The 4 most important things in life

In Our Day (2023) - Hong Sleeping
Cats
Alcohol
Cigarettes
+ Ramyun with chili paste

Embracing Mystery

Inside Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023) - Pham Vietnamese director Pham Thien An's assured debut feature, Inside Yellow Cocoon Shell, will make a great 'existential road trip movie' double feature with Bi Gan's debut Kaili Blues. A languid style with no cuts and slow zoom-in, this unhurried film starts with a group of young men discussing faith and afterlife in a busy Saigon outdoor restaurant. There is a fatal motorcycle accident off the frame and the camera slowly tracks to the busy intersection to reveal the sight of the accident. We later learn that it was Hanh, a sister-in-law of our reluctant protagonist Thien (Le Phong Vu), who died in the accident, and left him her 5-year-old son, Dao to take care of. Thien leaves with Dao to their hometown in the lush countryside for the very catholic funeral and following wake.

In the home village where he left long ago for Saigon, he encounters many people and engage in long conversations, including an old man who was in the army fighting viet congs and his old flame who is now a nun. The present melds with past and reality blurs with dreams, Inside Yellow Cocoon Shell presents the waking dream that is fleeting human life. The last third of this languid 3-hour film is Thien looking for his brother in the neighboring village. His motor bike breaks down and Thien has to take shelter in a snack stop. There he engages with an old woman who asks him why he had forsaken his soul and proceeds to tell him her near death experience. Is Thien really looking for his brother? Or is he in a spiritual journey to find himself? With the backdrop of colorful Vietnam and its western and eastern influences and its tumultuous history, young director Pham paints a very arresting picture of one man's journey to find himself and leaves room for us to contemplate and embrace life's mysteries.

Ching Ching from the Past

Chime (2024) - Kurosawa Chime feels like an out of context rehash of Kiyoshi Kurosawa in his heydays in 2000s when Japan was suffering crippling recession. I might be the minority on this, but he hadn’t made a good movie since Journey to the Shore almost ten years ago.

Robber of the Soul

La Chimera (2023) - Rohrwacher Josh O'Connor plays Arthur who has talent for locating ancient graves to loot in rural Italy. This tall English man with unknown past has roots in this part of the world with connections with its common country peasants. He is also in greiving process of his love, Benjamina, who was one of the many daughters of an aging local matriach, Flora (Isabella Rossellini), who reside in a decrepit mansion with her singing pupil Italia (Carole Duarte).

Rohrwacher belongs to ta generation of new filmmakers who embraces the traditional film technology and even older storytelling techniques which is abundantly displayed in La Chimera - Soft edges, speeding up for comic effects, fable like script, etc. But what makes Rohrwacher films unique is her modern sensibility, thanks to her transnational background. It is in her casting of O'Connor, Rosellini and Brazilian actress Duarte for thr roles and music choices as well. She is much different filmmaker than, say, Pietro Marcello.

As usual, Alice Rohrwacher's fable like story is filled to the brim with the colorful rural characters as they scheme, sing and dance around. Arthur finds some sort of redemption after Italia's objection that what he is doing is robbing the souls of the dead people that he is digging the trinkets out of earth where they are not meant for the eyes of the living. La Chimera is a charming film full of hearts and human warmth.

Bardo

Samsara (2023) - Patiño In his new film Samsara, filmmaker/visual artist Lois Patiño channels the Tibetan Book of the Dead via Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In his natural, documentary style narrative which is a departure from his previous, silent, non narrative, visually stunning work, he invites us to meditate. There are two parts, er, three parts to the film: first part takes place in Laos, the second part, we are supposed to close our eyes for 15 minutes, then third part in Zanzibar. His gamble pays off. I'd love to experience this film on a big screen with other people and perhaps fall asleep and not feel ashamed to do so. It's that kind of film.

In the first part, a young man is reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead to a dying old woman in a small fishing village in Laos. She knows that her time is almost up and ready to travel to Bardo, the intermediate stage where your soul will move on eventually. Reincarnation is mentioned. The young man is to take bunch of monks from the local monestery to a famous waterfall on his boat. This affords Patiño to do some really gorgeous long transitional shots with images overlapping each other.

The old woman passes and we are prompted to close our eyes and travel with the old woman. For the next 15 minutes, we are supposed to close our eyes and feel the light flashing in our closed eyelids with the sounds of what she is hearing from her life. Then silence.

We are now introduced to a little girl in Zanzibar, to a small fishing community where local women gather seaweeds to make soaps out of it. A new white goat is born and the little girl goes everywhere with the goat on a leash. The old woman tells the little girl that the goat might be an incarnation of a big tree in the forest, or an elephant (which we saw in Laos part), or an old woman. The little girl loses her goat.

Gentle and deeply contemplative, Samsara is a truly unique experience. Go see it in theaters if you can.

Tonal Exercise

Evil Does Not Exist (2023) - Hamaguchi Concieved as a accompanying video for composer Eiko Ishibashi (Drive My Car), Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exists plays out like a tonal exercise, unsure of where it will ultimately lead to, like a good looking sourdough bread just came out of the oven, yet there's something wrong with it - underproved - a little dodgy.

It starts out unhurriedly with a long dolly tracking shot of the wood, looking up, with Ishibashi's swelling, mood setting score. Then it introduces Takumi (Hiroshi Omika), a tan faced, stoic widower in rural Japan. He is a local handyman in a close-knit community facing a development company from Tokyo trying to set up a 'glamping' site which would contaminate the water source- famous for its purity- that the whole village is dependent on.

The two city slicker representatives from the company, Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani) get grilled by townsfolks (including Takumi) at the townhall presentations of the company's flawed plans. They realize that these people are no pushover country bumpkins. Through the long, soul searching conversations on the long drive back to Tokyo and back to the village, they realize they are on the wrong side.

Takumi is a forgetful fella. He constantly forgets to pick up his young daughter from a daycare and finds her in the woods walking home alone. It's a hunting season in winter. He tells her about the dead deer carcass in the woods they stumbled on. Deer don't attack people, they stay away from the presence of human activities, but a shot deer may attack you if you approach.

The city pair returns, thinking about quitting their jobs and learn the way of rural living from Takumi. It all seems idylic and unfussed, very different from cut-throat capitalist Tokyo environs where they are killing their souls and aspirations to make a living.

Hamaguchi is a very skilled director. His approach to filmmaking is unhurried, and dialogue and acting, natural. His films stand out among other contemporary Japanese films for that reason. He also has a way to bring out humanism of his characters who at first may not be too likable. He deals with many nuanced issues with Evil Does Not Exist - environmental destructions, city vs rural living and human nature.

But with its surprise ending, I question Hamaguchi's motive as unserious about all the issues he raised with the film. It feels like a mood experimentation with Ishibashi's score; setting things up to change the mood of the film this way or that way. Mysterious its end maybe, but I am left with feeling manipulated in a hollow exercise feeling like a bait, not unlike a little girl lost in the woods.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024 Preview

Taking place from February 29 through March 10, this popular annual festival showcases the verve, creativity, and depth of contemporary French cinema in a variety of genres.

This year's opening night film is the critical and box office hit The Animal Kingdom starring Romain Duris, Adèle Axarchopoulos. Others in the lineup includes Little Girl Blue with Marion Cotillard, Book of Solutions, Michel Gondry's new film in 8 years and loads of films by talented newcomers - Ama Gloria by Marie Amachoukeli, Banel & Adama by Ramata-Toulaye Sy and Nora El Hourch's Sisterhood (HLM Pussy).

With the recent critical success of Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall and Tran Anh Hung's Taste of Things, French cinema is having a moment with American Audiences. As always, Rendez-Vous provides the glimpse of what's hot in French cinema here and now.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema is sponsored by Villa Albertine, TV5 Monde, Maison Occitanie, FIAF, The Plaza, New York

Little Girl Blue - Achache Filmmaker Mona Achache recreates her mother Carole through Marion Cotillard in understanding her suicide a fascinating docu-drama Little Girl Blue. In the beginning of the film, Achache hands her mother's jeans, t shirt, blue cardigan, glasses and a perfume to Cotillard who accepts quietly and transforms into Carole, a writer, photographer who left mountains of journals, photographs and audio recordings behind.

Achache, uses a massive studio wall space to painstakingly catalog her mother's life, like a crime investigator. Carole, who herself had tumultuous relationship with her prolific writer mother, Monique, who hung out with other literary giants as Jean Genet, Maguerite Duras and William Faulkner in the 50s Paris.

The film tells the abuse perpetuated by men (all coincidentally named Jean/Juan) and how it reverberates through generations. A little heavy on the use of stock footage to drive home the points, but Cotillard's committed performance on screen, as she fluffs the lines and retries under her breath are all documented as the process. It's a fascinating, personal art therapy of a film.

On the Adamant - Philibert To Be and To Have director Nicolas Philibert's points his camera to the Adamant, a psychiatric daycare center for adults on the embankment of Seine. This floating, two story wooden structure is a safe haven for many people who struggle with mental illness. Philibert gently documents its patients and staff as they conduct series of workshops - music, painting, book keeping, jam making, etc. As one of the participants says, it's all about having someone to listen to their anxiety and neurosis.

Philibert, with his infinite patience and compassion, listens to these people without judgment and shows how each individual is talented and unique in his/her own way in the process.

On the Adamant softens its social stigma placed on mental illness.The Adamant is a project of St Maurice Hospital and all the patients are under some medication to control their conditions - many hear voices or suffer from hallucinations. By providing positive, calm environment, the project has been successfully operating since 2010. There's singing, there is poetry, there is traveling film screenings, all in the backdrop of the lively and romantic Seine. A real gem.

The Book of Solutions - Gondry A typical Michel Gondry manchild protagonist is perfectly played by Pierre Niney. Niney is Marc, a film director first seen fleeing the film executive's board meeting after they watch the footage and shut down his project. He drives to his childhood village in the rural home with his producer, editor and assistant in tow, to working on editing his 4 hour long, incomprehensible film. He flushes away all his anti-depressants against the advice from his beloved aunt Denise, in order to free his creative energy and gets sidetracked by everything around him, much to the dismay of all his crew members.

As always, Gondry puts his chaotic creative process on display while keeping it close to his heart with a film director as the protagonist. Not as visually creative as his earlier films but it has that madcap Gondry energy that is quite infectious.

The Novelist's Films: The Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

The latest film by Turkish film director, photographer, screenwriter, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, About Dry Grasses is three-plus hours of novelistic contemplation on human conditions in a stunning rural East Turkey backdrop.

Among the best Turkish New Wave directors, along with Reha Erdem (Times and Tides, My Only Sunshine) and Semih Kaplanoğlu (Honey, Commitment Hasan) Ceylan built a reputation as the world's most novelistic filmmaker, with deliberately slow pacing, long takes and themes steeped in vagaries of human existence, in often beautiful rural and urban settings in Anatolia and Istanbul. Indeed, experiencing each of his films is similar to reading a great thick book. And it's deeply satisfying, every time.

Ceylan studied engineering in school, then became a photographer: it is apparent that he has an eye for landscapes as you watch his films. Consider the snowy streets of Istanbul in Distant, ancient ruins on a hot summer day in Climates, the winding mountain roads from above at dusk in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, the icicle covered resort in Winter Sleep, and snow-capped mountains in About Dry Grasses, just to name a few. And there is always a cinematic showstopper in every one of his films that makes your jaw drop.

Yet, it's his juxtaposition of close-ups of the faces and their surroundings that gives meaning to his work. We humans exist among those spectacular places, with our jealousies, greed, lust, pride and other qualities intact.

With his wife Ebru Ceylan as a writing partner on most of his films, along with actor/physician Ercan Kesal (Three Monkeys, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and actor/teacher Akin Aksu (Wild Pear Tree, About Dry Grasses), he sketches out great, lived-in melodramas like no other.

Within the generous running time -- since Anatolia's comparitively modest 155 minutes, the runtime of Ceylan's films are more than three hours -- we get to know every main character in an intimate way with their faults and weaknesses, as well as their redeemable qualities. We get to live with them, like a main character in a great thick novel, at least a short while in darkened theaters. With Winter Sleep, the Palme d'Or winner 2013, adapting Anton Chekhov's play, The Wife, Ceylan explicitly let his audience know where his influences originate and where his interests lie thematically, while not sacrificing his cinematic playfulness.

About About Dry Grasses: About Dry Grasses deals with the usual Ceylan themes: how to live within your environment without making your surroundings a personal living hell.

Samet, our protagonist, skillfully played by Deniz Celiloglu, is a teacher in a small rural village, returning from the summer recess. He is counting the days until he is to reassigned and out of rural living, after the government's mandatory assignment period ends.

He is easily irritable and self-centered. Overall, he is not a likable character, like many other of Ceylan's male protagonists. All three principal characters -- Samet, Nuray (Merve Dizdar, Best Actress at Cannes 2023), Kenan (Musab Ekici), and Sevim (16-year-old Ece Bağcı) -- are exceptionally great.

There are many great moments in the film but one showstopper comes in late in the third act of the film. After accusations of inappropriate behavior with the students quiet down, Samet's favorite student Sevim poses for him outside school in the snowy field, as he is an amateur photographer.

It's the closeup of Sevim's face, where Samet sees betrayal, lies and vengeance, while the audience sees innocence, beauty and indifference. While self-absorbed Samet might not realize, but we do, that it's our projection on others that makes our lives miserable.

Also, it is the first time in a long while Ceylan plays with the film medium. He used non-professional actors until the mid-2000s. He even starred along with his wife Ebru in Climates as a fictional couple in a tale of disintegration of a marriage shot on digital video.

If the run of Anatolia, Winter Sleep and The Wild Pear Tree gave the impression that the Turkish auteur is just making wordy filmed plays in a spectacular setting, About Dry Grasses will surprise you. There is a third-wall breaking scene in Grasses, where Samet and Nuray get intimate after being drunk.

The camera follows Samet to the bathroom, then out the door to a film set in a lot, revealing that the tiny apartment filled with trinkets of Nuray's life is indeed a film set, which takes you out completely from the film narrative. It gives you a sudden jolt that all the characters' lives, their thoughts and intimate details and blemishes that you invested in for the last two hours, are indeed a fiction. That now you can take a breather and reset.

With About Dry Grasses, we are witnessing a great, mature filmmaker paving his legacy as a novelistic filmmaker with a visual flair in the league of Tarkovsky and Bergman.

About Dry Grasses enjoys its U.S. premiere Friday, February 23, at Film Forum in New York City.

My review of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012)

My review of Winter Sleep (2014)

My review of Wild Pear Tree (2018)