Tag: BFI Flare

Who’ll Stop the Rain (青春並不溫柔, Su I-Hsuan, 2023)

Posted on by

What does “freedom” actually mean? Su I-Hsuan’s post-martial law drama Who’ll Stop the Rain? (青春並不溫柔) sees a younger generation struggle to shake off the authoritarian yoke meanwhile it seems clear that freedom has its limits and has not been granted equally to or by all. Set in 1994 it takes place against the longest student strike in the nation’s history and ultimately pits the forces of protest and complicity against each other in the constant struggle for individual freedom. 

Free-spirited Chi-wei (Lily Lee) might be something of an outlier in this age, later expressing confusion to the comparatively repressed Ching that she doesn’t understand why they’re fighting for freedom when freedom was something they had always possessed. Yet at the university she finds herself constrained in what is supposed to be an artist’s school, denied creative freedom by stuffy professors who mark their students not by the quality of their work but their obedience and willingness to accept the lessons the professors see fit to give them. Chi-wei’s professor gives her telling off because he says her hair’s too messy, then humiliates her in front of the class by throwing her work on the floor and telling her to start again. Chi-wei, however, remains defiant and continues to work her own way regardless of what the teachers may say. 

It’s after a chance encounter with Ching (Yeh Hsiao-Fei) that she’s drawn into the student movement which opposes the authoritarian rule of the professors and demands greater creative freedoms for the students and society at large as this generation who came of age after martial law considers the kind of future they envision for themselves. But like any student movement, there are innate tensions within the group with some suggesting that its leader, Kuang (Roy Chang), is merely trying to relive the White Lily movement and is in fact less committed to the cause than he seems as evidenced by his willingness to enter dialogue with the staff against the wishes of his girlfriend, Ching. 

Unlike the others, Ching is a law student and not and artist. She’s also the daughter of a prominent, conservative and patriarchal politician and the group is somewhat ironically often dependent on her familial wealth. Her background perhaps makes it harder for her to emerge into a new, ostensibly freer age as bound by a set of ideas otherwise alien to Chi-wei who is at any rate absolutely herself and unafraid to be so. Ching tells her that she longs to be part of a group, which is presumably why she’s joined the artists in their protest even if others accuse her of simply rebelling against her privilege, which is something Chi-wei has little need for as she has already discovered the power of freeing her mind. 

It’s these forces that generate the push and pull between the two women as Chi-wei is eventually awakened to her sexuality by Ching only to experience her pulling away in her deeply internalised shame. Even so, she takes an approach that largely avoids direct confrontation but allows her to stay by Ching’s side, patient yet confused in attempting to create a safe space that Ching can accept as her own. Both women are also constrained by forces of traditional patriarchy with even Kuang stating that perhaps women shouldn’t be too independent after all or else they wouldn’t need him in an ironic moment foreshadowing his total redundancy. Meanwhile, Chi-wei is aggressively pursued by a fellow student who won’t be deterred by her frequent rejections and general lack of interest in men while ironically trying to convince her she’s been “brainwashed” by the strikers and is really a good girl, like him willing to bend to the authoritarian yoke. 

Perhaps it’s telling that it’s only once the strike is over and following a confrontation with her authoritarian father that Ching is able to overcome the barriers that prevent her from embracing her true desires and authentic self. In her opening voiceover, Chi-wei reflects that back then they still believed a tiny flame could burn down the forest implying at least that she was mistaken but even if a wider revolution ends if not exactly in failure than in compromise, disappointment, and rancour, it is true enough that the spark between these women was enough to burn through the forces that kept them apart to find a more individual kind of freedom that exists outside of oppressive superstructures even if as Ching says protest never ends.

Who’ll Stop the Rain screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Heavy Snow (폭설, Yun Su-ik, 2023)

Posted on by

“It’s obvious it was a romance, why did you pretend it wasn’t?” one wounded woman asks another while their connection seems to be frustrated by internalised shame and conflicting desires. Yun Su-ik’s frosty drama Heavy Snow (폭설, pokseol) does indeed seem to suggest that their love for each other can only exist in a kind of otherworld, eventually segueing into a metaphysical realm which simultaneously implies that this isn’t actually a romance but self-reflection and interrogation as a tomboyish actress searches for herself inside her various roles.

Indeed, Su-an (Han Hae-in) views Seol (Han So-hee) with a kind of awe which might be understandable given that Seol is a TV drama superstar improbably transferring to her rural arts school for a break from the world of showbiz. Or as Seol would later imply, because she’s become too difficult to manage and is rebelling against the emptiness of her ostensibly glamorous life through increasing acts of reckless self-harm. Su-an might wonder if that’s all her flirtation is, an attempt to flaunt a taboo while otherwise puzzled and jealous as to why someone like Seol would actually be interested in her. 

Yet Su-an’s interest is also in part idolisation, attracted to Seol because she fears she is everything she wants to be but isn’t, beautiful and talented. But Seol seems to doubt she’s either of those things while otherwise superficially confident in her sexuality and drawn to Su-an because of her ordinariness. Experiencing a moment of identity crisis, she’s looking for herself outside the frame yet also perhaps like Su-an caught in moment of self-idolisation. Noticing one of the giant billboards of her face that the litter the city she briefly touches it before walking away as if attracted to an image of herself she recognises and doesn’t. 

Yet it seems it’s less the awkwardness of too much intimacy that causes Su-an to pull away when Seol kisses her than shame. She tells Seol that she thinks it isn’t right, and perhaps goes on to regret that decision while continually pining for an idealised teenage love. The two women in a sense trade places. Years later Su-an is a famous TV actress, having in a way taken over the image of Seol, while Seol is evidently no longer acting but a depressed and defeated figure still resentful of Su-an’s rejection. The effects of their shifting fame deepen the gap between them with the teenage Su-an further nervous in her relationship with Seol knowing the danger that her celebrity presents. There is a suggestion that their creative desires conflict with the romantic, that they feel they cannot embrace their sexuality freely and remain in the entertainment industry because of the intense pressures a conservative society places on prominent people to be shining examples of moral purity. Each of them appear to become worn out by the demands of their fame, Su-an turning to drugs in attempt to mask her depression while the teenage Seol ponders quitting acting to become more her authentic self.

In the dreamlike third act which commences at the sea, a touchstone for each of the women connected to the innocence of their teenage romance, may suggest that in looking for Seol Su-an is really looking for herself or perhaps simply to recapture the person she was at the beginning of everything. At odds with each other, the two women become marooned in a snowbound land with no one else around. Finally repairing their relationship, it seems that they can only embrace their love in this barren place where no one else exists to judge them. The implication maybe that as Seol says the things Su-an wants to say to Seol she really wants to say to herself in a desire for self-acceptance, but equally that we can’t be sure that any of this “real” rather than dream or wishfulment.  In any case all that remains is a painful longing either for an unrealised love or the elusive self. 

Hinting at the pressures of the contemporary society, the unrealistic expectations placed on those in entertainment industry and outward social conservatism the film never less presents its central romance with an evenhanded poignancy even in its continuing impossibility as the two women continue to look for the self in each other but seemingly struggling to see past the hollow images of their own self-projections.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Heavy Snow screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

BFI Flare Confirms Complete Programme for 2024

Posted on by

The BFI’s LGBTQ+ film festival, BFI Flare, has announced the full programme for this year’s edition which runs at the BFI Southbank 13th to 24th March. This year there are a trio of features from East Asia included in the lineup from South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.

South Korea

  • Heavy Snow – drama in which a girl at a performing arts high school draws closer to a famous teen actress.

Taiwan

  • Who’ll Stop The Rain – drama set in post-martial law Taiwan in which an art student experiences first love after joining a protest group.

Thailand

  • Solids By the Seashore – etherial Thai drama in which a woman from a small town falls for a visiting artist.

BFI Flare runs at BFI Southbank 13th to 24th March, 2024. A small number of short films are also available to stream via BFI Player. The full programme can be found on the official website where tickets are already on sale. You can also keep up to date with all the latest news via the festival’s Facebook page,  X (formerly Twitter) account, Instagram, and YouTube channels.

Lotus Sports Club (ក្លឹបកីឡាបាល់ទាត់ផ្កាឈូក, Vanna Hem & Tommaso Colognese, 2022)

Posted on by

Solidarity becomes the watch word of a team of athletes led by the much loved Pa Vann in Tommaso Colognese and Vanna Hem’s observational documentary, Lotus Sports Club (ក្លឹបកីឡាបាល់ទាត់ផ្កាឈូក). Now in his 60s, Pa Vann is a trans man living with a longterm partner and running a women’s under 21 football team in which the majority of members are LGBTQ+, offering a place to belong to young people who often have nowhere else to turn having become estranged from their families or rejected by the world around them. 

One of the players on the team, Leak, explains that he always knew he was a boy but was expelled from school for cutting his hair short and behaving in a more masculine fashion. After leaving the home of a relative, a friend brought him to Pa Vann’s where he found a new sanctuary and a place he could be accepted for being himself. Amas, meanwhile, is from a conservative village and a Muslim family who struggle to accept his identity as a trans man and are unable to reconcile it with their religion and community. 

Both Leak and Amas are deeply grateful for the new family they’ve found with Pa Vann and also for the opportunities they’ve gained through football, Leak especially thankful to have met so many different people from so many different places while coming to see that he wasn’t alone and there were other people like him. The team is however for under 21s meaning that the pair will inevitably at some point age out and though it’s clear that they wouldn’t have to leave Pa Vann’s because of it they seem to struggle with what else to do with their lives. Leak in particular is deeply worried about not having a job at comparatively late age and eventually leaves for the city without saying goodbye apparently out of a desire to avoid hurting Pa Vann’s feelings or a fear he may be angry with him for leaving. 

Pa Vann is however philosophical if a little hurt, knowing that his job is to send them back out into the world with better skills to survive its harshness. Opening his home to the team members, he gives them life advice and teaches useful skills to help them find work such as carpentry and handicrafts. The entire point of the football team, which includes both LGBTQ+ members and otherwise, is to foster a sense of solidarity between the players to support each other in their everyday lives often in the face of entrenched social prejudice. 

Prejudice is something the team receives its fair share of. Players complain that some coaches from other regions accuse them of having men on the team and inappropriately ask for “proof” that they are female sometimes by having a look or a feel for themselves. But Pa Vann isn’t having any of that, directly telling the other coaches that he won’t have people being “rude” to his team and that their requests are “unacceptable”. Leak complains that the short-haired players have it worse and finds it ironic that he has to tell them he’s a woman to be left alone while even spectators sometimes hurl homophobic slurs from the sidelines. 

It seems unclear whether Leak and Amas find the city anymore accepting after moving there, but they do apparently find signs of hope in seeing other queer people living well while having their horizons broadened. Amas is also grateful for his time with Pa Vann but suggests that it might have been too easy to simply stay in the village and that he wanted to see more of the world and experience more of the life though he’d never have had the courage if it were not for the “solidarity” that Pa Vann showed him. Pa Vann’s own life cannot of have been easy. His partner explains that her family disowned her over the relationship while she herself identifies as straight and has never thought of Pa Vann as anything other than a man. But it has perhaps allowed him to show kindness and compassion to those like himself in giving them a safe place to stay where they can be accepted for who they are that then gives them the courage to extend the same kindness to others as they go out into the world seeking new and brighter futures of joy and solidarity. 

Lotus Sports Club screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare. It will also be screening at Bertha DocHouse on 23rd April as part of this year’s Queer East.

Trailer (English subtitles)

XX+XY (Lee Soh-Yoon, 2022)

Posted on by

According to the voiceover narration that opens Lee Soh-yoon’s lighthearted teen drama XX+XY, we live in an age of choices yet sometimes choice can itself be a burden. At least that’s how Jay comes to see it having been born intersex but encouraged to think that at some point they’re going to have to choose whether to live as a man or a woman as if those are the only options or the choice to continuing living just as they are is not available to them. 

In essence many of their problems could be solved by reducing social dependence on the gender binary. Having been mainly home schooled, Jay has decided to attend a regular high school in part to help them figure out who they are through interacting with other teenagers who, they discover, are also struggling with many of the same questions in trying to decide who they’ll be. Yet for Jay, there’s also the issue of social stigma surrounding the reality of their life as an intersex person which is little understood by the world around them. When their identity is exposed by a malicious person, Jay’s teacher sighs and asks “Why didn’t you hide it better?”, prompting their response that their identity is not something shameful that needs to be concealed while suggesting that the school is on one level at least failing in their duty of care in refusing to protect them from the fallout of being outed which is in part their fault in stemming from the indiscretion of a teacher. 

The idea that they have something to hide is also particularly hurtful to Jay because of their unusual family circumstances given that they were adopted by a couple in a happy marriage of convenience between a closeted gay man and a woman otherwise uninterested in marriage. Their father’s partner now also lives with them and is very much a part of the family as can be seen in cheerful family photo they have hanging on their living room wall. Jay’s father tells them that he wants them to live in a world where they can love freely without fear of judgement or of feeling forced into the kind of arrangement he and their mother have made, their happy partnership not withstanding. On the other hand, it’s also he who first raises the potentially problematic idea that Jay should decide their binary gender based on their sexual orientation only to be firmly slapped down by their mother. 

This is partly the thesis of the film, that Jay is figuring themselves out based on their feelings towards two potential suitors in childhood best friend Sera who’s always known that Jay is intersex and the smitten Wooram who fell for Jay thinking they were a girl and then confused by their more masculine presentation on arrival at school. As Sera later points out, Jay never directly states they are a boy but everyone assumes them to be one because they are wearing a boy’s school uniform and have short hair. It is the school that force Jay to make a concrete choice because of its persistent gender segregation which extends from uniforms, single sex bathrooms, and classroom cliques to different activities for boys and girls in PE. Jay has to make a choice because they have to pick a bathroom, only using the men’s means there’s no bins to dispose of sanitary pads forcing Jay to carry them around until they can find a place to discreetly dispose of them. The boys in Jay’s class are jealous of their popularity with girls, while immaturely gossiping about another boy they regard as effeminate and possibly gay because he is “small” and hangs out with the girls a lot. 

Meanwhile, the conservative attitudes towards sex and romance held by the school and society at large are also in themselves counterproductive. Teens try to buy condoms to be responsible but are turned away because they don’t have ID or a note from their parents and are even shouted at by a nosy old lady at the checkout all of which has them wondering if they should just go ahead without protection rather than giving up on the idea. When Jay’s intersex identity is revealed online, the teachers are more concerned about the concurrent rumour that they and Sera have slept together rather than the breaching of Jay’s privacy, only interested in what the other parents might say or that Jay’s identity on its own may negatively affect their reputation aside from the developing sex scandal. 

In any case supported by their new friends, Jay gains the confidence to believe that they, and everyone else, are good enough as they are and that there isn’t any point in worrying about the people who won’t accept them as they are now. The film may still imply that there’s a binary choice to be made and that whoever Jay decides to pursue romantically has a large impact on it, but nevertheless affirms Jay’s identity as it is and makes clear that it’s they who have a free right to define themselves independently of any social mores or commonly held beliefs. Warmhearted and generous of spirit, Lee’s teen drama finds that largely the kids alright treating each other with kindness and respect when given the opportunity to do so and only waiting for the adult world to catch up. 

XX+XY screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Peafowl (공작새, Byun Sung-bin, 2022)

Posted on by

A trans woman begins to step into herself after reclaiming her traditional culture to make peace with the past in Byun Sung-bin’s poignant indie drama, Peafowl (공작새, Gongjaksae). At once situating itself in the heartland of a society struggling to adapt to the pace of change, the film suggests that only by reintegrating her Koreanness can the heroine become fully herself even as the spirit of the father who rejected her softly tells her to dance her dance.

Myung (Choi Hae-jun), whose name as she later says means “not too light not too dark”, is a trans woman living in Seoul hoping to earn a large amount of money to pay for her surgery through winning a waacking dance competition. Shortly before she performs, she receives an unsettling telephone call and narrowly loses the dance off against a Taiwanese competitor while a judge explains that she lacks a colour of her own. It’s then that a childhood friend, Woo-gi (Kim Woo-kyum), contacts her to let her know that her estranged father Duk-gil (Ki Joo-bong) has passed away and asks her to come to the funeral. Myung first says she won’t go, but later does only to be berated by her overbearing, conservative uncle who ironically causes a scene by loudly exclaiming that a man shouldn’t be going around with long hair or wearing makeup. He even introduces her as Duk-gil’s son to an older relative who is otherwise much more sympathetic and even asks her with surprise why she’s wearing a male mourning outfit rather than the more appropriate one for women. 

It’s the uncle, a symbol of oppressive middle-aged patriarchal power, that is the real problem. Most other people are either broadly supportive or too polite to say anything of Myung’s changed appearance while her teenage nephew Bo-suk (Go Jae-hyun) simply accepts her and quickly refers to Myung as “sis” despite his mother’s obvious discomfort. It is however the uncle who is in charge, continuing to misgender and insult Myung especially once Woo-gi reveals that it was Duk-gil’s dying wish for Myung to lead the funerary rites at his 49th day memorial service. Myung doesn’t really want to participate but is tempted after Woo-gi suggests there’s a sizeable inheritance to be had if she agrees. 

It’s clear that Myung had good reason to resent her father, holding up her hand and revealing a large burn scar she’s since had tattooed with with a beautiful peacock feather. The feather motif is repeated throughout as a kind of symbol of Myung’s hidden beauty which she will eventually learn to reveal through the fusion of the traditional art of shamanistic ritual and her contemporary waacker dance moves, yet it’s also linked to the image of her father as a man she never understood and may never have really known whose relationship with her was shaped by the legacy of homophobic prejudice in ways she could never have imagined. The truth that she discovers reminds her that there have always been people like her even within this very “traditional” society, while the twin revelation that her cousin is gay and struggling in many of the same ways she has proves there always will be. As Woo-gi reminds her, her grandfather’s tree looks like it’s dead but is kept alive by its connections with others much like people are, pointing out that rituals accept everyone without prejudice or exception. 

Only after making peace with her conflicted aunt and showing her overbearing uncle the error of his ways can Myung begin to reclaim herself in reintegrating her traditional culture to gain the colour she was lacking and become fully herself as she performs the ritual along with a waacker dance that quite literally sets fire to the oppressive quality of tradition as mediated by men like her uncle who weaponise it to preserve their own privilege. Shot in classic 4:3, Byun neatly contrasts the vibrancy of Seoul nightlife with the oppressive dullness of life in the village, but also highlights the various similarities in the colour and noise of a shamanistic ceremony which as Myung discovers moves to a beat not dissimilar to waacker as she watches her friends dance in a club with the movements of traditional shamanism. In a way, Myung does indeed burn it all down but does so positively, finally coming to an understanding of her father and her history while reclaiming her traditional culture along with the right to do with it whatever she wishes.

Peafowl screened as part of BFI Flare 2023. It will also be screening at Genesis Cinema, London on April 20 as part of this year’s Queer East.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Dream Songs (너와 나, Cho Hyun-chul, 2022)

Posted on by

Teenage friends wrestle with a sense of mortality, frustrated longing, and future anxiety in the etherial feature debut from actor Cho Hyun-chul, The Dream Songs (너와 나, Neo wa Na). Set shortly before the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster and shot in a washed out soft focus with a hazy nostalgic quality, the oneiric drama finds its conflicted heroine coming to an appreciation of the solipsistic qualities of obsessive love while preparing to cross the line between adolescence and adulthood in fearing she may not return from her upcoming trip or that the her that returns will not be same and the world will have moved on without her. 

The trip is only four days, but for Sam (Park Hye-su) it represents the end of her adolescence and the beginning of adulthood. As the film opens, she wakes up in her classroom after having a disturbing dream that something bad is going to happen to her best friend Ha-eun (Kim Si-eun) who is currently in the hospital though only for broken leg after being hit by pedal bike on a zebra crossing. So upset is she, that Sam manages to convince her teacher to let her leave early to verify that Ha-eun is OK with her own eyes and try to convince her to come on the school trip to Jeju with her, broken leg and all, so that whatever happens happens to them together. 

In the repeated dream imagery, it’s being left on her own that Sam seems to fear. She doesn’t want to be the only one who survives or the only one who dies and leaves her friend behind though as she confesses there was something that felt peaceful in her dream on looking at a corpse that might have been her own. The school trip to Jeju is one that many teenagers take in a quite literal rite of passage, but it’s also tinged with additional anxiety in the painful reminders of the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster, directly referenced via a radio broadcast, in which many school children taking the trip from the area where the film takes place lost their lives. Sam’s impending sense of foreboding causes her to reevaluate her relationships and especially that with her best friend Ha-eun for whom she has developed romantic feelings she is unsure can be returned. Afraid to leave without saying anything but also worried she may be rejected and end up imploding the friendship too, Sam’s internalised conflict ironically blinds to her Ha-eun’s individual suffering in having recently lost her pet dog as well as her disappointment on missing out on the trip while recovering from her accident. 

Cho frequently lands on the image of clocks, often stopped, which hint at time running out while there are frequent allusions to death and drowning from the bird Sam finds on the ground by the school to the girls’ final parting seemingly taking place in front of a stranger’s funeral with mourners talking outside while people carry funeral wreaths directly past them. While the lines between dream and reality continue to blur, Sam sees images of herself in the two little girls playing together in the park and another with her grandmother who “saves” a toy dinosaur from drowning in an environment in which it is unable to survive. She and Ha-eun chase a lost dog and eventually end up on opposite sides of a fence which is the outcome Sam most feared, but are eventually reunited and able to have a more emotionally honest conversation now that Sam has come to an understanding of the self-involved qualities of her romantic obsession. 

Even so, for the first part of the film it isn’t entirely clear if Sam’s feelings are indeed romantic or if it’s more a case of intense teenage friendship that causes her to be jealous of others that might be spending time with Ha-eun while preoccupied with the identity of the mysterious “Humbaba” whom Ha-eun apparently wanted to kiss in a diary entry Sam was presumably not intended to read. Sam’s feelings are made clear in a letter she doesn’t have the courage to send while she seems to fear that time may slip away from her and Ha-eun won’t be there when she returns from her trip. Yet what she ends up awakening to is more like self love, or at least no longer fearing “Joy” will fly away from her when she’s not looking. Cho’s hazy, poetic coming-of-age drama excels in capturing the joyful quality of teenage female friendship and diffidence of first love if tinged with a note of melancholy nostalgia in the wake of a devastating loss.

The Dream Songs screened as part of BFI Flare 2023

Original trailer (English subtitles)

BFI Flare Confirms Complete Programme for 2023

Posted on by

The BFI’s LGBTQ+ film festival, BFI Flare, has announced the full programme for this year’s edition which runs at the BFI Southbank 15th to 26th March. This year there are a few features from East Asia included in the lineup including four from South Korea.

Cambodia

  • Lotus Sports Club – documentary filmed over five years following a trans man in his 60s who formed a football team for LGBTQ+ youth.

South Korea

  • The Dream Songs – etherial drama following two high school friends over the course of a day.
  • Life Unrehearsed – documentary following two Korean women who met each other at a summer camp in Germany in 1986 and have stayed in the country together ever since.
  • PEAFOWL – drama following a trans woman who is tasked with performing the memorial dance at her estranged father’s funeral.
  • XX+XY – teen comedy following an intersex high schooler who finds themselves at the centre of a love triangle.

BFI Flare runs at BFI Southbank 15th to 26th March, 2023. A small number of short films are also available to stream via BFI Player. The full programme can be found on the official website where tickets are already on sale. You can also keep up to date with all the latest news via the festival’s Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and YouTube channels.

Of Love & Law (愛と法, Hikaru Toda, 2017)

Posted on by 5 Comments

of love and law posterIn Japan the nail which sticks out is hammered down. Conformist societies promise mutual support, but all too often only when it suits the collective – those not deemed part of the club are wilfully left to fend for themselves with the dangled promise of readmission if one promises to reform and abide by the rules. We first met the couple at the centre of Hikaru Toda’s Of Love & Law in her previous documentary, Love Hotel, which documented their struggles with discrimination in frequently being turned away by establishments who did not wish to rent a room to two men. A same sex married couple in Japan’s second city of Osaka, Kazu and Fumi run their own law firm and operate under the mission statement of representing those who often find themselves without a voice in a culture which favours silence.

Opening at a local Pride event, the camera attempts to capture some talking heads but no one will bite. Asked for comments, the visitors each refuse to show their faces, revealing that they aren’t fully out, fearing that it might cause problems for them at work, or just embarrassed to go on the record about something so taboo. Though the law practice is not limited to representing LGBT issues, they are clearly a key concern to Fumi and Kazu who spend their “free” time engaging in outreach projects trying to foster a little more education and understanding of sexual minorities. Kazu brings this home when he tells his own coming out story in which his stunned mother exclaimed that she’d never heard of anything like this and therefore could not understand it. The problem wasn’t prejudice, it was ignorance mixed with fear.

Ignorance mixed with fear could equally well describe most of the cases brought against Kazu and Fumi’s clients. The protagonist of the second strand – artist and mangaka Rokudenashiko whose legal troubles even made the foreign press, attributes many of these issues to an inability to “read the air” or aquedately understand the unspoken rules of society and then silently abide by them. The law firm makes a point of defending those who have chosen to fly in the face of social convention, flying a flag for the freedom of choice in a society which often deliberately suppresses it.

The freedom of choice is certainly a key issue for the teacher suing the Osakan school that fired her for refusing to stand for the national anthem. Arguing that standing when one is forced to stand is hardly a declaration of patriotism and fearing the lurch to the right which has made even implicit indifference to the Imperial family a hot button issue, the teacher puts her foot down but finds that few will listen. Similarly, Rokudenashiko finds herself arrested for obscenity regarding her vagina themed artwork while the court undermines its own argument by accidentally proving that her work has socio-political merit.

Yet Rokudenashiko and the teacher have each, in a sense, made a firm decision to challenge the intransigence of their society, hoping to prevent a further decline even if not overly hopeful of improvement. Other clients on the roster include a fair few who are accidentally undocumented through no fault of their own thanks to Japan’s arcane and idiosyncratic legal system which makes it difficult to register births of children born out of wedlock or in difficult family circumstances meaning that youngsters sometimes grow up without the proper papers leading to problems with accessing education, employment, healthcare and welfare provisions. Getting someone a birth certificate who doesn’t currently “exist” can prove a taxing ordeal, especially as government officials often regard children born to “immoral” women as “unworthy” of care or attention.

Getting a call from the mother of a victim, Fumi is shocked when she makes a point of enquiring about the nationality of the perpetrator. He is unsurprised but disappointed in witnessing the various ways one oppressed person (both the victim and plaintiff are from impoverished, single parent backgrounds) can turn their oppression back on others as an odd kind of social revenge. Luckily, however, there are good people everywhere such as the fine young man Fumi and Kazu end up temporarily fostering after his care home is unexpectedly closed down. Kazuma accepts their relationship without a second thought, enjoys learning to cook from Fumi and blends right into Kazu’s extended family who each seem as warm and accepting as the couple themselves. Family is not about a register, it’s having a place to go where they’ll always take you in. Fumi doesn’t trust society because society shirks its responsibilities, but thankfully there are those who know better and continue on in hope tempered with patience.

Screened at BFI Flare 2018.

Malila: The Farewell Flower (มะลิลา, Anucha Boonyawatana, 2017)

Posted on by Leave a comment

Malila posterAnucha Boonyawatana’s second feature, Malila: The Farewell Flower (มะลิลา), opens with a quotation from a 19th century poem. The poem laments that even a Baisri painstakingly created to honour the gods will eventually be cast away once it has served its purpose. No longer divine, its soul departed, the ornament is just another thing to be disposed of. Like the beautiful Baisri, two men’s souls will briefly intertwine only for the flowers of their love to wither on the vine, fading away with the great work still incomplete. This incompleteness, the lingering sense of absence and irreconcilable longing, propel the one left behind onto a spiritual journey hoping to discover if the answers to his need lie within or are not to be found at all.

Shane (Sukollawat Kanarot), the owner of a jasmine plantation, has recently begun to rebuild his life following a period of heavy drinking during which his wife left him and his young daughter was killed by a python in the jungle. Reuniting with his former lover, Pich (Anuchit Sapanpong), Shane is distraught to find out that he is terminally ill with lung cancer and has decided to give up on conventional medicine and devote the rest of his life doing the things that make him happy. Pich’s one form of “treatment” is in his constant making and dispatching of “Baisri” – ornaments constructed from leaves and flowers for ceremonial occasions which, painstakingly created, must be sent away on the river after they have fulfilled their purpose.

Jasmine flowers are, as Pich remarks, too weak – they wither before the Baisri is completed. Though the two men are able to rekindle their romance, their time is limited. Shane contemplates becoming a monk in the hope that his good karma can be transferred to Pich but it is not to be. Alone, he sets out on a spiritual journey guided by another monk hoping to encounter the ghosts of himself and of his loves to absolve himself of his guilt and loneliness.

Set against the beautiful Thai landscape, Malila is a tale of fading flowers and eternal regrets. The art of Baisri requires intense focus and dedication in order to repurpose and reorder nature into something essentially manmade but beautiful. Later, during his quest, Shane will be met with a terrifying though no less intense experience when his guide and fellow monk instructs him in the art of corpse meditation. The sight of the body, putrid and infested with hungry maggots busily going about their business, presents a strong contrast with the otherwise idyllic scenery and forces a more literal contemplation of the process of decay as the human form dissolves leaving only memory and a ghost of past emotion in its place.

Ironically, or perhaps not, a Baisri is intended to mark a new beginning – a “farewell” on an onward journey. Shane sets off on a spiritual quest, suffering nobly in the forests with their frequent rainstorms and learning to be in the moment in the company of the comparatively better experienced monk who guides him, a former soldier now on the spiritual path. His search is internal but illuminated by the world around him and his gradually increasing connection with it.

Eventually transcending this world for another, Shane begins to find his answers and finally cleanses himself of his loss and suffering. Mixing lyrical poetry with beautifully photographed naturalism, Anucha Boonyawatana tells a painful tale of love lost and found, hearts broken and repaired, and finally of acceptance both of one’s self and of the transience of all things. Malila: The Farewell Flower is a parting gift to a departing love, filled with sorrow and regret but also with beauty even in decay.

Screened at BFI Flare 2018.

Original trailer (English subtitles)