Friday, February 22, 2013

What do you do about Korean men...

In Another Country (2012) - Hong
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"What do you do about Korean men,
They only think about sex."

A great lite comedy. It's a pleasure to see Isabelle Hupert running around being in three different scenarios in a deserted coastal town in Korea. Hong finds humor in repetitions in slightly different situations and awkward exchanges in English. As always with any Hong movies, it all comes down to excessive smoking and getting shitfaced on copious amount of Soju. And it's true. All Korean men are animals with only one thing in their minds.

Paradise Lost

Paradise: Love (2012) - Seidl
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Paradise: Love reaches its dizzying heights in terms of its brevity and authenticity using non actors to bring out the ugliest side of humanity. Compared to Seidl's work, Todd Solondz's stuff is a kid's play. Paradise: Love, the first of the planned trilogy (Paradise: Hope just played at this year's Berlinale), deals with the uncomfortable subject of sex tourism. It's pretty icky when it's the first world old white men on third world young women. It gets doubly gross when it's old, flabby white women (and no, they don't look like Charlotte Rampling in Heading South) on young black men. Seidl up the ante with its African setting (Kenya). Shot on location with mostly local people and non actors, Paradise is a two-hour, all-access glimpse into how the colonization still perpetuating dehumanizing effects on both side of the aisle. There are a lot of humor (intentional or otherwise) in the film but it's mostly oppressively sad and depressing. The most cringe worthy part is probably the scene where four droopy, old, naked white women trying to manage the young black stripper to get it up.

What Seidl achieves here is truly commendable. But dang, it's one of the saddest movies I've ever seen.