Tag: 2020s

No Man is an Island (沒有人該成為孤島, Jay Chern, 2022)

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For much of the pandemic, Taiwan was regarded as a success story having largely managed to avoid mass infections through a well formulated public health programme that meant for many life could carry on more or less as normal. Jay Chern’s documentary No Man is an Island (沒有人該成為孤島, méi yǒurén gāi chéngwéi gūdǎo) focusses on the sometimes forgotten frontline workers that made that sense of normality possible while losing their own in situating itself in a small hotel which agreed to become a quarantine facility for travellers arriving from overseas. 

Chern spends much of his time with the hotel’s manager, Rebecca Ma, who at one point describes the decision to house those needing to quarantine as the biggest mistake of her life but also something she ultimately felt was the right thing to do, that it would be wrong to refuse when they had the capability to help. Nevertheless, she makes clear that her greatest responsibility was to her staff, negotiating with the government that they’d only agree to offer quarantine services if they’d be provided with full PPE while we can also see the extensive procedures they must take to keep the the guests and themselves safe disinfecting rooms after guests leave and allowing several hours before deep cleaning them while running UV disinfectant lamps throughout the building. 

Meanwhile, they also face some pushback from the local community upset by the close proximity to those who may be carrying COVID-19 only to be reminded that if they weren’t quarantining at the hotel they’d have to go somewhere else and could even be staying in the apartment below theirs so the point is in many ways moot. Even within the hotel Ma is well aware of how boring and distressing being trapped in quarantine could be even in a hotel as nice as hers fully preparing herself for a series of picky complaints from guests with quite literally nothing else to do taking out their frustrations on the front desk team. Meanwhile, others forget that it’s not a holiday, they’re in quarantine, and want access to normal hotel services around the clock not always taking kindly to being reminded that certain things may not be possible. 

With that in mind, it’s genuinely touching to see the level of care that the hotel staff have for those staying with them taking note of their mental health as well as the physical. Ma recounts personally preparing a meal for the first few quarantiners and is often seen organising special treats for the guests particularly in the holiday periods so that they don’t feel alone as if the hotel staff is their family even gifting pretty flowers and cupcakes for mother’s day as well as small toys to keep children entertained. She herself has been living away from her family in the hotel to keep everything running smoothly while further members of staff move in later during the stricter lockdowns put in place after the situation intensifies ironically because of lax quarantine processes at another hotel which allowed airline personnel to leave earlier than otherwise recommended. 

Mindful of her responsibilities, Ma makes a point of leading by example never asking anyone else to do something she wouldn’t or put themselves in harm’s way unnecessarily. One employee reflects that she was so frightened that she wrote her will and explained to friends what to do with her ashes should the worst happen, but in general the atmosphere among the staff seems cheerful and upbeat, Ma giggling that she feels like a naughty child ringing people’s doorbells and then running away to let them know their meals have arrived. Privately she admits that the situation can be stressful because no mistakes can be made, it is quite literally a matter of life and death, but also a job she just needs to keep doing to the best of her ability. 

Chern also speaks to a few of the quarantiners one of whom is his own mother returning from the US to care for his bedridden grandmother, while others have returned to be closer to their families or because it is simply safer in Taiwan than wherever they were before, allowing each of them to chronicle their experiences in their quarantine diary as they try to stave off cabin fever and the anxieties of their long journeys home. Hanns House has become for them a small safe haven until they’re able to go back out into the world. “Sometimes life isn’t about what we want or if you’re ready, but rather if it’s necessary” Ma adds, later reflecting that the pandemic is turning into a never-ending marathon, “If you can’t run, crawl to the very end”.  

No Man is an Island streams in the US April 4 – 10 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Journey to the West (宇宙探索编辑部, Kong Dashan, 2021)

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An eccentric middle-aged man’s search for alien contact sends him on a quest for enlightenment in Kong Dashan’s deadpan epic Journey to the West (宇宙探索编辑部, Yǔzhòu Tànsuǒ Biānjí Bù). Inspired by the classic Chinese tale of the monk Tang Sanzang who journeyed west in order to bring true Buddhism to China in the company of the anarchic monkey king Sun Wukong, Kong’s comical adventure finds its awkward hero longing for connection in contemporary China his search for the extraterrestrial a means of provoking the next great human evolution in the belief that on the discovery of alien life humanity would immediately abandon its petty disagreements and live in perpetual harmony. 

Kong opens however with some VHS footage from 1990 in which UFO-obsessive Tang (Yang Haoyu) is interviewed for a documentary before flashing forward 30 years to the present day in which Tang has made little progress. The magazine which he edits, Universe Exploration, is on the brink of bankruptcy with his exasperated boss Mrs Qin (Ai Liya) already holding tours for prospective sponsors none of which go particularly well. As we later discover, Tang’s obsession has dominated his life resulting in the breakdown of his marriage while his daughter later died by her own hand it seems in part because of the same despair he too feels in his inability to understand the purpose of human existence. His quest is partly one for answers, though his theories often sound unhinged as he patiently explains about messages in the white snow of a detuned analogue television or pays visits to psychiatric institutions believing that psychopaths whose brains are wired differently may be better able to receive extraterrestrial signals. 

On the other hand, his way of life is not perhaps that different to that of his namesake Tang Sanzang in his wilful aestheticism insisting that the desire for better food along with sex for reasons other than procreation is merely a consumerist trap actively blocking the path towards human evolution which he believes he will discover in contacting extraterrestrial life. In his theory, if the Earth is like a grain of sand in the desert of the universe then it’s illogical to assume there are not other beings out there whom he assumes will be far advanced not only in technological terms but also in morality. But then, as a poet he later meets on his journey west into the mountains eventually asks him what if the aliens don’t have any answers either and have in fact come to Earth in order to ask the exact same question for which Tang seeks the solution?   

Inevitably, the conclusion that he comes to is that the answer lies within, that humanity is the universe and each person a single word in a great poem centuries in the making that might in its conclusion allow us to understand why we live if only we can go on connecting with each other to form new sentences in the great unfinished journey towards enlightenment. Then again, Mrs Qin hints at the mean spiritedness of the contemporary society in her conviction that if there are aliens out there who want to come to Earth it’s probably to rob it, while out on the road Tang is taken in by a bizarre scam involving the body of an alien in a freezer you can only see if you are the chosen one which requires the willingness to pay $99.99 to man running the alien embassy on Earth though it does at least result in Tang receiving a mysterious bone which does seem to be crucial to his quest once he runs into monkey king stand in Sun Tiyong (Wang Yitong) who wears a saucepan on his head and claims to have received a mission to retrieve a stone ball stolen from a lion statue’s mouth from a mysterious alien entity. 

Ever mindful of the contemporary realities, Kong throws in several ironic nods to the censors board Tang repeatedly reminded that he must always find a “scientific” explanation for bizarre phenomena rather than succumbing to “superstition”. Travelling west with Sun and a small team including his drunken friend and a young woman the same age as his daughter would have been if she’d lived, Tang does indeed undergo a kind of vision quest culminating in the apotheosis of Sun into Wukong while a strange man in a red hat riding a tiny UFO-like cart always seems to be one step ahead of them. Shot in a faux documentary style complete with direct to camera interviews and occasional breaking of the fourth wall, Kong’s hilariously deadpan, absurdist epic sees Tang journeying west in search of the meaning of life only to be confronted by the vastness of the universe and discover himself, and the answer he seeks, already in its embrace. 

Journey to the West screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

Clip (English subtitles)

Arc (Arc アーク, Kei Ishikawa, 2021)

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Does something have to have an ending to be meaningful or could eternity be the point? Inspired by Ken Liu’s short story, Kei Ishikawa’s near future tale Arc (Arc アーク) envisages a world without death if perhaps not for all in which bodily immortality has been achieved, but what would that mean for humanity no longer faced with mortal anxiety, how should it reorient itself in the absence of sickness or old age while the possibility of endlessness for the self has removed the urge for immortality through childbirth? These are all of course questions which have no one answer, though what the heroine finally discovers is that in the end it may be the choice itself of when to live or when to die that may lend her life at least its meaning. 

Even so, hers is a particular anxiety bound up with frustrated maternity having abandoned a baby she gave birth to at 17, too afraid of the responsibility to accept it. At 19, Rina (Kyoko Yoshine) is spotted at a club by a mysterious middle-aged woman, Ema (Shinobu Terajima), who runs a revolutionary cosmetics company which has pioneered a new way of preserving the bodies of the dead turning them into uncannily lifelike mannequins with a new process known as plasticisation. To Ema’s mind, true liberation comes from accepting transience, that once life has left it the body is just an object which might be repurposed for her art but then at the same time perhaps she is attempting to hold on to something that should be released, interfering in a natural process and while intending to offer comfort to those bereaved preventing them from letting go or moving on with their lives. Her much younger brother Amane, meanwhile, actively wants to stop time while alive utilising a similar technology to halt the ageing process and overcome the tyranny of death. 

In a strange way, Ema’s desire to restore a body which is no longer alive to ideal condition is also an acknowledgement of death which she believes is not the opposite of life but a necessary part of it. In overcoming the fear of death, she claims, a transcendental beauty will reveal itself. Amane meanwhile seeks to overcome death physically, but as Rina is warned his health revolution may not bring happiness to mankind not least because it exposes a persistent inequality in which eternal youth is available only to those with the means to acquire it, creating a new underclass not only of the poor but those whose bodies are not able to accept the treatment. Amane sees his creation as a dividing line in human history which will necessarily divide humanity into two groups, those who choose to join his revolution and those who do not (though interestingly he does not consider a third group who actively opposite it). Even so he sees it as a choice and accepts the right to reject immortality even going so far as to build a dedicated centre where those who choose to live a “natural” lifespan can do so in dignity and comfort. 

The concept of personal choice appears to be key, Ema too replying that her decision to stick with plasticisation rather than Amane’s treatment is her right though she too eventually hits a wall in the imperfection of her craft and the depths of her grief. She tells Rina to live her life freely encouraging her to live fully in the moment, while she too is quick to remind others that the decisions are theirs to make as regards their life and death. It’s not death nor the fear of it that are the problem, but the inability to choose as Rina finally acknowledges in remarking that the ability to decide its end point gives her the means to carve the arc of her life overcoming death through full existential control having in a sense closed a circle in facing her own sense of maternal failure. Shifting from the warmth and natural beauty of a beach in summer to the dark and brutalist environments of the BodyWerks lab, and from the muted colour of Rina’s youth to the black and white of her youthful old age, Ishikawa’s near future sci-fi-inflected tale suggests it’s not so much death that frightens you but helplessness and as in all things the answer lies in autonomous choice. 

Arc screens in Chicago on April 3 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Random Call (ランダム・コール, Riki Ohkanda, 2022)

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We may be more connected than ever before but now that it’s so easy to stay in touch we hardly every think of doing it. When was the last time you called someone just because with no specific reason in mind other than a desire to spend time with them? Struggling in his career and personal life, the hero of Riki Ohkanda’s heartwarming dramedy Random Call (ランダム・コール) begins to reconnect with his sense of humanity after a series of meetings with contacts from his phone selected at random each of whom teach him something about himself while reminding him that he is not alone and even if he’s not always been his best self love him anyway. 

A little over 30, Ryo’s acting career has not worked out as well as he’d hoped and he’s beginning to get depressed, isolated by his internalised sense of failure while believing he’s sunk too much into his dream of becoming a successful actor to simply give up as several people including his mother advise him to do. The random call he gets from old friend Shintaro is then a kind of lifesaver reminding him he’s not been forgotten though he’s slightly bemused to discover that Shintaro claims to have no reason for wanting to meet, except he does in fact have an ulterior motive. Inspired by a recent experience in which he became ill abroad and people just helped him out of nothing other than simple human compassion, he’s embarked on the “Random Call” social experiment the results of which he hopes to turn into a book. The idea is he calls a number at random from his phone’s contact book and asks them to go for coffee making sure to shake their hand before he leaves, just checking in with old friends with no other demands or expectations. Inspired, Ryo decides to try it out for himself and encounters various reactions to the unusual project. 

Perhaps that’s understandable, after all it’s natural enough that we mainly contact people when we want something from them so it’s only fair that some are annoyed or confused to discover there is no “point” to the meeting. It probably doesn’t help that the first “random” call is to a business contact, Saito, a TV producer, rather than to a friend with whom it might be more natural to meet up for a drink out of the blue. Saito is then irritated and suspicious, annoyed that Ryo is “wasting” his time assuming he’s making an awkward attempt to network but then something strange happens. He gives in to the magic of the random call and takes it at face value, accepting the warmth of an unexpected friendship and leaving a little happier than he arrived. 

But then, Ryo finds himself not being entirely honest with some of his encounters painting himself as more successful than he’s actually been talking up meetings about movies after hearing of another friend’s award-winning career success and recent marriage though as we later discover the friend wasn’t being entirely honest either. Meanwhile, he cheats a little in making a not all that random call to old friend Mie after learning that she may have fallen on hard times but she tells him that her contact list is mainly full of people she’d rather not speak to so random calling’s probably not for her though she does begin to tag along on some of his adding an additional perspective to his quest for connection through which he gradually begins to realise that his inner insecurities have him led to treat people badly with the consequence that they don’t always remember him fondly. 

Of course it doesn’t always work out, people don’t answer his calls, have moved away, or leave abrupt voicemails explaining they’re not lending him any money but even if it’s awkward or painful both sides gain something from the encounter emerging with a little more confidence in the knowledge that they haven’t been forgotten or else gaining a little closure to some unfinished business that allows both parties to begin moving forward. Through his various re-encounters, Ryo re-establishes a sense of connection with the world around him, encouraging and encouraged by others, and walking with a new sense of positivity into a less lonely future. 

Random Call screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

Trailer (no subtitles)

Musicophilia (ミュジコフィリア, Masaaki Taniguchi, 2021)

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What is “music”? Adapted from the manga by Akira Saso, Masaaki Taniguchi’s Musicophilia (ミュジコフィリア) finds its heroes grappling with a series of conceptual insecurities attempting to draw lines around what the what word might mean while torn between conservation and innovation as they struggle to find their own voices. Yet as the hero comes to realise, you can’t make music on your own letting go of his resentment and childhood trauma to remember his natural love of sound while repairing his relationship with his estranged half-brother in the wake of his father’s death. 

Gifted the talent of synesthesia in the ability to perceive shape and colour in the sounds of nature, Saku (Kai Inowaki) harbours a deeply held resentment towards “music” which he believes destroyed his family life, his mother (Misuzu Kanno) having been seduced by well-known composer Kishino (Kanji Ishimaru) as a student and thereafter forced to give up her dreams of becoming a professional cellist. Though he had contact with his father in his childhood, his stepmother never missed the opportunity to make him feel inferior while her own son, Taisei (Ikusaburo Yamazaki), became his father’s protege. Saku was not even allowed to touch his piano as if he were somehow unworthy of his artistic legacy. Having enrolled in art school in Kyoto, he nevertheless ends up being adopted by the contemporary music club which practices avant-garde and experimental techniques only to re-encounter his brother who is now in the third year of a PhD and an unpleasant elitist privately insecure about his musical talent. 

Everyone agrees that Taisei’s playing is technically perfect, but somehow dull lacking the individual spark of a true creative genius merely a carbon copy of his father’s teaching. Saku’s new friend Nagi (Honoka Matsumoto) compares Taisei’s skill unfavourably with the untrained talent of his brother, insisting that Saku’s music has the colour of joy and shape of kindness while Taisei’s sounds like notes arranged by a machine. Taisei is indeed cold and arrogant, snapping back at Saku’s question “what is music?” with the reply that music is what he’s played, as if he owned it and it only belongs to him. He even breaks with protocol and insults his professor claiming that his criticism is down to “internal politics” because he and his father did not get on, publicly criticising his translation of a German textbook on music telling him to “grasp the fundamentals of language” while his professor urges him to master the fundamentals of composition rather than arrogantly insisting his playing is unimprovable because it is the definition of “music”. Of course, some of this is his own insecurity afraid he can’t match up to his father and worried that in the end all he is is a poor imitation. For his part, Saku is often less than kind to Taisei, Nagi trying to point out to him that he’s better that but simultaneously finding him heading in the same direction as he tries to overcome an internal insecurity in order to rediscover his musical voice while unfairly lashing out at those around him. 

Taisei sucks the joy of out music, and indeed everywhere else, through his arrogant perfectionism his treatment of violin-playing girlfriend Sayo (Noa Kawazoe) approaching the abusive as he consistently runs her down and blames her for his own sense of dissatisfaction, while Nagi meditates on how freedom can make you lonely, herself seemingly the only one who thinks she’s in a musical, as the youngsters find themselves isolated by their own desire for artistic expression. Yet what the two men discover is that their father may have intended something else for them and that his desire was that they’d rediscover the innocent connection they’d had as children able to help each other should they become stuck either in life or in music. Saku’s natural talent is born of being immersed in the world around him realising that this too is “music” while Taisei struggles to move forward too obsessed with technical perfection to allow his music to breathe only rediscovering his humanity after an immense humbling that allows him to re-immerse himself in the natural world. At heart a coming-of-age tale in which two young men learn to put their differences aside and rediscover their childhood bond, Taniguchi’s gentle drama also offers a mild critique of academia and the tendency of institutions to exploit and manipulate talent only to wash their hands of it if something goes wrong placing funding above ethical concerns but eventually discovers that music is everywhere if only you’re willing to listen.

Musicophilia streamed as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Girl on a Bulldozer (불도저에 탄 소녀, Park Ri-woong, 2021)

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“Everyone just takes it” the heroine of Park Ri-woong’s Girl on a Bulldozer (불도저에 탄 소녀, Bulldozere Tan Sonyeo) is advised by her partly well-meaning uncle, urging her to know her place, stop fighting and become complicit with the injustice that pervades their society. Already beaten down by life, he has come to the conclusion that there is no other way out other than to submit himself to the quasi-feudalistic social codes of contemporary capitalism, but Hye-yeong (Kim Hye-Yoon) is still naive enough to think that she’s entitled to fairness and that she has the capacity to resist if not exactly for the good of society then in standing up for herself and her family. 

Family is however something about which she feels conflicted, disappointed in her feckless father (Park Hyuk-Kwon) fearing his gambling and drinking problems may have got the better of him yet again. As the film opens, 19-year-old Hye-yeong is in court charged with assault after intervening in a convenience store dispute. She already has a criminal record but the judge is lenient with her in reflection of the fact that she stepped in to defend someone weaker than herself, sentencing her to community service and vocational training rather than prison but reminding her she is now old enough to receive a custodial sentence should anything like this happen again. It’s immediately obvious that Hye-yeong is a very angry young woman who has already lost any real hope for the future, staking everything on saving enough money from her part-time jobs to rent a flat so she can move out and take her younger brother Hye-jeok with her. 

What little stability she has disappears when her father leaves early one morning and does not return, Hey-yeong receiving a call from the police informing her he’s a wanted man having apparently committed an assault and stolen a car from his former employer which he later drove off a bridge harming two pedestrians in the process. Meanwhile she also discovers that her father may have lost the restaurant where they live and work, a couple turning up to make alterations as if they already owned the place, the woman claiming that her husband is the nephew of Chairman Choi (Oh Man-seok) her father’s former boss and the owner of the car which he is accused of stealing. Part of Hye-yeong’s problem is her liminal adolescent status. It’s obvious her father had been keeping a lot of things from her while she’s constantly asked when her mother is coming to sort everything out though her mother died years ago and even the aunt she later approaches for help is less than sympathetic partly as we discover because her father dragged his brother into his money problems by making him a witness to a deal with the increasingly shady Choi. 

Choi is an embodiment of corrupt chaebol culture, adopting a quasi-feudalistic authority that allows him to wield his authority over those lower than himself in the complicated class hierarchy of the contemporary society as if he were a lord and they merely serfs. Also in debt to him, Hye-young’s uncle tries to talk to her about the way the real world works, that she should stop resisting Choi whom she blames one way or another for her father’s accident and know her place, acknowledging that when you’re nice to men like Choi they’re nice to you blaming his brother not for his foolish decision to trust him but for his eventual rebellion in insisting on getting what he was promised rather than submitting himself to Choi’s whim. The fact that Choi is currently running for political office promising to “never surrender to injustice” while making this small corner of backstreet Incheon great again through almost certainly corrupt construction contracts is only another expression of the insidious links between business and politics that once again work to oppress young women like Hye-yeong. 

Meanwhile, she finds herself constantly at the mercy of shady insurance companies one working for the victims of her father’s accident who turn out to be, as she thought, scammers playing up their injuries in the hope of cash amid the compensation culture that defines the modern society. Then again on the other hand, she discovers that her father had reactivated a series of insurance policies of his own, some suggesting the accident may have been a suicide attempt in that he hoped to take his debts with him while providing his children with financial security through the payout. The dragon tattoo on Hye-yeong’s arm which she has to hide with a sleeve in mainstream society marks her out as someone not to be messed with, but also exiles her from conventional success making it difficult to get a regular job or walk around without the implication of violence following her while even the vocational training she chooses of learning how to drive heavy vehicles also rejects her the instructor flat out saying that he’s “not being sexist” but thinks the course is unsuitable for a woman and she won’t find work as one in the construction industry. Young, reckless, and naive Hye-yeong opts for short-term vengeance literally attempting to take a bulldozer to the comfortable lives of men like Choi whose wealth is founded on the exploitation of those like her in counting on their desperate complicity, but discovers that his position is already far too entrenched to be turfed out by a single mechanism alone. “We at Korea Insurance will always be a source of strength for you” she’s ironically told after finally receiving a payout rather than an invoice left with little other choice than to try and make her way free of the control of the Chois of the world in rejecting her complicity. 

The Girl on a Bulldozer screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

Clip (English subtitles)

Will I Be Single Forever? (ずっと独身でいるつもり？, Momoko Fukuda, 2021)

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If you can achieve financial independence in the contemporary society, then what is or should be the primary purpose of and motivation for marriage, what does it mean, should you want it at all or is it merely an outdated institution designed to keep women in their place by making them dependent on men? Adapted from the manga by Mari Okazaki, Momoko Fukuda’s Will I Be Single Forever? (ずっと独身でいるつもり？, Zutto Dokushin de Iru Tsumori?) finds a series of young women asking just these questions wondering why it is everyone themselves included is still intent on viewing marriage and motherhood as the only markers of success as if none of their other achievements really matter if they’re going to write spinster of this parish on their headstone. 

10 years previously the now 36-year-old Mami (Jun Hashizume) shot to stardom penning a best-selling book about how it isn’t a sin to be single and the worst thing isn’t to be alone but to settle for less solely to escape loneliness. These days, however, she’s beginning to wonder, growing fearful of what it might mean to spend the rest of her life alone and worrying she’s about to miss the marriage boat witnessing it pass by passively without making a concrete decision of her own. Expressing her views on a talk show where “the troubled women of today are slapped with harsh reality”, Mami disappoints some of her longtime fans who found validation in her book reassured that there was nothing wrong in their desire to live independently rather than get married right after college and become regular housewives. Yet they are also ageing and facing the same dilemma, wondering if their life choices are really OK or if they’re missing out on a family life by refusing to settle for Mr. Almost-Right. 

The film’s English-language title flips the Japanese as if the question is self-directed, the women asking themselves when Mr. Right’s going to come along or worrying about the consequences if he never shows up, while the Japanese is more like the dreaded question every young woman is asked by an invasive female relative at a family gathering reminding her she’s not getting any younger and will end up alone if she’s not careful. Meanwhile, Mami is reminded that women who’ve bought their own apartments seldom marry, men aren’t interested in women who can be financially independent and don’t need to rely on them for economic support as Yukino’s (Miwako Ichikawa) longterm boyfriend explains breaking up with her immediately before moving in together as it turns out right next to Mami though she doesn’t know it as she takes out her frustrations online through an embittered anonymous Twitter account. 

For her, the point of marriage is supposed be escaping loneliness yet as her school friend Ayaka (Eri Tokunaga) will testify marriage can be the loneliest thing of all. Her husband is happy to play with the baby but hands it back every time it cries or needs changing unwilling to engage with the less fun sides of marriage or parenthood. Husbands are emotionally absent and rarely help at home, Ayaka’s trying to be helpful by taking the baby to the park so that she can focus on her chores both leaving her out of their fun and reinforcing the idea the home is all her responsibility and none his. “Don’t end up like me” Mami’s mother (Mariko Tsutsui) advises instantly seeing that her decision to marry casual boyfriend Kohei (Yu Inaba) just because he asked is doomed to end in failure, warning her that you have to “be ready to live alone” even if you marry, “no good comes of being a slave to a husband” she adds uttering the unthinkable in trying to warn her daughter of the realities of a patriarchal marriage. 

And as it turns out though five years younger vacuous rich kid Kohei is a patriarchal man whose friends all praise him for being brave and understanding in marrying an older woman while he pats himself on the back for being progressive in granting her permission to continue using her maiden name professionally after they marry. When they go to meet his conservative parents he criticises her outfit for making her look “old” while he’s worn shorts to a fancy restaurant and then orders a ridiculous green soda drink, forcing Mami to go along with his mother’s prodding that she’ll give up work when they marry to devote herself to childrearing though he’d also refused to attend a fertility/genetic screening session Mami had recommended on the grounds that it’s unnecessary because he’s a man as if childbirth is only a female concern and only women can have fertility issues or potential problems in their medical history. The more she tries to voice her worries the more he overrules her, the final straw coming as he refuses to listen to her anxiety about getting behind the wheel of a car, generally unnecessary in Tokyo, having previously been involved in an accident. She begins to wonder why it’s so important to follow the “correct path” even if it brings you no happiness solely in order to avoid people asking you with barely suppressed pity if you’re going to be single forever. 

The question comes from an older era in which it was it was near impossible for a woman to survive without a husband, but now that she can why should she put up with poor treatment and restrictions on her freedom if she is perfectly capable of supporting herself? Much younger than the others, sugar baby / professional socialite Miho (Sayuri Matsumura) meanwhile has gone the other way in trying live off men without the constraints of marriage only to find herself hamstrung by patriarchal expectations once again in having failed to realise that her lifestyle has an expiration date while she’s painted herself into a corner with no qualifications or work experience at the age of 26. The bulk of her business model is already rooted in the selling of other younger, prettier women as party guests for wealthy men and the consequences of continuing down that path are largely unpalatable to her. 

Touched by a further TV update from Mami, each of the women has a kind of epiphany that allows them to move forward into happier lives reassuring them that it’s alright to ask for more and they don’t have to hold any part of themselves back to meet the outdated expectations of traditional femininity, even Miho finding another way of harnessing the skills she does have to achieve true independence. The answer is not a total rejection of marriage or committed relationships but a reacknowledgment that to marry or not should be their own choice based on their own happiness rather than something you have to get over with to avoid the social stigma of becoming an old maid. A relatable exploration of the lives of young women in the contemporary society Fukuda’s empathetic drama eventually advances that in the end the best cure for loneliness is female solidarity in the face of a still overwhelmingly patriarchal society. 

Will I Be Single Forever? streams in the US until March 27 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-up Cinema

International trailer (English subtitles)

Howling (遠吠え, M Haris Sheikh, 2022)

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“What do you want from the world?” the sad sack hero of M Harris Sheikh’s noirish drama Howling (遠吠え, Tooboe) is asked on three separate occasions giving first a non-answer, then the answer he’d like to give, then the real one which is far less heroic or edifying but at least honest. Like everyone else, he too is howling into a void putting a brave face on his inner insecurity while longing to play the hero in his own life only to discover that no matter how many chances he’s given he may not be up to the mark. 

A self-professed nice guy, we first meet Ryuji (Ichiro Hashimoto) trying to help a young woman at the karaoke bar where he works escape sexual harassment in the workplace promising that he can protect her while pledging to kick the other guy’s ass, only as it turns out the other guy is her boyfriend and it’s Ryuji who’s been harassing her. Quite clearly uncomfortable, the young woman informs Ryuji she’s already reported him to HR and he’ll probably be fired today which is exactly what happens but rather than take this as an opportunity to learn Ryuji goes around telling everyone it was all a misunderstanding and he’s fallen victim to a needlessly judgmental society. “The world is tough for middle-aged men” he adds, lamenting that even having a “friendly discussion” with a younger woman has somehow become inappropriate. 

It’s these twin facets of his personality that go on to precipitate his downfall in his intense desire to conform to the masculine ideal as a protector when coming into contact with two women who are each in need of his help. Apparently never having had a girlfriend, Ryuji is overexcited when a 20-year-old college student, Akane (Yukino Takahashi), contacts him, a 40-year-old man, on a dating app never really considering that there might be something untoward going on right until the moment she explains that she’s trying to hire a randomer to kill her abusive father who happens to be the chief of police which is why she can’t hire a professional. Meanwhile, a school reunion grants him the opportunity of reuniting with middle-school crush Chisato (Sonae Kotani) only to discover that she has since married the bully, Tsuchida, who made their lives miserable and is trapped in an abusive relationship. Ryuji had been unable to protect her when they were children but claims to be different now. Then again Tsuchida said the same the thing and clearly hasn’t changed at all. Hoping to solve all his problems by getting a sudden windfall and proving that he can be the hero, Ryuji agrees to Akane’s plan but of course eventually disappoints himself realising that his fantasy of being a saviour is just that. 

Meanwhile the two women, who happen to be neighbours in a swanky high rise apartment block, begin by believing that they cannot escape their situations alone but need a male saviour each placing their hopes in the overeager Ryuji but finally freeing themselves perhaps spurred on by Ryuji’s male failure but otherwise rendering him an irrelevance. By the final confrontation each of the trio has sustained a wound to the hand to which Akane and Chisato jokingly refer as an eye of truth just like the hero from a manga yet with its own degree of truthfulness in that the women begin to see that their freedom is theirs for the taking while Ryuji is finally forced to accept that his presence is unnecessary proving his mettle only with a gesture of nihilistic futility. 

On the other hand we can also see the hand of a highly pressurised society on his fragile masculinity as he accidentally bonds with a pair of weird street preachers crying out for revolution but with an ironic bent. The first is a former Todai graduate who lost a good job in advertising because of all his unhealthy coping mechanisms. He preaches about a creating a truly fair society free of inequality brought about through a deadly virus claiming that his guru, the Master, is the origin not only of the coronavirus pandemic but every other dangerous pathogen known to man. Somewhat contradictorily, the Master reveals that he once lived in a swanky high rise apartment and would like to do so again which sounds somewhat incompatible with the goals of his revolution assuming he’s not planning to build so many that everyone who wants one can have one. The contradiction is further borne out in Ryuji’s answers about what it is he wants from the world, firstly stating ordinary requests such as a decent job, home, wife, children etc before admitting he’d actually prefer a really big house, lots of women, and respect from other people the last emphasising his internalised sense of belittlement and failure. 

The world that Ryuji inhabits does indeed seem to be oppressive and ominous, the strange overgrown alleyway below an overpass where he first encounters the revolutionaries reflecting the dark path of his soul while in the film’s complex production design the sterile space of the upscale tower block becomes a kind of trauma room where truths are aired leading to the final confrontation whimsically scored with circus music in which the women literally take matters into their own hands, and even the diner where Ryuji meets Akane takes on a Lynchian sense of the uncanny. Darkly humorous with its deadpan gags of giant spaghetti and the completely random entrance of an unrelated older woman also with a glove on her right hand ranting about her daughter’s hairdresser boyfriend and his koala neck tattoo, Sheikh’s absurdist drama quietly builds to its theatrical conclusion bringing down the curtain on a bloody tableaux the world as prophesied turned upside-down.  

Howling screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

International trailer (English subtitles)

Skeleton Flowers (かそけきサンカヨウ, Rikiya Imaizumi, 2021)

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The increasingly prolific Rikiya Imaizumi has become most closely associated with zeitgeisty youth romance accurately capturing the fears and anxieties of 20-somethings in contemporary Japan but brings his characteristically mellow touch to the classic coming-of-age tale in adapting Misumi Kubo’s short story Skeleton Flowers (かそけきサンカヨウ, Kasokeki Sankayo). In contrast to the gloominess of the title, teenage angst is never where you’d expect it to be as the variously pre-occupied pair at the film’s centre strive to deal with their problems with maturity and mutual compassion. 

You might for instance expect Yo (Sara Shida) who has been raised by her father, Nao (Arata Iura), since her mother left the family when she was three to feel jealousy or resentment when he sits her down and tells her that he’s fallen in love and wants to get married, especially as the woman he’s fallen in love with, Yoshiko (Akiko Kikuchi), has a small daughter of her own, Hinako. Attempting to be sensitive, Nao frames the new arrangement in a positive light in that Yo will be have more free time to be a regular teen and hang out with her friends rather than skipping out on after school clubs to take care of the household chores, a spin which could backfire in that Yo has obviously been used to being the lady of the house and might feel as if a responsibility she was proud of carrying is being taken away from her or that she’s being displaced by the new maternal presence of Yoshiko. She may in fact feel a little of this, but rather than lashing out or rebelling against the change in her familial circumstances she does her best to accept it with good grace while simultaneously prompted into a reconsideration of the relationships between parent and child meditating on the absence of her birth mother and wondering how and why she could have come to leave her behind. 

Riku (Oji Suzuka), her sometime love interest, had started a discussion in their friendship group about their earliest memories Yo unable to come up with anything on the spot but later remembering her mother carrying her into the forest and showing her the skeleton flowers of the title which appear bright white when dry but gradually become transparent as they absorb water. Later she remembers something else unsure if it’s a memory or a dream, a feeling of being suspended in mid-air as her parents argued as if everyone had forgotten she existed. Riku too frequently states that he’s “nothing at all”, feeling himself lost and directionless after being diagnosed with a heart condition later forced to accept that his life will never be the same as it was and his choices are now limited in ways they might not have been before. His health anxiety ironically leaves him emotionally numb, unable to identify let alone express his feelings as he becomes close not only to Yo but another, much more direct, girl in his class Saki (Tomo Nakai) who later does him the favour of explaining exactly what his problems are hoping to jolt him out of his emotional inertia while taking him to task for having been unintentionally condescending in his innate kindness. 

It’s this innate kindness that eventually sees both the teens through, each approaching their various worries with a mature compassion. Riku had felt uncomfortable in his familial home and jealous of Yo’s “real family” as she comes to accept her new relationships with Yoshiko and Hinako, but himself comes to understand the complicated relationship between his overbearing grandmother and lonely mother as one of mutual support getting another tip from Yoshiko that even if he feels has no particular talents, also jealous of Yo’s artistic prowess, his ability to support those around him is a talent in itself and an important part of the whole. A robust emotional honesty and the willingness to think things through calmly eventually lead stronger bonds between all concerned, Yo forgiving her birth mother while also embracing a new maternal relationship with Yoshiko, while Riku gains a new perspective of his own and even if he still hasn’t quite learned to identify his feelings is more comfortable with expressing them directly. A gentle, empathetic coming-of-age tale Imaizumi’s teenage drama roots itself in a world of fairness and compassion that allows each of the teens the space to figure themselves out while helping others to do the same no longer transparent in the rain but whole and fully visible not least to themselves. 

Skeleton Flowers streams in the US until March 27 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-up Cinema

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Far Far Away (緣路山旮旯, Amos Why, 2021)

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An introverted IT specialist gets a crash course in romance when he accidentally ends up dating a series of women from the far flung corners of the land in Amos Why’s charming romantic comedy, Far Far Away (緣路山旮旯). An occasionally subversive love letter to a disappearing Hong Kong, Why’s elegantly scripted romance also presents a snapshot of the contemporary society in exploring the various reasons each of the women has rejected the high status, consumerist lifestyle of the cities in favour of a more bespoke happiness elsewhere. 

At 28, Hau (Kaki Shum) has had only one relationship and is still unsure why his previous girlfriend, a former co-worker, broke up with him. His sympathetic hometown friends are forever trying to set him up while he nurses a gentle crush on another woman from the office, A Lee, but is too shy to say anything and worried that her reluctance when colleagues suggest he drive her home after a night out implies that she finds his company uncomfortable. That is not as it turns out quite the case, the reason she didn’t want him to drive her home is that she’d moved from an upscale, prestigious area to a small rural town far out of the city because she broke up with her boyfriend and couldn’t afford the rent but didn’t want anyone to know. 

The constant obsession with men driving women home becomes a minor plot point with several of the women actively questioning why it’s necessary and occasionally even offended while forcing Hau to admit that in most cases he’s offering because he wants to spend more time with them rather than out of a general concern for their safety or simple convenience. Having abandoned the dating app he was working on at work to concentrate on a delivery/map service, he ends up bouncing all around Hong Kong visiting various women even venturing to places so far out he needs to apply for a separate permit to enter while beginning to rethink his life choices realising that the reason he’s so set on stubbornly occupying his family’s flat in the city is rooted in his childhood trauma of having lost his mother to illness and his father to the Mainland in a symbolic orphanhood that hints at the anxieties of contemporary Hong Kong. Hau’s recently married friends discuss the possibility of having children but admit that they don’t really want to do it unless they can move abroad, Hau later speculating they will go to Taiwan while his friend who goes by the ironic name “Jude Law” has a British National (Overseas) Passport. Hau himself admits that he’d never really given it much thought until recently when a prospective partner asks him if he’d ever considered moving abroad mostly to confirm he won’t suddenly announce he’s leaving once they start dating seriously because almost no one can see a future for themselves in a changing Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, each of the women has made a decision to prioritise something else rather than join the city rat race from a youthful young woman living in an idyllic coastal town while determined to marry at 29 to Hau’s college friend Melanie (Jennifer Yu Heung-Ying) who chose to work for an NGO because of the better work/life balance that meant she wouldn’t be pressured into endless overtime. Then again another of Hau’s suitors appears to be just as ambitious as any other city dweller while viewing herself superior because her family bought a flat in a provincial area 25 years previously at a preferential rate and then sold it to her at below market value but more than they paid originally which strikes Hau as an odd arrangement between parent and child but speaks to the penny pinching mean spiritedness that leads her to blow up at him because he left a nice tip at a restaurant where service was included in the bill. An artist friend is willing to put up with primitive conditions in a remote mountain village because she’d rather have the stars than city lights, while each of the women also worry that any attempt at romance is always doomed to failure because no matter how keen they are or claim to be sooner or later the guys all ask them to move back to the city prioritising their own convenience while ignoring all of the reasons they chose to live in these very specific places. 

Eventually Hau becomes the exception, realising that the where isn’t the most important question acknowledging that perhaps he’s the one who ought to move in deciding to let go of the childhood trauma in his family home in order to make a new one of his own having figured out what he wants out of life and who he wants to spend it with which in the end dictates the where. Sometimes, love is just around the corner if you’re willing to go and have a look. A gentle celebration of a disappearing Hong Kong both literally and metaphorically, Why’s charming rom-com sends its hero on a roundtrip to love figuring out his place in the world in finding that home really is where the heart is. 

Far Far Away screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022

Original trailer (English subtitles)

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