Tag: 2023

Kitty the Killer (อีหนูอันตราย, Lee Thongkham, 2023)

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“You might be the stupidest killer I ever met” an ice cool assassin says of the bumbling hero at the centre of Lee Thongkham’s comic book action comedy Kitty the Killer (อีหนูอันตราย). She might indeed have a point, though as Charlie (Denkhun Ngamnet) points out killing is not strictly part of his job description which is more akin to a baby sitter for the “high school girl from hell” under his care, Dina (Ploypailin Thangprapaporn). In part a story of self-transformation, the film ironically plays with a series of genre tropes while providing a point of origin for an ongoing universe. 

As the film opens, Charlie is a feckless young man who can’t seem to get it together and is struggling to make a mark in his job as an “accounts manager” where he is semi-aware that everyone thinks of him as a bit useless. He muses on the difficulties of changing the way that others see him, but never quite takes the first step towards realising that what he needs to change is himself. Nevertheless, his life is changed for him when he runs into top assassin Grey Wolf shortly after The Agency tried to off him when he told them he wanted out of the game. Fearing he’s not long to live, Grey Wolf hands Charlie his trademark ring and tells him that he’s taken out a contract on his mum so if he doesn’t manage to rescue his associate Dina his whole family will be killed. 

Dragged into a world of assassins and conspiracy, Charlie has little option than to rise to the occasion shaking off his boring office boy persona to become a stylish handler perfectly equipped to face off against vicious killers as the gang chase vengeance for Grey Wolf and battle another faction of their own organisation which has apparently cut a deal with the Japanese which is why they all wear masks and carry katana. Lee Thongkham plays with a kind of re-imported orientalism in clear references to Kill Bill, even echoing a famous line in the film when assassin Nina the Faceless says to Charlie, “silly boy like you likes to play with swords.”

The line also hints at the subversion of traditional roles in play as Charlie becomes a male intruder in what in an otherwise a female space. Known as “Kitties” all the assassins are female though aside from villainess Violent all the handlers are men who are otherwise placed in a paternal role yet sidelined as nannies to the super-powered killers over whom they have almost total control. As Violet says, The Agency also has its rules and they are nothing if they do not obey. Charlie is to a degree raised by the four assassins under boss Makin (Vithaya Pansringarm) who train him to become to a capable handler allowing him to transform himself as he said he wanted to do in his opening voiceover while his mother otherwise pampers him at home. 

Nevertheless, the film also sympathises with the constrained lives of the Kitties who are told to have no emotions and that they must eliminate anyone who gets too close to them or witnesses them going about their business. As one of Dina’s “sisters” Tina remarks, she’s “just tired” of her emotionless life and lack of freedom, while Nina who already turned to the dark side tries to seduce them with false promises of greater autonomy under female boss Violet if simultaneously telling them they’d have to kill their friends and “family” in order to win it. In any case, it’s the sense of solidarity between the Kitties and the deeper than expected bond with their handlers that becomes the best weapon against Violet’s hostile take over of The Agency. Well, that and a magic stone that has the power to grant immortality, anyway. Filled with a good deal of deliberately silly dialogue and zany humour, the film also features a number of innovatively choreographed action sequences along with elaborate production design and the occasional use of onscreen graphics and animation. The depth of the world building hints at the potential for an ongoing series with a post-credits epilogue teasing a sequel offering further intrigue for the Kitties and their distinctly goofy handler in an expanding comic universe of retro charm. 

Kitty the Killer screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original trailer (English subtitles)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Plastic (Daisuke Miyazaki, 2023)

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A young couple bond over their shared love of an obscure 70s glam rock band, but soon find their youthful romance eroded by the realities of impending adulthood in Daisuke Miyazaki’s warmhearted coming-of-age tale, Plastic. Emotional distance becomes a persistent theme as mediated through a message into space that might take light years to arrive not to mention the reply, which seems to echo the couple’s inability to communicate despite their star-crossed connection.

Jun (Takuma Fujie) and Ibuki (An Ogawa) bond after realising they are both fans of 70s band Exne Kedy, talking for hours at a small cafe only leaving when the place closes. Having recently relocated to Nagoya from Tokyo, Jun enrols at Ibuki’s high school and joins her after school club much to the chagrin of her two friends. The pair eventually become a couple going on a series of wholesome dates including a trip to watch Sad Vacation in a cinema and are apparently very much in love but a year later the novelty has begun to wear off. Ibuki is studying for university exams and bound for a top institution in Tokyo while Jun is planning to drop out and pursue music full-time. 

Perhaps slightly more conventional, Ibuki berates Jun for his impracticality asking how likely it is he’ll be able to support himself with the kind of music he makes. Later she has some kind of flash forward in which she imagines herself supporting him financially while he’s not even playing guitar anymore and they’re arguing about responsibilities for rent and living costs. She breaks up with him in the carpark of a convenience store but perhaps regrets it, keeping up a half-hearted friendship while he remains lost and lovelorn pursuing music on the side while working part-time. “Plastic” becomes a kind of metaphor for their relationship, something which should have lasted forever but has been subtly undermined by the microorganisms of conventionality and contemporary capitalism until it eventually broke apart. 

The distance between them is likened to that of the space radio broadcast which might not reach its target for 25,000 light years. The message was sent the same year that Exne Kedy broke up, and may well be delivered a little more than 50 years later at their reunion concert only as the narratorial voice over explains, that’s largely up to chance. Swapping notes on studying in the same way Jun’s mother and grandfather had talked about seeing Exne Kedy in concert, Ibuki’s parents had compared their flashcards to modern apps and joked that maybe someday education would all be online as in fact happened during the pandemic. Having swapped her rural home for the bright lights of Tokyo, all her classes are online which ironically gives her more time to spend with her friends but also leaves her exhausted and distant. 

When Jun wonders if his music is like the broadcast, destined not to arrive for thousands of years so he’ll never know who got it. Another school friend, Ayumu, asks him if he’s sure he hasn’t just missed a reply 25,000 years in the making which is sort of ironic because he’s clearly missed that she’s been trying to answer his message only he’s too hung up on his ex to notice. Later she asks him to move in with her, pointing out that she’s right there not 25,000 light years away like Ibuki who is now living with a DJ who doesn’t even know who Exne Kedy are. The two of them are far apart but somehow still connected, not least by their love for the band which may eventually reunite them. 

Exne Kedy is modern day creation by Ide Kensuke who had previously released the album Kensuke Ide With His Mothership ― Contact From Exne Kedy and the Poltergeists and makes a self-cameo in the film in a surreal scene featuring the band whom Ibuki and Jun unexpectedly run into doing an impromptu performance in the middle of a forest singing a song that echoes the state of the couple’s relationship in which a lighthouse no longer illuminates and cannot light the way. Yet there is always a sense of the couple as a pair of flashing beacons waiting to pass close enough to each other to be able to convey a message. Featuring cameo appearances from (former pop star) Kyoko Koizumi and Machiko Ono, Miyazaki’s strangely charming youth movie is surprisingly sincere in its romanticism but equally in its critique of the world that frustrates it while suggesting that music may once again save the day.

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

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Rebound (리바운드, Jang Hang-jun, 2023)

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A collection of underdog teens learn a few valuable lessons in perseverance and determination while taking their moribund high school basketball team all the way to the national championships in Jang Hang-jun’s sporting drama, Rebound (리바운드). Inspired by the real life tale of Busan Jungang High School’s meteoric rise from obscurity to top rated team, the film quietly touches on inter-city rivalry and social inequality while otherwise spinning an inspirational tale of the power of solidarity and a never say die spirit. 

They are all in their way rebounding from something, and not least the team itself which is threatened with closure after being judged a bad investment by the penny pinching headmaster given its “embarrassing” series of total losses across a series of years. The team is given a brief reprieve but only as a token of its former reputation, the plan being to have one just for show but not actually enter any competitions while the school let it gradually fall into obscurity. Accordingly, they begins looking for “cheap” coaches who might be prepared to manage a phantom team and eventually land on 25-year-old social worker Kang Yang-hyun (Ahn Jae-hong) who is a former minor leaguer and alumnus of the school looking to reclaim his own failed hoop dreams vicariously through a new generation of new players. 

There are however only four left on the team, two of whom immediately quit leaving Kang scrambling around the city looking for tall boys who might be good with a ball and can be convinced to switch schools. The problem they have is that talented players are quickly snapped up by more prestigious institutions in Seoul which can after all offer more opportunities to ambitious youngsters aware that they probably won’t be playing basketball for the rest of their lives. No one really envisages a future for themselves in Busan which remains a kind of underdog in itself as it struggles against the the allure of Seoul as place of greater sophistication and possibility. Keen basketballer Ki-bum (Ahn Jae-hong) turns down Kang’s offer for just this reason insisting that his career is dead if he stays in Busban even while his parents seems to be turning down good offers on his behalf. He only agrees to join the team on learning that ace player Jun-yung (Lee Dae-hee) will be playing for them. 

Jun-yung is valued mainly for his height which sort of runs against the messages of the game in that it’s not something the players can control and no matter how hard they train they will always be at a disadvantage to those who are simply bigger. Kang’s first mistake is that he builds everything around the pillar of Jun-yung, barely letting the other players play while instructing them to pass every ball to him so he can shoot. In any case, Jun-yung too is eventually poached by a better team apparently forced to betray his teammates by his ambitious parents who are after all merely making what they see as a smart decision on his behalf. A disastrous fight between two players with unfinished business from middle school also results in a lengthy suspension ending the team’s hopes of competition success for the current season. 

But as Kang later says, it’s only really a “fake failure” in that it gave him a rebound he could use to realise his mistakes and start over prioritising their shared love of the game over his own insecurity now more willing to take a risk while concentrating on making the team as good as it can be rather than the external validation of championship wins. As he later tells them in an inspirational locker room speech, not all of your shots go in but that’s OK because they come back to you on the rebound and what matters is what you do with them then. Whatever happens, life goes on and fear of failure is not a reason to give up on something you love.

Jang does his best to avoid underdog sports movie cliches while subtly hinting at the pressures of social inequality as moody player Gang-ho (Jung Gun-joo) struggles with an old injury he couldn’t afford to have treated properly while trying to make extra cash betting on basketball games with other wayward neighbourhood kids. Capturing a real sense of energy in the various basketball games along with a wholesome sense of possibility as the team begin to bond and “improve” each other, Jang is careful not to be blinded by a false narrative of inspirational success but rather doubles down on the rebound mentality of seizing opportunities as they come and continuing to chase your dreams in your own way no matter how hopeless they may seem. 

Rebound screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ⓒ 2023 NEXON Korea Corporation, B.A. ENTERTAINMENT, WALKHOUSECOMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

As Long As We Both Shall Live (わたしの幸せな結婚, Ayuko Tsukahara, 2023) [Fantasia 2023]

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A young woman with chronically low self-esteem learns to love herself after bonding with a taciturn nobleman in Ayuko Tsukahara’s adaptation of the fantasy romance light novel series by Akumi Agitogi, As Long As We Both Shall Live (わたしの幸せな結婚, Watashi no Shiawasena Kekkon). Set in an alternate version of the late 19th/early 20th century in which the nation is ruled by an emperor who has the ability to foresee the future and leads a series of prominent clans of superpowered soldiers against “aberrations” who wreak havoc in the lives ordinary people, the film is effectively a kind of Cinderella story only the fairy godmothers are a kindly housekeeper a shady underground sect with the power to manipulate people’s minds. 

In any case, Miyo (Mio Imada) was born into a noble house the members of which have the ability to manipulate the wind though sadly she appears to have been born “powerless” and is bullied by her step-mother and step-sister who treat her as a servant. At 19, she learns she’s to be married off and is excited about finally escaping her abusive family home but also wary that it might not make much difference because her potential husband, Kiyoka Kudo (Ren Meguro), is said to be cruel and violent. All three of his matches have fled the house in under three days though being so used to mistreatment Miyo is sure that it will just be a matter of adjusting to her new circumstances. 

What she discovers is that Kiyoka doesn’t seem all that bad just a bit aloof and direct in his manner of speech. Nevertheless, she continues to believe that she isn’t good enough to marry him because she doesn’t have any magical powers and is convinced he will call off the engagement when he finds out. Meanwhile, she bonds with housekeeper Yurie (Mirai Yamamoto) after breaking protocol by helping out around the house for something to do though it is perhaps a bit odd that someone from such an apparently wealthy family has only one servant and seems to lead an incredibly simple life devoted to his role as a soldier helping to keep the aberrations in check especially now that the emperor is dying and someone has apparently released the pent up souls of fellow aberration fighters who died horribly and are filled with dangerous resentment.

Many of Miyo’s self-esteem issues are down to the way she was treated by her family and having lost her mother at two years old though there is obviously parallel in her literal “powerlessness” and the lack of agency that is afforded to her in having been kept a prisoner in the family estate only to be traded off in marriage by a father apparently out for whatever he can get for such a “mistake” of a daughter. It’s perhaps a slight failing in the narrative that she turns out to have powers after all rather than simply beginning to accept herself in the comparatively warmer environment of Kiyoka’s home even if it might also be a little awkward that her self-love is born of feeling loved by Kiyoka and to a lesser extent Yurie and immediately has her pledging to give her life for him if only he should ask it. 

For his part, Kiyoka is also undergoing something of a transformation in that it turns out he also felt estranged from his mother and is actually kind at heart just incredibly awkward and taciturn. The reason he didn’t bond with any of his previous suitors seems to be that he objected to their insincerity and the nonsense that goes along with being a member of the aristocracy like the concept of arranged marriage in itself, later taking Miyo’s family to task for their treatment of her claiming that he doesn’t really care about her social status or whether or not she has any powers. In any case, it’s love that helps her overcome her “powerlessness” even if she uses her newfound inner strength for someone else rather than herself, taking control over and her life regaining self-confidence as someone worthy of love, respect, and basic human decency not to mention happiness. A post-credits trail hints at a potential sequel or even series expanding on the franchise’s rich world building but for now at least it seems as if Miyo has found her happy ending, finally able to embrace life on her own terms rather than feeling as if she needs to make a mends for her existence.

As Long As We Both Shall Live screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Childe (귀공자, Park Hoon-jung, 2023) [Fantasia 2023]

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“Isn’t money great? Everything is solvable with it” according to a lawyer working for an ailing chaebol CEO, but for the man he’s talking to money is at the root of all his problems because he doesn’t have any and is therefore powerless not least to save his equally ailing mother who needs an expensive operation to survive. The latest action drama from Park Hoon-jung, The Childe (귀공자, Gwigongja) implies an apparent focus switch in that the korean title, Nobleman, is also that of its absurdly cheerful assassin. “Childe” in its medieval spelling may simply be an attempt to lend a eerie mythical quality similar to the way the word “witch” is used in Park’s previous films, but in its original meaning also hints at the ostensible protagonist’s liminal status as a “nobleman” who has not yet come of age. 

That’s in part because Marco (Kang Tae-joo) has no idea of his parentage, only that his father was Korean and returned home alone leaving him and his mother behind in the Philippines. Referred to by a derogatory term for children fathered by Korean men as a result of sex tourism, Marco is an embittered young man filled with resentment and little hope for the future whose literal fatherlessness is an allusion to his cultural orphanhood. His mother sent him to Korean schools and raised him only to speak English and Korean, either feeling some affection for his absent father or more practically deciding he might have a better life as a Korean even if in the end neither culture fully accepts him. He would never have attempted to look for his father were it not for his mother’s illness hoping in some way to make him accept responsibility for his actions and the family he abandoned. 

In essence, Park uses the ailing chaebol patriarch’s familial irresponsibility as a wider metaphor for corporatising colonialism and exploitation while emphasising the corrupting influence of chaebol culture in which money really can solve pretty much everything even, it’s implied, imminent death. Picked up by a slick lawyer, Marco is told his father is looking for him too because, ironically enough, he is also ill and near death so simply wants to see the son he abandoned. Chairman Han will fly him to Korea and also cover his mother’s medical bills if he agrees to come but once he arrives Marco realises he’s in a very precarious position caught in the middle of a succession battle between his two half-siblings who each see him only as a pawn and ultimately want him dead. A mysterious assassin billed as The Nobleman (Kim Seon-ho) but introducing himself only as a “friend”, possibly the last you’ll ever make, is hot on his tail though his motivations remain unclear. 

As in some of his other films, Park hints at a mysterious shadow world filled with conspiracy and dominated by chaebol interests though in this case the figure of the corrupted patriarch takes on a poignant sensibility in which he too has become little more than a pawn. It appears he may disapprove of his children’s actions and actually has a genuine interest in meeting the son he abandoned who is like the hero of a fairytale the most just, deprived of his birthright by the greedy machinations of others. The abiding mystery may be why the chairman is kept alive though it seems that oldest son Yi-sa (Kim Kang-woo) is otherwise unable to maintain control of the corporate empire without recourse to his father’s identity for he has little power of his own. 

That might go some way to explaining the absurdity of his sociopathic violence, wandering around in a bathrobe carrying a shot gun and executing newspaper editors who’ve tried to expose their dodgy dealings in the midst of a vast estate bordered by forests. Even the school girl half-sister roams around with a pistol taking pot shots at Marco and The Nobleman but interestingly not at Yi-sa or the Chairman which hints at an odd kind of familial solidarity even in this incredibly dysfunctional and corrupt environment along with a wilful determination to deprive Marco of what may be his birthright. As with his previous films, Park loads up on gore delivered with more than a little absurdity in a series of high impact action scenes, but finally returns again to an unconventional friendship and unexpected brotherhood between the powerless and dispossessed in a sense at least reclaiming something that was theirs by right with the only means at their disposal. 

The Childe screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival and is released in the US courtesy of Well Go USA.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Back Home (七月返歸, Nate Tse Ka-ki, 2023)

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“This place is cursed” according to an exasperated policeman dealing with yet another suicide at a rundown public housing estate in Hong Kong in Nate Tse Ka-Ki’s gripping supernatural thriller, Back Home (七月返歸). It’s true enough that this seems to be a fairly haunted land in which it has become quite difficult to tell the living from the dead, “they seem so real, I can’t tell the difference” a little boy admits while unfairly burdened by the ability to see things that others don’t or at least have become adept in not seeing. 

Wing (Anson Kong Ip-sang) too once had the ability to see ghosts, but apparently grew out of it after moving to Canada to live with his uncle a decade previously. All this place holds for him now is horror, he admits on being called home following his estranged mother’s attempt to take her own life. Now stable but in a coma, a doctor suggests it’s like her soul has gone wandering and they’ll have to wait to see if it ever comes back. Staying in his childhood home, Wing finds himself assaulted by painful memories of the past along with more literal ghosts he can’t really be sure aren’t manifestations of his trauma or symptoms of a fracturing mind. 

Then again, there is something very weird about this particular block. The people who remember Wing remember him as “spooky”, a boy who was rejected by the community around him after claiming to see ghosts. His embarrassed mother regularly railed at him, accusing him of lying and blaming him for his father leaving the family while seemingly suffering from mental health issues that have also seen her reduced to a figure of fun by the local kids. She tries all sorts of Taoist rituals including having him beaten with a burning stick to close his third eye all which understandably results in Wing deciding to remain silent and speak no more of ghosts while otherwise unseeing them in effort that must place extreme strain his own mental health. His plight is essentially one of repression in which he is haunted in more ways than one while forced to deny his authentic self because of a social taboo.

Even so, it’s a taboo others would quite like to break. In some ways we can’t quite tell if it isn’t Wing who’s dead and haunting his childhood home or if everyone else is actually a ghost. The ominous Uncle Chung who sells paper sacrifices hints as much when he unironically offers to make some for Wing while his overly cheerful wife’s constant offers of her special soup seem as if they may have some kind of ulterior motive. Complaining that there’s definitely something rotten in this apartment block, Wing discovers that there have been other victims besides his mother and hears from a little boy, Yu, that anyone who visits the forbidden seventh floor meets a sticky end. What’s waiting for Wing up there is a Lynchian world of repressed memory eager to confront him with his traumatic past and either set him free or trap him there forever. 

Bonding with Yu who is after all much like himself, a lonely little boy rejected by his peers while constantly “bothered” by wandering spirits, Wing starts to suspect there’s something more sinister going on. Director Nate Tse Ka-ki drops in repeated visual clues such as the distinctive pairs of scissors that seem to turn up in odd places while otherwise blurring the lines between the world of the living and the dead and alluding to other kinds of exile such as Wing’s life in Canada and estrangement from his family. On his return “back home”, he feels conflicted and resentful almost as if his mother had called him back and was refusing to let him go while grandma Chung ominously offers to look after Wing’s offspring when he eventually has one now that he’s where he’s supposed to be she assumes for good. It’s difficult not to read something sinister in her speeches about engineering a better future to “bring peace to this place” even before it becomes clear that it isn’t so much the lifting of a curse she’s interested in as its fulfilment. Some viewers may also detect something familiar in her delivery. In any case, in embracing a younger version of himself Wing may finally be able to escape his haunting even if it leaves him with a difficult choice between comforting fantasy and an objectively horrific “reality”.

Back Home screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Images: ©️mm2 Studios Hong Kong

Saga Saga (緑のざわめき-Saga Saga-, Aimi Natsuto, 2023)

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Three women contending with a legacy of patriarchal failure and male violence circle around each other in the picturesque hot springs resort of Ureshino in Aimi Natsuto’s etherial drama, Saga Saga (緑のざわめき, Midori no Zawameki – Saga Saga –). Less playful than Natsuto’s previous film Jeux de plage, the oscillating action takes on a poetic, mystical direction as the forces which bind the three women together eventually become clear while each in their own way tries to overcome a lingering sense of displacement and loneliness. 

The first of them, Kyoko (Rena Matsui), left Ureshino to become an actress in Tokyo but has given up performing and resettled in nearby Fukuoka where she runs into an old hometown boyfriend, Sotaro, who is currently sort of dating Eri, a woman he met on a dating app. Despite telling Kyoko he can’t stay long after reconnecting because he has a date with someone who is “not quite” his girlfriend, Sotaro ends up going to a love hotel with another woman, Naoko (Sae Okazaki), who frequents the bookstore where he works. Though it originally appears that Naoko is jealous of Kyoko and fears she’s missed her chance with Sotaro, we soon realise that she is in fact semi-stalking her for unclear reasons but actually wants to get in touch with someone else and eventually forms a telephone connection with Anna (Sara Kurashima), a high school girl currently living in Ureshino with her aunt, Fumiko (Asuka Kurosawa). 

In a way, they are all looking for something that seems to be missing in their lives. For Kyoko it seems to be something like the concept of home as she struggles with a series of sudden changes from the death of her mother two years previously to a brush with cancer in the form of an ovarian tumour she has recently had removed. Fumiko, who was a friend of her mother’s, tells her that she’s on a journey of self-reconciliation and there is indeed something in that as she works over the mysteries of her past while looking for new directions in her future. 

Meanwhile, she is plagued by strange dreams of being lost in a forest later telling a friend that she was once sexually assaulted in the woods when she was in high school and has the feeling the person who is chasing in her in her dream may be her father who left the family when she was a child. When she was receiving treatment for the tumour on her ovary, she began to ask herself why she had been born a woman forever subject to threat and patriarchal oppression. On her return to Fukuoka, she undergoes a very strange job interview in which she’s repeatedly assured that “being a woman” she won’t be asked to do anything “difficult” while it seems that being “attractive” is enough to get by in the beginning. Also they warn her that they don’t offer “great maternity leave or anything like that”. 

The lives of each of the women have been in one way or another overshadowed by male violence, but it’s Anna’s would-be-boyfriend Toru who is eventually victimised when he’s assaulted by a woman who wanted to bring back a problematic local festival cancelled because of a sexual assault. Toru had been in the forest to consult with some kind of mystic man trying to get him to conduct a ritual to get Anna to like him only to be told it doesn’t really work like that and you wouldn’t want it to anyway. After the assault it’s Toru’s life which spirals out of control when he’s blackmailed into acts of petty crime by the witch-like woman who forced herself on him, while Fumiko too is later forced to pay the price for having kept her secrets and for compassionate reasons attempted to hide the truth from those who most wanted to know.

Finally brought together on solving their individual mysteries, the three women settle on creating a home they can each return to, anchoring themselves as a family as a means of finding stability in a world which is so often in flux in defiance of the destructive forces which connect them. Even Eri admits that in reality she may have been looking for self-affirmation in her desire to find a dating app soulmate as her friends reflect on their terrible romantic experiences which, ironically, include being stalked. In the depths of its mysticism and eeriness, the film nevertheless ends on a note of serenity and the promise of moving forward if paradoxically by making a return. 

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

Original trailer (no subtitles)

River (リバー、流れないでよ, Junta Yamaguchi, 2023) [Fantasia 2023]

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Some might say time stands still in the “peaceful” hot springs town of Kibune, but on this particular day it’s more than usually true in Junta Yamaguchi’s followup to the cult hit Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, River (リバー、流れないでよ, River, Nagarenai de yo). This time around, the staff of a hotel along with its guests find themselves trapped in an infinite two minute loop in which they retain all their memories but are constantly returned to where they were two minutes previously no matter what they do. 

Depending on the situation, two minutes can be an eternity or an instant (or perhaps it’s always both) and in this case there isn’t much you can do in such a short time. The hotel staff find themselves constantly running up stairs and through corridors trying to coordinate their actions while accepting that nothing is permanent and any changes they try to make to their situation will be wiped out in the next loop. A chef who is also apparently a science enthusiast cautions them against taking any rash actions seeing as they can’t know when time will start flowing normally again, though for some the opportunity to embrace guilty pleasures such as poking a hole in the shoji is too good to pass up. 

As for what’s causing it, no one really knows but as it turns out everyone has a reason they might want to stop time. For maid Mikoto (Riko Fujitani) it’s that she fears her boyfriend plans to move abroad to study French cooking while another pair of guests secretly wanted to ask each other favours but are having trouble plucking up the courage and a blocked writer consumed with guilt for having killed off a key character is glad he can finally take some time out only to be slowly bored out of his mind when faced with an eternity of nothingness. The irony is that people come to places like these precisely because they’re “boring”, free from the chaos and stress of their ordinary lives. Mikoto says as much while wondering if that’s why her boyfriend wants to leave, that he feels as if he’s stagnating in a place where nothing changes and time doesn’t flow and that while he could be “happy” here with her living an ordinary life there’d always be a part of him wanting more.

Still, having this additional time helps each of them find clarity and begin to resolve some of their worries and anxieties. Even if they had “more time” in the more conventional sense, they may never have been able to speak plainly but given the enforced constraints of the time loop in which they quickly run out of other things to do and are more or less forced to talk to each other, they are all able to come to some kind of accommodation with what’s been bothering them. The two male guests are able to clear the air after an argument, the writer comes to a new appreciation of his characters thanks to his own sense of despair being trapped in the loop, and Mikoto realises she’ll have to let her boyfriend go in the hope that he’ll circle back around to her in time. 

The complexities involved are unlike those in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes given that time constantly resets so the only point of consistency is the initial position of each person though the infinite quality of the looping provokes an additional layer of existential questioning as each of the various protagonists is forced to ask if they’re really moving on with their lives or even notice that time is indeed flowing. The clue that something is continuing to move lies in the differing levels of snowfall in each of the loops hinting at the increasing depths of their despair as they realise that not even death might free them from the maddening cycle of repetition while accepting they’ll have to work together to figure out what’s going on and how to escape the loop. The farcical humour soon gives way to a more poignant sense of reflection but also to a renewed joy and excitement that the future might actually be fun too and maybe it’s less scary to go there than be quite literally stuck in the present for all of eternity.

River screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)