Epicentro (2019) - Sauper
Hubert Sauper, known for his searing documentaries on the effect of globalization and legacy of colonialism on African continent, in Darwin's Nightmare and We Come as Friends, now turns his attention to the island nation of Cuba. But this time, instead of his journalistic, overtly expansive approach which was necessary to shed a light on the issues that no Western countries knew or cared about, Sauper takes more personal approach in Epicentro, perhaps because Cuba, the Caribbean island nation's reputation as America's longest running foe in such a close proximity, has been a known entity to most Westerners. This doesn't mean Epicentro lacks a bite on exposing and criticizing inhumane US policy on Cuba over the last 50 years and the new exploitation in the form of tourism. Blending cinema historionics and geopolitics Sauper creates something that feels pointy yet ethereal and deeply personal.
Sauper narrates briefly about the title of the film in the beginning. He calls Cuba the Epicenter of 3 dystopian chapters of history, the ingredients of building a modern empire - slave trade, colonization and globalization of power. You'd think it would be one of those third world poverty porn. but Epicentro is nothing but. Sauper's usual guerrilla style camera follows a handful subjects - mostly children whom he calls 'little prophets', as they go on about their daily lives - at school, at home, playing in the streets, taking dance lessons, etc. The most striking parts of these children are how vividly conscious about Cuba's place in the world as the sole remaining Communist regime (North Korea is something else entirely at this point) and proud to be standing up to the world's superpower up north for so long. Yes, there are elements of brainwashing, as they are constantly reminded in school and on the streets and on TV of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's revolutionary rhetoric. But is that talk of self-reliance, cemented by decades of crippling economic sanctions, a bad thing? Whether it was Spaniards or Teddy Roosebelt, it was colonialism through and through. American invasion of Cuba in 1898 is based on the fake footage of USS Maine blowing up in which US government created in the bathtub with blowing cigar smoke and toy ships. Every Cuban knows this - the fact Sauper hits again and again throughout the film. Their literacy rate is staggering 96 percent.
First world arrogance is in full display - an American photographer snaps shots of the locals without any consent. They are used to this. Kids pose for him. He goes into their courtyards, snapping copious amount of pictures, through the windows even. Kids ask him for something in return. He gives the kid a pen, turns to the camera and say, "they should be honored to be photographed by me." An old German tango dancer, who is in Havana for 2 weeks, wants to show off his tango in school in front of kids doing ballet lessons. A teacher lets him, while kids snicker in the background.
Talking with the cadre of ex-pats and locals, Sauper juxtaposes the folly and absurdism of tourism industry. It is revealed that the director is a son of innkeepers in small Austrian resort town. In conversation, his friend says there are two types of people - there are normal human beings and there are tourists. There are luxury hotels that only American and European tourists stay. One of the main subject, Leonelli, a beautiful and bright little girl wants Sauper to sneak her and her friends in to the hotel so they can use the pool on the roof. They have a plan. Sauper will pretend they are his kids.
The director's whiteness and his camera adds another dimension to the film. Sure he has been invested in other parts of the world and their people. He speaks their language. But ultimately, he is a foreigner. How do you reconcile that he is there making a film? How much of a blending in really make you a 'normal people' instead of a 'tourist'?
Sauper ties the idea of modern day Cuba, full of intact 50s archetypes - cars, buildings as fiction that provides false narrative for tourists and of cinema: how they resemble, by way of presenting fiction, tourism. Cinema is all make believe anyway.
Unlike his other documentaries, Epicentro is filled with sense of joy and buoyancy. The flow of tying ideas together - past/present, reality/fiction, normal person/tourist, seems natural and even spontaneous. These ideas are imbued in the presence of Oona Chaplin, a Hollywood actress and a granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin and daughter of Geraldine. She enacts scenes with Leonelli, sings impromptu Spanish songs with her guitar, an attends the screening of a Chaplin film to the delight of kids.
Epicentro is an intimate, fluid, ethereal film while still being sharp edged in condemnation of the globalization and colonial history. It's one of the truly great documentaries of 2020.
Epicentro launches in Virtual Cinemas on August 28.
Friday, August 28, 2020
Solidarity in Humanity
Ghost Tropic (2019) - Devos
Flemish director Bas Devos' debut Violet had made an indelible impression on me back in 2015 when I caught it in New Directors/New Films series. With his painterly frames and quiet yet effective use of sound design made it one of the most memorable debut films in recent memory. Ghost Tropic, his new film, not only is just as beautiful and lyrical as Violet, it also quietly reinforces solidarity and comfort in humanity, not as so much words, but rather in images.
It starts with a static shot of an ordinary living room. Devos holds it for a good 3 minutes. Lights change and day becomes night. In a hushed small voice, the narrator, our nameless heroine, wonders if this lived in space would have as much meaning to a stranger or if we would be ashamed of it. By the end of the film, we realize that we are left with a collective memories of human connection.
Our heroine (Saadia Bentaïeb), a middle aged cleaning lady of the Middle-Eastern origin, at a large corporate building, is first seen laughing at a bad joke of a colleague. Their shift is over and they are packing up to go home for the night. The Brussels city streets are understandably deserted. She stops at an illuminated advertisement for a tropical vacation. You can almost hear the sound of tropics. She boards an almost empty train and falls asleep with the sound of tropical bird singing. Then she misses her stop.
So begins the all night adventure of the cleaning lady. This might not sound like much for a film, but with each encounters and imbued images, Devos builds layers of nuanced nightscape of urban loneliness, isolation but also seldom seen human connections among menial workers. The result is lyrical, fleeting sense of worker solidarity without ever delving into being preachy or corny.
Being left at the end of the train line, on the other side of the city, the lady calls her son, Bilal, hoping he will pick her up. But it's very deep in the night. All she can do is leaving him a message. In order to get cash from the bank machine, possibly for a cab ride, she gets into the shopping mall, by the grace of a sympathetic night watchman there. But then she realizes she doesn't have any money in the bank. The night watchman tells her where the bus station is and they bid farewell. But unfortunately, the bus is out of service.
She finds a homeless man on the street, slumped over and not breathing. His dog barks, cautiously. She calls 911. Who's going to care for the dog? A young medic says he will just tie him on the pole nearby until the homeless man gets back. She is worried about the dog being cold, but has to move on.
The lady gets some hot tea from a convenience store. A young woman clerk takes a pity on her and lets her stay a while, since it's cold outside, but only until closing time. The clerk ends up giving the lady a ride home in her car. They talk briefly about their lives. Nothing special. Just a chat: a dead husband. A divorce. Missing him vs. not missing him. And so on.
The lady spots her teenage daughter on the street with bunch of her young friends. She gets off the car and exchange goodbyes with the clerk.
Her daughter has her own life, the lady sees from a distance.
She stops in at an empty house where she used to clean for a family. Yet it seems someone's living there secretly. There are toys lined up on the floor. A young Arab man from the inside the house notices her looking through the window. He brings his finger to his lips. Does she report it or keep this encounter a secret?
And so on and so on. The midnight adventure of a cleaning lady continues. With each encounter and human interaction fleeting. You feel the warmth of their exchange just as of the mint tea she is drinking. You can feel the hot breath of a night watchman as he exhales his vanilla flavored electric cigarette. There is even room for a small miracle involving the dog which was left behind.
Gorgeously shot on full frame, the strength of the film is, again, in its delicate images. It's in shots of glistening plastic chairs, empty streets, a glow of a mobile phone, flickering distant headlights of traffic. I've seen some gorgeous nighttime cinematography in my time but nothing imbues more urban loneliness and isolation than images presented in Ghost Tropic. It's up there with Chantal Akerman's Toute une nuit and Nan Goldin's nighttime photography. Yet there is unmistakable warmth in those images too.
Devos created something magical here with Ghost Tropic. Quietly enchanting and delicate in its beauty, the film lingers in your mind long after its initial viewing.
Ghost Tropic opens virtually on 8/28 via Cinema Guild
Flemish director Bas Devos' debut Violet had made an indelible impression on me back in 2015 when I caught it in New Directors/New Films series. With his painterly frames and quiet yet effective use of sound design made it one of the most memorable debut films in recent memory. Ghost Tropic, his new film, not only is just as beautiful and lyrical as Violet, it also quietly reinforces solidarity and comfort in humanity, not as so much words, but rather in images.
It starts with a static shot of an ordinary living room. Devos holds it for a good 3 minutes. Lights change and day becomes night. In a hushed small voice, the narrator, our nameless heroine, wonders if this lived in space would have as much meaning to a stranger or if we would be ashamed of it. By the end of the film, we realize that we are left with a collective memories of human connection.
Our heroine (Saadia Bentaïeb), a middle aged cleaning lady of the Middle-Eastern origin, at a large corporate building, is first seen laughing at a bad joke of a colleague. Their shift is over and they are packing up to go home for the night. The Brussels city streets are understandably deserted. She stops at an illuminated advertisement for a tropical vacation. You can almost hear the sound of tropics. She boards an almost empty train and falls asleep with the sound of tropical bird singing. Then she misses her stop.
So begins the all night adventure of the cleaning lady. This might not sound like much for a film, but with each encounters and imbued images, Devos builds layers of nuanced nightscape of urban loneliness, isolation but also seldom seen human connections among menial workers. The result is lyrical, fleeting sense of worker solidarity without ever delving into being preachy or corny.
Being left at the end of the train line, on the other side of the city, the lady calls her son, Bilal, hoping he will pick her up. But it's very deep in the night. All she can do is leaving him a message. In order to get cash from the bank machine, possibly for a cab ride, she gets into the shopping mall, by the grace of a sympathetic night watchman there. But then she realizes she doesn't have any money in the bank. The night watchman tells her where the bus station is and they bid farewell. But unfortunately, the bus is out of service.
She finds a homeless man on the street, slumped over and not breathing. His dog barks, cautiously. She calls 911. Who's going to care for the dog? A young medic says he will just tie him on the pole nearby until the homeless man gets back. She is worried about the dog being cold, but has to move on.
The lady gets some hot tea from a convenience store. A young woman clerk takes a pity on her and lets her stay a while, since it's cold outside, but only until closing time. The clerk ends up giving the lady a ride home in her car. They talk briefly about their lives. Nothing special. Just a chat: a dead husband. A divorce. Missing him vs. not missing him. And so on.
The lady spots her teenage daughter on the street with bunch of her young friends. She gets off the car and exchange goodbyes with the clerk.
Her daughter has her own life, the lady sees from a distance.
She stops in at an empty house where she used to clean for a family. Yet it seems someone's living there secretly. There are toys lined up on the floor. A young Arab man from the inside the house notices her looking through the window. He brings his finger to his lips. Does she report it or keep this encounter a secret?
And so on and so on. The midnight adventure of a cleaning lady continues. With each encounter and human interaction fleeting. You feel the warmth of their exchange just as of the mint tea she is drinking. You can feel the hot breath of a night watchman as he exhales his vanilla flavored electric cigarette. There is even room for a small miracle involving the dog which was left behind.
Gorgeously shot on full frame, the strength of the film is, again, in its delicate images. It's in shots of glistening plastic chairs, empty streets, a glow of a mobile phone, flickering distant headlights of traffic. I've seen some gorgeous nighttime cinematography in my time but nothing imbues more urban loneliness and isolation than images presented in Ghost Tropic. It's up there with Chantal Akerman's Toute une nuit and Nan Goldin's nighttime photography. Yet there is unmistakable warmth in those images too.
Devos created something magical here with Ghost Tropic. Quietly enchanting and delicate in its beauty, the film lingers in your mind long after its initial viewing.
Ghost Tropic opens virtually on 8/28 via Cinema Guild
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Interview: Hubert Sauper on His Intimate New Documentary, EPICENTRO
Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper, known for his scathing documentaries on devastating effects of post-colonial, globalized world - Darwin's Nightmare (Tanzania) and We Come as Friends (South Sudan), changes his direction and focuses his attention on Cuba this time with Epicentro. While the island nation has been a constant subject for cinema for a long time, Sauper's film blends in the commentary on globalization and cinema history through the voices of extremely articulate and bright children. The result is a engrossing, intimate documentary that is poetic and playful as well as biting. This 2020 Sundance Grand Jury prize winner is seeing its virtual opening in the US on 8/28.
I caught him as he was traveling by rail in France. Even with bad reception and constant background noise, I was able to ask him questions about his filmmaking and the world wide pandemic we are experiencing right now.
It’s a crazy time we are living in. I was thinking that this worldwide pandemic seems like a good subject for Hubert Sauper, since you make films about globalization of the world. What do you make of the current state of the world?
Hubert Sauper: It is a crazy situation because the last three years I’ve been making this film about the beginning of cinema and Covid seems to be the end of cinema.
Yeah this is very much true.
The New York premier of the film was the night before the city shut down. I was locked out of New York and it was really crazy situation. So what do I think of it? I don’t really know what to think of this situation. Even what I talk about Epicentro, for us it was a poetic and fantastic way to communicate life and the quintessence of cinema is not just moving images but it’s a collective work and collective experience.
Right.
It’s a collective journey. And now it is questioned right? That’s the crazy thing. The thing is Covid doesn’t care about any of this human endeavor. So I really don’t know. There’s so much emphasis on where it comes from and every politician is using it as their gain. Again the reason why it was communicated so quickly was moving images that spread around the world. That’s the power of images.
I get the feeling that if any filmmaker could tackle this, you would be the one who can interpret the situation from a globalization angle.
One of the things I thought in the beginning of it was that I saw two patterns and posted two screenshots on my facebook page –One was a graph showing the spread of covid and the other of the international air traffic. It’s from a website called flight rada. And they were identical. It was almost synchronized. You click on flights and the Covid bubbles of the destinations of those flights blowing up. It is a global phenomenon. It’s very simple as that.
So you made two films on the effects of Colonial past and globalization in Africa (Darwin’s Nightmare and We Come as Friends), but this time it’s Cuba. Why Cuba?
I was interested in figuring out the ground zero of moving images where it became super powerful and important. And it led me to ‘Remember the Maine’ and I built it upon that. It was defacto of moving image industry and business were born. Cinema was just like any other technology. And it was used to drum up the support for the war.
I’m not saying your last films were not personal but Epicentro comes across as much more personal and intimate than your other work. Is there any personal relationship with Cuba?
Well, I’m not alone in saying that I love Cuba. I’m not the only one who is fascinated by Cuba. One of the things I am particularly fascinated by it is that it is a society that is very much isolated and extremely well educated. The roles it plays in political geopolitical arena, repeatedly is also extremely interesting. On top of that, it’s the Cubans’ reflections on the world that is so acute. Whenever I talked with and listened to them, it was a jaw dropping experience. Those little kids, Chigas, that I interacted daily--
The little prophets (the kids in Epicentro are credited as that on the credit roll).
Yes, they became friends for life! I talk with them on the phone constantly. Maybe it feels more personal because for three years of being there and making this kind of film, there’s no way not to be over-contact with your subjects and they are all over the place.
‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ was the question I wake up with every morning. You will have a café latte, which cost 3 times the average day salary of a person there. That alone is a great justification. That alone is cynical way of saying that Cuba is a paradise. It is a paradise if you have means. All these questions and paradoxes exist in Cuba. And that’s what interested me. I don’t have answers for these. I just ask questions.
I was thinking about that while watching the film. I mean, as a white European filmmaker making a film about colonialism and tourism in Cuba, how do you reconcile with that paradox? I find out from the movie that you were a son of an innkeeper in Austrian resort town.
How do I come to terms with the paradox of life? What I am saying is that the chief of Green Peace has flown more on airplane around the globe while talking about air traffic and its emissions. How do you…I mean… at best I am saying I’m a filmmaker and I’m not gonna apologize for making a film, you know?
Yep.
But of course there are situations that are very critical, for example, we are filming the photographer, poring in somebody’s backyard almost pushing the kids around to stay in focus and I am just another idiot behind the camera at that moment filming this other guy exploiting someone’s privacy. There is no difference between me and that guy in the eyes of Cuban people.
Yeah there is.
And there were about 30-40 people around us when we were there. My point is that the next day I showed them the footage and they were laughing about that footage. It was around my neighborhood where I was living and I asked them permission to shoot in advance and everything.
I was privileged to be paid by European Union to hang out in Cuba for two years.
Two years did you say?
I lived there for 3 years yes. 2 years teaching a class in film school so I could get a legal status and lodging, but all in all three years. I had a studio set up so I was writing, shooting and editing at the same time there. I’d shoot in the day and come back to the flat and edit at night.
Did you have a lot of footage to work with?
Yeah it was physically about a hundred to one.
Wow.
Right. About 200 hours of footage to make one movie.
It’s ok. I shot a lot of characters. But it’s complex process. How do you portray the psychology of empire. There are a lot of characters saying similar things but you try to get some different angles some are more eloquent than others and some are more interesting as characters. The characters are…I don’t know how to say it, sometimes it takes a form of casting. Sometimes it’s more true…. You are a cinema person. You write for cinema right?
So, I can tell you one thing which sets apart. You remember a group of children at night. One kid says I wanna chew down the other one while telling the story of Cuba, remember that?
Yes.
That was the moment, I met Lionelli for the first time in my life. Lionelli was among 10 kids who were mostly bigger than herself. She made herself to be heard. And we follow her after that: her figuring out herself in school and blah blah. But she was such a character and always wanted to be in front of the camera, she became my friend. And she became one of the figures in the film.
I love the scene where she asks you to sneak her and her friends in to the fancy hotel pool so she can swim.
“I need to pee.” As soon as she went into the pool. (laughs)
Why you like it is because at that point of the movie, you already know her and you realize that she has something to say and you feel that relationship. How do you say? Disobedience. Cuban Revolution is romanticized because of its disobedient spirit against the powerful. It’s her disobedient nature, going to the pool when she is not allowed to and pissing in the pool, I see the exact the same spirit.
By the way, I took a cab to the train station and she is all over Paris now (on the movie posters -Epicentro came out last week in Paris). It’s a kind of miracle. She wants to be a movie star and she wants to visit Paris. And she has done that now.
I really like your approach in Epicentro in weaving cinema history with Cuba. It is kind of epitomized by the presence of Oona Chaplin. The Grand daughter of Charlie and daughter of Geraldine. How did you get Oona to be involved?
Oona is a very close friend. She spent a part of her childhood in Cuba because her father’s refugee status. When Lionelli was watching Chaplin movie in the film, I hadn’t thought of Onna yet. That scene triggered me to call her. I sent her the footage to LA where she was working on Avatar movie. And she saw the footage and fell in love with the kids. So I said come on over and she did.
Wow, that’s awesome.
It shows that she is not only beautiful and talented, but a very free person. I think she enjoyed to be involved in it too. It was kind of a miracle too, having Oona coming out of nowhere watching her grandpa on the screen with the children on the rooftop in Cuba. It wasn’t in the script that I wrote originally. By the way, my first trip for Epicentro was not necessarily about Havana. It was the idea of Utopia and birth of cinema.
Well, I enjoyed the film a lot. I think it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. But this pandemic is still raging. So stay safe and hopefully you can make a film about the Covid experience, maybe?
I think I’m gonna be OK, if we can keep this magic called cinema, going.
Epicentro opens virtually on 8/28. Please check Kino Lorber website for more info.
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Bullshit
Nuestro Tiempo (2018) - Reygardas
My initial thoughts were right about Carlos Reygadas it turns out. I don't like to disregard a movie as pretentious. It implies that I didn't understand the film and am attempting to disparage it. But even from the beginning, starting with Japon, his first film, with all the critics going gaga over it, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy his supposed talent, his vision and questioned his intentions behind his stunts. Behind every single one of his movie except maybe Silent Light. Why do we need to see graphic sex scenes performed by non-actors? Why do we need to see animal abuse? Why do we need any of these? With each of his film, the experience felt like nothing more than exploitation. Visceral provocation has its place in films. But with nothing more than making its not so subtle points, I thought these scenes were beyond excessive and uncalled for. Just because of the strength of Silent Light, his serene contemplation of faith by way of Dreyer which I liked very much, I've decided to give him another try.
It's a 3 hour domestric drama starring Reygadas himself, his actress wife and his children in his ranch in rural Mexico. The beginning thirty minutes, involving children and teenagers playing in mudflats shot in anamorphic lens flare glories, are stunningly beautiful, if not creepy - like gliding over their nubile bodies which made me very uncomfortable, doesn't factor into the rest of the film at all. Our Time is definitely not about their offsprings. It concerns an open marriage of Jose (Reygadas), a renowned poet and rancher of bulls and his beautiful wife Esther (Natalia López) and a gringo horse breaker named Phil (Phil Burgers). Jose suspects that Esther is having an affair with Phil who is moving from job to job wherever he's service is needed.
It is not quite clear if Jose arranged his unfulfilled wife's affair with Phil from the beginning. But numerous narrations suggest he has something to do with the arrangement. But it doesn't make him compulsively checking Esther's phone for chats and passive aggressively confronting Esther about her lying. Our Time could've gone to the route of one of those cliché blinding jealousy movies or about an obsession. What Reygadas is doing here or not doing here is far worse - Time after time we hear Jose and Esther's narration (both their thoughts and reciting their letters to each other) over beautiful images - most notably over the extended shot of Mexico City at night from a plane as it descends through the fog, but what they are totally unreliable since their thoughts and their actions are completely different.
There is no causality for any of Esther's actions. Is she a nympho? Why is Jose encouraging her to have sex with other men? If he is for open marriage for satisfying Esther and not jealous, why is he still peeping while Esther is having very graphic sex with other men?
None of these makes much sense. It's not vascillation for some kind of resolution at the end emotionally or physically, it's going on like that forever. But is it about communication breakdown between a husband and wife? They talk but they can't articulate themselves? They tussle, throw chairs and still nothing gets resolved.
I read some interviews with Reygadas where he defends the reason for using his family. It's bullshit. Out of convenience, really? Our Time is perhaps the most egregiously self-indulging movie I've ever seen. It's Scenes from a Marriage only on the most superficial level. Even though I give benefit of the doubt in their trying that they are sincere in representing their relationship, I find them and their petit bourgeois life in the rural Mexico so uninteresting and boring.
He also said that it's not about masculinity that only American audiences would think that. It features bull ranch, bulls making horrendous sounds day and night, a bull gores a mule to death and a bull fight ends in the death of a bull at the end of the film. How does one interpret that any other way? This is movie is bullshit. Reygadas is bullshit.
My initial thoughts were right about Carlos Reygadas it turns out. I don't like to disregard a movie as pretentious. It implies that I didn't understand the film and am attempting to disparage it. But even from the beginning, starting with Japon, his first film, with all the critics going gaga over it, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy his supposed talent, his vision and questioned his intentions behind his stunts. Behind every single one of his movie except maybe Silent Light. Why do we need to see graphic sex scenes performed by non-actors? Why do we need to see animal abuse? Why do we need any of these? With each of his film, the experience felt like nothing more than exploitation. Visceral provocation has its place in films. But with nothing more than making its not so subtle points, I thought these scenes were beyond excessive and uncalled for. Just because of the strength of Silent Light, his serene contemplation of faith by way of Dreyer which I liked very much, I've decided to give him another try.
It's a 3 hour domestric drama starring Reygadas himself, his actress wife and his children in his ranch in rural Mexico. The beginning thirty minutes, involving children and teenagers playing in mudflats shot in anamorphic lens flare glories, are stunningly beautiful, if not creepy - like gliding over their nubile bodies which made me very uncomfortable, doesn't factor into the rest of the film at all. Our Time is definitely not about their offsprings. It concerns an open marriage of Jose (Reygadas), a renowned poet and rancher of bulls and his beautiful wife Esther (Natalia López) and a gringo horse breaker named Phil (Phil Burgers). Jose suspects that Esther is having an affair with Phil who is moving from job to job wherever he's service is needed.
It is not quite clear if Jose arranged his unfulfilled wife's affair with Phil from the beginning. But numerous narrations suggest he has something to do with the arrangement. But it doesn't make him compulsively checking Esther's phone for chats and passive aggressively confronting Esther about her lying. Our Time could've gone to the route of one of those cliché blinding jealousy movies or about an obsession. What Reygadas is doing here or not doing here is far worse - Time after time we hear Jose and Esther's narration (both their thoughts and reciting their letters to each other) over beautiful images - most notably over the extended shot of Mexico City at night from a plane as it descends through the fog, but what they are totally unreliable since their thoughts and their actions are completely different.
There is no causality for any of Esther's actions. Is she a nympho? Why is Jose encouraging her to have sex with other men? If he is for open marriage for satisfying Esther and not jealous, why is he still peeping while Esther is having very graphic sex with other men?
None of these makes much sense. It's not vascillation for some kind of resolution at the end emotionally or physically, it's going on like that forever. But is it about communication breakdown between a husband and wife? They talk but they can't articulate themselves? They tussle, throw chairs and still nothing gets resolved.
I read some interviews with Reygadas where he defends the reason for using his family. It's bullshit. Out of convenience, really? Our Time is perhaps the most egregiously self-indulging movie I've ever seen. It's Scenes from a Marriage only on the most superficial level. Even though I give benefit of the doubt in their trying that they are sincere in representing their relationship, I find them and their petit bourgeois life in the rural Mexico so uninteresting and boring.
He also said that it's not about masculinity that only American audiences would think that. It features bull ranch, bulls making horrendous sounds day and night, a bull gores a mule to death and a bull fight ends in the death of a bull at the end of the film. How does one interpret that any other way? This is movie is bullshit. Reygadas is bullshit.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Blood on the Dance Floor
All That Jazz (1979) - Fosse
There isn't much of a story in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. It shows Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), a chain smoking, heavy drinking, drug addled, womanizing, hard working Broadway choreographer and movie director getting ready for a new project and pushing himself too far and dying in the hospital. Fosse, who directed, choreographed and co-wrote, this is as self-reflexive as it gets, closely resembling Fellini's 8 1/2. From the beginning mass audition scene to the ending Ben Vereen number, the film is spectacular display of dancing talents. It also oozes that unmistakable 70s New York vibe. Scheider is phenomenal, so is Anne Reinking who plays Gideon's understanding ex-wife, Erzsebet Foldi who plays his daughter, Leland Palmer, his dancer mistress and Deborah Geffner, his one night stand. Sweaty, garish, energetic and brilliant, All That Jazz is all show and extremely proud of itself. Good times.
There isn't much of a story in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. It shows Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), a chain smoking, heavy drinking, drug addled, womanizing, hard working Broadway choreographer and movie director getting ready for a new project and pushing himself too far and dying in the hospital. Fosse, who directed, choreographed and co-wrote, this is as self-reflexive as it gets, closely resembling Fellini's 8 1/2. From the beginning mass audition scene to the ending Ben Vereen number, the film is spectacular display of dancing talents. It also oozes that unmistakable 70s New York vibe. Scheider is phenomenal, so is Anne Reinking who plays Gideon's understanding ex-wife, Erzsebet Foldi who plays his daughter, Leland Palmer, his dancer mistress and Deborah Geffner, his one night stand. Sweaty, garish, energetic and brilliant, All That Jazz is all show and extremely proud of itself. Good times.
Monday, August 3, 2020
5 Best Japanese Films of the Decade
This list reflects my tastes and preferences only. Please keep that in mind. Not in any order. Please suggest some good Japanese films from the last decade.
Japanese Girls Never Die (2016) - Matsui
With its intentionally jumbled chronology, Japanese Girls Never Die goes on to tell the story of Haruko (Aoi Yu), an aimless 27 year old who works at an office and still lives at home. Then there is an accidental graffiti artists and an anarchic High School girl gang on a crime spree, beating up unsuspecting men subplots. In series of flash forward, we learn Haruko hooking up with a grocery store clerk/childhood playmate, Soga (Ishizaki Huey). She has to deal with daily sexism at work place - hearing male superiors shit talking 35-year old, unmarried female co-worker and constantly being asked whether she has a boyfriend, then told she won't have problems getting married because how she looks. They even say to her point blank that they'd rather hire a 18 yr old girl with no experience rather than a male applicant with experience because they have to dole out more money for a male workers.
Then she goes missing. Yukio and Manabu, two 20 yr olds working dead end jobs and Aina (Takahata Mitsuki), a slightly pumped up version of cutesy Japanese girl decked with a blinged out cell phone and a gaggle of flush toys on her car dashboard, start stenciling Haruko's face from the police missing sign all over the neighborhood walls. The image goes viral and gets tied into the violent crimes perpetrated by the girl gang. In her absence, Haruko becomes a unwitting heroine of a movement.
Japanese Girls Never Die is a strong indictment of the society where girls are subjugated and sexualized at an early age. It's a structurally daring, thought provoking work. Aoi Yu, the baby faced star of millennial classics like All About Lily Chou-Chou and Hana and Alice does a great job, carrying the burden of being twenty something female in society where self-worth is hard to come by. It's crazy to think that Aoi is old and therefore can easily be discarded. What kind of world is this? Even though it's more than a decade apart from each other, it would make a great double feature with Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Bright Future.
0.5mm (2014) - Ando
Clocking just over 3 hours, 0.5 mm tells a sprawling journey of a young caretaker of elderly people (director Ando Momoko's little sister, Sakura) as she travels through Japan. It's a comical, tender and deadly honest look at aging Japan and its seemingly unbridgeable generation gap.
Sawa (Ando Sakura), is a comely caretaker of an bedridden old man- she changes his diapers, cleans his fluid tubes and feeds him every day. The man obviously hasn't long to live. Sawa expertly handles it all. One day, the man's daughter asks him if she's willing to sleep with the dying man- that it is his dying wish, and assuring her that he is quite flaccid. Breaking the agency protocols for a large sum of money and compassion, Sawa agrees to go through with it. But it only ends in a disaster that costs the old man's life. Something breaks in Sawa and she takes off on the road.
Without any money, she witnesses an eccentric elderly man (Inoue Tatsuo) who's compulsively going around town stealing bicycles and puncturing tires. She blackmails him into pressing herself into his life as his live-in caretaker. There are many funny moments in this prolonged segment as Sawa flirts and disinfects his desires, fights off a sleazy scammer of elderly people, until he decides to go to the fancy retirement home, leaving Sawa his long, worn-out winter coat and his beloved old vintage sport car which has been sitting in his garage.
Sawa moves on to another elderly man, a former professor (Tsugawa Masahiro), who pretends to go to teach every morning, but instead hangs out in the mall all day and spends his time looking at dirty magazines instead. No challenge is small for Sawa, as she pushes herself into the professor's life, guising herself as a former student and admirer of the professor, she forms an uneasy alliance with his older housekeeper and caretaker of his bedridden wife. Sawa insists upon taking care of the wife, who must have been a cultured woman, as she sings arias in the middle of the night. The professor was a navy captain in the war. He reflects contemporary Japan's directionlessness. With the collective will of the people, they could've moved a mountain 0.5mm if they wanted, back then. Just like his wife, he too, slowly loses his mind to aging.
Sawa travels to a small fishing village where she meets a slovenly mute boy whom she's known before and follows him to a shack where his brutish scavenger father lives. The boy turns out to be a girl underneath all the baggy clothing and Sawa and her father has several physical altercations.
With these encounters, Ando takes a current snapshot of Japan, where elderly population problem needs to be dealt with. That they need to be respected and seen with compassion. She also vilifies the post war generation who lacks compassion. They are passing responsibilities of taking care of elderly on to the directionless younger generation. In the center of 0.5mm is brave, ferocious, magnificent Sakura Ando. Not afraid of the physicality and wackiness of her character but also conveys deep compassion and understanding Sawa has for her elderly counterparts. With 30 percent of Japan's population over the age of 65, it's no surprise that Japanese cinema is the first to tackle growing elderly population problems. Biting, uncompromising and deeply poignant, 0.5mm is an impactful film mostly because its untethered, sprawling narrative. There are certain new breed of Japanese indie-filmmakers who totally ignore the typical 3-act narrative structure- Sono Sion, Aoyama Shinji come to mind. I see Ando is also the cut of the same cloth. There is a sense of freedom, freshness to their storytelling.
Asako I & II (2018) - Hamaguchi
Asako (Karata Erika), a passive young girl eyes a tall, good-looking boy, Baku (Higashide Masahiro) at a gallery. With the sound and smell of firecrackers set by rowdy school boys still ringering in the air, they kiss and hook up, just like that. They become a young couple very much in love. Asako's dependency on Baku is total. But always aloof, he disappears for days on end without explanation. Her friends warn her that he will break her heart one day. And one day, Baku goes out for errand and never comes back. At this point, I am expecting some existential, poetic drama along the lines of Maborosi or Before We Vanish. But I'm wrong.
It's been five years. Asako relocated from Osaka to Tokyo, has an stage actress roomate and works at a coffee shop. While delivering coffee at a coporate conference at the building across, she is shocked by a presence of Baku. But it's not him. His name is Ryohei (Higashide again in a double role) who works for a sake sales company. In turn, Ryohei is extremely intrigued by Asako who seem to have an extreme aversion to his presence. It's her shy but clear, direct stares that draws him in. After multiple attempts with the help of his Chekov quoting, English speaking colleague as a wingman, they hook up. It takes a long time for Asako to finally get over her first love and fall in love again to another man, a very different man who is down to earth and real.
Then Baku shows up in Asako's life again. Now a famous model, he turns Asako's life upside down.
Based on Shibasaki Tomoka's novel Netemo sametemo - Waking and Dreaming, the film tackles on letting go of the first love from a woman's point of view in a very unique way. Hamaguchi has a great sensitivity dealing with delicate subject and make his actors shine. Young Karata embodies depth and mystery of a young woman coming out of her shell without compromising her core self, while Higashide shines in dual roles with great empathy and maturity. All the supporting roles are also great and well drawn out. It is refreshing to see a Japanese film that is modern and direct and not trying to be overtly Ozu-y or arthouse poetic or genre-y, yet very Japanese. I very much appreciate Hamaguchi Rusuke's work.
It Feels So Good (2019) - Arai
'What would you do in the face of impending doom?' is the question posed on Kenji (Emoto Tasuku, Your Bird Can Sing) and Naoko (Takiuchi Kumi, Greatful Dead) in It Feels So Good. Writer/director Arai Haruhiko's new film, based on a novel of the same name by two time Naoki Literary Prize winning novelist Shiraishi Kazufumi, written right after Fukushima nuclear meltdown, sees a couple in the precipice of another major natural disaster in Japan.
It starts out with Kenji, unemployed thirty something divorcee seen on a riverbank, fishing half-heartedly, then getting a phone call from his unseen dad informing him that his cousin, Naoko, is getting married. Would he be able to come down from Tokyo and attend?
Naoko is getting married to an older career military man, who is in charge of disaster relief missions, in five days. He is involved in some National Security briefings right now. It turns out Kenji and Naoko share a past: they both were young and very much in love. Naoko even kept graphic photo album full of their sex acts taken by themselves. They tried every position, and everywhere. They used to explore every inch of each other's body. The memories of their affair come flooding back and they can't keep their hands off each other. They will continue to have sex until the day Naoko's fiance returns.
Arai makes sure that we see Kenji and Naoko and them only. We are invited into the couple's intimate bubble. No one else is seen and only heard occasionally on the phone. They go out to restaurants and street festivals, but the camera is only concentrated on them. But mostly, we see them having sex in his old mother's house, her parents house and her big empty new home which she will move in with her husband after the wedding.
Emoto and Takiuchi give commited, brave performances as lovers against socital norms and impending natural disasters. They have great chemistry together.
It is slowly revealed why they are not together. Kenji got someone pregnant and had to marry. Naoko only wants to marry the military man because she wants to have a baby. Obviously they have made some bad choices in their lives, they realize. Incest among cousins is looked down upon in Japanese society. But Japan is also a few countries which allow the first cosins to marry. There is a talk of inevitable eruption of Mt. Fuji, the sacred mountain of Japan. They reminisce about how they made love in front of the large picture of the caldera of Mt. Fuji, swearing their love into the volcano, as if sacrificing themselves to the mountain gods. They even took a picture to commemorate that night. Would they go their separate ways when Naoko's fiance returns?
It Feels So Good's theme is letting all your inhibitions go and live your life the way you want to, because it will all end anyway. Living in a country where natural disaster is way too common and people lead perpetually suspended in temporary existence, Ken and Naoko realize, it's now or never. From their point of view, their behavior might come across as nihilistic, but they are portrayed with much warmth and humanity by Emoto and Takiuchi. If we are to die tomorrow, who are we to judge how others led their lives? Intimate, natural and helplessly romantic, It Feels So Good is one of the best contemporary Japanese film I've seen.
A Story of Yonosuke (2013) - Okita
From reading a brief synopsis online of A Story of Yonosuke, and with its 2 1/2 hour plus runtime, and the fact it is a period piece (taking place in 1987), I was fully expecting a Being There or Forest Gump type parable steeped in a socio-political survey on Japan's economic boom and its downturn in recent years. In a way the film is a parable, but in the subtlest terms.
It's a winsome tale about an affable young man named Yonosuke (a funny sounding name, I was told), who is not mentally handicapped nor an ethereal butler who may or may not exist. Rather, he is a regular guy who still manages to touch many lives with his gentle, optimistic nature.
Even though the film's periodic details are astutely recreated and observed, it is not the nostalgia piece where someone would say, "Yes, I remember the Yomiuri Giants winning the world series that year". As you delve into Yonosuke's life, it makes you forget the film's artificial backdrop soon enough.
Yonosuke, a college freshman from Nagasaki, is played by Kora Kengo (Norwegian Wood, Woodsman and the Rain). His sharp features and intensity are diffused by his big fuzzy hair and goofy smile. He is an ordinary, good natured kid whom everyone wishes would be their best friend. Yonosuke first befriends Kuramochi (Ikematsu Sosuke) and Yui (Asakura Aki) (they later become a couple), when they stumble into the school's samba club in an orientation week. They become an inseparable trio. After getting infatuated with an older, alluring 'party girl' Chiharu (Ito Ayumi), Yonosuke unloads his feelings about her on the reluctant ears of Kato (Ayano Go), a reserved man Yonosuke mistakes for someone he knows. They also become best friends. Then he meets Shoko (Yoshitaka Yuriko), a rich industrialist's daughter, who is always chaperoned by a driver and waited by a maid. Their class differences provide many comedic moments in the film. A wide-eyed naif, Shoko falls for good natured Yonosuke right away. She even follows him to Nagasaki for the summer break at a moment's notice, bewildering him and his rightfully suspicious parents. Their courtship is perhaps the most beguiling part of the film: awkward, funny, tender and uplifting- as should any first love be remembered by.
"When I die, would anyone cry?" wonders Yonosuke at his grandma's funeral. It's a question all of us ask ourselves at some point in our lives. "No, everyone will laugh when they think of you." Shoko tells him. And this they do. Throughout the film, director Okita Shuichi unhurriedly inserts people from Yonosuke's life reminiscing about their time with him after some 16 years, without sacrificing the film's gentle narrative flow and without corny sentimentality. Their chance encounters with Yonosuke enriched their lives immeasurably and they feel privileged to have known him.
I take the film as a reminder that beauty and kindness is in all of us, in this time of economic hardship/post-Fukushima Japan. It's a warm hearted, hopeful film subtly realized by Okita and its spirit is beautifully embodied by Kora.
Japanese Girls Never Die (2016) - Matsui
With its intentionally jumbled chronology, Japanese Girls Never Die goes on to tell the story of Haruko (Aoi Yu), an aimless 27 year old who works at an office and still lives at home. Then there is an accidental graffiti artists and an anarchic High School girl gang on a crime spree, beating up unsuspecting men subplots. In series of flash forward, we learn Haruko hooking up with a grocery store clerk/childhood playmate, Soga (Ishizaki Huey). She has to deal with daily sexism at work place - hearing male superiors shit talking 35-year old, unmarried female co-worker and constantly being asked whether she has a boyfriend, then told she won't have problems getting married because how she looks. They even say to her point blank that they'd rather hire a 18 yr old girl with no experience rather than a male applicant with experience because they have to dole out more money for a male workers.
Then she goes missing. Yukio and Manabu, two 20 yr olds working dead end jobs and Aina (Takahata Mitsuki), a slightly pumped up version of cutesy Japanese girl decked with a blinged out cell phone and a gaggle of flush toys on her car dashboard, start stenciling Haruko's face from the police missing sign all over the neighborhood walls. The image goes viral and gets tied into the violent crimes perpetrated by the girl gang. In her absence, Haruko becomes a unwitting heroine of a movement.
Japanese Girls Never Die is a strong indictment of the society where girls are subjugated and sexualized at an early age. It's a structurally daring, thought provoking work. Aoi Yu, the baby faced star of millennial classics like All About Lily Chou-Chou and Hana and Alice does a great job, carrying the burden of being twenty something female in society where self-worth is hard to come by. It's crazy to think that Aoi is old and therefore can easily be discarded. What kind of world is this? Even though it's more than a decade apart from each other, it would make a great double feature with Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Bright Future.
0.5mm (2014) - Ando
Clocking just over 3 hours, 0.5 mm tells a sprawling journey of a young caretaker of elderly people (director Ando Momoko's little sister, Sakura) as she travels through Japan. It's a comical, tender and deadly honest look at aging Japan and its seemingly unbridgeable generation gap.
Sawa (Ando Sakura), is a comely caretaker of an bedridden old man- she changes his diapers, cleans his fluid tubes and feeds him every day. The man obviously hasn't long to live. Sawa expertly handles it all. One day, the man's daughter asks him if she's willing to sleep with the dying man- that it is his dying wish, and assuring her that he is quite flaccid. Breaking the agency protocols for a large sum of money and compassion, Sawa agrees to go through with it. But it only ends in a disaster that costs the old man's life. Something breaks in Sawa and she takes off on the road.
Without any money, she witnesses an eccentric elderly man (Inoue Tatsuo) who's compulsively going around town stealing bicycles and puncturing tires. She blackmails him into pressing herself into his life as his live-in caretaker. There are many funny moments in this prolonged segment as Sawa flirts and disinfects his desires, fights off a sleazy scammer of elderly people, until he decides to go to the fancy retirement home, leaving Sawa his long, worn-out winter coat and his beloved old vintage sport car which has been sitting in his garage.
Sawa moves on to another elderly man, a former professor (Tsugawa Masahiro), who pretends to go to teach every morning, but instead hangs out in the mall all day and spends his time looking at dirty magazines instead. No challenge is small for Sawa, as she pushes herself into the professor's life, guising herself as a former student and admirer of the professor, she forms an uneasy alliance with his older housekeeper and caretaker of his bedridden wife. Sawa insists upon taking care of the wife, who must have been a cultured woman, as she sings arias in the middle of the night. The professor was a navy captain in the war. He reflects contemporary Japan's directionlessness. With the collective will of the people, they could've moved a mountain 0.5mm if they wanted, back then. Just like his wife, he too, slowly loses his mind to aging.
Sawa travels to a small fishing village where she meets a slovenly mute boy whom she's known before and follows him to a shack where his brutish scavenger father lives. The boy turns out to be a girl underneath all the baggy clothing and Sawa and her father has several physical altercations.
With these encounters, Ando takes a current snapshot of Japan, where elderly population problem needs to be dealt with. That they need to be respected and seen with compassion. She also vilifies the post war generation who lacks compassion. They are passing responsibilities of taking care of elderly on to the directionless younger generation. In the center of 0.5mm is brave, ferocious, magnificent Sakura Ando. Not afraid of the physicality and wackiness of her character but also conveys deep compassion and understanding Sawa has for her elderly counterparts. With 30 percent of Japan's population over the age of 65, it's no surprise that Japanese cinema is the first to tackle growing elderly population problems. Biting, uncompromising and deeply poignant, 0.5mm is an impactful film mostly because its untethered, sprawling narrative. There are certain new breed of Japanese indie-filmmakers who totally ignore the typical 3-act narrative structure- Sono Sion, Aoyama Shinji come to mind. I see Ando is also the cut of the same cloth. There is a sense of freedom, freshness to their storytelling.
Asako I & II (2018) - Hamaguchi
Asako (Karata Erika), a passive young girl eyes a tall, good-looking boy, Baku (Higashide Masahiro) at a gallery. With the sound and smell of firecrackers set by rowdy school boys still ringering in the air, they kiss and hook up, just like that. They become a young couple very much in love. Asako's dependency on Baku is total. But always aloof, he disappears for days on end without explanation. Her friends warn her that he will break her heart one day. And one day, Baku goes out for errand and never comes back. At this point, I am expecting some existential, poetic drama along the lines of Maborosi or Before We Vanish. But I'm wrong.
It's been five years. Asako relocated from Osaka to Tokyo, has an stage actress roomate and works at a coffee shop. While delivering coffee at a coporate conference at the building across, she is shocked by a presence of Baku. But it's not him. His name is Ryohei (Higashide again in a double role) who works for a sake sales company. In turn, Ryohei is extremely intrigued by Asako who seem to have an extreme aversion to his presence. It's her shy but clear, direct stares that draws him in. After multiple attempts with the help of his Chekov quoting, English speaking colleague as a wingman, they hook up. It takes a long time for Asako to finally get over her first love and fall in love again to another man, a very different man who is down to earth and real.
Then Baku shows up in Asako's life again. Now a famous model, he turns Asako's life upside down.
Based on Shibasaki Tomoka's novel Netemo sametemo - Waking and Dreaming, the film tackles on letting go of the first love from a woman's point of view in a very unique way. Hamaguchi has a great sensitivity dealing with delicate subject and make his actors shine. Young Karata embodies depth and mystery of a young woman coming out of her shell without compromising her core self, while Higashide shines in dual roles with great empathy and maturity. All the supporting roles are also great and well drawn out. It is refreshing to see a Japanese film that is modern and direct and not trying to be overtly Ozu-y or arthouse poetic or genre-y, yet very Japanese. I very much appreciate Hamaguchi Rusuke's work.
It Feels So Good (2019) - Arai
'What would you do in the face of impending doom?' is the question posed on Kenji (Emoto Tasuku, Your Bird Can Sing) and Naoko (Takiuchi Kumi, Greatful Dead) in It Feels So Good. Writer/director Arai Haruhiko's new film, based on a novel of the same name by two time Naoki Literary Prize winning novelist Shiraishi Kazufumi, written right after Fukushima nuclear meltdown, sees a couple in the precipice of another major natural disaster in Japan.
It starts out with Kenji, unemployed thirty something divorcee seen on a riverbank, fishing half-heartedly, then getting a phone call from his unseen dad informing him that his cousin, Naoko, is getting married. Would he be able to come down from Tokyo and attend?
Naoko is getting married to an older career military man, who is in charge of disaster relief missions, in five days. He is involved in some National Security briefings right now. It turns out Kenji and Naoko share a past: they both were young and very much in love. Naoko even kept graphic photo album full of their sex acts taken by themselves. They tried every position, and everywhere. They used to explore every inch of each other's body. The memories of their affair come flooding back and they can't keep their hands off each other. They will continue to have sex until the day Naoko's fiance returns.
Arai makes sure that we see Kenji and Naoko and them only. We are invited into the couple's intimate bubble. No one else is seen and only heard occasionally on the phone. They go out to restaurants and street festivals, but the camera is only concentrated on them. But mostly, we see them having sex in his old mother's house, her parents house and her big empty new home which she will move in with her husband after the wedding.
Emoto and Takiuchi give commited, brave performances as lovers against socital norms and impending natural disasters. They have great chemistry together.
It is slowly revealed why they are not together. Kenji got someone pregnant and had to marry. Naoko only wants to marry the military man because she wants to have a baby. Obviously they have made some bad choices in their lives, they realize. Incest among cousins is looked down upon in Japanese society. But Japan is also a few countries which allow the first cosins to marry. There is a talk of inevitable eruption of Mt. Fuji, the sacred mountain of Japan. They reminisce about how they made love in front of the large picture of the caldera of Mt. Fuji, swearing their love into the volcano, as if sacrificing themselves to the mountain gods. They even took a picture to commemorate that night. Would they go their separate ways when Naoko's fiance returns?
It Feels So Good's theme is letting all your inhibitions go and live your life the way you want to, because it will all end anyway. Living in a country where natural disaster is way too common and people lead perpetually suspended in temporary existence, Ken and Naoko realize, it's now or never. From their point of view, their behavior might come across as nihilistic, but they are portrayed with much warmth and humanity by Emoto and Takiuchi. If we are to die tomorrow, who are we to judge how others led their lives? Intimate, natural and helplessly romantic, It Feels So Good is one of the best contemporary Japanese film I've seen.
A Story of Yonosuke (2013) - Okita
From reading a brief synopsis online of A Story of Yonosuke, and with its 2 1/2 hour plus runtime, and the fact it is a period piece (taking place in 1987), I was fully expecting a Being There or Forest Gump type parable steeped in a socio-political survey on Japan's economic boom and its downturn in recent years. In a way the film is a parable, but in the subtlest terms.
It's a winsome tale about an affable young man named Yonosuke (a funny sounding name, I was told), who is not mentally handicapped nor an ethereal butler who may or may not exist. Rather, he is a regular guy who still manages to touch many lives with his gentle, optimistic nature.
Even though the film's periodic details are astutely recreated and observed, it is not the nostalgia piece where someone would say, "Yes, I remember the Yomiuri Giants winning the world series that year". As you delve into Yonosuke's life, it makes you forget the film's artificial backdrop soon enough.
Yonosuke, a college freshman from Nagasaki, is played by Kora Kengo (Norwegian Wood, Woodsman and the Rain). His sharp features and intensity are diffused by his big fuzzy hair and goofy smile. He is an ordinary, good natured kid whom everyone wishes would be their best friend. Yonosuke first befriends Kuramochi (Ikematsu Sosuke) and Yui (Asakura Aki) (they later become a couple), when they stumble into the school's samba club in an orientation week. They become an inseparable trio. After getting infatuated with an older, alluring 'party girl' Chiharu (Ito Ayumi), Yonosuke unloads his feelings about her on the reluctant ears of Kato (Ayano Go), a reserved man Yonosuke mistakes for someone he knows. They also become best friends. Then he meets Shoko (Yoshitaka Yuriko), a rich industrialist's daughter, who is always chaperoned by a driver and waited by a maid. Their class differences provide many comedic moments in the film. A wide-eyed naif, Shoko falls for good natured Yonosuke right away. She even follows him to Nagasaki for the summer break at a moment's notice, bewildering him and his rightfully suspicious parents. Their courtship is perhaps the most beguiling part of the film: awkward, funny, tender and uplifting- as should any first love be remembered by.
"When I die, would anyone cry?" wonders Yonosuke at his grandma's funeral. It's a question all of us ask ourselves at some point in our lives. "No, everyone will laugh when they think of you." Shoko tells him. And this they do. Throughout the film, director Okita Shuichi unhurriedly inserts people from Yonosuke's life reminiscing about their time with him after some 16 years, without sacrificing the film's gentle narrative flow and without corny sentimentality. Their chance encounters with Yonosuke enriched their lives immeasurably and they feel privileged to have known him.
I take the film as a reminder that beauty and kindness is in all of us, in this time of economic hardship/post-Fukushima Japan. It's a warm hearted, hopeful film subtly realized by Okita and its spirit is beautifully embodied by Kora.
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