Portrait of Hell (地獄変, Shiro Toyoda, 1969)

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Asked to paint a vision of heaven, an artist replies that he cannot because he sees it nowhere in this present society. “Over my body and my life, you have absolute authority. But you can never command my artist’s soul,” he spits back at his corrupt lord, but in many ways the lord can command his soul as an artist for he creates the world he reflects for all that he attempts to manipulate him as a man and one he assumes to be far inferior to himself. 

Shiro Toyoda’s adaptation of the classic horror story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Portrait of Hell (地獄変, Jigokuhen) opens with a brief voiceover narration that explains that this story takes place almost 1000 years ago in the Heian era when the Fujiwara clan was at the height of its power. But after so long at the top of the tree, the Fujiwara have become both restless and indifferent in their complacency. “The common people live lives of hopeless despair,” the narrator explains outlining the Fujiwara’s inability to govern as even minor natural disasters give rise to famines and corpses litter the streets. Even nobles now live “lives of perpetual dread” having gained a sense of their own impermanence. 

Lord Horikawa (Yorozuya Kinnosuke) is however seemingly oblivious to the suffering of his people. Yoshihide (Tatsuya Nakadai), a Korean painter, tells him that his problem is everyone tells him what he wants to hear (because they fear for their lives) rather than what is actually happening. During the opening sequence, Horikawa had abruptly decided to leave a public celebration. An old man appeals to some of the guards for money, but they roughly beat him and he is later trampled to death by Horikawa’s frightened bull which had become loose during a storm. The old man dies cursing him, exclaiming that “he has treated us like slaves. I have become no better than an animal.” Horikawa had been told that the man used his last dying breath to remark on what an honour it was to be trampled by the lord’s bull. Yoshihide paints a picture that drives a court lady out of her mind featuring the corpse of the old man under a cherry tree that seems so vivid to her that it emanates a stench of death. Horikawa doesn’t like it much either, and its uncanny realism unsettles his mind. He thinks he sees the ghost lying in wait for him in his own bed and orders Yoshihide to dismantle the painting as if that would make the ghost disappear. 

Horikawa believes the “ghost” is a manifestation of Yoshihide’s rage rather than his own guilt or incompetence. Yoshihide certainly does not like the world the lord has made, replying that he has seen hell everywhere in the cities and the villages while there is no heaven to be had which is why he cannot paint it. Yet Yoshihide and the lord are almost perfect mirrors of each other. Yoshihide is also rigid and superior. He prides himself on being Korean, pointing out that the foundations of the court and of modern learning were all brought over by Korean scholars even if Horikawa claims to have “improved” upon them. Yet some of his fellow painters worry that the style their Korean ancestors worked so hard to perfect has been eclipsed by Japanese influence while secretly considering returning to Korea which has now become prosperous unlike the conditions in Japan. 

Horikawa later slips and calls Yoshihide a stupid “foreigner” making plain his contempt despite describing him as the greatest artist of his generation which is why he’s commissioned this piece of art in the first place even though he had described all of his previous pieces “ugly” while objecting to their attempt to show him how rotten his kingdom has become. Yet Horikawa is correct when he says that it’s Yoshihide’s “infernal arrogance” that has provoked his downfall. Having caught his daughter Yoshika (Yoko Naito) with one of his pupils, he locked her in a shed and exclaimed that no other man would have her. If he had not done so, she may never have come to the attentions of the lord and suffered her eventual degradation at his hand, nor would Yoshihide have been so easily manipulated into a obsessive desire to effectively depict the depths of hell. 

Yoshihide is some kind of method artist who insists he can only paint what he sees. Thus he goes to great lengths to observe hellish cruelty, tying up an apprentice boy in chains and torturing him with snakes, his eyes burning with a fiery intensity. His tragedy is that he comes to realise that the painting reflects not the world but himself. He is hell, hell is here. While his daughter burns, he looks on impassively only to be outdone by her pet monkey who in a gesture of selfless love leaps into the flames. Even so, Horikawa praises the finished painting as a masterpiece, “an impressive depiction of the hell that is our life,” commenting somewhat ironically on the current conditions within his fiefdom. Only latterly does he notice his own role within it, suddenly consumed by his hellishness as if dragged own into the flames despite himself. 

Toyoda shoots in the manner of a classic ghost story, making fantastic use of ghostly effects as Horikawa finds himself haunted by the spirits of those he’s wronged. At times, the screen fills with red light as if soaked in blood or baked in the hellish glow of slow burning flames. He flips between the icy blues of Horikawa’s estate, and the stifling ochre that seems to surround Yoshihide who does after all feed off all this strife rather than seeking to cure it. The two men end up in an impossible game of brinksmanship from which neither can back down, two “arrogant” rivals blindly creating a hell for those around them through their selfishness and vanity. “Life is more hellish than hell itself” runs a final quote from Akutagawa, laying bare the tale’s essential irony in our inability to recognise the hell we create for ourselves and others through our own arrogance and fear.

BFI London Film Festival Confirms Complete Programme for 2023

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The BFI London Film Festival returns to cinemas across the city 4th to 15th October. East Asian highlights this year include stupendous Chinese animation Deep Sea, tense Korean drama Cobweb, and the latest from Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Hirokazu Koreeda. Here’s a look at the East Asian features on offer:

China

Hong Kong

  • Expats – feature-length fifth episode of the Amazon TV series revolving around the lives of three American expats against the backdrop of the 2014 Hong Kong protests.

Japan

  • The Boy and the Heron – semi-autobiographical fantasy animation from Studio Ghibli & Hayao Miyazaki.
  • Evil Does Not Exist – latest from Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) focussing on a construction project in a peaceful rural village.
  • Monster – latest from Hirokazu Koreeda starring Sakura Ando as a mother who confronts a teacher after noticing changes in her son’s behaviour.
  • Perfect Days – Tokyo-set tale from Wim Wenders starring Koji Yakusho as cleaner living a simple but soulful life.

Malaysia

  • Tiger Stripes – femininst pre-teen body horror in which a young woman begins to change in unexpected ways.

Mongolia

Philippines

  • Asog – road movie docudrama following a non-binary schoolteacher on the way to compete in a drag competition soon after surviving a typhoon.

South Korea

  • Cobweb – meta drama from Kim Jee-woon set in the authoritarian 70s in which a director becomes obsessed with the idea of reshooting the ending of his completed film despite the interference of the censors.

Vietnam

  • Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell – 178-minute slow cinema epic in which a man reconnects with his estranged family following the sudden death of his sister.

The BFI London Film Festival takes place at various venues across the city from 4th to 15th October 2023. Full details for all the films as well as screening times and ticketing information are available via the official website. Priority booking opens for Patrons on 4th September, for Champions on 5th September, and Members 6th September, with general ticket sales available from 12th September. You can also keep up to date with all the latest news via the festival’s Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and YouTube channels.

In Broad Daylight (白日之下, Lawrence Kan, 2023)

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A jaded investigative reporter rediscovers a sense of purpose even as her industry flounders while exposing systematised abuse and neglect in privately run care homes in Lawrence Kan’s hard-hitting drama, In Broad Daylight (白日之下). The film’s title hints at its pervasive sense of despair, the problem isn’t so much that no one knew the state of affairs but that no one cared enough to do anything about it while the journalists too find themselves at the mercy of a hyper-capitalistic society. 

A whistleblower close to the end of the film reveals that they’d been anonymously sending photos from the care home where they work because they wanted “to feel human again” and “treat others as humans” only until now no one had taken any notice. They weren’t really expecting that anyone ever would. Top investigative reporter Kay (Jennifer Yu Heung-Ying) is one of only a handful of reporters left on her paper which is threatening to shut down the investigative department altogether if they can’t bring in a big scoop. Kay’s boss is similarly conflicted, not wanting to crush the idealism of rookie recruit Jess in insisting that their work has value in telling the stories that should be told while privately reminding Kay that the care home scandal might not be “explosive” enough to earn them a reprieve from their boss. 

For her own part, Kay is already jaded explaining to Jess that nothing really matters and nothing they write makes any difference when wrongdoers generally get off scot-free. Her desire to pursue the care home story is partly personal in that she’s dealing with a degree of guilt and grief over the death of her grandfather who took his own life in a privately run facility. To investigate one she’s been tipped off is particuarly bad, she poses as the granddaughter of a patient with dementia, Kin-tong, explaining that she’s not visited before because her family moved to Canada when she was a child, and thereafter making an offer to volunteer on seeing how bad things really are there witnessing not only a dead rat in Kin-tong’s room but physical abuse of the residents. 

It would be easy enough to assume that the faults are “isolated incidents” as the regulatory body likes to describe them and mostly down to the presence of the head nurse, Mrs Fong, who is clearly not someone who should be working in a care facillity, but the truth is that these are systemic problems largely born of governmental indifference. A government source tells her that the waiting list for a publicly funded homes stands at 15 years leaving many families little choice but to take what they can afford in the private sector. They are often unable to take care of elderly relatives themselves because they cannot take time off work to do so, or are simply not equipped to respond to their loved ones’ needs. 

But neither are the care homes. The manager, Chief Cheung who is blind himself, in part justifies the existence of his facility on the grounds that it is difficiult for people with disabilities to find homes to take them, painting the community as a happy family home doing its best rather than a callous attempt to exploit the vulnerable run by a dodgy businessman who admits that even if they’re exposed they’ll just change their name and start again somewhere else. Kay asks Kin-tong why he stays but he tells her that they’re all the same anyway. Even when she uncovers evidence of sexual abuse of a resident with learning difficulties she discovers that it’s almost impossible to prosecute because no one wants to put a vulnerable person on the stand opposite their abuser which allows them the confidence to think they can do whatever they want because they’ll never face dismissal let alone criminal proceedings. 

Kay begins to wonder what the point is if, as people are fond of telling her, no one really cares, but also is also forced to reflect on the moral difficulties of the situation. If the home is closed down, it will leave many of the residents with nowhere else to go. Mostly likely they will end up on the streets or in another equally bad private care home while she at least might earn herself a temporary reprieve in achieving the kind of scoop her money-minded editor was looking for. Her boss insists that she can’t change the world, the system won’t change overnight even if people are temporarily outraged. The truth is that these are people who’ve been abandoned by their society and often by their families especially with so many younger people emigrating leaving relatives behind with no one to watch over them. Though somewhat jaded, Kay comes to empathise with the people she meets at the care home and rediscovers a sense of purpose in her work that reminds her it’s worth the fight even if in the end nothing really changes. In many ways bleak, Kan’s empathetic drama is otherwise undespairing in its gentle advocation for mutual compassion and world in which we can truly take care of each other.

In Broad Daylight screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. It will also be screening in Chicago on Sept. 16 as part of the 17th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Legend & Butterfly (レジェンド＆バタフライ, Keishi Otomo, 2023)

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“What was everything for?” an ageing Nobunaga (Takuya Kimura) asks his attendant Ranmaru (Somegoro Ichikawa) towards the conclusion of Keishi Otomo’s historical epic, The Legend & Butterfly (レジェンド＆バタフライ, Legend & Butterfly) produced in celebration of Toei’s 70th anniversary. Oda Nobunaga is such a prominent historical figure that his story has been told countless times to the extent that his legend eclipses the reality, but rarely has been he depicted so sympathetically as in Otomo’s history retold as romantic melodrama in which he and his wife, Lady No (Haruka Ayase), are mere puppets of the times in which they live dreaming only of a place beyond the waves where they might be free of name or family. 

Tellingly, Otomo opens in the spring of 1549 in which the dynastic marriage was arranged to broker peace between unstable neighbouring nations Owari and Mino. Nobunaga’s father’s health is failing and he fears in the chaos of his death Mino may attack, while No’s father fears that her brother will soon revolt against him plunging the fiefdom into disarray and therefore vulnerable to an attack by Owari. At this point, Nobunaga is known as “the biggest idiot in Owari,” a foppish dandy who cares only about appearances. As he prepares to meet No, his courtiers apply his makeup and do his hair while dressing him in a rather outlandish outfit No immediately insults as “foolish”. He treats her with chauvinistic disdain, barely speaking save to order her to pour the drinks and give him a massage only for her to point out that she’s been travelling all day and a “thoughtful” considerate husband would be giving her a massage instead. “I detest women who do not know their place,” he snaps. “I detest men who are ignorant,” she counters. The wedding night ends in humiliating failure as No demonstrates her martial arts skills and Nobunaga is forced to call his guards to rescue him. 

Little is known of Lady No in historical record, but here she is bold and defiant, as her father had said too free with her opinions for a woman of the feudal era. She claims to have been married twice before and assassinated both husbands on her father’s orders, implying that she is essentially sleeper agent more than hostage and will kill Nobunaga without a moment’s thought as soon as the word is given. Yet she also begins to guide her husband towards his destiny, mocking him as a fool but giving him useful strategic advice that wins him glory on the battlefield along with the political advancement that led him to become the first great unifier of Japan. For all that they “hate” each other, they are well matched and have a similar sensibility that allows them first to become allies and then friends before frustrated lovers.

But their love is enabled only when they escape the feudal world, shaking off their retainers to go on a “normal” date in Kyoto where they dance to Western musicians and taste foreign candy only to end up accidentally massacring some peasants when No’s martial arts training kicks in trying to stop a man beating his son. Even so, they are forever linked by their time in Kyoto in the romantic talisman’s of a carved wooden frog and a European lute even if the blood-spattered jizo and buddhist statue watching their eventual connection imply there will be a reckoning for all the blood that is spent. Jumping on a few years, the film does not elaborate on what caused Nobunaga to become a man without a heart and lose the love of his most trusted ally but positions his transformation into the “Demon King” as the kernel of his undoing just as his dream of unifying Japan and bringing about an age of peace (if one ruled by fear) is about to become a reality. 

In any case, the one thing that everybody knows about Nobunaga is how he died though then again his remains were never recovered giving rise to a happier ending in which he and Lady No were finally able to escape the feudal world to chase a freer future beyond the sea which is perhaps what they do in the film’s poetic final sequence in which they might in a sense share a dream connected by frog and lute. It might not be very historically accurate, but that is perhaps the point in hinting at the lives they might have led if the world had been different. Otomo films with a painterly eye that lends an air of poignant gravitas to a tale of romantic tragedy in which love is both salvation and destruction amid the flames of a collapsing temple. 

The Legend & Butterfly screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Those Swell Yakuza (極道渡世の素敵な面々, Seiji Izumi, 1988)

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The yakuza movies of the post-war era had largely depicted the gangster world as being one of internecine desperation and even if the hero was a pure-hearted defender of a traditional honour code those around him were anything but honourable. By the late 1980s, however, the yakuza were increasingly seen as an outdated institution amid the high rise office blocks of a prosperous Bubble-era Japan in which the street thug had given way to more corporatised kinds of organised crime. 

This might help to explain the ironic title of Seiji Izumi’s 1988 comedy Those Swell Yakuza (極道渡世の素敵な面々, Yakuza Tosei no Sutekina Menmen) which simultaneously presents a nostalgic view of gangster cool and a way of life which is more rooted in the everyday existence of a contemporary petty outlaw. The hero, 24-year-old Ryo (Takanori Jinnai), is a former banker who evidently rejected the heavily corporatised nature of the Bubble-era society and left his stable job to open a record store which subsequently went bankrupt leaving him with huge debts to yakuza loansharks. It’s these debts he’s trying to escape by wandering into a mahjong parlour and getting carried away with his early success despite the advice of steady hand Nakagawa (Takeshi Kusaka) who eventually covers his losses when it turns out that Ryo started playing without any stake money. A ageing yakuza, Nakagawa takes him outside to teach him a lesson explaining that the parlour is run by Taiwanese gangsters and he’s lucky to be leaving with his life. Nevertheless, Nakagawa is impressed by his hutzpah and leaves his business card in case Ryo has the desire to get in touch. 

Ryo’s decision to become a yakuza reflects both a sense of emptiness in the Bubble-era society and a nostalgic longing for post-war gangsterism and the theoretical “freedom” is represents to a man like Ryo though of course there’s not so much autonomy to be had in the life of a petty footsoldier who is always beholden to the whims of his boss. Nakagawa becomes to him a kind of father figure, though he’s also someone who has largely lost out in having achieved little in the realms of gangsterdom while his friend and contemporary Kanzaki (Hideo Murota) has successfully climbed the ladder to become a high ranking officer. Kanzaki takes him to task for visiting the mahjong parlour in part because the Taiwanese gang has gained a reputation for dealing with drugs of which their organisation does not approve and it would present a problem if his connections to them were to come out during any potential anti-drug action by the police. By the film’s conclusion, Nakagawa has become something of a tragic figure more or less excluded from the yakuza world while his body is ravaged by alcoholism and his finances by gambling addiction. 

Ryo, meanwhile, seems to live the yakuza dream. He gets stabbed while defending a bar hostess from a yakuza from a different gang and then meets the love of his life, Keiko (Yumi Aso), who similarly rejects the constraints of the contemporary society by refusing the marriage arranged by her father for his own benefit to spend three years waiting for Ryo who goes to prison after shooting Kanzaki in the arm to avenge a slight against Nakagawa who also cuts off his finger to fulfil the codes of yakuza honour. Wandering around in sunshades and flashy suits, Ryo soon attracts a fiercely loyal band of followers of his own and despite the tragedy of losing one of his men to an assassin proves adept in navigating the yakuza world to present an idealised image of masculine cool perfectly tailored to the Bubble era.

Despite the shooting that landed him in prison and the mission of revenge he leaves his own wedding (after the ceremony) to complete in the film’s conclusion, Ryo’s yakuza existence is otherwise fairly non-violent and based in a kind of trickery that makes him seem clever rather than exploitative given that as Nakagawa had suggested the way forward for the modern yakuza is scams not drugs. As one of his prison buddies puts it, there are old school gangsters like Ryo ready to die for the clan, and then there are those like himself intent on filling their boots. Largely, most of these guys are old school yakuza who do obey the code and have some kind of scruples about how they make their money which adds to their aspirational allure as Ryo seems to lead a fairly charmed life of idealised masculinity with a pretty wife and fancy apartment seemingly free of the petty oppressions faced by workaday salarymen. Izumi makes frequent reference to classic Toei gangster pictures from a decade previously with appearance from from genre stalwarts such as Hideo Murota, Nobuo Ando, and Mikio Narita, but lends the action a contemporary spin in the ironic sense of cool even if the implications of ambiguous ending may be far less upbeat.

Asian Pop-Up Cinema Returns for Season 17!

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Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema returns for its 17th Season Sept. 8 to Oct. 7. Opening with bathhouse dramedy Yudo, the season will close with surreal Korean comedy Killing Romance with actor Lee Sun-Kyun in attendance to receive the Excellent Achievement in Film Award. Veteran Hong Kong actor Ben Yuen will receive this season’s Pinnacle Career Achievement award while Ng Siu Hin and Rachel Leung will receive the Bright Star Award and Mongolian actor/director Amarsaikhan Baljinnyham will also be recognised as a Pinnacle Career Achievement Honoree.

Japan Cinema Showcase

AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60610) 

Opening Night Film

Friday, September 8, 7PM: Yudo (湯道, Masayuki Suzuki, 2022)

Toma Ikuta stars as a failed Tokyo architect returning to his home town with the intention of getting control of the family bathhouse currently run by his brother (Gaku Hamada) to tear it down and build an apartment block in this warmhearted celebration of traditional bathhouse culture.

Friday, September 8, 9:30 PM: Hoarder on the Border (断捨離パラダイス Takayuki Kayano, 2023) Special Encore 

A former concert pianist begins to see the world from a different angle after taking a job cleaning houses in Takayuki Kayano’s humanistic dramedy. Review.

Saturday, September 9, 2:00 PM: The Dry Spell (渇水, Masaya Takahashi, 2023)

Toma Ikuta stars as a municipal worker in charge of turning off the water supply at houses that are behind with their bills but finds himself conflicted on discovering two neglected children living alone in a home which is already without electric and gas.

Saturday, September 9, 4:00 PM: Remembering Every Night (すべての夜を思いだす, Yui Kiyohara, 2022)

A series of women wander around Tama New Town each searching for something in Yui Kiyohara’s wistful drama. Review.

Saturday, September 9, 7:00 PM: Insomniacs After School (君は放課後インソムニア, Chihiro Ikeda, 2023)

Two teens begin to overcome their fears and anxieties after bonding over their shared insomnia in Chihiro Ikeda’s adaptation of the Makoto Ojiro manga. Review.

Come & Go (カム・アンド・ゴー, Kah Wai Lim, 2020) Special Encore 

September 8 – 15, 2023 Streaming available for U.S. views at: https://comeandgo.eventbrite.com

A detective investigates the connection between the discovery of an old woman’s skeleton and a series of real estate scams by interviewing the local residents many of whom are migrant workers from other areas of Asia.

Hong Kong Cinema Showcase

AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60610) 

Saturday, September 16, 2:00 PM: READY O/R ROT (不日成婚2, Anselm Chan, 2023) World Premiere 

Actress Rachel Leung is scheduled to do the introduction of the film.  

Sequel to the 2021 film Ready O/R NOT starring much of the same cast and revolving around three couples each facing concurrent crises from dealing with an unplanned pregnancy to infidelity and trying plan a wedding with a meddling mother-in-law.

Saturday, September 16, 5:00 PM: In Broad Daylight (白日之下, Lawrence Kan, 2023)

Director Lawrence Kan and Actress Rachel Leung are scheduled to attend to do the introduction of the film and Q&A after. 

Jennifer Yu stars in this ripped from the headlines drama in which an investigative journalist goes undercover to expose the dire situation in Hong Kong’s care homes for the elderly and disabled.

Saturday, September 16, 8:00 PM: Stand Up Story (說笑之人 Au Cheuk Man, 2023)

Pinnacle Career Achievement honoree Ben Yuen, and two Bright Star Award recipients Ng Siu Hin and Rachel Leung (IN BROAD DAYLIGHT) are scheduled to attend the award ceremony before the film and Q&A after.   

Veteran Hong Kong actor Ben Yuen, who will also be receiving this season’s Pinnacle Career Achievement Award, stars as an intellectually disabled father.

Sunday, September 17, 2:00 PM: Over My Dead Body (死屍死時四十四, Ho Cheuk Tin, 2023)

Residents of a swanky apartment block must band together to get rid of a random corpse and protect their property values in Ho Cheuk-Tin’s dark-hearted farce. Review.

Sunday, September 17, 5:00 PM: Wish Comes True (把幸福拉近一點, Ling Chi-Man, 2023) World Premiere

Actress Rachel Leung is scheduled to attend and do the introduction for the film.

Abandoned by her mother, Xiaofei discovers a “Wish Come True” machine and bonds with a young man, Wai, who is living with a rare disease.

Centerpiece

AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60610) 

Saturday, September 23, 2:00 PM: Harvest Moon (Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam, 2023)

Pinnacle Career Achievement honoree Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam is scheduled to attend the award ceremony before the film and Q&A after.   

Debut directorial feature from Mongolian actor Amarsaikhan Baljinnyam adapted from a novel by T. Bum-Erden in which a chef must return from the city to take care of the harvest after his father dies.

Saturday, September 23, 5:30 PM: A Letter to the President (Roya Sadat, 2017)

Director Roya Sadat is scheduled to attend for the introduction before the film and the Q&A after.

Drama from Afghanistan following a public official who is arrested and put on death row after defending a woman accused of adultery.

Saturday, September 23, 7:30 PM: Like a Fish on the Moon (Dornaz Hajiha, 2022)

Director Dornaz Hajiha is scheduled to attend for the introduction before the film and the Q&A after. 

Iranian drama in which parents search for answers when their four-year-old son stops speaking.

Chinese Cinema Showcase

Illinois Institute of Technology (10 W 35th St, Chicago, IL 60616) Admission Free.  RSVP is required.  

Saturday, September 30, 2:00 PM: Ripples of Life (永安镇故事集, Wei Shujun, 2021)

Wei Shujun’s meta odyssey follows a Beijing film crew to a small town in rural China where everyone it seems is longing for escape. Review.

Saturday, September 30, 4:30 PM: The Best is Yet to Come (不止不休, Wang Jing, 2020)

Social drama based on the life of journalist Han Fudong who exposed the stigma against people with Hepatitis B in China.

Sunday, October 1, 2:30 PM at Claudia Cassidy Theatre: Hachiko (忠犬八公, Xu Ang, 2023) Special Encore

78 E. Washington St. Chicago, IL 60602. Admission Free. RSVP is required. Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, all the attendees will receive an individually wrapped moon cake after the screening, courtesy of the Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in Chicago.   

The heartrending tale of a faithful dog who continued to wait for his owner at a cable car station becomes a poignant symbol for a left behind China in Xu’s Ang’s reimagining of the 1987 Japanese film. Review.

Seven Days in Heaven (父后七日, Essay Liu, Wang Yu-lin, 2010) Special Encore

Director Wang will give a pre-recorded virtual introduction to the film.

September 25 – October 1, 2023 Streaming available for U.S. views at: https://seven-days-in-heaven.eventbrite.com

Comedy in which a young woman experiences culture shock on returning from the city for her father’s Taoist funeral.

South Korea Cinema Showcase

AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60610) 

Friday, October 6, 7:00 PM: New Normal (뉴 노멀, Jung Bum-Shik, 2023)

Anthology film featuring six interconnected tales of love and violence in post-pandemic Seoul from the director of Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum.

Friday, October 6, 9:15 PM: The Childe (귀공자, Park Hoon-Jung, 2023) Special Encore

A boxer finds himself in a precarious position after travelling to Korea in search of the father who abandoned him in Park Hoon-jung’s bloody thriller. Review.

Saturday, October 7, 2:30 PM: Drive (드라이브, Park Dong-hee, 2023)

Director Park Dong-Hee is scheduled to attend and introduce the film and do the Q&A after. 

Intense drama in which a snooty influencer falls asleep in a taxi after attending a brand launch and wakes up to discover she is trapped in the boot of a car. The driver wants a ransom, but not only that he wants her to live stream her kidnapping!

Closing Night Film

Saturday, October 7, 7:15 PM: Killing Romance (킬링로맨스, Lee Won Suk, 2023)

Lead actor Lee Sun-kyun is scheduled to attend for the award ceremony and together with director Lee Won Suk, they are doing the INTRO and the Q&A of the film. 

A once famous actress sets out to reclaim her autonomy from an abusive, controlling, billionaire husband in Lee Won-suk’s hilariously off the wall comedy. Review.

Asian Pop-Up Cinema Season 17 runs in Chicago Sept. 8 to Oct. 7. Further details are available via the official website and you can also keep up with all the latest news by following Asian Pop-up Cinema on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter),  Instagram, and Vimeo.

In Her Room (ひとりぼっちじゃない, Chihiro Ito, 2022)

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The hero of Chihiro Ito’s debut feature In Her Room ( ひとりぼっちじゃない, Hitori Bocchi ja nai) is so pathologically shy that he has become almost invisible, a ghost-like presence not fully of this world. Colleagues ignore him, taxis never stop, and restaurant staff continue their conversations as if he wasn’t even there. At one point he’s run over by a car and tells the police that the person probably didn’t see him or realise they’d hit someone. Only a mysterious woman he later describes as showing him a side of himself that even to him was unfamiliar pays him any attention but then there’s something a little bit sinister in her otherworldliness that causes us to wonder what it is she wants from him. 

Dr. Susume (Satoru Iguchi) is so awkward that he’s taken to practicing small talk with the skull he uses as a training tool at the dentist surgery where he works. He seems almost abstracted from himself, unable to relate to others because his emotions are distant from him. His mother keeps calling and asking him to come visit her because there’s something she wants to talk to him about but he brushes her off, telling her she should do whatever she likes as if disinterested in whatever it might be that she wants to say. In fact, she is the only person who seems to be able to see him, calling out to him from a car to offer him some homemade bread, but he still doesn’t really engage with her. We start to wonder if he has a problem with the other person in the car, Tomoko, a middle-aged woman who may be his mother’s partner though she too greets him warmly and is understanding of his reluctance to spend time with them.

Miyako (Fumika Baba), the mysterious woman who lives in a fantastic flat entirely covered in indoor greenery, asks Susume if he loves his mother but he deflects her question and simply says that he wants her to be happy for the rest of her life. For a time, we can’t be sure if Miyako and her wonderful apartment actually exist or are simply the manifestation of Susume’s headspace as he tries to talk through his loneliness and lack of self, only it later seems that other people see her too and in fact frequent her home much in the same way Susume does which causes him a degree of obsessive jealousy. He is particularly bothered by the presence of Yuko (Yuumi Kawai), a woman who works in a nearby grocery store and is also friendly with Miyako and similarly possessive. He later tells her that Miyako is guiding him towards the person he’s supposed to be, though Yuko isn’t so sure and suggests her existence is a little more sinister. Apparently she keeps a giant ball of hair taken from everyone she’s ever known in a hidden drawer, and then a man apparently took his own life in her apartment though Yuko refuses to share the contents of his note with him. 

Yuko’s words contribute to a growing sense of unease exacerbated by a video Susume watches from a man who sounds like a cult leader who suggests that misfortune may be caused by magic or sorcery, leading credence to the idea that Miyako is some kind of forest-dwelling witch gently luring Susume into her trap. Soon after their relationship becomes physical, a praying mantis is seen climbing on her plants. Susume’s uncertainty is reflected in the carving he is making of Miyako’s face which gradually starts to take shape though is also in its way a self-reflection in much the same way he said that Miyako was showing him a side of himself that only she could see. When he finally delivers it to her, it’s just as blank as her expression, a smooth sphere with a vague outline of personality. She places it quietly in a shed where her various friends sometimes hide to spy on each other. 

The trio attend a weird play together in which a giraffe-man allows his community to eat him because he is a terminal people pleaser of the kind we might assume Susume to be only the play seems to arouse a flash of resentment. He tells Miyako that he thought the giraffe-man’s actions were duplicitous, that he must have been secretly confident that he would taste good and was in a sense showing off. He isn’t sure who he’s most angry with, the people that decided to satiate not their hunger but their curiosity by eating him or the giraffe-man himself for letting them do it. But Miyako replies that to her it’s quite the opposite. The giraffe-man simply wanted to be of use to those around him. A grim image of the dismembered giraffe is later echoed in that of a squashed bug, suggesting that this is what Miyako is doing to her various callers, feeding on their insecurities and leaving nothing more than a bloody carcass behind. 

Even so, Susume begins to realise that he’s being presented with a choice and decides on change, finally facing his mother and embracing her happiness along with Tomoko while expressing a desire to uproot himself to see if he’s capable of change in a different place. Adapting her own novel, Ito allows an eerie sense of mystery to remain never quite explaining the true nature of Miyako or the surreal nightmare sequence in which Susume is chased by a glowing orange entity, but instead ends on an ambivalent note at once hopeful and maybe not as Miyako carefully stores her effigy perhaps just one more trophy in a treasure trove of lost souls. 

In Her Room screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

J005311 (Hiroki Kono, 2022)

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If a stranger offers you a large amount of money to drive to an undisclosed location, what would you say? Hiroki Kono’s J005311 is so named for a bright new star born when two stars already dead collided which goes some way to explaining the central relationship between the two men at the film’s centre. Though they rarely speak, a kind of connection arises between them that changes them both in unexpected and unexplained ways but perhaps gives each a new sense of hope and possibility. 

After some kind of alarming phone call, Kanzaki (Kazuaki Nomura) throws away various things in his apartment and leaves as if not expecting to return. He goes out and tries to hail a cab, but it seems as if the driver refuses to take him where he wants to go. Kanzaki slowly walks away and sits down wondering what to do next before catching sight of a young man running furiously across the road after snatching a woman’s handbag. Kanzaki wouldn’t usually be the sort to chase a thief, but tears off after the man and makes him a rather unexpected offer. He will pay him a million yen if only he’ll agree to drive him to a location near Mount Fuji around two hours away. The man is understandably suspicious and in fact tries to snatch the bag Kanzaki had the money in but is ultimately unsuccessful and agrees to the drive.

No real explanation is given for why Kanzaki is prepared to pay this large sum of money to get someone to drive him rather than taking public transport at least part of the way or booking a car through some kind of chauffeuring firm where long fares are more usual. It may be because he’s afraid whoever called him will find him on a train or bus, which would also explain why he leaves his phone behind at a service station, or perhaps he just wants company and companionship on what is looking increasingly like a final journey. Kanzaki tells the man, Yamamoto (Hiroki Kono), that he’s going to meet “a friend” which is a fairly unimaginative lie he doesn’t believe for a second though he for the moment he lets it go. Later Yamamoto notices he has a rope in his bag while we also see Kanzaki loop its strap around his neck and try to strangle himself all of which adds grim import to his final destination. 

For his part, Yamamoto is wary of the arrangement and also of Kanzaki who is awkward in the extreme. He tells Kanzaki that he can buy whatever he likes with the million yen yet when he asks what he’ll use it for he says he doesn’t know. He says he likes work that’s “easy” like construction or deliveries while evidently supplementing his income with the purse snatching which he remarks gets easier each time you do it. Several times it seems as if Yamamoto may run off with the money, or just run off leaving Kanzaki stranded, but eventually comes back if for unclear reasons that nevertheless suggest he’s begun to care Kanzaki and feels to an extent responsible for him while fearing what awaits him at his destination. 

Kanzaki too feels responsible for Yamamoto, eventually asking him to give up bag snatching as if implying that he’s better than that and ought to respect himself more. After tipping copious amounts of sugar onto his food at a rest stop, Kanzaki shoves a whole pastry into his mouth and seems as if he’s about to cry perhaps feeling rejected or that he overstepped the mark with Yamamoto before suggesting that he might want to walk the last part alone only for Yamamoto to once again return and follow him. In a sense they begin to save each other, bonding in a shared sense of despair if exchanging few words and emerging with a new sense of possibility forged by their unexpected sense of connection. Kono follows the two men with restless intensity, the camera swooping POV style or clinging tightly to them in the confines of the rented car while eventually seeming to vibrate in the poignant closing scenes. At times obscure, the film nevertheless has a wintery poetry and melancholic soul and ends on a note of silent serenity as the two men prepare to move on though who knows where to. 

J005311 screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

You & Me & Me (เธอกับฉันกับฉัน, Weawwan Hongvivatana & Wanweaw Hongvivatana, 2023)

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A pair of identical twins come to consider an inevitable separation on the eve of the Millennium in twin directors Wanweaw Hongvivatana and Weawwan Hongvivatana’s quirky Thai comedy You & Me & Me (เธอกับฉันกับฉัน). Set in 1999 and apparently autobiographically inspired, the film follows the two young women as they face the coming end of the world in Y2K anxiety, but for all that their world really is ending as they find themselves shipped off to the country with their mother as their parents embark on a trial separation with the looming threat of divorce. 

Amusingly named “You” and “Me”, the girls (both played by Thitiya Jirapornsilp) are all but inseparable and reflect that they are glad never to feel lonely and always to have someone to share things with. They rejoice in their sameness rather than resenting it and often use it to trick the world around them so they can get two dinners for the price of one or sneak each other into cinemas on a single ticket. They swap places all the time and occasionally sit exams for each other to maximise their individual strengths. But then, when Me sits a maths exam for You she ends up meeting fellow student Mark (Anthony Buisseret) who “shares” his pencil with her by breaking it in two. Mark then abruptly disappears, but the girls reencounter him once they go to stay with their grandmother in the country (Karuna Looktumthong) where he has also relocated following his parents’ divorce only he thinks the girl he gave his pencil to was You, not Me. 

Mark may be the first thing they can’t really “share” though in a way that’s what they end up doing. Me never tells her sister she likes Mark, and You doesn’t realise it was Me he liked at the maths exam, but gradually he starts to come between them if only in disrupting their dynamic as You starts to want more time away from her sister and Me feels as if she’s being abandoned. Half a melting ice lolly lying untouched in a glass seems to neatly sum up her views about the changing nature of their relationship as sisters. But then they’re also at the age in which their sameness might start to bother them. Me abruptly goes out and gets a different haircut, as if she wanted to play her sister at her own game and assert her individuality even if it ends their childish games of place swapping and trickery. 

The millennial apocalypse is also a symptom of their adolescent anxiety as they try to come to terms with impending adulthood and the changes that will inevitably take place in their lives meaning they too will need to split and necessarily head in different directions though it doesn’t mean they’ll be less close or connected, especially with the “Y2K safe” mobile phones their dad tragically thinks are his next big business opportunity. The film takes them from Bangkok to the country where their grandmother still speaks in dialect and in all honesty Y2K might not matter all that much even if the girls run up grandma’s tab in the local shop trying to prepare for the end of the world. The television news is full of tales of mass suicides and Nostradamus, but their problems are both bigger and smaller as they ponder fresh starts in a new century which is only really the entrance to the next stage of their lives. 

Millennial nostalgia and the laidback atmosphere of the Thai countryside lend the film a peaceful air of serenity as the girls begin shift towards acknowledging their individual identities over their bond as sisters, not exactly rejecting their sameness but adjusting it in considering the future paths of their lives. Playing both sisters, Thitiya Jirapornsilp captures a sense of what make Me Me and You You but also what they are together and the anxieties they each face as twins, something of which the directors have first hand knowledge in repeatedly insisting that in the end twins are just the same as everyone else even if the girls sometimes have trouble separating themselves from each other. Strangely poignant in its Millennial conclusion, the film nevertheless ends on a note of warmth and solidarity in which the two sisters prepare to step into the new century independently and together no longer so afraid of whatever it might bring. 

You & Me & Me screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2023 GDH 559 Co., Ltd.

Wind, Woman and Road (風と女と旅鴉, Tai Kato, 1958)

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Tai Kato joined Toei’s Kyoto studio in 1956 having made his directorial debut at the independent production house Takara Productions in 1951 shortly after being letting go from Daiei in 1950 during the Red Purge (he had been chief secretary for studio’s the labour union). Heavily influenced by and a great admirer of Daisuke Ito, Kato had a passion for chanbara and jidaigeki which were Toei’s mainstays at the time, but even while making what were essentially programme pictures his approach was anything but conventional. With 1958’s Wind, Woman, and Road (風と女と旅鴉, Kaze to Onna to Tabigarasu), Kato embarked on what would become a signature style of “realistic” period drama otherwise at odds with the formulaic nature of the genre. 

As he would continue to do, Kato instructed his cast not to wear makeup and while casting kabuki actor/chanbara megastar Kinnosuke Nakamura insisted on a more modern performance style than the sometimes mannered theatricality of the traditional samurai film. Ginji is cocksure young man living on the road after being kicked out of the hometown he is now travelling towards because of a crime supposedly committed by his long absent father. On the way, he runs into Sentaro (Rentaro Mikuni), a middle-aged man recently released from prison who is struck by his appearance and immediately asks how old he is realising that Ginji is about the same age as his own son who died as a result of a fight. 

The two begin walking together and Ginji tells Sentaro that his village sends gold to the governor around this time every year as a bribe to get lower taxes which doesn’t make a lot of economic sense but evidently works for them. Last year, the gold was stolen by notorious bandit Hanzo the Shark (Eitaro Shindo) and two villagers were killed during the robbery. Ginji half jokes about teaming up to steal it, and then playfully attacks Sentaro leading the entourage escorting this year’s payment to flee in terror leaving the gold behind. Sentaro encourages Ginji to take the money back to the village, but he is later shot by the returning villagers who think they must be Hanzo’s henchmen pulling the same stunt as last year. 

Unlike the typical chanbara hero, Ginji is petulant and resentful. He has a very modern way of speaking and is rebellious in character as you might well expect him to be given his life experiences. The other villagers are not happy to see him and continue tar him with his father’s brush, sure that the son of a thief can’t be any better while Ginji pines for his late mother claiming that the villagers’ harassment along with the inability to support herself economically led her to take her own life. Once a member of Hanzo’s gang he vacillates between a desire to be accepted by the village and that to take his revenge on it. Sentaro meanwhile is determined to save him, regretful that he could not save his own son from the life that he had led as a yazkuza and petty criminal. 

There is a persistent sense that everyone here is at heart a wanderer. The doctor’s daughter Ochika (Yumiko Hasegawa) who develops a fondness for both men relates that she was lured away from the village by an itinerant actor and fell into a life of ruin before returning to discover that her mother had passed away. The headman’s adopted daughter Oyuki (Satomi Oka) with whom Ginji falls in love tells him that she too is an orphan, her father was a medicine pedlar who dropped dead in the village which then took her in. Echoing a sense of rootlessness in the post-war world, they are all in someway displaced and looking to restore connections which have previously been broken but largely failing or unable to do so. Ginji is torn between his criminal past and the reformed future offered to him by the more positive paternal relationship he develops with Sentaro who, unlike his own father, is readily accepted by the village which is unaware that he previously spent time in prison. 

The final showdown takes place in a windswept clearing filled with Kato’s trademark mist as Ginji finally picks a side only to realise that that in the end he will always be a wanderer, a rootless figure whose only home is the road. Kato shoots a little higher than he would subsequently but still rests a little lower than the norm, emphasising a sense of destabilisation in Ginji’s volatility along with a painful longing that keeps him a lonely soul lost in the fog and on perpetual journey towards a long forgotten home.