love and that everything would somehow work out because they were a family. 

Though raising a child is hard enough on its own, the additional financial strain placed on them along with the impossibility of both looking after Kali and trying to earn a living is something exacerbated by the lack of provision for families like theirs especially those without the support of friends or relatives. Sacrificing their dreams to look after their son, the couple do everything they can to ensure he has the best future possible but are often frustrated by those around them who maybe prejudiced or lack understanding of kids of like Kali and the additional care he sometimes needs especially as his developmental process is obviously slower than average and he may never achieve independence. Though some of the meta commentary and references to tropes of a stereotypical Philippine rom-coms are a little on the nose, Jurilla focuses on the love the parents have for their child and their earnest attempts to do the best for him even at the cost of their own health and wellbeing while also hinting at the unfairness of the society around them in which there is little help available to those who do not have the resources to pay for that which should be provided for all.

Love Child screens Nov. 8/9 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Little Red Sweet (紅豆, Vincent Chow, 2024)

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Towards the conclusion of Vincent Chow’s poignant drama Little Red Sweet (紅豆), the heroine says she thinks her family’s sweet soup shop is important because it helps people hang on to memories through food. Like many, May (Stephy Tang) seems to be displaced in a Hong Kong that’s changing all around her while other things stay frustratingly the same from her father’s (Simon Yam) refusal to teach her the family recipe because he wanted to pass the shop onto his son to her brother’s sexist assumptions that the housework is her responsibility while staying home playing games rather than helping in the shop.

Indeed, it’s not until matriarch Lin (Mimi Kung) suffers a stroke that everything she did for the family is thrown into stark relief. It’s clear she did most of the heavy lifting at the shop, especially when it comes to customer interactions which are not May’s father’s forte. He doesn’t speak English and has to fetch Lin when a pair of tourists want to pay. Unable to run the shop alone, he asks his son Boyo (Jeffrey Ngai) to help, but he refuses despite having no other obligations as a cram school student who mainly stays home and plays games. Boyo doesn’t help with the housework either, simply expecting that May will take care of it and him despite his ongoing obnoxiousness. 

Because of his refusal, May finds herself giving up her dream job as an air stewardess to help out in the shop though her father won’t let her near the kitchen and seems as if he’d still ideally like to hand the shop down to his son or perhaps close it for good to free both children from the burden of caring for its legacy. May’s job as an air stewardess may have symbolised her desire for escape but also reflects her rootlessness and sense of displacement. Before her mother was taken ill, she’d suggested using her staff discount to go on a family holiday which would have been their first because her father never wanted to close the shop though it was obviously not to be nor could she repair their familial bonds through her work. Both she and her tentative love interest (Kevin Chu) recall how low the planes seemed to fly when they were children and how distant they seem now reflecting not a broadening of their horizons but the impossibility of escape along with a loss of intimacy and the widening spaces between people.

But as Canadian-Hong Kong travel writer Soar says, it’s the people not the place and it’s the sense of community that May values in the old-fashioned shopping arcade that is inevitably targeted for redevelopment threatening the future of the shop. First trying to resist the march of progress, May eventually starts looking at new spaces but the ones she sees are slick, modern, and devoid of both warmth and character. A journalist who comes to interview May asks her why she wants to carry on a shop selling traditional desserts that might not be so popular among the younger generation but May says that it’s important as they help people hang on to their memories as if she were also talking about an older Hong Kong that is fast disappearing the soul of which lies in the sense of comfort this sweet bean soup provides. Eventually she’s presented with a choice, like many of her generation wondering whether to take her memories somewhere else or stay and try to salvage something from rapidly receding past. 

Her father’s eventual capitulation in agreeing to teach her how to make the family’s iconic sweet red bean soup is akin to a baton being passed, but also a sign of progress in accepting her as his heir rather than insisting on the feckless Boyo whom he also takes to task for his reluctance to look after himself and assumption that it’s his sister’s job to cook and clean for him. Though perhaps bittersweet, there is indeed something poignant in May’s determination to remake a home in a shrinking Hong Kong where community matters and kindnesses are repaid with interest years after they’d seemingly been forgotten. As Soar had said, it’s the people not the place or in another sense perhaps it amounts to the same thing and the taste of home you only find in the warming sweetness of red bean soup.

Little Red Sweet screens Nov. 8/11 as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)