I’d like to start a thread that’s not so much a smaller fork off the monster “What have you been watching” thread, but more as a general follow up to the exciting comments that followed Onderhond’s review of Spring Subway.
There were many great thoughts and film recommendations in that thread, most I haven’t had the chance to see yet, but through six degrees of separation and a friend who runs a dvd shop I’ve stumbled upon some really good stuff.
My most recent viewing experience was Kenji Uchida’s A Stranger of Mine. You can read Todd’s review of it here. It’s a spot on review in my opinion ... a small film but extremely well done. Don’t jump on me for describing it as using the Pulp Fictiony storytelling device of repeating scenes from different perspectives (I know it’s been done before/better/whatever) ... it’s just the easiest, most obvious comparison that comes to mind.
As the movie unravels, and we see the same scene again from another point of view, it just keeps getting better and better. The scene where the Yakusa boss hiding under the bed sees only the shy dance of feet of characters we had seen from a different perspective earlier is priceless.
So ... has anybody seen the director’s follow-up After School?
I got interested in Jo Odagiri somehow, and stumbled upon a little film he was in early in his career called Platonic Sex. It’s not a great film by any means, but I’ve seen a handful of Jo’s movies and Platonic Sex is my favorite Jo Odagiri role so far. Hiroshi Abe also is very good in the film, as is the newcomer who plays the lead (a teenager who’s raped, cast out by her family and enters the sex industry).
I see that Jo has directed a film. Ard interviews him about it here. Sounds like a crazy guy who has directed a crazy film. Somehow I stumbled upon some gossip that referenced Yuka Itaya as his girlfriend/fiance/wife or something. Well ... it turns out she is one of the actresses in the above mentioned A Stranger of Mine. She seems like a smart and tough actress, and I know it sounds silly, but after reading Ard’s interview with Jo, she seems like a good fit with the guy. I wonder what she looks like naked.
Enter Desire (Yokubô), directed by Tetsuo Shinohara (Breathe In, Breathe Out (2004); Heaven’s Bookstore (2004); Hatsukoi (2000) ... aka First Love).
Desire is not a very good film, in my opinion, mildly interesting, but I think Yuka Itaya demonstrates that she is an actress to keep an eye on (and not just for her full-frontal performance). She strikes me as someone who has probably not studied or trained as an actress, but she seems to exude an intelligence which makes her instantly engaging ... as opposed to her co-star Jun Murakami who didn’t seem like he could act at all. It was his performance that really sunk the film for me. Although playing a character whose ... um, “tool” has become inoperative due to an accident probably meant he was supposed to be somewhat sympathetically pathetic.
Ooops! Oh well. I think he should dump her and go for Yuka Itaya. She seems like a lot more fun.
If he’s going to go for the gentler type, maybe he should look into Lunmei Kwai. I saw her teenaged debut as a frumpy kid in Blue Gate Crossing a while back and thought she was wonderful in that most delightful of Taiwanese gayful youth films. (Although the best film of that genre, albeit Japanese not Taiwanese, has to go to Kaze Shindô‘s Love/Juice). Then she was captivating and dreamy in The Most Distant Course, a film that washes over you like a gentle breeze on a warm summer day in a green meadow somewhere in the mountains or by the sea, or somewhere like that, ya know, remote yet familiar. I haven’t seen Parking yet, but I got roped into watching Hark Tsui’s All About Women, and while it’s a goofy film full of sight gags and silliness, Lunmei Kwai is not bad at all. I think she’s got a future. She’s not one of those cutesy types ... well, maybe she is, but she seems to have a strength to her interior that will keep her interesting as she matures. We’ll see if the same holds true for Kitty Zhang Yuqi (CJ7), who, although the youngest of the three female stars in All About Women, plays the oldest character. She plays a believable 31 year old marketing executive who oozes sexuality and plays it well. And of course we can all watch Zhou Xun all day long, right? I can’t really recommend the film, as it’s kind of dumb, but it was entertaining on some level. And seeing Lunmei Kwai as a punk rocker, even though it’s the made up not for real movie fantasy type of punk rocker, was fun.
Odagiri fans should defintely check out HAZARD. It’s pretty great in a low key, “Adrift in Tokyo” kinda way.
I like to think HAZARD is proof positive that I’m no sheep. I like Odagiri and I worship Sion Sono but we’ve tried twice to watch the film and have failed to complete it. We all agree we will try again, but ... Odagiri seems to be just “ohhh"ing and “uhhh"ing his way through it. It might be that I generally watch films in the presence of two fine ladies and we all find displays of high levels of testosterone uninteresting. We love Asian film but think fisticuffs (martial arts) gangsters and gunfights are pretty dumb.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who’s read some of the crud I post in these forums that I’m no film critic and I don’t know the history of cinema ... just know what I like. And a film we watched last night left me, left all of us, absolutely stunned: WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?
WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? vs ALL AROUND US
Why love the former and be so unimpressed by the latter? The acting is brilliant in both films. The cinematography in WTIIT is better than in AAU ... it’s a more attractive film to look at. They are both films that don’t appeal to mainstream audiences due to the number of scenes where nothing happens. Heck, one could argue that in the entire WTIIT film that nothing happens in any of the scenes. Maybe it’s that in WTIIT you can tell from the beginning that it’s going to be an observational film, a slow meditation on a hyper-real everydayness, whereas AAU seems like it wants to tell a story but punctuates itself with random bits of nothingness.
One thing is for sure: WTIIT is a brilliantly edited film. Almost every scene is cut at such a precise point that it leaves you dying to spend just one more moment in time with the character. A lot of the scenes in AAU seemed to go on for just a moment too long—and not in that awesome Cassevettes way.
Ah well, I’ve rambled a bit too much after a film that essentially left me speechless.
The only other film I’ve seen by him is THE WAYWARD CLOUD. And besides rough-housing, the other boink on our not-like-so-much list is musical numbers ... unless they rock. Hard. Show tunes and cabaret style crap just don’t cut it.
But I’m definitely going to check more of this guy out. Are you recommending “I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone”?
I’ll recommend Good-bye Dragon Inn…..but then I’ll duck and cover, as I’ve not seen anyone on board with me for that Tsai-ML particular film. Damn, and I should revisit What Time is it There?
Excellent review, Ard. The guy had to have studied panting before filmmaking. Does anybody know? A friend has a copy of Vive L’Amour so I will probably see that next, but will work my way through his stuff if it continues to impress.
There needs to be a genre name for films like What TIme is it There and All Around Us beyond just ‘arthouse’ so we can all point and say “yeah, one of those.” And they can fail as miserably as entries in any other genre. I don’t consider All Around Us a failure, and even with all my bitching about it and contrary protestations, I do think I will revisit it.
And but speaking of Yuka Itaya and this genre, I saw Hiroshi Ishikawa’s Tokyo.Sora, another film she was in, and was bored to the point of disgust. Then I got roped into watching Su-ki-da and was blown away. Everything that seemed wrong with Tokyo.Sora seemed to work wonders in Su-ki-da, like shooting the actors from a mile away and then cutting to a shot of the kitchen table or a tree trunk.
I’ll recommend Good-bye Dragon Inn…..but then I’ll duck and cover, as I’ve not seen anyone on board with me for that Tsai-ML particular film. Damn, and I should revisit What Time is it There?
Oh, lord ... I expected so much of that film and got so little ...
Speaking of Aoi Miyazaki, watched Heavenly Forest (Tada, kimi wo aishiteru) [Just, loving you] last night.
I was a bit surprised by the sometimes frank and honest dialog coming from Aoi Miyazaki‘s character in what for the most part is a very family friendly bit of Japanese young love/first love cinema. But it is appropriate for her character, a set-to-mature-at-any-moment young woman deficient in some necessary growth hormones needed to push her over the edge (that when triggered by a first kiss will ultimately be her ... undoing) and seems trapped in young adolescence. It’s a very cute and cute-funny, and really sad, sad, film. Miyazaki teeters the edge between coy and seductive so well it made me dizzy ... with delight. I could, however, understand her pouty lipped attempts at cuteness turning some folks off. She does slip out of it each time very quickly, though. That’s part of her charm, I guess.
The film is beautifully photographed. The ‘heavenly’ forest is fairy-tale gorgeous, as are the three young actors we spend time with. The story is engaging too, clearly a novel-adapted one. Heavenly Forest is a winner in its genre.
I’ll recommend Good-bye Dragon Inn…..but then I’ll duck and cover, as I’ve not seen anyone on board with me for that Tsai-ML particular film. Damn, and I should revisit What Time is it There?
Goodbye Dragon Inn is among my TML faves, the others being The River and What Time Is It There.
i find it incredibly haunting and very very on the ball about the death of cinema. the final static single take, oh WOW, that completely blew me away. it’s simply cinema looking back at us, and we’re not there. genius.
I’m a big fan of Ryuhei Kitamura since I first saw Versus. Last night I got a chance to see a film of his called “Love Death” and was greatly surprised. I’d never seen a Yakuza comedy so well done since the early days of Miike. This one blew me away and had me laughing my ass off. God I love Dark Yakuza comedies almost has much as I love Wuxia films. And having Riki Takeuchi in it was an added bonus. Until last night Miike’s Fudoh- the Last Generation held top honors in the category of Crazy Yakuza films but I thinks it’s been dethroned.
I started to watch Harmful Insect last week and punted after about twenty minutes. I decided to give it another go tonight. I finished it and I’m pissed.
Aoi Miyazaki plays a thirteen year old girl whose mother attempts suicide after her father abandons the family. Her classmates gossip in the bathrooms about a supposed affair she had with her sixth grade teacher. She skips school and her only friend is killed by a gang. Her mom’s new boyfriend attempts to rape her.
It’s awful to take such a cute and accomplished young actress and punish her for ninety minutes and call it a film. The 100% wrong ass ending makes clear director Akihiko Shiota‘s obvious choice of cheap and manipulative. Aoi Miyazaki gets big props for her performance and even bigger props for going along with the project but the film is a conceited mess of phony bullshit.
Kind of interesting to see Yû Aoi with baby fat, though.
[UPDATE] That’s how I felt five minutes after the film ended with one of the more heartbreaking shots I’ve seen in a while. After sleeping on it I feel a little different. I guess I like my heartbreak to come as more of a slow fizzle rather than an abrupt slap in the face. I still think it’s not a very polished film, it’s not that engaging to sit through, but I have a better appreciation for the vision of it. I won’t say exactly what the ending is, but it has to do with the sixth grade teacher who leaves the school and goes to work in a nuclear power plant amidst the rumors of a relationship with Miyazaki’s character. The film is punctuated throughout with screens of written correspondences between the teacher and Miyazaki. It’s not definitive that there was a sexual relationship and the ambiguity is important. That the two of them actually correspond is telling.
One of the best scenes in the film is when Miyazaki’s character is talking with a classmate she has started ‘going out with’. We’ve seen them innocently kiss and we can see this as a first step in her trying to re-assimilate into a normal middle school life. The two characters are in an classroom, empty of people but full of desks. The boy inquires about the rumors surrounding her relationship with the teacher. Miyazaki hesitates for a moment and then gently pulls one of the desks from the back of the room to the front, knocking it into rows of desks and chairs as she exits the room. It’s an outstanding scene and really highlights how well this sixteen year old actor is able to internalize her character’s angst and scream it out loud without making a sound.
I can’t say enough about how good Miyazaki’s performance is. I’ve mentioned how relentlessly her character is punished throughout the film. The amazing thing is how quietly and resigned, how maturely and almost positively, she responds to all of it. Her alienation is palpable and yet she wanders through the film with such strength of character it’s mesmerizing.
I still don’t think the film is assembled very well. If it weren’t for Miyazaki’s performance it would be difficult to engage. The lack of a traditional flow of ideas seems crass, too challenging for its own good. The exaggerated level of her abuse, coupled with her transcendent response to it, still doesn’t let the ending ring true for me. It does seem a lot like just another slap in the face, a misguided attempt to inflict more pain in the viewer’s heart when something, anything, would have been more appropriate for the character. Ultimately, however, I guess it is the organic summation of the vision that the director set out to explore: bad things happen to good people and the alienation of youth is a train wreck of self-multiplying disasters that once it begins, it’s impossible to stop. It’s a tragedy that redemption is withheld from a character so deserving of it.
If you are a fan of Aoi Miyazaki you should check this film out just to see what she was capable of at age sixteen. It’s pretty powerful.
