Tag: 2020s

Sabakan (サバカン SABAKAN, Tomoki Kanazawa, 2022)

Posted on by

A melancholy middle-aged writer looks back to a climactic summer of his youth and the ghost of fractured friendship in Tomoki Kanazawa’s heartwarming nostalgia fest, Sabakan (サバカン SABAKAN). A classic summer adventure movie, the film finds a sense of warmth in childhood memory but also reflects on all that at the time it was impossible to understand along with a sadness in the inevitable end of summer as two boys chase the spectre of dolphins in an otherwise tranquil seaside town.

In the present day, Takaaki (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi) is a struggling author and divorced father already behind on his child support. When he mentions working on another novel, his agent laughs at him that books like that don’t sell while trying to convince him to take a job ghostwriting for an Instagram influencer going viral for her dieting tips. Perhaps because the agent had described his writing as “quick and easy to read”, essentially anonymous and empty, he begins meditating on his childhood self repeatedly praised for his writing by a teacher who is perhaps a little easily moved. 

The summer of 1986 was the beginning of the Bubble era and Takaaki’s memories are indeed filled with a series of cultural touchstones such as the idol Yuki Saito whose poster the young Takaaki sometimes kisses after dancing around singing her hits. All of which is one reason why the poverty of his classmate Kenji (Konosuke Harada) has made him even more of an outcast bullied by the other kids who follow him home and make fun of the rundown house with tarp covering the roof that he lives in with his mother (Shihori Kanjiya) and several siblings. His fisherman father died some years ago and his mother works in the local supermarket doing her best to support five kinds on a part-timer’s salary. Kenji takes a liking to Takaaki because he’s the only kid who didn’t join with the others when they laughed at him, more or less blackmailing him into a summer adventure looking for dolphins in a cove over the mountain. 

Even the younger Takaaki reflects there probably weren’t any dolphins in the first place, Kenji just wanted to go on adventure with him and didn’t otherwise know how to ask. A careless word from his otherwise warm and supportive mother provokes a minor rift in the boys’ relationship that despite himself the younger Takaaki didn’t quite understand causing him to pull away from Kenji in an unwarranted sense of rejection unable to recognise that he is simply awkward and has low self-esteem which caused him to question the reality of their friendship. In any case though they are later separated by unexpected tragedy, their connection becomes a touchstone for each of them reminding them that they are not alone even if no longer together. 

Kanazawa captures an impish sense of fun the boys’ adventure as they find themselves in a tricky situation with a trio of thuggish delinquents and meet an equally melancholy teenage girl at the shore who stares mournfully at a washed up can of Korean soda and explains sadly as she looks out over the sea that she herself has not been there yet. The Yuki Saito poster comes down, signalling the arrival of a coming of age and the putting away of childish things as Takaaki moves into a more concrete adulthood while still floundering in adolescent confusion and the inability to fully understand his new friendship or its growing importance in his life. 

The adult him understands only too well, meditating on his memories and triggered by nostalgia on seeing a can of mackerel and remembering the carefree summer of his youth. The rediscovery of a childhood bond begins to open him up both artistically and in his relationship with the wife and daughter from whom he is separated. Told with humour and warmth, the film is filled with a sense of childhood wonder and the comfort of the everyday largely undimmed by the entrance of tragedy and the essential sadness of summer’s end. Even so it allows its melancholy hero to find a kind of salvation not only in childhood memories of dolphins and canned mackerel but in the enduring quality of a friendship that itself may have become distant.

Sabakan screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Little Blue (小藍, Lee Yi Fang, 2022)

Posted on by

Mother and daughter find themselves in eerily similar situations when dealing with a social double standard in Lee Yi Fang’s pointed drama, Little Blue (小藍). At heart refreshingly sex positive, the film nevertheless asks why some people seem to be hung up on what is a perfectly normal part of life while simultaneously exploring how sexuality can be misused or exploited and mostly particularly that of the young and naive. “I sometimes feel like my body’s not mine,” the titular Xiaolan (Wang Yu-xuan) confesses to a befuddled teacher who explains to her that she’s gone “astray”, while she might as it happens have a point. 

The opening sequence is witness to the transformation Xiaolan subsequently undergoes. Describing herself as incredibly confused, unable to understand what the teacher is getting at when he asks her why she didn’t come to him when it started, this Xiaolan is wearing makeup and has a fashionable hairstyle. But flashing back a few weeks, the Xiaolan we then encounter is shy and mousy. She has long, lank hair and glasses in contrast to her more glamorous friend Kyueiyu who needles her about hair removal techniques and the realities of contemporary dating. 

This Xiaolan is mildly resentful of her mother whom the other kids brand as “hot” when she turns up with a lunch box Xiaolan had forgotten. Vivi (Helena Hsu) is an estate agent who works late and leaves Xiaolan to get her own dinner but also has a very active sex life and an annoying boyfriend who keeps sexting her and sending videos of questionable taste at inappropriate moments. There’s probably something in the fact that aside from Xiaolan’s high school boyfriend Wu Miao (Ye Ting-qi), the otherwise unavailable men all have Western names. Vivi’s sleazy boyfriend goes by Matt, while she later starts an affair with a married client, Kris, and Xiaolan finds herself drawn to a slightly older guy she hooks up with on a dating app who tells her that he has a girlfriend and his name is “Tim” (Roy Chang). 

Just as Wu Miao had after seducing her on a beach, Tim soon starts ignoring Xiaolan’s messages. After all, he has a girlfriend and probably doesn’t want to be bothered by a genuine connection with a dating app hook up. Xiaolan experiences a kind of breakdown after handsome footballer Wu Miao shares an explicit photo of her with a friend who then “accidentally” posts it on the class chat if only to delete it seconds later. Wu Miao isn’t visible in the photo even if everyone knows he’s on the other side of it, but in any case it’s only Xiaolan who suffers a repetitional loss and is shamed by her classmates. It’s in the wake of his shunning that Xiaolan turns to dating apps, hoping to satiate her curiosity and desire but in the end discovering only more loneliness. Taking her to task, Vivi claps back that at least she gets a “thrill” from her otherwise painful love affairs whereas Xiaolan doesn’t seem very happy at all and gives the impression that her dating app odyssey is at least in part an act of self harm. 

Nevertheless, mother and daughter eventually begin to bond over the irony of their parallel crircumstances if only in the knowledge that it doesn’t really get any better and in the end female solidarity may be all there really is. Lee shoots the changing Xiaolan in melancholy shades of blue that of course eco her name but also lend her world an isolating quality that traps her within her own shame and uncertainty. Even the teacher who attempts to talk to her about her waywardness ends up becoming inappropriately aroused. Xiaolan tells him that he’s “very normal” and hasn’t done anything wrong in a moment that seems both a mic drop and somehow transgressive, allowing Xiaolan to offer the sex positive message she should have received while ironically highlighting that the teacher’s response, as unconscious as it may have been, is necessarily problematic. 

In any case, Xiaolan is finally able to reclaim herself and sexuality as perhaps is Vivi as something that belongs to her alone rather than for others. She’d begun to change herself to be accepted, getting contacts, stealing her mum’s makeup and following her friend’s beauty techniques but still found herself rejected and reduced to a mere body much as Vivi is described as a spare time girl realising that Kris only sees her as a temporary escape from his familial responsibilities. Maybe Vivi saw it the same way, too wrapped up in her own problems to deal with her daughter’s, but what emerges between them seems to be healthier kind of emotional honesty that, ironically, neither found in the arms of their duplicitous men. 

Little Blue screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Youth (Spring) (青春, Wang Bing, 2023)

Posted on by

There’s an almost eerie quality to the absence of age in Wang Bing’s sprawling exploration of the Zhili textile industry Youth (Spring). Perhaps for reasons of tact, the ages of older workers, unlike those under 35, are not displayed while they are also predominantly female. One has to wonder where the young men who currently work on the shop floor will later end up if they generally do not stay in this line of work though alternatively it may be further evidence of generational shift in which the young men of 30 or 40 years ago simply did not take up jobs as seamstresses. In any case, the only older men we see here are factory owners and floor managers while the older women are often at the forefront of mostly futile attempts at collective bargaining. 

Many young migrant workers apparently prefer the factories in Zhili because they offer a greater degree of freedom than the large state-run complexes which often micromanage the lives of their employees in almost prison-like conditions. But then it’s also obvious that they struggle and largely cannot earn a living wage despite the long hours they are often forced to put in. One younger worker tries to complain about the lack of overtime pay on offer, explaining that he needs to make at least 4-500 yuan a day and cannot do that without the extra payment but the manager simply tells him that he pays better than other shops and in any case there are plenty of rural youngsters who will be happy to take his job. 

The later part of the film is largely concerned with attempts at collective bargaining led by veteran workers who find themselves frustrated by the system. This kind of work is often seasonal and ironically unavailable in the spring during which many workers return home to their villagers. They are paid on piece rate contracts but the rate is set by the kinds of garments they’re making and they often can’t know how much money they’ll be getting by the end of the season. Consequently they try to work up the rate on certain items while at times resentful of other workers who’ve been able to make more solely because they were assigned different tasks which pay better. The managers give them all the usual excuses, largely refusing to budge or offering only a modest per item increase which as one worker points out will barely make a difference if the quota is small anyway. 

Wang gives more of an overview rather than focussing on a series of individuals but discovers an ironic intersection of the legacy of the One Child Policy and the economic realities of today. At the first workshop, a couple who met on the shop floor experience an unexpected pregnancy. The young woman, Shengnan, seems to be given little choice in the matter which is largely being decided by the respective parents on each side. Because of the additional complications of the residence system (they are each from different districts) the parents both want the couple to move closer to them especially as the boy’s parents are economically dependent on him as they age. Shengnan’s mother puts her foot down and negotiates with the manager to get Shengnan time off for an abortion but he refuses until Shengnan has finished her current quota after which he says he’ll be very happy for her to take some rest at home to get over it though as another suggests, trying to offer comfort, an abortion is just like getting bitten by a dog and then biting back. He does however accept that it’s the girls who suffer while all the men are “little emperors”.

Evidence of sexism is rife. Another worker needles his girlfriend about her job in an overnight internet cafe, telling her that it’s not good for girls and that it might cause acne while seemingly not bothering to think about how his long shifts at the factory might be affecting him. “Women are useless” another man later exclaims despite being largely supported by them in the workplace, not least by his own mother who works in the same factory. The younger workers are often cheerful, messing around with silly banter and constant flirting. It’s not surprising that relationships often arise with people trapped together such long periods of time with little possibility of going out to meet someone else, but they’re also largely impossible given the futility of trying earn enough to support a family through seamstressing. Another man faces a similar dilemma when he discovers his girlfriend has also become pregnant but cannot decide if he wants to get married, worrying about shouldering the responsibility of a wife and child while financially insecure. 

All of which would seem to conflict with a wider anxiety about children not getting married as parents often reject a potential suitor based on low economic status or residency while young men find themselves frustrated unable to envisage a time when they might be financially stable enough to start a family. Meanwhile, the old-style factory dorms are strewn with rubbish and in general depressing in their grey concrete exteriors and poorly lit rooms. An outburst leading to a physical confrontation between workers seems only natural given the fraught conditions though Wang presents it as a howl of despair from a generation trapped between the old China and the new with very little to show for it.

Youth (Spring) screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, 2023)

Posted on by

A man in late middle-aged quite obviously living in the past begins to wake up to the possibilities of change in Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-set drama, Perfect Days. Even so, Hirayama’s (Koji Yakusho) days may be pretty much the same but that doesn’t necessarily mean that his life is dull or even predictable while it’s clear that he manages to find joy in small moments of serenity even if he may also seem to be harbouring a great sadness. 

The irony is that Hirayama lives in a rundown postwar tenement that happens to be almost directly under the Tokyo Skytree which Wenders often cuts back to as if to signal the disparity between the rich and glitzy skyline of the contemporary city and the lives of those on its margins. Hirayama’s home has an almost eerie quality owing to the glowing purple light shining out of the window of his spare room where he nurtures tiny saplings back to health. The traditional-style two-floor flat has two tatami-mat rooms on the upper level, the other filled with books and cassette tapes amid an otherwise spartan interior. Before leaving for work each morning he brushes his teeth over the kitchen sink, the place has no bathroom, and meticulously takes up his belongings neatly placed in order on a shelf by the front door. 

Perhaps it’s this kind of order that Hirayama craves, clinging to the security of the usual and dedicating himself to his work with unusual rigour. A municipal toilet cleaner, he painstakingly scrubs each and every bowl and urinal, checking the nozzles on the bidet function and shining a mirror underneath to make sure everything is as clean and tidy as it could possibly be only for drunken salarymen to push past him and quite literally piss all over his hard work. Like many such workers, he attains a kind of invisibility and should anyone need to use the facilities while he’s cleaning them he’s obliged to step outside and wait before starting all over again. When he finds a little boy crying alone in a park toilet he takes him by the hand and tries to help him find his mum, only when he finds her she completely ignores Hirayama and even goes so far as to wipe the boy’s hand with a wet wipe. The boy’s little wave of thank you as they leave is the only ray of comfort and recognition. 

Yet for all that, it’s as if this the life Hirayama has chosen. He barely interacts with his chatty colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto) who has a habit of rating everything out of ten and sees no value in his work, hardly bothering to do much cleaning at all while complaining that he has no money to romance the bar hostess he’s hoping to make his girlfriend. Takashi and Aya are fascinated by Hirayama’s collection of cassette tapes which he plays in his van, though Takashi more so for the commercial value that may be attached to them in a world in which everything old is new again and specialised stores in the trendy neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa trade exclusively in secondhand LPs and Sony Walkmans. Even so, Aya too appears to have her private sadnesses drawn to the voice of Patty Smith but pressing stop when the tape mentions suicide. The melancholy office lady in the park and an elderly homeless man who lives there too must have their own stories as unknown to Hirayama as his is to them. 

A surprise visit from a teenage niece suggests that he may have come from a relatively wealthy family with a tyrannical patriarch and that this ascetic life of his is a kind of rebellion or else or a refuge, but there’s a look of pain on his face when the landlady at his favourite bar (played by enka legend Sayuri Ishikawa) laments that she wishes everything could stay the same. Perhaps he’s tired of this very analogue life and its otherwise pleasant monotony as he further confirms for himself realising that it’s not right for things not to change as he engages in a game of shadow tag with another middle-aged man who’s evaluating his life after a terminal cancer diagnosis. In truth, the film risks straying into orientalism in its advocation of Japanese serenity in simplicity (something not helped by the final title card explaining the term komorebi) while the musical choices appear a little on the nose and the celebration of mundanity in Hirayama’s labour might otherwise seem flippant. Even so, Yakusho’s typically astute performance keeps the film on an even keel as Hirayama finds himself on a turbulent journey towards a “new world” of fulfilment and possibility. 

Perfect Days screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Road to Boston (1947 보스톤, Kang Je-kyu, 2023)

Posted on by

The right to participate in a foreign marathon becomes a victory for the Korean in people in Kang Je-kyu’s sporting period drama, The Road to Boston (1947 보스톤, 1947 Boston). Skewing towards the nationalistic, the film finds two brands of exceptionalism colliding while hinting at the sense of destabilisation in a nation which has not only been divided but rather than the promised liberation only re-colonised by an entirely different military regime who insist that Korea is not a real country merely a protectorate. 

In 1936, Sohn Kee-chung (Ha Jung-woo) won a gold medal for marathon running in the Berlin Olympics but when he stood on the podium they played the Japanese anthem and flew the Japanese flag. They announced his name pronounced the Japanese way, and when Kee-chung covered the Japanese emblem on his uniform he was banned from sports and put under police surveillance. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910, and the victories were accredited to the Japanese Empire. The country had been liberated from Japanese rule at the end of the war, but the nation was divided in two with the Americans occupying the South and the Soviets the North. 

Part of Kee-chung’s bitterness is that his family are trapped over the border and he’s been unable to bring them South, but it’s also that he was not able to run “freely” under the flag of his nation or in his true name. Yet now that they’ve been liberated, it’s as if only the names have changed. Loutish American GIs make trouble in the streets bullying the locals much as the Japanese had while the nation in general remains poor. There’s a chance that Korea could compete in the 1948 Olympics in London, but they’ve been told they don’t qualify because Korea doesn’t really exist and even in the way it does it’s only for a couple of years so they have no track record of international competition, all their previous successes are still attributed to Japan. To qualify, they decide to enter the Boston Marathon, but are told there are additional hurdles because Korea is a “refugee country” and the authorities are worried they might just stay there. 

When they do actually arrive in the US, they get a similar attitude told that winning the Boston Marathon might help them gain US citizenship as if that were some ultimate prize they must be secretly longing for when all they want is to be recognised as Koreans. Because the Military government signed off on their participation, the shirts prepared for them carry American flags, but Kee-chung does not want his protege Yun-bok (Im Si-wan) to suffer the same fate as him and compete under a flag that is not his own as he outlines in a powerful speech to the person in charge of the marathon while cheered on by outraged Asian Americans who also suffer racism and discrimination in the so-called land of the free.

At the press conference, reporters ask offensive and embarrassing questions such as whether Korea has universities, newspapers, or even electricity. The US guarantor Nam-hyeon (Kim Sang-ho) also states that even when he says he’s Korean, people ask him if he’s from China or Japan while Yun-bok receives racial slurs from a runner representing America. America is also presented as the land of immoral capitalism in which the only thing that matters is money in direct contrast to Kee-chung’s claims that runners aren’t in it for the cash. He originally rejects Yun-bok for his “arrogance” and lack of interest in anything that isn’t about money but later changes his mind on realising his crushing poverty and desire to help his ailing mother. 

On the other hand, the runners are constantly reminded how different the US (and elsewhere) is from Korea, asked if they know how to sleep on a Western-style bed or use a shower while reminded that everything in the mini bar you’ll be charged for. Yun-bok comically washes his face in the toilet seeing only a basin of water little knowing what taps are or how to use them. On his first taste of Coca Cola, a symbol of American capitalism, he is captivated and wonders if they should just accept the American flag for the right to run and a quiet life while Kee-chung will not be put through that humiliation again. The right to participate in the marathon under the Korean flag becomes a victory for the Korean people as a whole who had chipped in to crowdfund it in the face of resistance from the US military government. A big wig who made his money in dubious ways might have a point when he asks if it’s right to spend so much on a marathon when people are starving in the streets, but then what Kee-chung is trying to reclaim is national pride which to some at least is worth the price. In any case, the historical victory becomes a crowning moment of Korean independence, no longer a refugee state but (symbolically at least) a sovereign nation and finally free to run just as far as it can go.

Road to Boston screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Polan (ポラン, Kota Nakamura, 2022)

Posted on by

The closure of a second-hand bookshop leaves a gaping hole at the centre of a community in Kota Nakamura’s warmhearted documentary, Polan (ポラン). Driven to close their physical shop because of the ongoing economic effects of the pandemic, an elderly couple contemplate changing times but still hope to save something of paper culture and the organic pleasures of offline browsing from unexpected discoveries to serendipitous friendship and the comfort to be found in having a familiar place you can be certain of returning to. 

As he explains, Kyosuke Ishida found himself disillusioned when most of his fellow student protestors ended up getting regular salaryman jobs. He wanted to prove he was different, so he dropped out and started working as a tutor at cram schools before eventually deciding to open a small second-hand bookshop. The shop was so successful that they later moved to larger premises, but footfall began to fall during the pandemic while online sales remained constant. With his wife Chiseko who runs the bookshop with him already feeling the physical strain of their work and the landlord upping the cost of their lease, the pair eventually decide to close up though Kyosuke has mixed feelings and would have liked to continue a little longer. 

More than the books, what the shop offers is a sense of community. Some customers tearfully remark that they’ve grown up with the store and feel themselves bereft while others share happy memories of browsing the shelves. The store itself is like a place out of time, decorated in a whimsical, antique style from the fretted front window to the antique clock on the wall and old-fashioned dolls sitting on the cases. As they’re fond of pointing out, everyone is welcome at the store and they pride themselves on providing a diverse selection of books rather than just the things they particularly like or know will sell well. Kyosuke devotes whole shelves to each genre and keeps them all well stocked rather than prioritise sure sellers ensuring that rare books are always available. 

As he says, part of what he’s trying to save is paper culture. If you know what you’re looking for, then of course you can find it online right away and have it delivered quickly and cheaply. But perhaps something’s been lost in the drive towards convenience. Kyosuke remembers taking a lengthy train journey as a child during which they had to temporarily disembark in an unfamiliar place but that doesn’t happen with the Shinkansen where you can’t even open a widow or see much of the world around you as you rocket through it. As he sees it, you might have a happier life taking a more difficult path, much as he has opening a bookshop, discovering small things along the way rather than opting for easy convenience. He wants people to experience the thrill of the inconvenience of turning a page, along with “the joy of searching and pleasure of encountering” that can only be found with a physical experience in a real world bookshop. 

Nevertheless as he admits times have changed and we’re entering a new and unknown post-pandemic world. He regrets that the bookshop can’t go too but consoles himself with the knowledge it’ll exist online. There is however continuity as their employee, Minami, decides to open a bookshop of her own taking some of the same sentiments with her in providing another community hub open to a diverse collection of book lovers in pleasant surroundings. Revisiting the location a year later, Nakamura discovers the shop space still vacant. Its bare industrial walls are somehow devoid of life. It’s difficult to believe the bookshop with its whimsical old world charm once existed there. It takes just 20 days to demolish it with the shelving and other furnishings taken by other store owners such as Minami and a distant relative in another town suggesting that the shop itself lives on, moving in a cycle much the books though some of those are unfortunately pulped as last resort. A gentle tribute to a disappeared local institution, the film ponders on what we’re losing in the post-pandemic world along with what our love of convenience may be costing us in a warmth and sensation otherwise unavailable in our rapidly digitising world.

Polan screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Boys (소년들, Chung Ji-young, 2022)

Posted on by

A “mad dog” policeman uncovers a miscarriage of justice but finds that his faith in his institution may have been misplaced in Chung Ji-young’s pressing judicial drama, The Boys (소년들, Sonyeondeul). Like much of Chung’s previous work critiquing the power imbalances of the contemporary society, the film is one of several recent dramas taking aim at the justice system and the utter contempt of those in power for those without most notably for the titular boys exploited by a failure of the system.

In 1999, a trio of teenagers is picked up and arrested for the robbery of a convenience store in which an old woman died. Newly transferred to the district, “mad dog” policeman Joon-cheol (Sol Kyung-gu) receives a tip off that actually someone else did it. The informant says he’d previously told the investigating officer, Choi (Yoo Jun-sang), but was ignored. Joon-cheol might assume that’s because he didn’t think there was anything in it and didn’t find the informant credible, but something nags at him and he begins to look at the case only to realise too much of it doesn’t make sense. He soon discovers that Choi and his underlings beat the suspects, who were terrified and naive due to their youth, into a false confession in order to get a promotion by solving a prominent case.

Chung switches back and fore between 1999 and 2016 when the boys’ retrial finally takes place and discovers Joon-cheol a somewhat broken, defeated man who has served out the past few years on a peaceful rural island never receiving any further promotions. With his retirement looming, he’s been offered a return to the mainland, but apparently only thanks to Choi which leaves a sour taste in Joon-cheol’s mouth. Like pretty much everyone else, he is haunted by a sense of guilt that in the end despite his promises he was powerless to help these innocent young men escape their false imprisonment. 

Then again, Joon-cheol is also a product of the system. The “mad dog” beat suspects too, and there’s something chilling in his justification that he only beat the “guilty” and never the “innocent”. He got his promotion after being stabbed on the job, a strange sacrifice that seems the inversion of Choi’s greedy venality. Choi really thought nothing of these boys, one whom had learning difficulties and was illiterate so could not have written his statement on his own, because they were poor and defenceless and is unrepentant even when confronted with the truth. He himself could have caught the real culprits but simply chose not to because it was easier and more convenient to him to destroy the lives of three innocent boys instead. 

Choi’s reach seems to be eerily extensive though the police force’s reluctance to correct a miscarriage of justice because it would make them look bad is obviously an institutional flaw along with the use of violence to elicit confessions. The older version of Choi with slick backed hair and an arrogant manner behaves as if he’s untouchable, giving an answer for everything and leaving no room to be challenged while others are only too keen to support his version of events with equally smug manipulations of the law. 

The boys find themselves powerless. They cannot challenge Choi and though they’ve served their sentences and paid a debt to society that was never theirs to begin with cannot move on with their lives because they are still branded murderers meaning no one will hire them. Meanwhile, at least one of the real killers has had to opportunity to start again and is reluctant to help because they do not want their new family to find out about their past. Everyone is harbouring some kind of guilt or desire to bury the truth for a quiet life, Joon-cheol too not wanting to get involved and cautioning the boys against applying for a retrial because it will only cause them further pain. 

Though the truth is eventually revealed and the boys’ names cleared, the overwhelming implication is that you cannot really win against men like Choi. The sentiment is rammed home by a final title card explaining that nothing happened to any of the policemen involved in framing the boys while Joon-cheol only has the satisfaction of having helped to free them neither vindicated as a police officer or successful in undercutting the corruption inherent in the police force and embedded in the society itself. Nevertheless, Joon-cheol’s righteousness and the the unexpected support he receives from those around him for doing the right thing add an inspirational quality that simultaneously suggests justice is a distant dream but also that it can be achieved if enough people can be persuaded to chase it even while against their own interests.

The Boys screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Baian the Assassin, M.D. (Part 1) (仕掛人・藤枝梅安, Shunsaku Kawake, 2023)

Posted on by

A traumatised assassin takes it upon himself to get rid of a few villains on realising there’s something not quite right with his latest contract in Shunsaku Kawake’s classic jidaigeki homage, Baian the Assassin, MD: (Part 1) (仕掛人・藤枝梅安, Shikakenin Fujieda Baian). The titular hero is the protagonist of a series of novels by Shotaro Ikenami which have spawned several previous adaptations on the big and small screens. Produced in celebration of Ikenami’s centenary the film, one of two, harks back to the golden age of period drama if with a more contemporary sensibility. 

Baian (Etsushi Toyokawa) is ostensibly an acupuncturist though by night he uses his needles to kill rather than to heal. Hired to take out the second wife an inn owner, Omino (Yuki Amami), his suspicions are raised on realising that he had also been the assassin who killed the man’s first wife two years earlier. He blames himself in part for having agreed to assassinate a woman in the first place, and remains conflicted even after accepting the job wondering if Omino is next in the firing line or if she was actually the one who had the other woman killed in order to usurp her place. 

The film makes clear from the outset what a difficult place Edo could be for a woman as Baian carries out an assassination on a boatman who had raped a samurai’s wife and then blackmailed her into further sexual favours only for her to hire an assassin and then kill herself confessing all. Omino had apparently been the stepdaughter of a gang leader who sexually abused her and then died leaving her with no support and nowhere to turn except to sex work. Maybe no one could blame her for taking advantage of a besotted client to escape her terrible circumstances though getting rid of his wife would obviously be a different matter. Omon (Miho Kanno), a maid Baian takes a liking to while investigating, admits something similar that as a widow with a young son realistically speaking there is nowhere else that could she work to support him except on the fringes of the sex trade. Then again, as she says the previous mistress was strict but it was because she cared, whereas Omino is just mean and self-interested. She’s fired all the old staff and brought in pretty young women who are quite obviously being expected to entertain their male customers in more direct ways. 

In any case, Baian soon finds himself drawn into a wider series of plots when his friend Hiko (Ainosuke Kataoka), a skewer maker who assassinates people with poison darts, is tasked with taking out first a lascivious carpenter and then a rogue samurai who has supposedly raped and kidnapped the daughter of his lord which obviously turns out not quite to be the case. Rape and kidnap are depressingly common in Edo-era society where it is largely women who suffer under a patriarchal society with intensely oppressive social codes that demand female purity. In a post-credits sequence, we come to understand that Hiko too is seeking vengeance for the death of a woman who killed herself and her child after being raped by bandits. Meanwhile, Baian reveals that he had a mild hatred of women himself born of pain in having been abandoned by his mother who left with another man and took only his sister with her after his father’s death. He had to overcome that resentment in order to fulfil himself as a doctor treating women’s bodies but struggles when he realises that someone involved in the case is closely linked with his own traumatic past and death may be the only way to save them. 

Both he and Hiko end up breaking the assassin’s code but only in defence of justice, which might sound odd considering the nature of their work. Nevertheless, they each have their scruples and don’t like to think of themselves as having been used or inadvertently killed someone who didn’t really deserve it. As Baian puts it, the greatest villains may really be “well-meaning weak cowards” though perhaps corrupt lords can’t really complain about falling victim to their own tactics. With noticeably polished production values and atmospheric cinematography, Kawake pays tribute to classic jidaigeki and eventually sets his heroes back on the road awaiting the next battle for justice in the distinctly unjust feudal era. 

Baian the Assassin, M.D. (Part 1) screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bên trong vỏ kén vàng, Pham Thien An, 2023)

Posted on by

Late into Pham Thien An’s three hour spiritual epic Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bên trong vỏ kén vàng), a youngish man rides through endless fog as if echoing the miasma of his life. He finds himself displaced, admitting that he no longer has any reason to return to his hometown now that his parents have moved to the US and the girl he loved has become a Christian nun, yet he continues to yearn for a greater meaning in his life or something that would anchor him in an Earthly world that seems somehow fragile and intangible much like the soul itself. 

Tellingly, in the film’s opening scene Thien (Lê Phong Vũ) is situated across from a man who is giving up his life in the city for a more spiritual existence in the mountains. The third friend between them cannot understand his decision, remarking that he knows many who’ve tried the same thing but have all eventually returned if for no other reason than money. “The existence of faith is ambiguous,” Thien admits when pressed for his opinion but cannot fully choose either side neither able to accept the certainty of the man bound for the mountains nor the cynicism of his city-dwelling friend. He wants to believe, but he can’t. “My mind holds me back,” he explains, trapped in an existential limbo still searching for a truth he is unsure exists. 

While the men are talking, they are momentarily distractedly by a loud noise that turns out to be a nearby traffic accident in which two motorbikes have collided. The man died instantly while the woman is seriously injured but the child with her has apparently escaped more or less unscathed. No one really reacts very much to this seemingly horrific event, perhaps it is simply too common an occurrence to bother them. Thien too remains in his seat, barely looking up. At massage parlour he ignores his ringing phone, jokingly telling the masseuse that “God is calling,” apparently an ironic pet name for his client, only to receive a visit from a member of staff telling him to answer to because there has been a “family emergency”. It turns out that the woman in the crash was his sister-in-law, Hahn, who has since passed away and he must now take charge of his young nephew, Dao (Nguyễn Thịnh), who is now orphaned in the absence of his brother who disappeared without trace some years previously.

No one knows what happened to Tam, though some speculate that ran off with another woman or recalling that he once wanted to become a priest assume he encountered a spiritual calling that caused him to abandon his family. In the wake of tragedy Thien begins searching for him, but as an old lady insists it’s really a way of searching for himself in an attempt to make peace with the ineffiablities of life. Unable to understand what’s happened to his mother, Dao asks his uncle abour the nature of “faith” but Thien has few answers for him explaining that it’s what he too is looking for. Dao childishly asks what shape it is, only for Thien to admit that it is formless and in essence he does not know what he seeks. 

The old lady pushes him towards a more concrete religion, detailing an experience in which her soul detached from her body and she was able to discern the mortal world’s rottenness while even the most pious of souls continue to suffer for their sins. She urges prayer and attendance at Mass, while an old man who spent his youth in war tells him that money is merely dust and the way he’s made peace with his life is through helping others. In the city, Thien had been like a lost thing scooping up a lonely bird like him marooned in urban emptiness, but is also restless in the country. He tells his former girlfriend that he admires her decision, which only makes her laugh, but is unable to find such certainty himself and seems set on a path of endless wandering searching for a truth which may not even exist. Pham Thien An follows him with an etherial gaze, segueing into memory as the current Thien stands in for his former self literally reliving the past much as in the lyrics of the melancholy song he performs at karaoke which speak of a lover trapped in nostalgia still hoping their love will return to them. Thien is much the same, searching for himself while lost in the fog of an everlasting road. 

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Love Will Tear Us Apart (ラヴ・ウィル・テア・アス・アパート, Kenichi Ugana, 2023)

Posted on by

“This film depicts a pure and genuine love between an awkward boy and a girl with a pure heart,” according to a pop idol starring in a film called “garbage love”, but it’s a true enough description of Kenichi Ugana’s genre-crossing slasher romance, Love Will Tear Us Apart (ラヴ・ウィル・テア・アス・アパート). Co-scripted by Hirobumi Watanabe, the film has a deadpan, surreal sensibility but has a lot to say about entrenched patriarchy and a bullying culture. 

As the film begins, Wakaba is a cheerful little girl who has an all encompassing obsession with a handsome pop idol, but is secretly enduring an oppressive atmosphere of domestic violence in her family home at the hands of her cruel and violent father. In this she might have found a kindred spirit in classmate Koki who is enduring physical abuse at the hands of his mother who openly tells him how much happier she’d be if only he’d never been born. Koki is also being bullied by a pair of mean kids at school and meekly takes it, unable to stand up for himself. When Wakaba steps up and tries to help him, the bullies turn on her too and their teacher (Atsuko Maeda) seemingly does nothing. After the pair bond through a screaming session at a local river, the bullies mysteriously fall out of a window which Koki is then seen ominously staring out of. 

The film jumps on seven years to a teenage Wakaba (Sayu Kubota) who discovers the world is not a safe place for women, repeatedly encountering a series of skeevy guys beginning with her favourite pop band who lure her to a cabin in the woods where they openly talk about getting her drunk to take advantage of her or spiking her drinks. One of the chief victimisers is another woman, Moeka, whose apparent “job” it is to recruit girls for the guys to have fun with. Wakaba’s friend Kanna (Riko) wants to leave, sensing that there’s something not quite right but Wakaba is naive and unable to see the danger. A similar thing happens when she visits Tokyo alone and has a meet cute with a guy who spills coffee on her shirt and offers to buy her a new one, then to show her around, takes her for sushi, declares his love and makes a proposal of marriage. 

As might be expected, many of these men end up dead at the hands of a vicious, chainsaw-wielding serial killer in a white hazmat suit, gas mask, and goggles. You can’t quite blame him for his crimes because everyone he kills is so irrediambly awful while it really does seem that he might be trying to protect Wakaba in some way from the hidden dangers she remains unable to see because of her pure heartedness. While her own father had been cruel and violent, she discovers that Moeka’s, police detective Kamiyama (Mitsuru Fukikoshi), is the opposite but worse in his unsettling obsession with his daughter, whom he believed to “pure and earnest” little knowing that she had been procuring young girls to serve up to the sleazy band members.

In a strange way, the serial killer turns out to be Wakaba’s healthiest relationship even if he’s basically stalking her not to mention murdering people with chainsaws because they threatened her happiness. The film runs through a series of genres from the cute childhood romance that soon turns ominous and the cabin in the woods slasher movie complete with creepy monkey and trainset, to martial arts epic as Wakaba abandons her life to train with a YouTube serial killer catching guru in a tropical resort town but retains its sense of anarchic innocence and internal integrity. As the pop star had implied, it really is a tale of genuine love between an awkward boy and a pure hearted girl in which they gradually realise that they each have a right to be happy and can be so together despite all violence and mayhem around them which includes killing a guy by shoving a grapefruit blender on his head. Strange and absurd the film nevertheless has a heartwarming romantic sensibility along with a desire for a less destructive world defined more by kindness and compassion than bullying and violence. 

Love Will Tear Us Apart screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

International trailer (English subtitles)