Tag: Fantasia International Film Festival

Just Remembering (ちょっと思い出しただけ, Daigo Matsui, 2021) [Fantasia 2022]

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A communication breakdown gradually erodes the love of a young couple in Daigo Matsui’s melancholy romantic drama, Just Remembering (ちょっと思い出しただけ, Chotto Omoidashita Dake). Inspired by Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, Matsui’s city vistas are drenched in loneliness and regret made all the deeper by the enforced isolation of the coronavirus pandemic while echoing the sense of rueful nostalgia that draws the fated lovers back together but unites them only in their shared sadness. 

Told in a non-linear fashion, the film follows taxi driver Yo (Sairi Ito) and lighting technician Teruo (Sosuke Ikematsu) through the course of five year relationship picking up on each of Teruo’s July 26th birthdays as time ticks by with a weary fatalism expressed by an ever present wall clock. As the film opens, a lonely Teruo celebrates a birthday alone watching Night on Earth which we later learn to be his favourite film, a poster adorning the wall above his bed, and something of a touchstone in his relationship with Yo who is like Winona Ryder in the movie a woman who drives a taxi. Echoing the film’s title, each of them repeatedly encounters reminders of their time together from forgotten hair clips to outdated profile pictures that hint at the unresolved nature of their failed romance. In a park that leads to Teruo’s apartment, a man (Masatoshi Nagase) is often seen sitting by a tree waiting for his wife to arrive he says from the future. The man and his wife may perhaps represent an older version of Teruo and Yo though in contrast to his absolute faith and willingness to wait it’s uncertainty and an inability to reckon with intangible feeling that eventually disrupt their connection. 

Awkward and anxious, Yo struggles to express herself in words yet is unable to understand the world without them whereas Teruo communicates through dance and feels words to be largely unimportant unable to fully convey thoughts and emotions. The pair are indeed the most connected when they’re dancing, the otherwise shy and subdued Yo captivated by Teruo’s movement and dropping her guard to dance spontaneously in a quiet back alley while the street guitarist who forever connects them plays quietly behind. When Teruo injures himself and is left unable to dance, it destroys his ability to communicate and places an unbearable strain on the relationship as he retreats to lick his wounds unwilling to bother Yo with his mental and physical pain while she resents the distance he places between them and reads his reluctance to burden her as a fault line in their romance. She tells him that however he may change her feelings won’t, which only sounds to him as if she only loves an abstract idea rather than the reality while he too fears that she won’t like the him that that isn’t a dancer because not even he really knows who that Teruo may turn out to be. 

It’s telling in a way that the central love confession occurs in a taxi that’s being driven by someone else, a bemused older man who encourages the pair that it’s best to say what you want to say while you can and literally stops time for them by pausing the meter as twinkle twinkle little star echoes ironically in the background. Yo says she likes her taxi job because she has a desire to travel but not the ability to choose a destination and driving the taxi allows her to feel as if she’s on the way to something though she’s only following her passengers’ instructions. Her essential trait is passivity, feeling lost and aimless in her life and often allowing others to make her choices for her save when she follows the advice of a lovelorn barman (Jun Kunimura) who tells her that sometimes you have to chase after what you want only to later be disappointed when the wounded Teruo fails to chase after her. The barman tells her that she doesn’t understand love, and perhaps she doesn’t unwilling to trust her romantic destiny while perhaps neither does Teruo, always somehow waiting while gazing at visions of love on ordinary street, high school girls gossiping about boys, an elderly couple helping each other down the stairs, and a mother carrying her infant son. 

It’s tempting to view their romance as doomed because they speak different languages while their continual role reversal suits neither of them very well, Yo quite literally in the driving seat but by her own admission having no idea where they’re going while Teruo struggles to communicate with her in terms she can understand. Yet they also share moments of true connection and vulnerability in which they are each understood by the other in a way they may never be again that leaves each of them with a lingering loneliness and regret for their failed romance. Love is an escape route, according to the wise old barman, but it’s one that continually eludes the two lovers who like the like man at the park are trapped in a state of perpetual waiting for a far off resolution. 

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

Trailer (English subtitles)

Chorokbam (초록밤, Yoon Seo-jin, 2021) [Fantasia 2022]

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A small family contends with the persistent unfairness of contemporary Korean society in Yoon Seo-jin’s slow burn indie drama, Chorokbam (초록밤). Translated literally, the title means “green night”, the family often bathed in a neon green that seems to reflect their sense of despair and anguish unable to envisage much of a future for themselves in a world ruled by greed and envy which leaves them little option other than to become insensitive to the joy and pain of others. 

As the film opens, the nightwatchman patriarch is busy giving out parking tickets when he suddenly spots a cat hanging from from a children’s climbing frame. Shocked and feeling pity for the small creature, he cuts it down and buries it by the green light of the moon but finds little sympathy when relating his traumatic discovery to his wife. The nightwatchman’s wife is preoccupied with more practical affairs, irritated by her husband’s annoying habits such as leaving the bathroom door open and not washing his hands after finishing his business, while their grown-up son Won-hyung wants to get married but can’t afford a place to live on his salary as a care worker. When it comes to that, they’re soon to be turfed out themselves because their landlord wants to tear the building down. 

Matters come to a head when the grandfather passes away, the nightwatchman’s sisters getting into an actual physical altercation at the wake while loudly complaining about who did or didn’t pay for the funeral. Totting up the condolence money they accuse supposedly cheapskate guests of freeloading, implying they only turned up for a free meal that they have in a sense stolen. Meanwhile, the sisters also want to ensure that their father’s house is sold quickly so they can divvy up the inheritance. What they realise, however, is that there were things about their father’s life they may not have known which raise questions about moral responsibility when it comes to dealing with the affairs of someone who has died. 

The nightwatchman comes to identify with the strangled cat, though the spectre of hanging seems to loom over the rest of the picture with even the nightwatchman’s wife eventually discovering the body of someone whose death she may unwittingly have contributed to. She complains about her husband’s fecklessness, that he, who barely talks at all, makes her deal with anything unpleasant including his hotheaded sisters. She tells him that she regrets marrying into his “horrible” family and is thoroughly sick of dealing with them only to be pursued by a wounded dog with whom she perhaps also identifies. The nightwatchman’s wife is often excluded from the frame, a disembodied voice from behind a wall as she is as she feeds her husband breakfast and again when he asks her to deal with an emotionally difficult situation in a cafe. The nightwatchman simply smokes by a widow as if physically removing himself from the scene. 

Won-hyung meanwhile becomes increasingly resentful with his friends’ wedding coming up, unable to escape the feeling of belittlement in being unable to marry or move forward with his life with little prospect that anything will change. Yoon frames the family’s dilemmas with a deadpan realism, bathing the everyday grimness of their lives in an putrescent green that suggests there may be no escape from this maddening society where all relationships are built on transaction. The family are doing their best but are also estranged from each other, the nightwatchman barely speaking while his wife is left to deal with the uncertainty of their lives alone. She even laments they’ll likely not see the sisters again until the next person dies because their familial connection is essentially hollow and valueless in a society ruled by money. 

The nightwatchman comes to think of himself as a strangled cat, finding himself facing a noose during a poetic dream sequence that encourages him to think of suicide as the only possible escape from his impossible situation. Bleak in the extreme, Kim’s slow burn drama paints an unflattering portrait of the contemporary society as one in which all hope has long been lost leaving only dread and despair in its wake. 

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

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Fish Tale (さかなのこ, Shuichi Okita, 2022) [Fantasia 2022]

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Shuichi Okita has made a career for himself exploring the lives of eccentric people and The Fish Tale (さかなのこ, Sakana no kKo) is certainly no exception. Based on the memoirs of the real life “Sakana-kun”, the film is a testament to the ways in which true enthusiasm can become an infectious source for good while even subjects which might seem esoteric can have universal appeal when delivered in the right way. Meebo (Non) is not like everyone else but sees nothing wrong in that nor do they see anything wrong in the way others live their lives (save for thinking edamame are better than fish). 

Later a TV personality, best-selling author, and YouTuber, Meebo has been totally obsessed with fish all their life. They draw pictures of fish, edit a fish-themed newspaper in middle school, and talk about fish all day long but they still eat fish and find how good it tastes just another thing that makes fish the best thing ever. Though Meebo’s mother (Haruka Igawa) is ever supportive, their father (Hiroki Miyake) has his doubts worried that Meebo isn’t like the other children and is going to struggle later in life. When Meebo meets a strange man with a fish hat on his head (a cameo from the real life Sakana-kun) whom most of the other children avoid, their mother says it’s alright to go to his house to see his aquarium but their father disagrees for obvious reasons later calling the police when Meebo fails to return home at the agreed time. Mr. Fish Head is the only person with whom the young Meebo can truly bond in their shared love of sea life but he also bears out their father’s sense of disapproval in admitting that he came from a wealthy family but is now low on funds because like Meebo he wasn’t suited to conventional schooling and has never been able to hold down a steady job. 

Meebo’s mother meanwhile is more relaxed, calmly telling Meebo’s teacher that having good grades isn’t necessarily important for everyone and she doesn’t want to force Meebo to make themselves unhappy by giving up fish to get them. In any case employment is something Meebo struggles with, fired from the aquarium for spending too much time admiring the fish and then later let go from a sushi bar. Meebo is hired to create an aquatic display for a dentist with an extremely gaudy office but fails to correctly interpret the brief unable to understand the dentist just wanted something flashy and superficial (like himself), but is finally offered a job at a pet shop with a sympathetic boss who appreciates their deep knowledge of and love for fish. 

As Meebo says, they don’t understand what “normal” is save for a vague sense that they may not be but continues to live their life happily no matter what others might think. When they’re targeted by delinquents in high school, Meebo ends up simply inviting them to come fishing with them and is generally able to win over those who don’t understand or approve of their obsessive interest with the force of their enthusiasm. Then again, there are those who are simply too conventional such as the young woman childhood friend Hiyo (Yuya Yagira) tries to introduce her to who rudely laughs at Meebo’s “childish” determination to become a “fish expert” as if such a thing were inherently ridiculous. Time and again its these special connections often made in childhood which continue to help Meebo on their way, engineering a friendship between the leaders of two rival high school gangs who later hire them to help decorate the interior of a new sushi bar. 

That’s not to say their life is not sometimes difficult, but their love for fish always seems to carry them through while the joy and enthusiasm they bring with them makes others happy and more curious about the world in which they live. Their love of sea life eventually trickles down to the next generation with childhood friend Momo (Kaho) taking her daughter to the aquarium just like Meebo’s mother had them and buying her an encyclopaedia of fish which Meebo themselves had written. A quirky, warmhearted tale of total self-acceptance, Fish Tale is also testament to the positive influence of “obsessive” passion which far from dark or introverted can help to illuminate the lives of those who might also be afraid of their differences and love for that which others may deride as niche.

The Fish Tale screened as part of this year’s Fantasia.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Fantasia International Film Festival Confirms Complete 2022 Programme

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The Fantasia International Film Festival returns to cinemas for its 26th edition taking place once again in Montreal from July 14 to Aug. 3. With the full lineup now confirmed here’s a rundown of the East Asian features included in this year’s programme:

China

  • One and Four – Tibetan drama in which a forest ranger is surprised by a bloodied man entering his cabin.

Hong Kong

  • Chilli Laugh Story – comedy starring Sandra Ng and Gigi Leung in which a son tries to convince his mum to turn her hot sauce into a home business.
  • Detective vs Sleuths – latest from Wai Ka-Fai starring Sean Lau Ching-wan in which a former top policeman who left the force after suffering a nervous breakdown chases a serial killer known as the sleuth who bumps off suspects in cold cases.
  • Dr. Lamb – notorious Category III true crime drama starring Simon Yam as a bloodthirsty taxi driver.
  • The Heroic Trio – Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung, and Michelle Yo star in Johnnie To’s 1993 classic.
  • Kid with the Golden Arm – 1979 Chang Cheh classic.
  • Legendary in Action! – retro martial arts drama in which a formerly successful director gets a second shot at the big time by directing his childhood hero in a remake of a classic serial.
  • Mercenaries from Hong Kong – 1982 Wong Jing classic starring Lo Lieh, Johnny Wang Lung Wei, Wong Yue, Chan Wei Man and Nat Chan as a team of mercenaries hot on the trail of a fugitive murderer.

Japan

  • Anime Supremacy – adaptation of the novel by Mizuki Tsujimura following three women in the anime industry.
  • Baby Assassins – a pair of mismatched high school girls raised as elite assassins get swept into gangland conflict while forced to live together to learn how integrate into society in Yugo Sakamoto’s deadpan slacker comedy. Review.
  • Convenience Story – comedy from Satoshi Miki in which a failed comedian encounters a mysterious woman at a convenience store.
  • Girl from the Other Side – dark anime adaptation of the manga by Nagabe in which a little girl lost in the forest bonds with a mysterious beast.
  • Goodbye, Donglees! – animation in which two boys head off into the woods after being falsely accused of starting a fire.
  • Just Remembering – bittersweet love story from Daigo Matsui inspired by Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth.
  • Inu-Oh – a blind Biwa player and a cursed young man exorcise the spirits of the Heike through musical expression in Masaaki Yuasa’s stunning prog rock anime. Review.
  • Kappei – quirky comedy in which a collection of adults raised for an apocalypse that never happened must try to live normal lives.
  • Missing – darkly comic thriller in which a young girl searches for her father who went missing after saying he was going to claim the bounty on a serial killer he spotted in town.
  • My Broken Mariko – Yuki Tanada’s adaptation of the web manga by Hirako Waka in which a woman goes on a journey following the death of a childhood friend.
  • My Small Land – a young woman who came to Japan as refugee when she was a child finds her life upended when her family’s refugee status is revoked.
  • The Mole Song: Final – undercover cop Reiji finds himself increasingly conflicted in his mission to take down Todoroki in the final instalment of the comedic trilogy. Review.
  • The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai – holding fast to samurai ideals a progressive retainer realises his era is at an end in Takashi Koizumi’s homage to classic samurai cinema. Review.
  • Popran – a self-involved CEO gets a course correction when his genitals suddenly decide to leave him in Shinichiro Ueda’s surreal morality tale. Review.
  • Sadako DX – Sadako gets an update in a contemporary digital horror from Hisashi Kimura.
  • Shari – experimental film in which a red monster invades the ordinary life of a snowy town.
  • Shin Ultraman – big budget adaptation of the classic tokusatsu series directed by Shinji Higuchi with a screenplay by Hideaki Anno.
  • Special Delivery – a jaded delivery driver’s finely tuned existence is upended when she’s forced on the run with the young son of a wanted man in Park Dae-min’s high octane thriller. Review.
  • The Fish Tale – latest from Shuichi Okita starring Non in a tale inspired by the life of “fish ambassador” Sakana-kun.
  • Tang and Me – futuristic adventure from Takahiro Miki starring Kazunari Ninomiya as a dejected young man who sets off on a journey with an adorable robot when his wife throws him out of the house.
  • What to Do with Dead Kaiju – satire from Satoshi Miki in which bureaucrats must try to decide how to dispose of the corpse of a defeated kaiju.
  • What’s Up Connection – 1990 drama from Masashi Yamamoto in which a Hong Kong teenager wins a trip to Japan.

Korea

  • Alienoid – highly anticipated sci-fi drama from Choi Dong-hoon starring Kim Tae-ri in which aliens open a portal between feudal Korea and the present day.
  • Chun Tae-il: The Flame That Lives On – animated biopic of labour activist Chun Tae-il who self-immolated in protest of Korea’s exploitative employment environment.
  • Confession – mystery drama in which a man is accused of a locked room murder
  • Heaven: To the Land of Happiness – a chronically ill thief and a “poetic fugitive” find themselves on the run from a “philosophical gangster” in Im Sang-soo’s playful existential drama. Review.
  • The Killer – a former hitman is charged with babysitting a friend’s daughter only for her to be kidnapped by thugs.
  • The King of Pigs – live action adaptation of Yeon Sang-ho’s animated drama in which a policeman must stop his childhood friend from taking revenge on those who bullied them.
  • Next Door – drama inspired by the life of Kim Dae-jung in which the leader of the opposition tries to battle a government which has installed a surveillance team in the house next door.
  • Next Sohee – latest from July Jung starring Bae Doona as a policewoman taking aim at those who exploit vulnerable teenage girls.
  • On the Line – a former policeman gets back on the case when his wife is targeted by telephone scammers in Kim Gok & Kim Sun’s steely action thriller. Review.
  • Rising Dragon – sequel to The Admiral: Roaring Currents following Admiral Yi Sun-sin (Park Hae-il).
  • The Roundup – sequel to The Outlaws starring Ma Dong-seok as a detective who pursues a vicious killer all the way to Vietnam.
  • Seire – folk horror in which a man pays a heavy price for attending the funeral of an old flame shortly after his child is born.
  • Space Monster Wangmagwi – kaiju classic from 1967.
  • The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra – eerie drama told from the point of view of some mold growing on a mattress.
  • Stellar – dramedy in which a man comes to understand his father while on the run in his beat up Hyundae Stellar.
  • The Witch: Part 2. The Other One – long awaited continuation of Park Hoon-jung’s The Witch.

Philippines

  • Whether the Weather is Fine – Philippine drama in which a mother and son search for missing loved ones in the aftermath of disaster.

Taiwan

  • Demigod: The Legend Begins – Taiwanese puppet drama from Pili International Multimedia.

Thailand

  • Fast and Feel Love – drama in which a world champion sport stacker has to learn to look after himself after his girlfriend dumps him.
  • One for the Road – a New York club owner returns to Thailand on learning that his friend has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The Fantasia International Film Festival runs in Montreal, Canada, July 14 to Aug 3. Full details for all the films are available via the the official website, and you can also keep up with all the latest news via the festival’s official Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and Vimeo channels.

Fantasia Confirms Second Wave of Titles for 2022

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The Fantasia International Film Festival returns to cinemas for its 26th edition taking place once again in Montreal from July 14 to Aug. 3. With the full programme announced later this month here’s a look at the East Asian titles so far confirmed amid an impressive lineup of global genre cinema.

Japan

  • Anime Supremacy – adaptation of the novel by Mizuki Tsujimura following three women in the anime industry.
  • Baby Assassins – a pair of mismatched high school girls raised as elite assassins get swept into gangland conflict while forced to live together to learn how integrate into society in Yugo Sakamoto’s deadpan slacker comedy. Review.
  • Convenience Story – comedy from Satoshi Miki in which a failed comedian encounters a mysterious woman at a convenience store.
  • Girl from the Other Side – dark anime adaptation of the manga by Nagabe in which a little girl lost in the forest bonds with a mysterious beast.
  • Goodbye, Donglees! – animation in which two boys head off into the woods after being falsely accused of starting a fire.
  • Just Remembering – bittersweet love story from Daigo Matsui inspired by Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth.
  • Inu-Oh – a blind Biwa player and a cursed young man exorcise the spirits of the Heike through musical expression in Masaaki Yuasa’s stunning prog rock anime. Review.
  • Kappei – quirky comedy in which a collection of adults raised for an apocalypse that never happened must try to live normal lives.
  • Missing – darkly comic thriller in which a young girl searches for her father who went missing after saying he was going to claim the bounty on a serial killer he spotted in town.
  • The Mole Song: Final – undercover cop Reiji finds himself increasingly conflicted in his mission to take down Todoroki in the final instalment of the comedic trilogy. Review.
  • The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai – holding fast to samurai ideals a progressive retainer realises his era is at an end in Takashi Koizumi’s homage to classic samurai cinema. Review.
  • Popran – a self-involved CEO gets a course correction when his genitals suddenly decide to leave him in Shinichiro Ueda’s surreal morality tale. Review.
  • Shari – experimental film in which a red monster invades the ordinary life of a snowy town.
  • Shin Ultraman – big budget adaptation of the classic tokusatsu series directed Shinji Higuchi with a screenplay by Hideaki Anno.
  • What to Do with Dead Kaiju – satire from Satoshi Miki in which bureaucrats must try to decide how to dispose of the corpse of a defeated kaiju.

Korea

  • Chun Tae-il: The Flame That Lives On – animated biopic of labour activist Chun Tae-il who self-immolated in protest of Korea’s exploitative employment environment.
  • Heaven: To the Land of Happiness – a chronically ill thief and a “poetic fugitive” find themselves on the run from a “philosophical gangster” in Im Sang-soo’s playful existential drama. Review.
  • Next Door – drama inspired by the life of Kim Dae-jung in which the leader of the opposition tries to battle a government which has installed a surveillance team in the house next door.
  • On the Line – a former policeman gets back on the case when his wife is targeted by telephone scammers in Kim Gok & Kim Sun’s steely action thriller. Review.
  • The Roundup – sequel to The Outlaws starring Ma Dong-seok as a detective who pursues a vicious killer all the way to Vietnam.
  • Stellar – dramedy in which a man comes to understand his father while on the run in his beat up Hyundae Stellar.

Philippines

  • Whether the Weather is Fine – Philippine drama in which a mother and son search for missing loved ones in the aftermath of disaster.

Thailand

  • Fast and Feel Love – drama in which a world champion sport stacker has to learn to look after himself after his girlfriend dumps him.
  • One for the Road – a New York club owner returns to Thailand on learning that his friend has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The Fantasia International Film Festival runs in Montreal, Canada, July 14 to Aug 3. Full details for all the films are available via the the official website, and you can also keep up with all the latest news via the festival’s official Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram, and Vimeo channels.

Follow the Light (光を追いかけて, Yoichi Narita, 2021) [Fantasia 2021]

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“We all want to run, but still we’re holding on” insists the hero of Yoichi Narita’s rural coming-of-age tale, Follow the Light (光を追いかけて, Hikari wo Oikakete). Not perhaps as its title implies a religious treatise, Narita’s gentle drama nevertheless chases faith in the future while exploring the effects of rural depopulation, economic stagnation, and familial fragmentation on the lives of the young but eventually rediscovers a sense of security, not to mention wonder, in the natural world along with the importance of community in creating a feeling of emotional rootedness. 

Teenager Akira (Tsubasa Nakagawa) has just moved back to his dad’s hometown following the divorce of his parents, his mother presumably having left the family. As one might expect he is sullen and resentful, wishing a meteor storm would destroy his new home and drawing violent comic books to that effect. He ignores everyone at school and is uninterested in making friends, continuing to view himself as an outsider who is not destined to stay. This feeling is compounded by the fact that the school itself is about to close down due to the declining numbers of children in the local area as a result of rural depopulation. 

Akira’s interest is piqued, however, on witnessing a mysterious girl standing atop the roof of a farm house and surveying all below. Accidentally making friends with a bullied boy, Shota, Akira discovers the girl’s name is Maki (Itsuki Nagasawa) but is warned off her on the grounds that she is “crazy” and potentially violent. Akira ignores the warning, but is in any case guided towards the ostracised young woman by a mysterious light said to be caused by a UFO which leads him towards a crop circle in a rice paddy in the middle of which Maki is currently lying.

As Akira discovers, Maki has problems of her own in that her parents are in the middle of a debt crisis and about to lose the small petrol station they’ve been running as a family business. They are in fact just one of many casualties in the faltering local economy which is in a constant state of recession given that the young people all leave for the cities and there’s precious little money to be made in farming anymore. Akira’s father Ryota (Taro Suruga) went to Tokyo to be a musician, an ambition which obviously did not work out, and now he’s come back works for an organisation attempting to find solutions for the future of agriculture in an effort to bring prosperity back to the countryside. Akira’s teacher, Michiru (Rina Ikoma), by contrast who will soon be out of a job is disinterested in her work partly because she left to go to uni in Tokyo but was dragged back by parental pressure and remains intensely resentful trapped in a backwater provincial life quite clearly not of her choosing. 

It wasn’t of Akira’s choosing either and on top of dealing with the disruption of his parents’ separation he feels himself displaced as a city kid unused to the gentle rhythms of country life while struggling to understand the impenetrable local dialect. He originally does nothing on witnessing Shota’s bullying but later befriends him only for their friendship to be derailed by petty jealously in Shota’s resentment towards his growing interest in Maki. Maki, meanwhile, is also struggling with a sense of abandonment largely cared for by her down-to-earth farmer uncle in the wake of parental failure. Akira may originally feel the same way about his boomerang dad, returning home to live with grandma having failed in the city, but later perhaps comes to understand that return is not necessarily defeat while gradually warming to the joys of the country life with its wide-open vistas and kindhearted locals. 

Even so there’s a sense of desperation in these young lives as they watch their world dismantled in front of them as symbolised in the imminent closure of their school. Guided by lights they decide to look towards the future, positing a new sense of community open to anyone willing to be a part of it. As if echoing the sound of the Earth, Maki accepts her parental legacy in continuing to sing a traditional rural folksong once sung by her mother while Akira discovers a new sense of belonging in his father’s latent love for his old hometown. A hymn to a disappearing small-town Japan, Follow the Light is less lament than resurgent hope that something can be saved if only in change.

Follow the Light streamed as part of the 2021 Fantasia International Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Kakegurui 2: Ultimate Russian Roulette (映画 賭ケグルイ 絶体絶命ロシアンルーレット, Tsutomu Hanabusa, 2021) [Fantasia 2021]

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Closet revolutionary or compulsive gambler, Yumeko Jabami (Minami Hamabe) continues to be a thorn in the side of the Student Council in the sequel to hit movie Kakegurui, itself a sequel to a two-series live action drama adapted from the manga by Homura Kawamoto. Set as the opening expositionary narration explains at school for the elite Hyakkaoh Academy where social hierarchy is determined by skill in gambling, Ultimate Russian Roulette (映画 賭ケグルイ 絶体絶命ロシアンルーレット, Eiga Kakegurui: Zettai Zetsumei Russian Roulette) sees the rattled Student Council making a counterproductive and potentially ruinous decision in bringing back a previously exiled player in the hope of permanently neutralising Yumeko. 

Makuro Shikigami (Ryusei Fujii) was suspended some years ago for his part in the “House Pets’ Curse” which led to most of the school being demoted to its lowest, near untouchable ranks. At Hyakkaoh Academy, students are required to pay a tithe to the Council and those who can’t pay end up as “House Pets”, humiliatingly treated as cats and dogs. Yumeko’s friend Meari (Aoi Morikawa) fears she may have fallen foul of the curse herself having hit a lengthy losing streak, but it’s not until Shikigami begins twisting the situation to his advantage that Yumeko is snared by his manipulative trap. 

Yumeko, meanwhile, is in the middle of a depressive episode largely down to her reluctance to take part in the school’s upcoming sports’ day. Just as in the previous film her long game was better cakes in the cafeteria, her end goal here is trying to get the event cancelled by whatever means possible. In any case, we also witness another dark side to the oppressive rule of the Student Council as a demoted Maeri finds herself in a literal chain gang forced into hard labour building the facilities for the sports festival in what seems to be a minor dig at preparations for the Olympics. Yumeko and Meari are, however, responsible gamblers in that they refuse to bet on other people’s safety or at least refuse to be complicit in games which are designed to inflict harm or cruelty on others. 

As Shikigami explains in his opening monologue, the skills needed for gambling are strategy, ability to read your opponents, and a killer instinct. This is something Yumeko knows well, she plays players not games and sees straight through Shikigami realising that his crazed psychopathy is an act to mask the meticulous quality of his external manipulations. Nevertheless she is also caught out by her unwillingness to put her friends in danger, willingly sacrificing herself instead. The Student Council too are seemingly caught off guard little realising that Shikigami presents just as much of a threat to their authority as Yumeko and is equally uncontrollable with far fewer principles. Still as Student Council President Kirari (Elaiza Ikeda) ominously reflects, “there must be chaos before order”. 

In any case, they find themselves awkward allies in facing off against Shikigami in the promised game of Russian roulette mediated through a card game but played for real. The Student Council leaves itself surprisingly vulnerable in a loophole which allows House Pets to challenge them directly overruling all of the other school regulations, while Shikigami too falls victim to his own arrogance never quite expecting to be challenged having achieved his primary goals of seizing control of the school via the Council. The only way to beat him is to play him at his own game, disrupting his self-serving plotting and tendency to cheat in an insult to the art of gambling while undermining his confidence in his own intellectual superiority. “Only a twisted mind could beat you” he says of Yumeko believing himself to be a twisted mind though as it turns out perhaps not quite twisted enough. 

Temporarily siding with authority in order to put a stop to Shikigami’s authoritarian potential, Yumeko does not so much challenge the system as work around it while protecting herself and her friends from Shikigami’s machinations. What she defends is in a sense gambling itself, rejecting Shikigami’s intention to subvert it to his own advantage. Maintaining the same absurdist, manga-esque aesthetic as the first film complete with cartoonish CGI pupil shrinking, slick onscreen graphics, and even this time a random musical number, Hanabusa significantly ups the ante with bomb threats and unexpected Satanism while leaving the door open for the next instalment with Yumeko’s final instruction to “Bring on the Madness”. 

Kakegurui 2: Ultimate Russian Roulette streamed as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Jigoku-no-Hanazono: Office Royale (地獄の花園, Kazuaki Seki, 2021) [Fantasia 2021]

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The OL, or “office lady” occupies a peculiar place in Japanese pop culture if not the society itself. The evolution of the typing pool, the OL exists to one side of office life, treated as domestic staff in the corporate environment and in many ways expected to be invisible. As such, an OL performs stereotypically feminine tasks in the office such as keeping the place clean and their male bosses looked after in addition to handling often dull and pointless admin work. It goes without saying that in general being an OL is a young woman’s job with the expectation that most will either find a way to transition onto a more viable career track or simply leave the world of work behind to marry and become a regular housewife. 

It’s this image of the OL as the embodiment of bland geniality that is at the centre of Kazuaki Seki’s zany comedy Jigoku-no-Hanazono: Office Royale (地獄の花園, Jigoku no Hanazono), a repurposing of “yankee” high school delinquent manga for the world of the office lady scripted by comedian Bakarhythm. A devotee of yankee manga, 26-year-old OL Naoko (Mei Nagano) explains that even office ladies have their warring factions outlining the tripartite fault lines at play in even her small company where the head OLs from Sales, R&D, and Manufacturing constantly vie for hegemony through physical dominance. She however merely observes from the sidelines defiantly living her “ordinary” office lady life. That is until new hire Ran Hojo (Alice Hirose) arrives to upset the precarious workplace power balance. 

Naoko first catches sight of Ran after she challenges some of the OLs from her company as they harass a timid male employee in the street though they don’t become best friends until after Ran spots a salaryman trying to upskirt her at a bus stop and decides to teach him a lesson. Despite being a yankee, it seems that Ran is also trying to live a normal OL life, bonding with Naoko over their shared love of a TV drama, but is not exactly good at the job and regards fighting as her one and only skill. Perhaps speaking to an inner insecurity born of being a woman in a conformist and patriarchal society, each of the women struggle to see themselves as protagonists in their own lives rather than mere supporting players unwittingly both playing the role of the ditzy best friend to the competent hero. 

In one of her many meta quips commenting on the action and how it would play out if she were a character in a yankee manga, Naoko laments her status as the “comic book hero’s boring friend” which is extremely ironic seeing as she is certainly the heroine of this movie given that it’s her voiceover we’re hearing and her POV we generally adopt. Yet Seki sometimes undercuts her by shifting to a rival voiceover offered by Ran herself doubtful of her proper place in the narrative and eventually descending into an existential crisis after an unexpected setback shatters her sense of self. 

Nevertheless, even if as the de facto leader of her company’s OLs Ran advocates for equality insisting there are no bosses and no underlings only women standing together, Office Royale generally embraces rather than attacks societal sexism particularly in its somewhat unexpected conclusion which ends in ironic romance rather than female solidarity. Even so, it’s interesting that the OLs lose interest in delinquency once the hierarchy of fists has been fairly decided, acknowledging the superior skills of a better fighter and thereafter living peacefully rather than continuing the internecine determination to sit at the top of the pyramid which is the hallmark of the high school yankee manga. 

While the final arc strays into some potentially problematic territory with the uncomfortable humour of four male actors playing the top fighters of a rival gang of OLs from another company, Office Royale offers a series of surprisingly well choreographed fight scenes even if eventually descending into manga-esque cartoonish violence while much of the humour stems from Naoko’s adorably nerdy voiceover musing on what would happen next if this were a yankee manga. In the end, however, it’s less a tale of office lady infighting than of a pair of young women coming to a better understanding of themselves even if they do so through the potentially destructive medium of pugilism. 

Jigoku-no-Hanazono: Office Royale streamed as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Hello! Tapir (嗨！神獸, Kethsvin Chee, 2020) [Fantasia 2021]

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“In this world, everything disappears eventually” according to the prophetic words of the absent father of young Keat in Kethsvin Chee’s charmingly retro children’s fantasy adventure Hello! Tapir (嗨！神獸, Hāi Shénshòu). At heart a tale of grief and a small child’s acceptance of death, Hello! Tapir is also one of gentle adventure as the hero and his two friends search for tapirs in the undergrowth but eventually discover an accommodation with loss in the knowledge that nothing’s ever really gone even if you can’t see it. 

Keat (Bai Run-yin) lives in a small fishing village with his fisherman father (Lee Lee-zen) and grandma (Lü Hsueh-feng) who sells seafood at the market. Captivated by his father’s improbabe tale of having encountered a tapir who eats people’s nightmares in the forest, Keat implores his dad to take him to see it too but Keat’s father Sheng is always too busy and often reneges on his promises. Ominous winds start to blow when news of a typhoon is broadcast over the radio while Keat is angry that no one woke him before his father left on the boat as he had asked them to do. Sure enough, not long after Keat discovers a commotion at the harbour and gathers there has been some kind of accident at sea. His father hasn’t come home and his grandma is frantic but he’s just a little boy and no one is telling him anything. 

Told from a child’s point of view, Chee’s melancholy tale perfectly captures the confusion and resentment of a small boy in the midst of crisis. Keat cannot conceive of the idea his father may never come home again, replying to his friend’s questions that he’ll be back maybe tomorrow or the day after that. After all, he was supposed to take him to see the tapir. Because he’s sure his dad’s coming back, he grows resentful towards his recently returned mother (Charlie Yeung Choi-Nei) who left the family some time previously and had been living in Taipei and his grandmother for taking his father’s place away by boxing up his clothes and preparing to sell the fishing boat which came back empty on its own for scrap. 

Meanwhile he attempts to secure his father’s legacy by searching for the tapir on his own, encountering a baby which later leads him into the forest and towards its giant parent sucking on golden nightmare orbs all the way. Tapirs are obviously not native to Taiwan and so their presence is as decidedly unexpected as their unusual appearance. You would’t expect to see one wandering through town unless it had recently escaped from a zoo, but they are perhaps Keat’s way of processing the loss of his father the adult tapir gently showing him what it was he most wanted but feared to know while comforting him with its reassuringly warm presence. 

On the cusp of adolescence, Keat finds himself squarely between two sets of overlapping worlds caught between the fantasy of nightmare-eating tapirs and the reality of his grief while also remaining firmly in the realms of childhood having innocent adventures with his two friends as they try all sorts of tricks to draw out the mystical creatures just as his mother deals with the difficulties of planning a funeral and making plans for the future without overburdening her son with impending change. Nobody tells Keat anything because he’s just a child and they think he won’t understand, but he understands that they’re not telling him and the knowledge further increases his sense of loneliness and alienation left entirely alone with his grief and anxiety. 

A beautifully drawn magical realist fable, Chee’s charmingly old fashioned kids fantasy adventure makes the most of its idyllic seaside setting replete with a warm and friendly atmosphere despite its concurrent tragedy. Keat is forced to face the reality of his loss, but does so while maintaining a sense of wonder for the natural world secure in the knowledge that all things disappear in the end, but it isn’t the end of the story and death is merely another part of life. Warm and empathetic, Hello! Tapir paints its coastal setting with an uncanny sense of magic coupled with a cosmological sense of security as its young hero begins to come to terms with his loss thanks to the gentleness of sleeping creatures. 

Hello! Tapir streamed as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie (奥様は、取り扱い注意, Toya Sato, 2021) [Fantasia 2021]

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Perhaps in some ways out of step with the times, the 2017 Nippon TV drama Caution, Hazardous Wife (奥様は、取り扱い注意, Okusama wa, Toriatsukai Chui), like the earlier Secret Agent Erika, saw top assassin Nami (Haruka Ayase) fake her own death in order to live a “normal” life as an “ordinary housewife” married to “boring salaryman” Yuki (Hidetoshi Nishijima). Nami could not however resist using her skills for good and bravely took on a local yakuza gang who’d been running a suburban prostitution ring through employing handsome gigolos to seduce emotionally neglected housewives and thereafter blackmailing them into sex work. The series ended on a cliffhanger in which, spoiler alert, Nami was confronted by her husband who turned out to be a Public Security Bureau officer originally tasked with monitoring her before genuinely falling in love.

This brief background recap is useful but not strictly necessary in approaching the series’ big screen incarnation, Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie, which ironically assumes the audience knows Nami’s secret backstory but also obfuscates it in picking up 18 months after the cliffhanger to find her now living as “Kumi” in a tranquil seaside town having apparently lost her memory. The town will not remain tranquil for long, however, as a mayoral race is about to bring tensions to the fore in the polarising issue of a prospective methane hydrate plant the authorities insist is necessary to revive the area’s moribund economy while others worry about industrial pollution and its effects on the local sea life. Unsurprisingly, the events will turn out to have a connection to Nami’s past while she struggles to regain her lost memories and preserve the peaceful, ordinary life with her husband which is all she’s ever really wanted. 

Though some might find it somewhat conservative that what Nami wants is to become a conventional housewife, what she’s looking for is the stability of the “normal” life she’s never known. As such, she may not actually want to regain her memories, preferring to go on living as Kumi who has perfected the housewife skills which so eluded Nami including becoming a top cook, for as long as possible. Yuki, meanwhile, now living as high school teacher Yuji, feels something similar having been ordered to “deal with” his wife if she remembers who she is but refuses to become a PSB asset. 

Upping production values from the TV drama, Sato keeps Nami in the dark for as long as possible though her sense of social responsibility remains just as strong as she bravely intervenes when coming across a gang of teens taunting a boy with homophobic slurs for having a pink coin curse, later becoming concerned on witnessing the leader of the opposition to the plant being attacked by thugs in an attempt to intimidate him out of his decision to stand as a rival candidate to the incumbent mayor. Nevertheless, he allows space for plenty of dramatic action scenes including flashbacks to Nami’s career as an international assassin while the final set piece also throws in some bickering marital comedy before turning unexpectedly dark.  

Regaining her memories, Nami’s inner conflict is in her complicated relationship with Yuki wondering if he ever really loved the “real” her or if he perhaps preferred Kumi the docile Stepford wife, which is ironically the cover identity she’d longed to construct. Conflicted and suspecting his wife may have remembered who she really is, Yuki tells her to forget about the past but also that his feelings won’t change and she should be free to be herself but as Nami later realises the past won’t let her go and the peaceful life she’d dreamed of might be harder to preserve than she’d previously thought even as she commits herself to embracing the life she has now because her relationship with Yuki is the most important thing to her despite her lingering doubt. 

Touching on a few hot button issues from industrial pollution and environmental concerns to economic decline and rural depopulation, Sato nevertheless returns to the outlandish absurdity of the TV drama as Nami finds herself facing off against Russian gangsters while exposing a plot by shady conglomerates to exploit a small-town desire for better access to jobs and infrastructure, along with judicial corruption and electoral interference. Nevertheless, the hometown spirit eventually wins out even if Nami finds herself on the run once again though having gained a little more emotional clarity. 

Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie streamed as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. The original TV series is also available to stream with English subtitles (along with those in several other languages) in many territories via Viki.

International trailer (English subtitles)