Tag: 2020s

Silence of the Sea (海の沈黙, Setsuro Wakamatsu, 2024)

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Can there be any greater humiliation than having your work plagiarised and the other person’s being better? Renowned artist Tamura (Koji Ishizaka) feels he has to say something on seeing an old painting at an exhibition honouring his late mentor and realising it’s not the one he painted. He doesn’t think he ever had the ability to paint something with this kind of power even when he was young, and he didn’t even use the materials which appear to have given this version a emotional depth that the original never had.

In some ways, this is Tamura’s past literally coming to the surface to show him that his life has been a series of mistaken choices and whatever success he may have achieved it’s come at the cost of his artistic soul. The first part of Setsuro Wakamatsu’s Silence of the Sea (海の沈黙,, Chinmoku no Umi) ponders why Tamura might be so keen to confess this work isn’t his when he admits that it’s objectively “better”, but even if that might be true, he has to concede it isn’t him and therefore shouldn’t have his name on it. Though he appears to have become greedy and vain, trading on his connections and more of a celebrity artist than someone with real and urgent ideas to express, he is apparently willing to burn all his bridges on the altar of authenticity while simultaneously refusing to divorce his wife, the daughter of his late mentor, despite living with another woman and their child on the other side of the country.

But as someone else says, does it matter whose name is on the painting when it is beautiful in itself? Then again, this beauty is intended both to cover something up and to expose it. In his youth, Tamura apparently threw another artist, Lyuji (Masahiro Motoki), under the bus. 40 years later, Lyuji is a master forger living a life in the shadows tattooing young women with his fevered artistic visions. It’s true enough that he seems to see them only as “canvases” and otherwise rejects personal connection while still carrying a torch for Tamura’s now wife Anna (Kyoko Koizumi). He seems to be stuck in the past, forever meditating on a particular pairing, The Silence of the Sea, which reflected his own moment of trauma when his parents both drowned when he was a child. 

The film seems to pain Tamura and Lyuji as two sides of the same coin. The more Tamura’s star rose, the sicker and more humble Lyuji became as if he were literally bleeding him dry. In the words of his assistant, Lyuji had an imperative to depict beauty, but art seems to deplete him. He literally vomits blood on the canvas while struggling to recreate his lost painting and thereby return to the source of his trauma. The sea for him seems to represent life and death along with life’s beauty and terror, while for Tamura it is perhaps merely picturesque even if for both of them the sun is always setting.

One man has almost painted over the other, stolen a life that might have been meant for him though his talent may lie more in an ability to play the game than in art itself. But at the same time, Lyuji has destroyed himself through his selfishness and single-minded obsession with his art along with the internal traumas it turns out he cannot simply paint over. His life is like the candle that Anna makes in his image, slowly melting away and producing only a single tear from a lonely soul. His eventual conviction is that beautiful things need only exist in our hearts and minds as memory rather than as material things. As he says, measuring art in money is mere foolishness, which paints his career of forgery as an ironic revenge against the art world which values only what’s popular and has become a game for the rich to play to enhance their status little caring for the nature of the art itself. Yet this covering up and later revealing of a truth has led to several deaths, among them a man who lived for art and a woman who yearned for love only to end up a scorned muse of an emotionally distant man. The sea took them all, but for Lyuji at least it may finally have fallen silent in the final perfection of his art.

Silence of the Sea screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © 2024 Eiga Umi no Chinmoku INUP Co.,Ltd

Strangers in Kyoto (ぶぶ漬けどうどす, Masanori Tominaga, 2025)

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A former capital city, Kyoto is renowned as a historical centre and seat of tradition. But on the other hand, no one wants to live in a museum and while some of these old-fashioned ways of life might seem quaint or comforting, they’re also burdensome and for some an unwelcome imposition. Madoka (Mai Fukagawa), the wife of the 14th heir to a Kyoto fan seller is full of earnest wonder, but she’s also an outsider here and bringing with her own preconceptions and anxieties. 

To begin with, she’s come as a kind of cultural anthropologist directly interviewing local people to gain material for the manga she’s drawing with a friend. When one of the ladies she’s talking to explains that she runs a cafe in a former bathhouse that’s been sensitively adapted so that his traditional space can find new purpose in the modern world, Madoka is visibly disappointed which of course causes offence to her interviewee. Something similar happens when she interviews a woman running a traditional sweet shop who explains that their top-selling items are their halloween specials. They no longer sell anything that would have been on sale when the shop opened a few centuries ago. 

Madoka, who is not from Kyoto, is obsessed with preserving the city’s “true face” and fails to see that these businesses have survived because they’ve been able to adapt to the times when others could not. Repurposing old buildings to house modern businesses is one way of keeping the city alive. Meanwhile, she idolises her mother-in-law’s traditional lifestyle, but is after all experiencing it from the perspective of a guest. It may very well be much nicer to eat rice cooked over an open flame, but she’s not the one who’s got to get up early to stoke the fire or spend hours stirring the pot. She takes her responsibility as the wife of the 14th heir so seriously in part because she doesn’t understand what it entails. Her husband, Mario, meanwhile is keen to remind his mother that he has a life in Tokyo and won’t be returning to take over the shop, at least as long as his father is alive. 

Mario tries to warn Madoka about the complex nature of Kyoto social etiquette, but she fails to understand and makes a series of embarrassing faux pas that gradually destabilise the local equilibrium. In Kyoto, a particular brand of politeness rules in which one’s true feelings are never expressed openly but only through barbed comments that everyone nevertheless understands. So, when someone wants you to know that the party’s over and it’s time you went home, they’ll politely ask if you want any green tea over rice. This level of subtlety is lost on Madoka who comes from a city where size of the community means you have to be explicit.

It never really dawns on her that mother-in-law might have become so fed up with her that it’s easier just to sell the house and end 450 years of tradition than to tell her go home. Then again, it seems like she may be missing some social cues in Tokyo too, while it’s also fairly obvious in any culture that putting her awkward interactions into the manga could end up upsetting those around her. They do, after all, have a point that it’s inappropriate for her to make herself the self-appointed guardian of a place she’s isn’t from and doesn’t live in, disregarding the thoughts and feelings of those who do (not that they really told her what they were). 

Perhaps as she said she’s beginning to understand Kyoto in this regard by fighting back passive aggressively to claim her right to take over the fan shop. She might have a point about the comparatively ugly and utilitarian apartment blocks taking over the city as old buildings are bulldozed to make way for the new, but on the other hand it may not be possible to continue this business as it is and simply bringing in more tourists who’ll just clutter up the place and not buy anything may not be the answer. What the answer is may not be clear, but Madoka at least seems to have found her little niche in the heart of Kyoto, even if it is no longer so polite as to keep its irritation to itself.

Strangers in Kyoto screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2025 Strangers in Kyoto Film Partners

The Hotel of my Dream (私にふさわしいホテル, Yukihiko Tsutsumi, 2024)

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What does a girl have to do to get her book published in this town? Adapted from the novel by Asako Yuzuki, Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s The Hotel of My Dream (私にふさわしいホテル, Watashi ni Fusawashi Hotel) follows its eccentric heroine through a literary feud with an established master in an attempt to defeat a misogynistic, hierarchal and exploitative publishing industry and finally publish a full-length novel. In part a meditation on identity, the trades on its heroine’s charms and the comedic prowess of leading lady Non.

Set in 1984, the film begins and ends at the Hilltop Hotel popular with writers through the ages thanks to its proximity to book town Jinbocho and the offices of big time publishers. Using the pen name Taiju Aida, Kayoko (Non) is an aspiring author who won her publisher’s newcomer prize a few years previously for a short form essay but has been unable to write anything of substance since after being stung by a harsh review from literary master Higashijujo (Kenichi Takito). After learning from her editor Endo (Kei Tanaka) that Higashijujo is in the room upstairs and is on a tight deadline to complete a story for an upcoming anniversary anthology, Kayoko decides to impersonate a hotel maid so he’ll stay up all night and not make it, forcing Endo to use her story instead.

The irony is that Kayoko’s story is popular with readers and she has real talent as a writer that’s being suppressed by the publishing industry at large in the form of her former publisher, Endo, and Higashijujo. Higashijujo is a representative of a particular kind of older writer and is effectively acting as a gatekeeper by suggesting that young women like Kayoko have no place in the literary scene. Even so, he’s captivated by the story she tells him that’s the same as the essay she later has published which cleverly weaves in some of his own personal details. She plays on his vanity and lasciviousness in telling him she’s a big fan and is romantically naive as if dangling herself as bait. Higashijujo realises that Kayoko is Taiju Aida and kicks off a kind of literary feud in which he disrupts her career and she puts on various different personas to upset or embarrass him. 

Nevertheless, his rivalry with her does seem to stimulate his own latent artistic mojo and have him writing manically once again if partly out of resentment, while Kayoko is forced to change her name again before winning a note literary prize as “Junri Arimori” and writing with a completely different style. On realising that they may both be being manipulated by Endo who is setting them against each other in order to stimulate their writing, they team up against him by attempting to disabuse his daughters of the notion that Santa’s not real only they already know. They were just going along with the ruse because that’s a child’s job in much the same as Higashijujo suggests a writer’s is to conjure a pleasant fantasy for the reader and Kayoko creates a series of false personas further her own literary dreams. 

Yet as Kayoko says she’s not given the kind of support that other writers get and even after getting a book published has to go round to stores on her own to encourage them to stock and promote it. She only rises to prominence by charming a bookseller after catching a notorious book thief who didn’t even steal hers because he only takes “popular” books. Kayoko is indeed a total crazy lady, but perhaps you need to be in order to survive in this environment that’s still dominated by men like Higashijujo writing borderline sleazy novels and hanging out with hostesses in upscale Ginza bars. Resented by his daughter, he stays out in hotels for days at a time, leaving his wife alone and neglecting his family. Kayoko has to fight tooth and nail for her place in this space and to prove herself worthy of a room at the Hilltop Hotel while Higashijujo’s ride was must less fraught with difficulty even if it may not have been easy. The final message seems to be, however, that art is created best in opposition and success isn’t always good for an artist as Kayoko finds herself frustrated, feeling as if she hasn’t achieved all of her revenge but has no left to take it against while perhaps still manipulated by Endo who provides a source of authority for her to kick back against as literary queen trying to hang on to her throne.

The Hotel of my Dream screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © 2012 Asako Yuzuki_Shinchosha © 2024 “The Hotel of my Dream” Film Partners

Streaming (스트리밍, Cho Jang-ho, 2025)

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There’s a kind of collective fantasy that lies at the centre of live-streaming. A bargain between the streamer and the viewer not to break the illusion, but the power dynamics between the two are vague and shifting. The viewers give “stickers” to express their appreciation or try to manipulate the streamer, while the streaming tries to fulfil the viewer’s wishes in the hope of getting more stickers without being too obvious that they’re letting the viewers lead them by the nose.

What Cho Jang-ho’s Streaming (스트리밍) suggests is that the snake is eating its own tail and the desire for streaming success has led the streamers to make ever more questionable decisions and the viewers to demand increasingly extreme action which may cause harm to the streamer or others. There are several points at which we might wonder why Woo Sang (Kang Ha-neul) does not appear to have alerted the police nor do his viewers do so for him. They sit and watch passively while another streamer apparently gets up and takes her own life, some wondering if what’s just happened is for real and they ought to try calling someone or if it’s just another bit.

We might even wonder if any of this is “real” or just a game being played for the benefit of the viewers who each join in with what amounts to a kind of scavenger hunt as Woo Sang tries to track down a missing streamer, Matilda (Ha Seo-yoon), who went missing after he recruited her to help him investigate a series of murders. In his interactions with Matilda, we can see Woo Sang’s own insecurity. He’s clearly brought her on as a glamorous assistant, but she keeps upstaging him and he’s finding it increasingly hard to hide his irritation. When they role play what they think might have happened between the killer and his victim after they snuck out of a nightclub, he takes things too far and shows a dangerous capacity for misogynistic violence. Some of the viewer’s concerns that he may have harmed Matilda in some way in revenge for her taking the lucrative top spot on the streaming charts away from him may be understandable.

But at the same time, Matilda doesn’t quite seem to be on the level either and may, in fact, be using Woo Sang to further boost her popularity and stay number one which would allow her to keep 100% of takings rather than pay the 50% commission to the streaming service. Despite his critiques of other streamers, Woo Sang too is shown to be an amateur detective exploiting the serial killer case for his own gain while somewhat cavalier about Matilda’s safety after using her in his video. In truth, solving the serial killer case might be quite bad for his business because without it Woo Sang wouldn’t have any more material for his show. But then, while shows like this exist, content may also rise to meet them and the film almost implies that true crime gives rise to a kind of bloodlust that simultaneously glorifies the host and the killer who are profiting in terms of notoriety even if the streamer is taking all the money. 

“When interest becomes excessive, it turns into an obsession,” Woo Sang tells his viewers somewhat disdainfully of a man who may have become fixated on the public image of “Matilda”, though it might as well apply to himself and his audience of armchair detectives. “Staging means death,” he intones, though there’s no way to know he hasn’t made all this up himself and it wouldn’t really be surprising given the streamers’ obsession with being number one. Some of the viewers maybe be sceptical, but the truth is they’re all playing this game too and it’s all good fun until it’s not, leaving Woo Sang and his audience in way over their heads. Or then again, maybe his old-fashioned battle of wits with a Moriarty-like killer is just that, which would explain Woo Sang’s strange conviction that he will honour the terms of their agreement not to kill Matilda until the deadline expires even though Woo Sang thinks he’s seen through his attempt to throw him off the tracks. A little muddy in its messaging, the film nevertheless makes plain that it’s Woo Sang that has become dangerously obsessed and deluded by the persona he’s crafted for himself into believing that he alone can bring a killer to justice.

Trailer (Korean subtitles only)

Revolver LILY (リボルバー・リリー, Isao Yukisada, 2023)

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A former assassin is drawn back into the light when an old colleague is framed for the murder of a small family in Isao Yukisada’s adaptation of Kyo Nagaura’s pulp novel, Revolver Lily (リボルバー・リリー). Set in the Taisho era, the film finds Japan at a crossroads amid an atmosphere of rising militarism in what is still a very poor country trying to change its fortunes through imperialism while those like Yuri (Haruka Ayase) attempt to stave off the oncoming apocalypse of war.

Though Yuri (whose name means “lily” in Japanese) had been part of a spy ring in Taiwan and trained to further Japan’s interest through political assassinations, she evidently came to see the error of her ways when the group was betrayed and an attack on their hideout led to personal tragedy. Since then, she’s lived as a well-to-do owner of a geisha house apparently under her own name which somewhat conflicts with the idea that she is simultaneously on an international most wanted list. In any case, she’s swept back into action when one of her former comrades, Kunimatsu, is accused of murdering the family of a man named Hosomi who is apparently on the run while militarists also seem to be intent on finding his teenage son Shinta (Jinsei Hamura).

Shinta, who was born with a lame leg which would presumably rule him out for military service, later becomes a kind of symbol of Japan as a more enlightened nation that no longer sees the need to use violence in order to advance its own interests. His father, Hosomi, had apparently done a series of dodgy deals with the military and then run off with all the money which is why they want to find him. It later turns out that he took the money not so much out of greed as that he was trying to turn the tide by growing the country economically in the hope that there would no longer be the need for imperialistic conquest.

Yet the money becomes a means of setting the army and the navy against each other in an increasingly straitened Japan in which neither feels they have the proper finding to pursue their ambitions. Constant references are made to the devastating economic impact of the 1923 earthquake, yet the authorities spend increasing amounts of money on waging war and there seem to be increasing numbers of soldiers on the streets. The army, in general, are depicted as loutish thugs with little on their side except brute force, while the navy in their pristine white uniforms are backroom plotters and always one step ahead.

But there is obviously a giant irony at the heart of the film in that as Yuri declares at the end, “fighting protest nothing,” having just taken out most of the Tokyo garrison in an effort to protect Shinta so that he can be preserved as a symbol of a new pacifist Japan. Though she tries to avoid mortally wounding anyone, Yuri is still prepared to use violence in order to combat it while the fact that merely fight on the side of capitalism suggests that there is, in fact, already a war going on between competing visions of the nation’s future which are both destined to come to pass. Capitalism, too, however, has its rough edges as symbolised by the grinning yakuza boss (Jiro Sato) who boasts of being “a man you can trust” but is only really ever on the side of greed and power.

Yuri, meanwhile, seems to be reawakened by her latest mission. She tells her assailant who accuses her of living in a state of nihilistic limbo, that she has made a choice a live which also symbolically aligns her with the new future opposed to the death cult that is militarism. Nevertheless, history tells us that whatever promises are made the militarists will win and the people will suffer. Yuri, however, continues fighting for peace with the film making full use of Haruka Ayase’s growing stature as an action star following on from franchises such as Caution, Hazardous Wife as Yuri effortlessly takes out huge numbers of army goons assisted by her female comrades. The closing scenes hint at further adventures for Yuri amid the vibrant Taisho-era setting taking on the forces of militarism with impeccable style and elegance.

Revolver LILY is available digitally in US from 27th January courtesy of Well Go USA.

Another World (世外, Tommy Kai Chung Ng, 2025)

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The Another World (世外) in title of Tommy Kai Chung Ng’s animated adaptation of Saijo Naka’s novel SENNENKI -Thousand-year Journey of an Oni-, most obviously refers to that beyond our own which belongs to the dead and those who exist outside of time, but it also hints at the other worlds that might be possible if only we could find ways to channel our negative emotions into something more positive rather than allowing ourselves to be consumed by rage and resentment.

As Soul Keeper Gudo (Chung Suet-ying) says, the seeds of evil lie within us all though he does not necessarily believe that they destroy humans, rather that they may also push us to survive. Throughout his wandering adventures, the souls he encounters are angry for reasons that are not irrational but a natural consequence of the world in which they live. Goran is a powerless princess resented by her subjects for being the apparent victim of a curse. She blames herself for her mother’s death in childbirth and is consumed by feelings of worthlessness even before her father the king dies and riddles the court with conspiracy. Coming to believe that he was murdered, her rage blossoms turning her into a cruel despot inflicting crazed violence on her subjects until eventually fleeing the palace. Flower City is reduced to Wheat Village where the farmers are pressed by the occupying force which demands half of their already poor harvest and does not much care if they starve to death despite warnings that they won’t eat either if the peasants are either too weak or too dead to farm the land.

It’s starvation that is really the true evil most particularly when it is caused or exacerbated by human greed and cruelty. Echoing Yuri (Christy Choi Hiu-Tung), a young girl who does not know she is dead and is intent on finding her brother from whom she has been separated, Gudo makes this simple act of sharing food a means of connection and identification. Farmer Keung, meanwhile, believes that he can only free the village by becoming a “Wrath”, a creature of indiscriminate violence that arises when the seeds of evil blossom and threatens to destabilise both this world and the other. Gudo tries to dissuade him, showing him that those who succumb to their rage and anger often end up harming those closest to them no matter how much they say they’ll be different. But Keung’s eventual conviction that their salvation lies solidarity and standing together against the oppressive regime eventually backfires when they’re betrayed by its duplicitous soldiers. Ying too, a young orphan exploited as child labour and forced to work in a factory during the Industrial Revolution, witnesses someone close to her literally consumed by the machinery.

The film does not suggest that this rage is wrong or misplaced, only that giving in to it is a choice that only puts more fear and evil out into the world. Gudo suggests the solution is solidarity after all in that anyone can offer salvation, but it also requires time and faith in one’s self. His various charges must learn to forgive themselves before they can let go, lay down their burdens and prepare for reincarnation. This is really the only way it is possible to endure this impossible world, which is not to say that it cannot be changed or resisted but that the means of resistance is to live in the better world that does not yet exist rather than succumb to violence which will result only in more of the same.

Beautifully animated, the film appears to draw inspiration from the work of Studio Ghibli including a few homages in particular to Castle in the Sky, though relying more on verbal exposition than purely visual storytelling or thematic resonance. Nevertheless, there is something satisfying in the depiction of resentments as a series of knots to be untied leading to a gradual liberation as if symbolising the work to be done. The closing scenes perhaps imply that this world cannot be cured, even if the other one may be, but is not itself without hope, and that whatever else may be human warmth and the desire for the world to be better will endure.

Another World opens in UK cinemas 29th February courtesy of Central City Media.

UK trailer (English subtitles)

Wandering (流浪の月, Lee Sang-il, 2022)

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The fact that “people only see what they want to see”, as one character puts in Wandering (流浪の月, Rurou no Tsuki), has a been a minor theme in the work of Lee Sang-il for whom nothing is ever really as black and white as it might seem. Adapted from a novel by Yu Nagira, the film asks some characteristically difficult and necessarily uncomfortable questions while otherwise contemplating the toxic legacy of parental abandonment and the cycle of abuse.

On a rainy day in 2007, a 19-year-old student, Fumi (Tori Matsuzaka), extended an umbrella to a lonely nine-year-old girl, Sarasa (Tamaki Shiratori), sitting out in the rain because she didn’t want to go home. He invites her to come back to his place and she agrees, later asking him if she can stay which she does for a couple of months until the police tear her away from Fumi’s side after tracking them down to a local lake. Fifteen years later, Sarasa (Suzu Hirose) has a job at a diner and is engaged to successful salaryman Ryo (Ryusei Yokohama) but though her life may look superficially perfect there are deep-seated cracks in the foundations. Ryo is a brittle and volatile man who is controlling and possessive, though Sarasa can’t seem to decide if she ought be “grateful” for the life she has or find away to break of Ryo before it’s too late.  

Many of Ryo’s problems are apparently a result of latent trauma caused by his mother’s abandonment. Shortly before paying a visit to his family, Ryo had become violent with Sarasa and though his family notice the bruises they choose to say nothing until his sister, less out of compassion than a kind of spiteful gloating, explains that he’s done this sort of thing before and often picks vulnerable young women with disordered familial histories in the knowledge that it will make it much more difficult for them to leave. Sarasa had herself been abandoned by her mother who palmed her off on an aunt after her father’s death from cancer to run off with another man. The irony is that Fumi is accused of kidnapping her but is the only person to have shown her kindness while giving her the confidence to reassert her autonomy. Nevertheless he is branded a paedophile, while the relative who had sexually molested her while she was living with her aunt is allowed to go free.

Then again, it seems that Fumi does, in fact, have an attraction to young girls though he never behaved in a harmful way towards Sarasa and appears to have taken her in for otherwise altruistic reasons. The film asks the uncomfortable question of how we should respond to a person who identifies themselves as a paedophile but knows that to act on it would be wrong and therefore does not do so. Lee often frames Fumi in Christ-like fashion, cutting to his bare feet on the water of the wooden pier and later in the closing scenes catching him in a crucifixion pose with his legs slightly bent and his arms outstretched all of which emphasises his suffering and mental anguish in being afflicted with these unwelcome desires which after all he did not ask to be burdened with. 

But this framing is further complicated by a final revelation that Fumi is suffering with a medical condition that prevented him from passing through puberty. His body is therefore not sexually mature and he feels himself to be, in this sense, a “child”. Most often what he says is that he is someone who cannot love an adult woman, which is most obviously a way of articulating that he cannot fulfil the sexual dimensions of an “adult” romantic relationship. Sarasa, meanwhile, comes to feel something much the same, explaining that she does not enjoy physical intimacy because of the trauma of her abuse which is recalled to her in Ryo’s aggressive and one-sided love making. 

These are not distinctions which occur either to the police or the gutter tabloid press. The young Fumi had tried to explain to the detectives that Fumi had not harmed her, but they didn’t listen, while the pair later become fodder for malicious gossip when they re-encounter each other by chance and it is salaciously suggested there is something unseemly in their relationship. The gossip ends up costing Sarasa her job, while the notoriety of her past as a kidnapping victim had also been used against her by Ryo not to mention the casually biting remarks of some of her workplace friends. As she says though more of her hopes for her relationship with Ryo, people only see what they want to see and are often unable to look past their biases and preconceived notions.

As it turns out, Sarasa did have other people around her who cared for and supported her such as the sympathetic boss who tried to protect her both from her increasingly paranoid boyfriend and the judgemental guys from HR. She’d forgotten what Fumi had told her in that she was the only person who could own herself and she shouldn’t allow other people to bend her to her will, restoring to her the confidence and independence which had been taken from her by toxic familial history. Sarasa in a sense returns the favour, Fumi also burdened by a sense of rejection likening himself to a weak sapling his mother ripped from the soil before it had a chance to mature, as reflected in the poignant scene of Fumi fast asleep mirroring that of herself when she first arrived at the cafe. Poetically lensed by Hong Kyung-pyo, Lee lends the melancholy tale a poetic quality as the heroes eventually find a home in each other if only to be condemned to a perpetual wandering.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The 2nd Repatriation (2차 송환, Kim Dong-won, 2022)

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“Psychologically, I’m a man who is already buried in the ground,” laments one of the “converted”, “I just wish I could get out of here”. Kim Dong-won’s landmark 2004 documentary Repatriation followed a series of “unconverted” long-term prisoners who had been sent to the South as spies and were later caught but refused to abandon their ideology. A historical turning point in the relations between North and South allowed these men who longed to return home to do so, but others were refused on the grounds that superficially or otherwise they had “converted” and renounced North Korean Communism to live more freely in the South. 

Almost 20 years in the making, Kim’s followup documentary 2nd Repatriation (2차 송환, 2 Cha Songhwan) follows those who were left behind but have never abandoned their ideology in their hearts and are determined to return to the North. Just as in the earlier film, Kim frames them as essentially caught in a kind of no mans land between two nations and two ideologies, used and misused as tools of each but also pawns at the hands of geopolitical manouvering. Though Kim had assumed a second repatriation would follow soon after the first, this was not to be because of changing political realities not only in Korea but in the US whose influence many regarded as essential in brokering peace across the peninsula. 

Kim’s main protagonist Youngshik is a cheerful and vibrant man, but sometimes descends into aggressive rants about “bastard Americans”. As the documentary is quick to point out, there is truth in some of what he’s saying regarding the undue influence of and risks of military dependency on American forces, but the strength of his language often lays bare the rigidity of his ideology. Later in the film, a younger man asks Youngshik if there aren’t things that worry him about the state of North Korea today in the reports of widespread famine, but Youngshik appears to not really listen to him before brushing it off as all the fault of the Americans. Anything that’s wrong with North Korea is the Americans’ fault, but then so is the division itself so callously drawn up as an overture in a proxy war. Nevertheless, in the 2020 US elections he finds himself rooting for Trump based solely on the single issue of North Korean relations believing his election may pave the way for an eventual reunification despite the vast ideological gulf that must necessarily exist between them. 

Youngshik has indeed never given up his mission and is seen giving speeches on the subway and protesting outside the Ministry of Unification crying out for peace. He claims that he “converted” only superficially after being tortured but feels ashamed of his actions. A second issue arises when a group representing the families of those kidnapped by North Korea objects to the repatriation on the grounds that their relatives will not be afforded the same opportunity asking for something more like a prisoner swap. But Youngshik and the North Korean authorities deny that any kidnapping took place, insisting that anyone captured by the regime after accidentally straying into its territory would have been allowed leave if they so wished laden down with rice, fish, and fresh clothes. Another of the converted speculates that they may have chosen to stay because the South Korean state would simply have confiscated everything they’d been given. Some fisherman who did return were punished under the Anti-Communism laws or accused of spying. 

Each side is keen to use those caught between them for their ends with the truth an unintended casualty. Meanwhile the irony remains that both the kidnapped and the former North Korean spies have been forcibly separated from their families by political forces beyond their control. Youngshik insists that he came to erase a border but has since been trapped by it, unable to understand the absurdity which prevents him from visiting his home. On one particular occasion, he is permitted to visit North Korea but only to a single village set aside for that purpose pointing at his hometown which he says lies just over the hill. In any case Youngshik is by that point in his 80s. After he learns that his wife has passed away. He begins to despair wondering what the point of returning home would be. His children would be strangers to him. They may harbour resentment or perhaps they would not get along. 

Despite his convictions life in the North must be very different and romanticisation of it as an exile a dangerous fantasy. Youngshik tells the man who asked him about famine that life the North was easier in part because there was no need to think. Your basic needs are taken care of so long as you do the work assigned to you whereas in the South you have to take care of yourself, no one will help you, and if you cannot work you cannot eat. The life of Youngshik and those like him is necessarily hard, ill equipped to survive in a capitalist society and without support network outside of each other save a few volunteer groups. One of the other men who married a South Korean woman explains that he is still working long hours at a physically strenuous job despite a heart condition because he has no other choice. Another who also married prepares to divorce his wife and return to the North ensuring she will inherit their home and face no financial penalty but otherwise resolved to abandon her in the hope of reuniting with the family he once abandoned if not entirely through choice. 

Only one of the men, who resented by the others, states that he did not come by his own volition and on balance prefers to stay in the relative freedom of the contemporary South. Each of the others is desperate to return and trapped in a kind of limbo unable either to make a life in the South or cross the border into a life which may still be rootless and uncertain. Some say the previous returnees were forced to marry in part to have someone to take care of them in their old age, assuming their families would not or could not do so, and in order to monitor them to ensure they had not been turned or were engaged in a counter mission against the North. In the end Kim is not able to complete his story with the prospect of a second repatriation ever more distant. Even his own trip to North Korea in search of his secret history is rendered impossible. The liaison company ironically suggest he send a foreigner instead, a Korean-Norwegian producer appealing through another Asian nation apparently having more luck. A list of the names of applicants for the second repatriation at the film’s conclusion lists many as deceased while those surviving are already over 90 and left with nothing else than the desire to return to a homeland that seems as if it may have forgotten them.

Budget Hotel Family (ビジネスホテル･ファミリー, Junya Hayashi , 2021)

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A actor whose promotional tour is interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic finds himself pulled into the toxic relationship between a hotelier/film festival organiser and a formerly homeless man he was trying to help in the first documentary feature from Junya Hayashi, Budget Hotel Family (ビジネスホテル･ファミリー). For one reason or another, the actor tries to help his friend evict the man who causes nothing but trouble, but discovers that there’s a weird bond between them and however much he tries to encourage their separation they somehow end up reuniting. 

While on the road promoting His Bad Blood in which he had starred, actor Yu Toyama is stranded in Aomori in northern Japan unable to return to Tokyo because of the coronavirus State of Emergency. Remembering that an acquaintance from the Abashiri Film Festival, Katayama, owns a small hotel, he asks him if he can travel there directly with the director of this film, Junya Hayashi, with whom he is making a documentary. On their arrival, however, the pair are soon introduced to Itagaki, a 74-year-old man Katayama offered a place to stay after discovering him washing clothes at the river. 

Toyama explains that Katayama is a friendly man who makes a point of taking care of filmmakers who visit the Abashiri Festival and has formed strong and enduring friendships with many of them. His family own a small, budget hotel named “Family” which Toyama is shocked to discover has become quite rundown and is currently suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, Katayama is currently training to become a taxi driver to help make ends meet. From what he says, it seems Katayama had a history of taking in people in need and offering them a place to stay while they got back on their feet, but Itagaki has been continually taking advantage of his hospitality and Toyama attributes some of the hotel’s decline to Itagaki’s problematic presence. 

During their first meeting, Toyama seems to find Itagaki amusing and even talks about offering him some work after admiring his drawings displayed on walls around the room. But on interviewing him alone, his view begins to change. Itagaki seems entitled and manipulative, calling Katayama all sorts of names while accusing him of having been violent towards him and suggesting he may go to the police to have Katayama arrested. There is something undeniably chilling in the direction his conversation takes as he makes wild accusations that Katayama is planning to kill him but if he tries anything he’ll give as good as he gets. 

Any good will Toyama might have had towards Itagaki dissipates, but then Katayama doesn’t deny that there have been physical altercations between them in the past, while it also seems clear that Katayama has been drinking a lot and may not have a full comprehension of what has actually been going on. In any case, though he has repeatedly asked Itagaki to leave, he never does and for whatever reason Katayama seems incapable of cutting him off completely. It seems in some ways he may be lonely and identifies with Itagaki as he had with the protagonist of His Bad Blood as someone rejected by mainstream society, feeling unable to abandon him knowing no one else is going to help Itagaki and possibly for good reason in light of everything he’s put him through.

Not only has Itagaki outstayed his welcome he often goes drinking in local bars and starts tabs in Katayama’s name while he even manages to get kicked out of hospital for ignoring the curfew and starting a fight with a doctor, having the audacity to tell them and the hotel they sent him to that Katayama will pay his bills. When they eventually get him to move out, the exasperation on Toyama’s face is palpable on seeing him move into a really nice, spacious, modern two-bedroom apartment which whichever way you look at it seems well beyond his means given that he’s long been sponging off Katayama and maybe others claiming he couldn’t survive on his pension benefits. 

The fact Katayama found him at the river lends Itagaki the air of a predatory Kappa who’s already “famous for doing bad things” and is content to bleed Katayama dry while he can’t seem to pull himself free from whatever spell Itagaki has cast over him. The real question might be why, aside from the film, Toyama continues to play the role of referee between these two people who aren’t related but seem to be bound by some inexplicable force despite his warnings that they are obviously not good for each other. The jury seems to be out on whether Katayama has finally escaped but there is a poignancy in his resulting loneliness in the absence of Itagaki’s evident toxicity. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

Back to the Past (尋秦記, Jack Lai & Ng Yuen-Fai, 2025)

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Can history be changed, and if it can, should it be? In a way, Jack Lai & Ng Yuen-Fai’s Back to the Past (尋秦記) is an attempt to change history in itself in that it’s a long-awaited sequel to a television series that concluded more than 20 years ago. A passion project from star Louis Koo, the film opens in contemporary Hong Kong where the inventor of the time machine that sent Hong Siu-lung back in time to witness the ascension of the Qin emperor is released from being “wrongfully imprisoned” for attempting to change history.

Lung (Louis Koo) seems to have told those back in the Qin Dynasty that he came from a mysterious “hometown” . He’s now estranged from his former pupil, Qin Emperor Poon (Raymond Lam), after becoming disillusioned with his despotic rule. It seems that Lung’s inability to return to the present due to a broken amulet somehow contributed to Ken (Michael Miu) getting sent to prison. Now he’s out, he’s sending himself back to the past because, for otherwise unexplained reasons, he wants to become the Qin emperor himself to prove that it is possible to change history after all. Though it is apparently still 2025 in contemporary Hong Kong, Ken and his team have access to a lot of futuristic gadgets like metal discs that can suddenly transform into motorcycles, transparent holographic communication devices, and a headset that can give you the appearance of another person.

Thus Lung is a man doubly trapped in the past in that he has no way of knowing how the society developed in the years since he left. He’s essentially fighting a war on two fronts as he’s ambushed by Ken’s team, some of whom are only there to loot “ancient antiques”, while in fear of his life from Poon who blows hot and cold over wanting to kill him as a potential traitor. The TV series had ended on a cliff hanger in which Lung’s son Bowie changed his name to “Yu”, meaning eagle, but also giving him the name of the warlord who overthrew the Qin emperor but ended up becoming a dictator himself.

The incongruity of Qin Dynasty warriors facing off against Ken’s ultramodern kit with bows and arrows is indeed fascinating, though the puzzling lack of confusion among Lung’s friends and family is possibly explained away by having seen various other odd things from Lung’s “hometown” in the past. No one is very surprised when he puts on his future clothes either, while the bun clip hair extension one of his wives made him wear gets dropped pretty quickly. Aside from the clash of eras, there’s also a commentary on the nature of family as is perhaps expected for a (Western) New Year movie. Ken is given the opportunity to trade his captured daughter for Lung’s captured wife, but refuses, insisting that he only wants the Qin emperor. When one of his men is killed, Lung tells Poon that he won’t help him any more so he’ll have to make his own way to back to the palace. His wives, however, tell him that Poon is still family even if he did turn a bit evil, and after all he risked his life to save Bowie, so it would be mean to leave him behind.

Poon is the spiritual son who has disappointed his father, Lung by turning to the dark side but Lung can never quite give up on him while as much as he bangs on about having Lung killed, Poon can’t bring himself to do it either and seems to still want Lung’s approval just not as much as absolute power. Trapped in the past, Lung has come to realise that it’s family that’s important so it doesn’t really matter where you are as long as you’re all together. A tacked on “alternate ending” sells the New Year theme with the entirety of the Qin Dynasty cast being beamed to 2025 to enjoy some nice food and a fireworks display all together as a family after which Lung returns to the past and says he’ll never come back to the future. It’s tempting to read his declaration as an expression of the nostalgia inherent in the premise, that Lung wants to go back to an earlier time when things weren’t as complicated as they are now even if he’s still living under an oppressive regime. But at the same time, history can’t necessarily be reclaimed in that way and even for him things have moved on, though of course for those in the present it is still possible to change “history” and perhaps more difficult to do so if you can’t let go of an idealised past.

Trailer (English subtitles)