Soulmate (소울메이트, Min Yong-keun, 2023)

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“Why should you step out for him?” one friend asks another, seemingly cutting to the quick of the fracture point in their relationship though ultimately unwilling to carry the conversation to its natural conclusion. A remake of Derek Tsang’s Soul Mate, Min Yong-keun’s frustrated love story is warmer and shorn of the icy angst which defined the original if also less certain in its implications and in the end profoundly melancholy in the missed opportunities and awkwardness of an unspoken affection. 

In the present day, a near 40-year-old Mi-so (Kim Da-mi) is called to a gallery to witness a giant and intricately drawn photorealistic portrait of herself attributed only to “Ha-eun.” The gallery owner has reason to believe the two women are friends and asks Mi-so to help her contact the reclusive artist, though she says that she knew only briefly in childhood and hasn’t been in contact with her for many years. This surprises the gallery owner as she’s uncovered a lengthy blog that outlines the entirety of their friendship in sometimes painful detail. 

The portrait staring back at her with her own gaze which is also the gaze of Ha-eun (Jeon So-nee) the artist confronts her with the painful realities of her past and the continuing absence of Ha-eun from her life. All we can know for the moment is that at some point they were separated and that Ha-eun has seemingly disappeared, though the Mi-so we see now seems so different from the one we encounter in childhood who is as Ha-eun describes her “free and also very delicate”. 

Inseparable for much of their youth, the relationship between the two women begins to fracture in adolescence as their paths begin to diverge. Ha-eun meets a boy, Jin-woo (Byeon Woo-seok), which necessarily disturbs their friendship by disrupting its dynamic. Unlike Tsang’s original in which it becomes clear that perhaps neither woman was in the end very interested in the boy who was himself a kind of proxy for the mutual attraction they could not articulate, Min presents him as a more conventional romantic rival albeit one who represents the sense of conventionality that the more conservative Ha-eun continues to cling to in contrast to the free spiritedness represented by Mi-so and her love of Janis Joplin. 

Ha-eun is confronted by the darker sides of Mi-so’s unconventionality during a trip in which she witnesses Mi-so get a bottle of wine out of a collection of drunk businessmen by offering to mix them drinks. An argument about money and power dynamics soon returns them to the fault line in their relationship, Jin-woo and their complex feelings for each other. Wilful misunderstandings lead to irresolvable resentments, each believing they are somehow in the way while equally hurt by the dissolution of their friendship and too proud to say so.

Min’s drama decreases the homoerotic undertones of Tsang’s original and opts instead for the defence of a deeply felt platonic friendship that may have developed into an unconventional family unit if given the opportunity. An exchange of earrings on two separate occasions seems much more convincing as an act of marriage than the more literal union between Ha-eun and Jin-woo. Yet maybe that’s the message the portrait was trying to deliver, a sign of an unspoken love that reunites Mi-so with the childhood self who knew it was possible to draw one’s feelings while seeing herself as Ha-eun saw her, Ha-eun’s own eyes reflected back at her. The two women in a sense switch places, becoming one while split in two and eternally connected if physically separated. 

The irony is that it’s the fear of losing it that erodes their relationship, and pride more than shame that divides them even if it’s ultimately the unwillingness to confront their feelings and the inability to articulate them that keeps them apart. Nevertheless, they eventually come to an acceptance of themselves as sun and moon, two halves one whole continually incomplete happiest only in each other’s company. Then again, there are some very unreliable narrators in play and perhaps we can’t be sure that everything we’ve been told is true yet even if not literally so still speaks of a deeper emotional truth and the deepening wound of lost love comforted only by memory and the act of recapturing it. 

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

Trailer (English & Korean subtitles)

Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight (ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道, Teruo Ishii, 1973)

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A nihilistic ronin falls into the hellish trap of the Yoshiwara in Teruo Ishii’s dazzlingly psychedelic period drama, Bohachi Bushido (ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道, Porno Jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido). Adapted from a manga short by Kazuo Koike, the film once again tackles Edo era corruption as a brothel owner with a special connection to the shogun attempts to wipe out the competition presented by an enterprising merchant class only to find himself hoist by his own petard.

Ishii signals his intentions early on with the artfully staged opening scequence in which wandering ronin Shino (Tetsuro Tanba) is attacked on a bridge at dusk. As he turns to slash at an opponent, the blood splatter morphs into the film’s title while the clang of swords gives off little blue sparks that turn into the listings for the cast and crew. By the time the title sequence has concluded, night has descended on the bridge and Shino finds himself engulfed in darkness. “To die is hell, but to live is also hell” he exclaims as he jumps into the water below, hoping to be free of his empty life of killing. 

Unfortunately, he is rescued and brought to the Yoshiwara where they try to persuade him to join the Bohachi clan so called because to do so you must abandon all eight human virtues. The Bohachi’s main line of work is the sexual torture of women until they become docile dolls for their brothel. Shino describes them as “revolting” but then adds “just like me” and agrees to join anyway only to earn their mistrust when he refuses to play along with their games, buying but not sleeping with a woman brought in over a debt. Though Shirakubi, the guy who recruited him, tries to kick Shino out and calls the police on him for good measure, the big boss, Shirobe (Tatsuo Endo), decides he’ll take him in for use as an attack dog taking down anyone who interferes with business be they lords or officials. 

The irony is that the nihilistic Shiro enthusiastically takes to his work because he dislikes the debauchery of the Edo-era society even while working for the “legitimate” brothel owner who is at least “licensed” to exploit women for financial gain. What Shirobe resents is the rise of quasi-brothels in the various teahouses that are obviously selling more than just tea but continue to undercut his business by selling women even cheaper than he does. He also feels betrayed by the various samurai lords who choose to visit the teahouses over his own establishment and therefore seeks to have them frightened into submission by ordering Shino to kill any man found with one of the tea house sex workers. Later he even declares a kind of sex worker amnesty promising to pay five ryo for any of the teahouse women brought to him, no matter by who, and then joking that he’s actually killing two birds with one stone by getting his hands on a high quantity of new stock for a very low price. 

Shino refuses to sleep with the women and is most offended when his male assistant is killed in an attack by the rival brothel owners yet the team of warrior women sent to protect him did nothing to help because their orders were only to protect Shino and Shirobe’s orders must be followed to the letter on the pain of death. He seems to know he’s living on borrowed time and Shirobe probably intends to finish him off once he’s finished his mission of removing all opposition and restoring Shirobe’s power to manipulate the shogun but barely does anything to resist until faced with the rather ironic punishment of being given opium and then forced to participate in a never-ending orgy intended to result in his death in an extraordinary psychedelic sequence from Ishii . 

Of course, what they didn’t reckon on was Shino’s ironic desire to live or at least not to be beaten in which he actively begins stabbing himself to overcome withdrawal symptoms and carry on fighting even when they try to ram him with a giant spear cart. Ears are cut off, flying across the screen followed by arms and then heads. Ishii lends a poetic sheen to the closing moments as Shino is caught in a hero pose alone in the snow but still standing, if barely, and freed at least from one kind of hell if not from many others. 

Godzilla Minus One (ゴジラ-1.0, Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)

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When Godzilla emerges from the waves in Takashi Yamazaki’s entry into the classic tokusatsu series Godzilla Minus One (ゴジラ-1.0), he does so as an embodiment of wartime trauma most particularly that of the hero, Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who failed die. Some might call his actions cowardice, returning to base siting engine trouble rather than doing what others regard as his duty, though the film implies it’s simply a consequence of his natural desire to live, a desire which the tenets of militarism which in essence a death cult insisted he must suppress. 

But for Koichi as he’s fond of saying the war never ends. He’s trapped in a purgatorial cycle of survivor’s guilt and internalised shame, feeling as if he has no right to a future because of the future that was robbed from other men like him because of his refusal to sacrifice his life. When he first encounters Godzilla on a small island outpost, he is ordered back into his plane to fire its guns at him but freezes while the rest of the men, bar one, are killed. Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), a mechanic who had already branded Koichi a treacherous coward, gives him a packet of photographs belonging to the dead men each featuring the families they were denied the opportunity to return to. Photographs on an altar become a motif for him, though he has none for his parents who were killed when their house was destroyed by the aerial bombing of Tokyo. A surviving neighbour similarly blames him, directly aligning Koichi’s act of selfish cowardice with the razing of the city.

The return of Godzilla is literal manifestation of his war trauma which he must finally confront in order to move into the new post-war future that’s built on peace and solidarity rather than acrimony and resentment for the wartime past. But then again, the film situates itself in a fantasy post-war Tokyo in which the Occupation is barely felt and the government, which mainly consisted of former militarists, is also absent. Both the US and the Japanese authorities refuse to do anything about Godzilla because of various geopolitical implications making this a problem that the people must face themselves, though they largely do so through attempting to repurpose rather than reject the militarist past. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), a scientist who worked on weapons production during the war, gives a rousing speech in which he explains that this time they will not pointlessly sacrifice their lives but instead fight to live in a better world which is all very well but perhaps mere sophistry when the end result is the same. 

Called back by their old commander, many men say they will not risk their lives or abandon their families once again because they have learned their lessons but others are convinced by the message that they must face Godzilla if they’re ever to be free of their wartime past. Koichi wants vengeance against Godzilla but also to avenge himself by doing what he could not do before. The film seems to suggest that this time it’s different because he has a choice. No one has ordered him to die, and he is free to choose whether to do so or not which is also the choice of being consumed by his war trauma or overcoming it to begin a new life in the post-war Tokyo that Godzilla has just destroyed. 

Despite the desperation and acrimony he returns to, Koichi maintains his humanity bonding with a young woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who agreed to take care of another woman’s child. Even the neighbour, Sumiko (Sakura Ando), who first rejected Koichi and is suspicious of Noriko, willingly gives up her own rice supply for the baby proving that in the end people are good and will help each other even if that seems somewhat naive amid the realities of life in the post-war city ridden with starvation and disease. In any case, it’s this solidarity that eventually saves them, Godzilla challenged less by a pair of large boats than a flotilla of small ones united by the desire to finally end this war. Like Yamazaki’s previous wartime dramas The Eternal Zero and The Great War of Archimedes, the film espouses a lowkey nationalism mired in a nostalgia for a mythologised Japan but as usual excels in terms of production design and visual spectacle as the iconic monster looms large over a city trapped between the wartime past and a post-war future that can only be claimed by a direct confrontation with the lingering trauma of militarist folly.

Godzilla Minus One opens in UK cinemas 15th December courtesy of All the Anime.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Snow Leopard (གསའ།, Pema Tseden, 2023)

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When a snow leopard breaks into a herder’s pen and kills nine of his castrated rams, the herder traps it and effectively holds the animal hostage in the hope of gaining compensation in Pema Tseden’s mystical drama Snow Leopard (གསའ།). He is reminded that the snow leopard is a “first class protected animal” but understandably asks who’s going to protect him, why is the snow leopard’s life so much more important than his own?

Prone to angry rants, Jinpa (Jinpa) is more often than not portrayed as a snow leopard himself grunting and struggling to get free when the forestry police attempt to restrain him. He says that the herders and local wildlife used to live in harmony. If a snow leopard eats one or two sheep, then they just accept it but as climate change and other environmental forces have pushed them further down the mountain Jinpa feels the snow leopards in particular have become greedy and must be stopped. He wants to kill the snow leopard in revenge and refuses to let it go until the government agrees to compensate him for his financial loss. His rage is such that it’s economically irresponsible, calling in a local man with a digger to rescue the remaining sheep and telling him that it’s fine if one or two die while agreeing to pay the same price as the sheep is worth to have him try to rescue them. 

Jinpa’s brother, a monk obsessed with photographing snow leopards, and father are each of the opinion that it’s spiritually irresponsible to keep the snow leopard bound up as it is the embodiment of the spirit of the mountains. It’s possible to read Jinpa’s animosity towards it as rage against the natural world and his fierce, almost mad diatribes against it as a kind of irrational hatred. Yet like him the snow leopard contains dualities. The one in the pen has a cub on the mountainside and seems to be capable of true tenderness though also violent carnality in its attack on the sheep. Jinpa more than anyone seems to be aware that the snow leopard is simply being what it is, but cannot forgive it for this very personal act of betrayal. 

The monk, meanwhile, has a unique relationship with the captive snow leopard segueing into a surreal black and white sequence in which he eventually sets it free and is rewarded for his act of kindness. This seems to hint at the ways in which human life and animal could coexist but also at the essential spiritual quality of the snow leopard as a symbol of something elemental along with the roots of traditional Tibetan culture which are now on the brink of eclipse. A TV news crew tipped off by the monk with whom the reporter went to school turn up to capture these bizarre events but appear uncertain as to what they’re actually filming. The cameraman is frequently so awestruck that he forgets to film anything while the reporter is constantly fending off calls from his girlfriend.

A farcical stand off occurs when representatives from the government turn up, seemingly looking down on Jinpa and irritated by his demands for compensation while insisting that the snow leopard must be released. He refuses to give in even as they remind him that if anything happens to it, it’s him that will be held legally responsible. The forces of authority are also intruders, making an incursion from the world of modernity much as the snow leopard descends from the mountain and the ancient past. Men like Jinpa occupy a liminal space, caught between the old and the new while their way of life is increasingly threatened by the forces of modernity. 

In a way, perhaps you could say the monk is trying to capture the snow leopard too even as he shares a special affiliation with it that connects him to the land and his culture along with something deeper and older that the modern world may lack. Yet what they need to do is set it free and restore an order that’s natural rather than manmade. Director Pema Tseden sadly passed away at the young age of 55 shortly after completing the film but offers a sense of the eternal in the snow-covered expanses of mountains and the cruel tenderness of those who live there.

Snow Leopard screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Ninja vs Shark (妖獣綺譚 ニンジャVSシャーク, Koichi Sakamoto, 2023)

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There’s a lot going on in formerly peaceful village Okitsu. Not only are villagers washing up in bits after being attacked by a mysterious Sea God, but they’re also being abducted by a gang of devil-worshipping bandits. Koichi Sakamoto’s Ninja Vs Sharks (妖獣綺譚 ニンジャVSシャーク, Youjuu Kitan Ninja vs Shark) is exactly what it sounds like only with added zombies and black magic along with a more prosaic darkness in the legacy of domestic violence, entrenched patriarchy, and social prejudice. 

The twin threats are the reason that the village chief decides to employ Kotaro (Koshu Hirano), a drifter with a good reputation as a bodyguard but a bad one as a man. In the last village, he raped the wife of the man that hired him, Tae, on learning that they did not in fact have the money to pay. This fact seems to be forgotten as the film progresses and Kotaro is seen in a much more sympathetic light as someone who has a genuine interest in protecting the village rather than a heartless rapist and mercenary. In any case, on his arrival in Okitsu he walks in the attempted rape of Sayo (Juria Nagano), a woman ostracised by the village for having killed her abusive father after he murdered her mother. Her father was also the Mayor’s brother, which would make him her uncle though he thinks nothing of declaring her “cursed” and offering her up as a sacrifice to bandits and supernatural enemies alike. 

As Kotoaro remarks, some people only feel safe through oppressing others. The pair immediately bond over their shared outsider status and a sense of loss having been instructed by those they could not save that above all else they should live. There is however a minor love triangle in the determination of villager Shinsuke (Shun Nishime), otherwise fairly ineffectual, to protect Sayo from bandits, curses, and the stigmatisation of the village. Nevertheless the trio end up becoming fast friends even as Kotaro’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of roving ninja Kikuma (Kanon Miyahara) who is set on tracking him down as a traitor to their clan. 

Meanwhile, the leader of the devil-worshipping clan has figured out that he can gain eternal youth by eating pearls and vampirising handsome young men after sucking on their chests and licking their faces. Becoming a many-toothed shark-man in the process he has a pact with a giant shark demon which has been slowly killing off the villagers which is counterproductive because he needs them to produce more pearls. Kikuma also has some kind of dark ninja magic which allows her to create zombies, killing and bringing back the woman Kotaro raped as an undead retainer still hoping for vengeance though Kotaro’s dark past seems to be otherwise forgotten in his newfound sense of righteousness. 

It’s obviously a lot, but Sakamoto mostly makes it work as simply a part of this strange feudal world though the real villain is obviously the Mayor who is not sufficiently dealt with and yes, he probably should have closed the beach not to mention looking for a better way to deal with the Sea God if not the bandits. The titular shark does not appear all that much though there are plenty of other fights and action sequences not to mention severed heads and giant blood sprays along with gory dismembered body parts. Less a contest between man and nature, the battle is between the supernatural force of the shark and classic ninja training which Kotaro is forced to re-embrace in his quest to save Sayo having sworn off it because of inherent corruption in the ninja world. In any case, though they might have defeated the shark and struck a partial blow against the devil-worshippers, the trio each find themselves exiled from mainstream society, unable to remain in the village and seeking a life of independence elsewhere. A post-credits sequence hints a sequel suggesting that trouble is, however, likely to follow them as they do their best to survive in Edo-era society where vampire shark-men may actually be the least of their worries.

Ninja vs Shark screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (천박사 퇴마 연구소: 설경의 비밀, Kim Seong-sik, 2023)

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The titular Dr. Cheon (Gang Dong-won) doesn’t believe in ghosts. Some may see him as a scammer or a conman, but he is a real doctor and sees what he’s doing as a kind of role-play therapy exorcising the demons that disrupt human relationships through, essentially, giving people what they want but were unable ask to ask for. Inspired by a popular webtoon, Kim Seong-sik’s charmingly quirky supernatural adventure Dr. Cheon and the Last Talisman (천박사 퇴마 연구소: 설경의 비밀, Cheonbaksa Toema Yeonguso: Seolgyeongui Bimil) has a pleasing retro quality that recalls classic serials along with the wisecracking heroes of old as Cheon exorcises a few demons of his own while trying to constrain a great evil. 

In a strange way, Cheon’s cynicism maybe a direct result of knowing that ghosts are real and one of them killed his brother and grandfather who was in fact the chief shaman. These days, Cheon is YouTube celebrity exorcist who runs what he calls a “high tech psych” company carrying out fake rituals with the aid of a series of special effects designed by “Apprentice Gang”, or more accurately his assistant In-bae (Lee Dong-hwi), featuring ominous wind and more dynamite than seems advisable. Kim has some fun casting the couple from the bunker in Parasite, on which he served as an AD, as wealthy homeowners with more money than sense convinced they’ve got a ghost largely because because their teenage daughter has recently become moody. Using Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction, Cheon assesses what’s at the heart problem in the family and gives each of them some spiritually endorsed advice such as that the husband should stop buying ugly statues his wife doesn’t like and the parents should cut the teenage daughter some slack. 

As he suggests, every one is happy so it doesn’t really matter that he lied to them or that the ritual was fake because they’ve still been cured of what ails them albeit through some psychological manipulation rather than religious reassurance. Then again, those around Cheon may find it somewhat embarrassing that their teachings are being exploited to make money out of desperate people even if Cheon seems to think it was alright to scam the wealthy family because they can after all afford it. Conversely, he tries to turn down a young woman who comes to the office judging from her clothes that she wouldn’t be able to pay only to change his mind when she flashes a bag full of cash. 

Unlike Cheon, Yoo-kyoung (Esom) actually can see ghosts and ought to be able to see through Cheon but perhaps chooses not to while he, refreshingly, does not take too long to re-accept the fact that ghosts are real after all and this one has a particular bone to pick with him personally. Kim casts the ghost world in shades of blue and gives them untold power, able to fly around in spirit form and possess one person after another in quick succession, while otherwise lending the empty streets a kind of warmth in the orange glow of the flares In-Bae uses to survey the landscape. With gorgeous production design and impressive effects, the film incorporates the trappings of shamanism from drums to lines of prohibition but deepens its lore with a series of key artifacts as Cheon finds himself reaccepting his destiny as a shaman while weilding the sword of justice.

In any case, the film seems to ask why not both, suggesting that Cheon’s fake shaman business is sort of real anyway and in its way provides healing not least to himself. They are all haunted by ghosts of the past whether they see them or not, while Cheon’s eventual quest is one of vengeance that would also allow him to lock away his trauma in a sealed room deep underground and bound by the chains of hell. The sight of the many sutras the villain had placed to possess and control the townspeople suddenly bursting into flames implies a kind of liberation or purification in which the dark presence has finally been lifted even if it may not be for long. Hugely entertaining and fantastically witty, Kim ends the film with a post-credits sequence teasing a potential series and the irresistably intriguing further adventures of Dr. Cheon, fake shaman and real exorcist, showman and swordsman battling evils both ancient and modern.

Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Eagle and the Hawk (鷲と鷹, Umetsugu Inoue, 1957)

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Strapping sailors meditate on revenge and forgiveness while trapped aboard a moribund cargo ship in Umetsugu Inoue’s otherwise charming musical youth drama, The Eagle and the Hawk (鷲と鷹, Washi to Taka). One of several films Inoue released starring muse of the moment Ishihara, the film uses the boat as a kind of metaphor for a reluctance to deal with the unfinished past as several of its crew members are actively engaged in a self-imposed limbo wilfully remaining in a transient space floating between two harbours with no plans to disembark. 

This is most obviously true for the zombified Ken (Kinshiro Matsumoto) who wanders around the boat in a depressive daze unable to get over a girlfriend who left him for another man though as it turns out the bosun too is hiding out at sea waiting for the statue of limitations to run out on the murder of his lover 30 years previously. When two new recruits show up from the sailors union despite only one having been requested, many are under the assumption that they too are running from something on land though the boat itself is a confined environment from which there is no real escape so it’s also an ideal space for confrontation. 

The thing they may be running from is the murder of the boat’s chief engineer in the film’s noirish opening sequence in which a middle-aged man in a sailor’s cap is stalked by a youngster in jeans before being knifed with a ceremonial dagger. If they were running from that particular crime, it might be ironic that they chose this particular boat but then as the murdered man’s son, First Mate Goro (Hiroyuki Nagato), discovers the dagger was part of a set and the other one’s owned by the captain who seems very alarmed by the whole affair. Meanwhile, the captain’s daughter, Akiko (Ruriko Asaoka), has secretly stowed away along with Akemi (Yumeji Tsukioka), the heartbroken former girlfriend of one of the two new guys, Senkichi (Yujiro Ishihara). 

Women are regarded as unlucky on board, and it’s not difficult to guess why with Goro offering strict instructions to the new guys not to try anything with Akiko while one of the other sailors later attempts to rape Akemi with a palpable desperation existing within the crew. There is also a degree of homoerotic tension between the two new guys, the other being Sasaki (Rentaro Mikuni) who typically walks around shirtless in a pair of tight jeans and works hard to give the impression of having a mysterious past all of which leads Senkichi to suspect he’s an undercover cop possibly there after him or one of the other crew members though unbeknownst to (almost) everyone there is another crime in motion on board. 

As usual, it’s the past that’s come calling with Senkichi on the boat ironically running towards rather than away from a confrontation while others desperately try to cover up their crimes or deflect their responsibility for the dodgy dealings of their youth. Both Senkichi and Sasaki immediately remark that the boat’s a “junker” as soon as they get on board, implying that it too is on its way out, its disrepair a sign of its captain’s lack of respect and care for ship and crew alike. Then again, it seems the crew were intent on drinking half the cargo, most of them clearly happy in their work and enjoying a pleasant sense of camaraderie even on this crummy ship and its presumably not quite above board trip to Hong Kong which might hint at why Akemi shows up in cheongsam though for stowaways both women seem to have brought extensive wardrobes which in all honesty are not particularly well suited to life at sea. 

In any case, the boat becomes an unexpected place of healing and forgiveness largely brokered by manly magnanimity as Goro, on learning the truth behind his father’s murder, accepts that the killer’s motivations are “understandable” even while cautioning them against the fallacy of revenge which he insists will only create more hate and violence. He’s also fairly okay with Senkichi romancing his girl, Akiko, who sadly tells him she sees him more like a brother and isn’t interested in marrying him even if that’s what her father also expects neatly reflecting the dynamic which arises between Akemi and the lovelorn Ken who begins to cheer up and consider leaving the boat to open a transistor radio shop only for Akemi to describe him as a little brother while continuing to chase Senkichi despite his interest in Akiko. An expressionistic storm scene provides some divine justice, but also provokes a bittersweet romantic resolution which suggests it’s time to get off the boat and the face the past but with a kind of cheerfulness for the future otherwise at odds with the rage and violence of the original crime. Of course, this being a vehicle for Yujiro Ishihara, Inoue works in a few romantic scenes with his ukulele and a mournful song about the moon and ocean but finally sends him back to dry land a little more “grounded” for having found his sea legs.

Concrete Utopia (콘크리트 유토피아, Um Tae-hwa, 2023)

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“They were just ordinary people” the heroine of Um Tae-hwa’s Concrete Utopia (콘크리트 유토피아) replies when asked about those who once lived in her apartment block. Considering what happened there, her words have a chilling quality hinting at the ways society breaks down and doesn’t in the wake of disaster and fear brings out our worst instincts. Yet on the other hand, perhaps it’s not so far from where we are now as Um’s housing crisis satire makes plain in a patriarchal and status-obsessed society.

“There’s no high and now low now. Everyone is equal,” according to Keum-ai (Kim Sun-young), head of the women’s association at the Hwang Gung apartment block, but of course that’s not true. An opening sequence featuring stock footage hints at the aspirational nature of post-war high rises that as one woman said were designed to give regular people a chance at homeownership though what most people enjoy is the convenience. The irony is that this is quite literally hierarchal living, though there are hierarchies even within hierarchies. When disaster strikes the city, Hwang Gung is inexplicably the only apartment complex left standing in what was previously a forest of concrete. Refugees from other other apartment blocks have made their way into the building, but some want to evict them and not least because they come from “Dream Palace” a more expensive and snooty complex across the way the residents of Hwang Gun believed looked down on them. 

With all these “outsiders” in the building, tensions begin to bubble. One couple wants to evict the non-residents because it took them 23 years to buy an apartment so they’re incredibly resentful that someone might usurp their privilege. Chaired by Keum-ai, a debate develops as what to what residency means with some firmly believing only home ownership is good enough, questioning the rights of civil servant Min-sung (Park Seo-joon) because he is still repaying his mortgage and therefore isn’t technically the owner of this home. In any case, most are unwilling to share despite knowing that many of the non-residents will die if left out in the post-disaster sub-zero temperatures. 

It’s also telling that when pressed to elect a leader, someone says that it has to be a man. Within the new system that emerges, the residents are divided along strict gender lines with the men serving in a kind of militia under the increasingly authoritarian rule of “Delegate” Young-tak (Lee Byung-hun) and women remaining in the building doing stereotypical female tasks. The rules state that the apartments are for residents only, while rations are awarded in proportion the perceived contribution to the community and it is forbidden to go outside. The residents develop a sense of themselves as chosen people, but are also feared by those around them for their cruelty with the rumour that their raiding parties are practicing cannibalism. 

The moral centre of the film, Min-sung’s wife Myeong-hwa (Park Bo-young) was against evicting the non-residents but largely goes along with the status quo until noticing the ways in which Young-tak’s authoritarianism is changing her husband, destroying his humanity and turning him into an obsequious lackey too afraid to resist. Then again, Min-sung was already a little more selfish and conservative than she may have been, secretly wanting to evict the non-residents in the hope of holding on to his property while unwilling to share the spoils with them. It’s this fear, their fear of displacement on losing the social status that comes with homeownership, that drives some towards cruelty even though in a world like this things like property values and job titles are obviously no longer relevant. 

This is may also explain Young-tak’s short term thinking, sending raiding parties out to find more food in the ruins and rubble rather than exploring options for growing new crops or securing water supplies. Flashbacks to conversations with his family reveal that this may have been a longterm problem for him with his wife criticising that he “never solved anything”. Her criticism undermines his sense of manhood in his inability to protect his family, not only unable to provide financial stability but even to keep a roof over their heads having apparently been swindled out of a house purchase. Male failure and insecurity by turns fuel his need for authoritarian power while the men under him, like Min-sung, mistakenly look to him as a leader and seek to emulate his code of masculinity in the desire to claim their own role as patriarchs protecting their families. 

As another member of the apartment block points out, no matter how bad the situation is there are things you should do and things you shouldn’t. Myeong-hwa does her best to maintain her humanity and is perhaps rewarded for it on encountering another group of good people much like herself while others find only more violence and misery. If they had only agreed to share in the beginning, come together and thought seriously about solutions for a better future all this could have been avoided but in the end traditional social values prove hard to abandon with homeownership still afforded special status amid the ruins of society even as Young-tak institutes a mini authoritarian fiefdom complete with secret police and public self-criticism sessions. Darkly comic in its satirical absurdity, Um’s drama is keen to point out what a crisis can do to “ordinary people” but also offers a ray of hope that there will in the end always be those less inclined to selfish cruelty than to an altruistic desire to find solutions that work for everyone.

Concrete Utopia screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Rest of Our Lives (ラストターン　福山健二71歳、二度目の青春, Shinji Kuma, 2023)

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A pair of elderly men struggle to find meaning in their lives in the face of well-meaning infantilism and health anxiety in Shinji Kuma’s warmhearted ageing drama, The Rest of Our Lives (ラストターン　福山健二71歳、二度目の青春,, Last Turn: Fukuyama Kenji 71-sai, Nidome no Seishun). They are not, however, the only ones as even younger people find themselves consumed by existential confusion when reaching a natural turning point and accepting that their lives will have to change. Yet through their various relationships each begins to come to a new accommodation with the present and accept that though their lives may be different than before there are still many things for them to do. 

Kenji lost his wife two years previously having cared for her as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. These days he likes to take a walk around the neighbourhood and then get on with his usual business though even he begins to realise that he’s become forgetful and is prone to doing strange things like leaving the remote control for the TV in the freezer. His son lives far away but is worried enough about him to install an iPad on the wall so they can call each other any time and he can also check in on him to make sure Kenji hasn’t had a fall or anything like that. But to Kenji it obviously seems like an imposition, his son’s basically spying on him and taking away his privacy along with a little of his independence. Satoru has also been checking out homes and recommends an organisation for elderly people where he can get health advice, stay active, and avoid social isolation. 

Only at the centre he starts to feel insulted, irritated that the staff members talk to them as if there were small children while getting them to do weird exercise regimes that make him feel silly. One elderly gentleman, Hashimoto, eventually storms out exclaiming that they aren’t in kindergarten anymore instantly earning Kenji’s admiration. Even so, as it turns out they are very different men. While Kenji is somewhat reserved and polite, Hashimoto is a chatterbox who makes constant inappropriate comments about women he probably only (just) gets away with because of his age and otherwise loudmouth personality. The friendship between them is slow to develop for this reason, but also because Kenji seems to have forgotten what it’s like to have a friend and accidentally upsets him leading Hashimoto to think that perhaps he is just annoying Kenji and should leave him alone. 

At the swimming pool they’re encouraged to go to, the pair run into Kaori, a former competitive swimmer like them struggling to accept the physical decline of her body along the end of her sporting career. Now working as an instructor she finds teaching an uphill battle partly in her buried resentment but also through a lack of empathy for her students unable to remember what it was like to not be able to swim and impatient with those lagging behind. They are all looking for ways to reorient themselves, not so much because of their age because of the immense changes in their lives along with a sense of loneliness. Kenji lives alone, but even Hashimoto who has moved in with his son confesses that the often feels in the way and once again infantilised seeing as they’ve given him a traditional Japanese room which lacks a locking door. 

Yet the realisation Kenji comes to is that their fear of becoming a burden is misplaced. It’s alright to ask for help when you need it and even better to offer it where you can such as in his thoughtful decision to walk a neighbourhood dog that barks all the time because the elderly lady who owned him passed away and her son’s out all day at work. Shining a light on the lives of the elderly in an increasingly ageing Japan, the film is makes a gentle plea for intergenerational solidarity and a more compassionate society that is responsive to the needs of others and cares for everyone equally. Kenji and Hashimoto marvel that even in their old age they still take pleasure in learning new things while allowing themselves to accept help as a gesture of love while making sure to return the favour wherever they can. 

The Rest of Our Lives screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

My Lovely Angel (내겐 너무 소중한 너, Lee Chang-won & Kwon Sung-mo, 2021)

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“You’ve got to be brutal to survive in this world,” according to a coldhearted gangster remonstrating with down on his luck chancer Jae-sik (Jin Goo) for his seeming inability to be as bad as the world around him in Lee Chang-won & Kwon Sung-mo’s touching drama My Lovely Angel (내겐 너무 소중한 너, Naegen Neomu Sojunghan Neo), “You won’t get anywhere the way you handle stuff.” He might have a point, Jae-sik doesn’t really have the heart to be a heartless gangster but for the moment at least has been driven into cynicism by the futility of his life. 

When one of the women in the small troupe of performers at promotional events he drives round in his van doesn’t turn up for work, Jae-sik is irritated and not really all that remorseful on realising that the reason Ji-young hasn’t arrived is that she died in a freak accident. Like most of the other women, he doesn’t know much about her personal life hearing from the police that her family record only lists a seven-year-old daughter. Investigating her apartment he makes two important discoveries. Firstly, Ji-young’s lease is about to expire and there’s a 70,000 won deposit looking for a new owner. Secondly, Ji-young’s daughter Eun-hae (Jung Seo-Yeon) is still in the apartment though she behaves as if she doesn’t know he’s there and seems to survive on packets of bread her mother had left on the kitchen table. 

It takes Jae-sik quite a while to realise that Eun-hae is deafblind, but in any case he ends up moving into the apartment and superficially looking after her in the hope of claiming that he’s Ji-young’s common law spouse and entitled to the deposit money and anything else Ji-young might have to bequeath. But as he discovers, deafblind people find themselves trapped in an awkward limbo of the contemporary welfare system which recognises only deaf or blind people, leaving those who are unable to see or hear without any kind of support. Jae-sik tries to take Eun-hae to school, but she’s put in a class for blind children which is taught through spoken language that she is obviously unable to hear. Jae-sik complains that the classes are no good for her while she becomes obviously bored and frustrated by them, but the teacher’s only suggestion is that she also take the classes for deaf children which are taught in visual media she obviously can’t see. 

Of course, to begin with Jae-sik only accepts Eun-hae as a means of getting the money, otherwise little interested in what will happen to her now. He tries to ring her estranged birth father, but he rejects all responsibility for her presumably having walked out on the relationship because of his reluctance to care for a child with special needs. Jae-sik tells the landlady, who thinks he’s Eun-hae’s dad, that he’s looking for a nanny because he wouldn’t be able to care for her on his own while working only for the landlady to point out that Ji-young was managing it alright hinting at the patriarchal double standards which still see childcare as an inherently female domain. 

Still despite himself, Jae-sik begins to bond with Eun-hae who is after all completely dependent on him. He begins to communicate with her through teaching her words written in hangul by tracing them on her palm, while she seems to blossom in a new world of sensation when the pair embark on a road trip to the country. Though his past chases him, the further Jae-sik travels from the city the less cynical he seems to become no longer interested solely in money but beginning to care about those around him, not just Eun-hae but those he meets along his journey many of whom are also dealing with their own problems which sometimes echo his own as in a single-mother’s attempts to care for her ageing father as his dementia worsens. Lee & Kwon lend a golden glow to the expanses of the rural farmland where Jae-sik and Eun-hae find themselves taking refuge, Eun-hae in thrall to the natural world cheerfully dancing in the rain, smelling the flowers, and befriending animals even as the city snaps at their heels. Avoiding obvious sentimentality, the film nevertheless tells a poignant story of paternal redemption and the blossoming of a little girl finally finding a means to express herself.

My Lovely Angel screened as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)