Im Sang-soo's THE HOUSEMAID (2010)

My review for Im Sang-soo's new film The Housemaid is up on In Review Online. It played in the Twin Cities a couple weeks back, but it will no doubt be available on DVD soon (and probably available on demand for all I know.)

The Housemaid is a film that pales in comparison to the stunning original from which it is based upon, but ignore the original and you have a dark and unrelenting thriller. Unfortunately, that was something I could not do. I was a big fan of Im's The President's Last Bang which is a wry comedy about the assassination of former South Korean President Park Chung-hee in 1979. The Housemaid has the same commitment to a tone of discord, but it is, in my opinion, a throw away compared to Kim Ki-young's 1960 masterpiece.

(Do yourself a favor: buy the Region Free DVD of the original Housemaid here.)

(Edit 3/19/11 - Just realized you can watch Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid free on Mubi.)

Lee Chang-dong's SECRET SUNSHINE

Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine opened Friday at St Anthony Main and is absolutely one of those films that should not be missed. Secret Sunshine lit up Cannes nearly four years ago earning Jeon Do-yeon Best Actress and earning the film mounds of critical praise. Six months later, as the film languished without US distribution, I opted to import the South Korean DVD as my only option to see the film and was stunned by the film's audacious delicacy. Although late in the game, IFC picked up the film (along with Lee's equally impressive new film Poetry) for 2010 release. At 142 minutes, Secret Sunshine is a seriously in depth inquiry on human emotions. Below is a review I wrote for In Review Online to be posted there soon.


Prior to the release of Secret Sunshine in South Korea, director Lee Chang-dong insisted that his highly anticipated new film was just “normal.” In an interview with Kim Young-jin, Lee said, “Things couldn’t have been more normal.” Anyone who knows Lee’s work had good reason to be suspicious of this statement. ‘Normal’ is not a word you would use to describe this meticulous director and it is certainly not a word you would use to describe the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Secret Sunshine. Shortly after he completed his third feature, Oasis, to great critical acclaim, Lee was appointed the Minister of Culture by newly elected president Roh Moo-hyun. His filmmaking career went on hold indefinitely when it seemed to be at a peak. After spending one year embroiled in politics, including the bitter fight to maintain film quotas in South Korea, Lee stepped down and disappeared. A few years later this revered novelist and filmmaker emerged with a new script and a new film to make. And everyone knew that it would be anything but normal.

But there is a bit of truth to Lee’s proclamation. Secret Sunshine lacks a certain amount of overt style in favor of unpredictable emotions and a chaos driven narrative. But this is not the chaos of, say, extracting a memory from a dream within a dream within a dream, but a smaller, more personal and inconsequential chaos. Lee’s schisms in time and flights of fantasy found in Peppermint Candy and Oasis are not on the agenda for Secret Sunshine. Lee instead uses his ‘normal’ approach to observe a painful pattern of tragedies and failed self-discoveries in the life of Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon), a woman struggling for stability in a very unstable set of circumstances.

Shin-ae is an irreverent single mother with the aura of a woman taking control of her life. Recently widowed, she is moving to her late husband’s hometown of Milyang, which, using Chinese characters, translates to ‘secret sunshine.’ Starting over, however, is far more involved than reconciling the death of her husband. As facts percolate to the surface, we realize that she is not only escaping the accidental death of a philandering and most likely abusive husband, but also a family that blames her for her own misfortune. Finding solace in a strange place is part of the plan, but so is reinventing herself into something other than a victim, not only for herself but also for her solemn young son. Her face of confidence and urban sophistication is a thinly veiled farce, but one that Lee allows us to slowly discover.

Her first encounter is with Jong Chan (Song Kang-ho), an earnest local mechanic who helps Shin-ae when her car breaks down. Just as Shin-ae is looking to start anew, Jong Chan also sees an opportunity for himself by forging a friendship with this newcomer. When Shin-ae boasts that she might be looking for land to invest in, Jong Chan finds a real estate agent to help out. When Shin-ae tells Jong Chan that she will be teaching piano in town, he aggressively solicits students. Their push-pull relationship defines their surface characteristics as well as their more concealed idiosyncrasies. At one point, Jong Chan marches into Shin-ae’s teaching room to hang a bogus award on the wall. It is an odd moment: for Jong Chan, it is an innocent gesture that he thinks will help Shin-ae’s business, but written on Shin-ae’s face and in her reaction is a pathetic admission that ‘awards’ have never been a part of her history. The subtle yet so specific interaction is there for the taking, but it is far from pushed in your face. Its delicacy exists because of a careful lack of emphasis that permeates even the most dramatic moments.

When tragedy strikes nearly a third of the way into the film, the event, although gratuitous, neither looks nor feels that way. Instead, Lee’s “tragedy” is used as device no different from Hitchcock’s MacGuffin—to propel Secret Sunshine down its eventual wandering road. But more importantly, it allows Lee to fully explore the tumultuous emotions of the enigmatic Shin-ae and her intrepid tag along, Jong Chan. In many ways, the major earthquake in Shin-ae’s life causes Lee to steady his camera even more and keep a lock on his unobtrusive observational tone. As his lead character rides an emotional rollercoaster—distilling grief with shock, revelation, grace, depression, anger and eventual resignation—the film never pushes the story or the audience with manipulation. In one of the most harrowing scenes, Shin-ae, overcome with sorrow, aimlessly walks into a religious revival and proceeds to emote with unabashed tears and wailing. Jong Chan, who has followed her in, is our companion in trying to process what is going on. Ultimately, it seems that Shin-ae is most comfortable among complete strangers, but the questions of a character’s actions (both Shin-ae’s and Jong Chan’s) are the elegant mysteries of Secret Sunshine.

One of the most refreshing things about Secret Sunshine is how hands-off Lee Chang-dong is with Jeon Do-yeon as Shin-ae. Tags of artifice, be it music or close-ups, are cast aside to allow Jeon to give a performance that won Best Actress at Cannes in 2007. Shin-ae’s breakdown does not solicit false sympathies and it certainly isn’t a setup for a narrative trap (or the nominal cue that breakdown will eventually equal recovery.) Jeon embodies the innocence and grace of someone born again, but also the erratic emotions that go along with trauma and grief. The same could be said about Song Kang-ho as Jong Chan, but his character keeps the (mostly) even-keel of a misguided playboy. Nonetheless, Song performance is a tempered counterpoint to Jeon.

Secret Sunshine is receiving a belated U.S. release—nearly four years after it drew attention at Cannes—just ahead of Lee’s new film Poetry, another film that Lee would no doubt call normal. Extraordinary is what I would call both of these films: testaments to exquisite filmmaking and audacious acting. Secret Sunshine takes the makings of a melodrama and pulls the spotlight off the drama and onto the characters with such elegant ease, you hardly notice. Jeon Do-yeon and Song Kang-ho turn the film into a rich discovery in which no one succumbs to the heavy-handed design. The result exposes our human frailties and innate paradoxes. The final shot of the film has the last word. With a note of irrelevance, the camera slowly moves away from Shin-ae and Jong Chan to follow a lock of her cut hair. It lands on the peripheral, a spot of otherwise unnoticed secret sunshine, ending with a beautifully understated and unresolved dot-dot-dot.

MSP Asian Film Festival: PRIVATE EYE

Private Eye (2009)
Park Dae-min
South Korea

Park Dae-min's debut film, Private Eye, carries on the recent tradition in South Korean film of liberally appropriating genre tactics and shaping them into unique versions of hackneyed themes. If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it is not meant to be. In a world were the economy of film is dominated by Hollywood, all but suffocating any notion of national cinema, I am thrilled that South Korea continues to take Hollywood to the mat year after year. However, most of the time this isn't happening with the titles and directors that may be most familiar to international audiences, but instead with films like the disaster movie Haeundae, the family comedy Scandal Makers, the God-awful monster movie D-War, and the entertaining Public Enemy franchise. Although Private Eye did not see the same success as some of these movies, it is a film cut from the same cloth with very populist intentions and domestic audiences in mind.

Hong Jin-ho (Hwang Jeong-min) is and ex-military officer who now makes money exposing cheating wives and photographing the scandals along the way. Eventually his profession will be known as a private eye, but in the early 20th century, no such thing exists in Korea. Jin-ho is just a guy trying to earn enough money, by hook or by crook, to catch a boat to the US (where he hears there are more cheating wives.) Although he makes a rule not to investigate anything dangerous, Jin-ho agrees to look into a murder when a young medical student offers him a large reward. Jin-ho quickly gets pulled into the mystery that involves opium dens, underage girls, knife throwers and corrupt officials. One of those corrupt officials is Jin-ho's former colleague and less clever nemesis, Yeong-dal (played by Oh Dal-su, the pastry chef responsible for giving the 'Kind Hearted Guem-ja' a job in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, among other very memorable roles.) As the bodies start to pile up, the race is on for Yeong-dal to pacify politicians in the high profile murders and for Jin-ho to find the truth.

The action moves at a steady clip, but it unfortunately never gives the characters much consideration beyond generic labels: clever and stupid, naive and worldly, evil and pure. And the crackpot team of brilliant sleuth and earnest doctor is as well-worn as the crime novels in a used bookstore. But where Private Eye really shines is in its beautifully constructed early 20th century Korean era. It's an idealized hybrid of contemporary cool and awkward modernization in a Japanese occupied Korean peninsula. Traditional dress mixes with modern, as does the rapidly changing cultural conventions. Uhm Ji-won plays a woman who is an inventor secretly working beyond society's view creating things that help Jin-ho in his profession. She is like a very interesting version of Bond's Q. At one point in the film she is asked to do some eavesdropping with a group of society ladies. Their outing? A sophisticated round at the archery range with the women all wearing their gorgeous hanboks and carrying their bows like a fashion accessory. It's moments like these that are surprising in their picture perfect specificity. The ending is a wee bit overwrought, as if there was some sort of need to make the mystery more mysterious and titillating, but thankfully it is peppered with some genuine suspense so it doesn't fall flat before tying up all the loose ends. With an epilogue almost literally leads into a sequel, we surely have not seen the end of Jin-ho and his his sidekick. With a little bit of care (and luck), Private Eye could turn into a very interesting franchise of historical thrillers.

VIFF: Day 11

Winter Vacation (2010)
Li Hongqi
China

Li Hongqi, be still my heart! Winter Vacation is something of a perfect mixture of Chinese specificity and avant-garde bravado. An incredibly austere set piece, Winter Vacation doesn't concern itself too much about drama or reality but instead builds a laconic daydream filled with irony and surrealism. Both adolescents and adults seem to be stuck in aimless stagnancy in a small town in northern China over winter break. Normally this vacation, which coincides with the Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year), is depicted as an extremely lively time with family, food and firecrackers. Li Hongqi has painted the antithesis of this conception with the youth standing around looking at each other (and occasionally throwing slurs at one another) and their guardians doing much of the same. Winter Vacation is anchored by two sets of characters: five teenage boys who continually ask each other what they are going to do and an antagonistic grandfather and grandson sitting at opposite ends of a couch trading jabs. The film cycles through the non-events of the town—a thug extorting money from a kid, a woman buying nappa cabbage, a couple getting a divorce—but always returns to our two groups of heroes. At first these individuals seem oblivious to the absurdity of their stage set life until it is slowly revealed that they are more than aware of their sardonic situation. Kids and adults alike are calm but pensive. Li punctuates the beautifully barren images with a subtle soundtrack by experimental composer Zuoxiao Zuzhou (who has also contributed to soundtracks for Jia Zhangke, Zhu Wen, Yang Fudong and Ai Weiwei.) I, being a person who generally likes watching paint dry, adored Winter Vacation and it may just be my biggest discovery and favorite film of VIFF.


Chassis (2010)
Adolfo Alix, Jr.
Philippines

The VIFF program bills Chassis as "sub-proletarian Filipina Jeanne Dielmann," a trick that seemed to have me in mind. There is an air of truth in this statement (especially in their respective final sequences) but the two are literally and metaphysically worlds apart. Nora's husband drives a truck and they live with their young daughter in makeshift homes underneath idle trucks in the truck yard alongside many other families. Her husband is often absent, even when he is not driving, and seems completely uninvolved with helping raise their daughter. Under the most extreme circumstances, Nora does her best to provide for her daughter and occasionally turns to prostitution to make ends meet. At one point in the film a man on the bus is asking for donations for people with disabilities. Although it is unimaginable, Nora sees that her situation could be worse and gives the man some money. Far be it from me to tell you that her situation does get worse, but Nora's perfunctory attitude is eventually pushed to the limit. Shot in black and white, Chassis makes the most of emotion in this even keel portrayal of life on the fringes.


Mundane History (2010)
Anocha Suwichakompong
Thailand

It's hard to see a mystical film from Thailand and not think of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But this would be ignoring that Thailand is a country deeply rooted in Buddhism, a religion that is far more open to broader definitions of life and the universe and Mundane History is magically able to work this into a simple but corporeal story. Ake is a young man who has been recently confined to a wheelchair from an accident that is never fully defined. Understandably bitter, Ake is hard on his new and easygoing nurse Pun, a man who is not much older than Ake. Early in the film, Pun laments to someone on the phone that he's not sure if he likes his job: "Everyone here is soulless." Mundane History patiently spends time proving this statement wrong. Ake slowly opens up to Pun and director Anocha Suwichakompong slowly introduces us to much larger themes that connect us all. The timeline is patterned, working back and forth within the period of time that Ake and Pun get to know each other peppered with burst of abstractions. The film derides conventional notions of time (presenting the title credit 20 minutes into the film) and the narrative is unconcerned with conclusion. As a matter of fact, the film ends with a bold statement on beginnings with an unblinking and visceral birth. The uncanny combination of macro and micro themes in Mundane History works seamlessly under Suwichakompong's gentle direction. If Pun releases animals in order to build his karma, Suwichakompong has made a film in order to build ours. It is also worth noting that Mundane History makes good use of pop songs in its soundtrack from the bands Furniture and The Photo Sticker Machine.


Oki's Movie (2010)
Hong Sang-soo
South Korea

Hong Sang-soo films should be more spread apart, because having just seen the vibrant Hahaha, Oki's Movie seems like a pale exercise. Split into four short films, Oki's Movie puts two men from different generations and their respective affair with Oki under the Hong microscope. The respective films show four different perspectives from four different times. Jingu is a film student whose affair with Oki raises the jealous ire of his professor, Song who also has a history with the young woman. Jingu is the hapless hero who we embarrassingly see flinging his ego in places it doesn't belong. In one of my favorite scene's from the film, Hong sets up a hilarious post-screening discussion where Jingu is answering questions about his film. Jingu is drunk and is being overly essoteric about his film when a young woman stands up and asks him why he dumped her friend he was seeing a couple years ago. The uncomfortable but compulsory Q & A that we all know so well is kicked up a notch as the young woman presses Jingu and no one, including Jingu, can put a stop to it. Oki's Movie certainly has its moments, but the four chapter portraiture—notated by separate credits and Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance"—seems like an unnecessary distraction.

VIFF: Day 7

Rumination (2009)
Xu Ruotao
China

Visually artist Xu Ruotao give the Cultural Revolution the full symbolic treatment in this experimental and counterintuitive film. At times feeling like a performance art piece and at times falling apart due to spare production values, Rumination is a refreshing new take on a popular subject in mainland Chinese film. The action follows the aimless wanderings of a small rural regiment of the Red Guard between 1966-76. They do a lot of nothing as they randomly persecute individuals and explore the dilapidated buildings that adorn the barren landscape. The film's segments are notated by year intertitles that go chronologically. The visuals, however, depict occurrences in the opposite order. In other words, the opening, titled 1966, clearly represents the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, and the ending, titled 1976, represents Mao's resurgence of power in 1966. In the middle Xu uses archive footage for 1971, a turning point in the Cultural Revolution due to Lin Biao's criminalization and death. The film feels very free form, but with closer examination, Rumination is filled with specificity. Xu Ruotao never underestimates the audience's understanding of Chinese history and ability to interpret its often vague allegories, and, as a result, much of the film remains elusive. As a painter, Xu is given to greater leaps of faith than is characteristic in filmmaking. Xu was on hand after the screening and the first thing he did was apologise for not knowing how to make a film, an admiral recognition even if it is just half modesty. He also said he had no idea why he flipped the timeline in such an unconventional way, making it even more interesting. In many ways, I think Rumination's odd chronology speaks to the way time and political movements cycle. Rumination was included in the selection for the Dragons and Tigers Award for Young Cinema and was rightfully awarded a special mention.


End of Animal (2010)
Jo Sung-hee
South Korea

Although seeing so many movies lumped together makes things a little muddled and it becomes hard to make bold statements without a little time and perspective, I'm going to do it anyway: Jo Sung-hee's End of Animal is one of the most unique South Korean films I have seen in some time and may well be the most sublimely unique in the Festival. End of Animal is a loosely spiritual film portraying an ambiguous apocalypse that comes suddenly without cinematic trappings or warning. Soon-young is pregnant and traveling via taxi from Seoul to her mother's house north of the city. The driver picks up a young man headed in the same direction who has the uncanny ability to know everything about both the driver and Soon-young, including what they are thinking. I'll stop there. Most of this film is about experiencing the unexpected under pretenses that don't necessarily match the subject matter. Jo Sung-hee winds this story up tighter than a drum, sending waves of dread, anticipation and frustration through a captive audience. End of Animal leaves you with far more questions and mysteries than answers and conclusions, and dares to be wildly allegorical. The director was in attendance, and was faced with an audience that I don't think knew how to process this film. Other than admitting to religious inspirations, Jo shed few clues about this enigmatic film. Reminiscent of Moon Seung-wook's abstract Nabi from 2001, End of Animal is an unbelievable debut film.

Three to remember. VIFF: Day 5

Yowzers day 5. I should just go home now. There is absolutely no way I can do any of the films below justice considering available time and brain, so please accept my apologies for the brief and muddled thoughts. All three of these films are highly recommended.

Hahaha (2010)
Hong Sang-soo
South Korea

I sat in Hahaha completely bewildered: Why had I never thought about Woody Allen in connection with Hong Sang-soo? I tried to run through Hong's films in my head. Was I distracted by other aspects? Or is Hahaha just that much different from the rest of his films? Either way, basking in the glow of Hahaha, it seemed to hit me over the head with a 2 x 4. (And for the record, we are talking about Allen's "funnier films.") Munkyung and Jungshik are friends who are revisiting recent events over a few drinks. They trade stories of their coincidental trips to Tongyung on the southern coast of Korea, and, as their stories play out on screen, we realize—but they don't—that their wanderings in the area overlap and include some of the same people. Munkyung is a recently fired professor who now calls himself a film director (even though he hasn't made a film) and is planning on immigrating to Canada to help his aunt run a photo franchise. Jungshik is a depressed married man who is having an affair with an airline stewardess and is tortured by the fact that he is being untrue to both of them. All events involve hilarious and farcical attempts to make connections with other people (generally of the opposite sex) and large amounts of soju. Munkyung is played to brilliant pathetic perfection by veteran Hong actor Kim Sangkyung. A mama's boy prone to weeping, Munkyung is a Hong Sangsoo styled everyman but is given the onscreen space to indulge in conventional character tropes including a dream sequence and a fist fight, both constructed with Hong's unique touch. Seongok (stunningly played by Moon Sori) is an odd and irreverent museum tour guide that Munkyung woefully chases. Munkyung and Jungshik's gathering from which the flashbacks unfold is only seen in brief black and white snap shots and voice over exchanges that would go something like this: "Wow. You were really great!" "Yeah." "Cheers!" "Cheers." "Hahaha." There is a certain formal and tonal restraint to Hong's films, and just a touch of that restraint falls away in Hahaha, easily making it one of the most enjoyable films he has made.


Don't Be Afraid, Bi! (2010)
Phan Dang Di
Vietnam

Toppling any and all expectation, Don't Be Afraid Bi! is one of the most remarkable debut films I have seen in a very long time. Directed by Phan Dang Di, the scribe of last year's subtle Adrift, Don't Be Afraid, Bi! displays a rare skill for storytelling, an uncanny eye for cinematic elegance and a fearless candor for difficult subjects. Bi is a 6-year-old boy who lives with his patient mother, alcoholic father, lonely aunt and bedridden grandfather who has recently returned to Vietnam. Each adult member of the family is dealing with their respective demons as Bi looks on. On the surface the narrative is neither new or innovative, but Phan is able to be delicately obvious and subtly overt, especially in sexual intonations. Don't Be Afraid, Bi! has one of the most surreal seductions sequences since Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth. (And I use the word "seduction" very loosely in both cases.) Meanwhile he weaves the familial riffs with Bi's innocent explorations of an ice factory and the grassy fields next to the river with visual innovation. His naive observations are a visual patchwork for the viewer that add a substance that few films even bother with. The final shot binds the characters and the film to the dirt they live upon while acknowledging the world as something much bigger and much more mysterious. Don't Be Afraid, Bi! is a revelation, and Vietnam is long overdue for such an incredible new voice in filmmaking.


Karamay (2009)
Xu Xin
China

Not only the longest film at VIFF, Karamay may also be the most important. On December 8, 1994 a fire broke in Friendship Hall in Karamay, a town in the far western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Inside the large theater, the region's brightest and most talented young students were performing for local and regional officials. 325 people were killed in the fire, 288 of them were children. The chaos that ensued in the weeks that followed the fire was heightened because of the obvious and overwhelming grief of parents and relatives, but also by the shameless government cover up of the story. A media embargo on the tragedy, still in effect in China, meant to quash the story seems to have had the opposite effect and left many people burning with hatred and sorrow and allowed the incident to symbolize government corruption through underground channels. Xu Xin's six hour documentary, shot in 2007, attempts to make up for 13 years of forced silence through his own relentless investigation of staggering emotional resonance. The film opens on the 13th anniversary of the fire at the huge graveyard of the victims in the middle of a barren, rubble-filled field. Walking around to the gravestones, each with a small photo, we slowly start to meet some of the families who have come to burn offerings to their dead children. From here, Xu moves into the bulk of the film which is made up of candid interviews with the parents and archive news reports, home videos and long buried media footage. Slowly and patiently, Karamay allows people to fully express their feelings, suspicions and first hand accounts about the fire—an accommodation that these people are given probably for the first time from someone outside of their circle. Xu builds a devastating portrait of the events, the unbelievable negligence and the lost souls left behind. Thirteen years is still painfully recent for the interviewees but seems like enough distance from the incident for this documentary to exist with proper perspective. If my comments above haven't been clear, I was completely bowled over by Karamay and its a film I hope to return to in the future.

VIFF: Day 4

The Man From Nowhere (2010)
Lee Jeong-beom
South Korea

Completely by the numbers, The Man From Nowhere borrows from so many South Korean action dramas that it almost feels like a theatrical déjà vu. Almost. The film opens with a police stakeout at a club where a drug deal is taking place—the goods are dropped, the police rush in, a dancing girl steals the drugs and the evidence that the police need is gone. The film cuts to a rundown apartment building where a mysterious loner (Won Bin) runs a pawn shop. His only friend is a young neighbor girl who is unafraid of his silence and shady look. As things go, the girl is the daughter of the dancing girl who stole the drugs and the drugs have been stashed in a camera bag sold to the pawn shop. The mob is hot on the woman's tail and the police are hot on the mob's tail. Our man from nowhere gets caught in the middle and his long buried past comes rushing to the surface. The Man From Nowhere is a pulsing and often violent thriller that has no problem stopping now and then for a little melodrama. Most of it results from the clichéd friendship between the secretive lone wolf and the cast aside young girl. But don't go to The Man From Nowhere for the drama, go for the well designed action sequences including a hand-to-hand knife fight that would impress any ronin. Reminiscent of last year's The Chaser and numerous other slick South Korean actioneers, The Man From Nowhere is nonetheless able to carve out a very satisfying niche for itself. The 10:00am screening could not stop the Won Bin fans from storming the theater, coffee in hand. Coos emerged at his first appearance and a shirtless scene near the middle of the film—the power of the heartthrob lives!


The High Life (2010)
Zhao Dayong
China
preceded by
Condolences (2009)
Ying Liang
China

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Zhao Dayong (Ghost Town) jumps to fiction with this unique and fiercely independent film. Bifurcated by two narrative strains, The High Life unexpectedly switches tonal gears and, as a result, magically lifts the burden of expectations. Set in the mean streets of Ghangzhou, Jian Ming runs a fake employment stand where he guiltlessly takes the money of desperate migrant workers knowing that they will disappear before they have a chance to realize his scam. Oddly content with his so-called business, Jian wiles away his free time practicing Beijing opera in full costume and hanging out with his girlfriend who works as a prostitute. His personal conflicts are internalized and are only revealed in his actions—some subtle, some not so subtle. When his friend talks him into helping with a pyramid scheme, he suddenly and insignificantly gets arrested, which jettisons the film into its second part in a jail where Jian is being held. The focus shifts to an unscrupulous but kindhearted prison guard, Dian Qui. Dian forces prisoners to incessantly read aloud from a of his own poetry and finds ways to punish those who refuse. Dian's odd form of reformation is accepted and even relished by some of the prisoners. Dian's candor allows us to get to know some of the inmates, but there fate in the prison is as fleeting as their future. The actors who play Jian and Dian provide a sense of honesty to their complex characters with seemingly little or no effort. The film's title is borrowed from a line spoken by a thug in anticipation for a future that doesn't exist. The High Life depicts anything but what the title implies, and instead finds a simple sort of grace in the small pleasures. Zhao's unusually narrative adds a new facet to the well-worn path of indie Chinese film. Condolences, screened ahead of The High Life, is a documentary that gives the viewer a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a solemn funeral in one fascinating shot.


The Drunkard (2010)
Freddie Wong
Hong Kong

Based on the popular Hong Kong novel of the same name, Freddie Wong's debut feature is as boozy as the title implies. The Drunkard, however, is able to compliment the somber drunken atmosphere with swoon worthy 1960s Hong Kong sexiness. The film's namesake is Mr. Lau, a disillusioned middle-age writer whose private and public failures are washed away with endless glasses of whiskey. Haunted by his memories of the Japanese war in Shanghai, Lau slowly loses his means to support himself, his addiction and the beautiful woman who provide him companionship. Veteran actor Zhang Guozhu carries The Drunkard on his solid but liquor soaked shoulders. He embodies the contradictions of this dignified adict with gritty charm. As if trying to protect himself from the same fate, he finds it easy to call other people clichés. It's worth noting that Wong is a film critic and a programmer for the Hong Kong International Film Festival. He purchased the rights to the novel ten years ago and it has taken him this long to get his film made. The film boasts an impressive production despite its shoestring budget, with an inspired cast of classic actors. As any screen shot or clip will show, The Drunkard will forever be burdened by comparisons to In the Mood for Love (which also drew inspiration from the same novel.) In making a masterpiece, Wong Kar Wai owns the era in with The Drunkard is set. (The Drunkard received its International Premiere here at VIFF with Freddy Wong in attendance.)


The Metamorphosis (2010)
Lee Samchil
South Korea
preceded by
Father's Challenge (2010)
Jo Ara
South Korea

South Korean experimental film: one a riff on Guy Maddin and one a riff on Kafka. Neither worked. 'Nuff said.

Lee Chang-dong's POETRY

Yet another film that I look forward to seeing, hopefully sooner rather than later, is Lee Chang-dong's Poetry. Published with In Review Online's "You Can't Stop Wat's Coming - Most Anticipated Films of 2010," here's why:

The renaissance in South Korean film over the past 15 years has jettisoned the likes of Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Ki-duk and even Hong Sang-so onto the international stage. Meanwhile, somewhat behind the scenes, Lee Chang-dong has quietly been honing his craft of dramatic realism through socio-political commentary—Green Fish (1997) and Peppermint Candy (2000)—and more recently with subtle acts of melodrama—Oasis (2007) and Secret Sunshine (2007). Lee’s penchant for outcasts is only matched by his understanding of the cruel and mysterious world that molds these ordinary people into misconstrued personae non gratae. Secret Sunshine is a character driven tour de force that rested heavily on the shoulders of lead actors Song Kang-ho and Jeon Do-yeon (who won Best Actress at Cannes) that flew well under the radar, especially in the US where it remains undistributed. This year’s Poetry, about an aging woman who turns to art in order to come to grips with her own mortality, seems like anything but a slide for Lee. Already picked up by Kino for the US, Poetry won Best Screenplay at Cannes in what some call a consolation prize for not getting the Palme d’Or it deserved.

Check out the trailer for Poetry here on Wildgrounds.

Na Hong-jin's THE CHASER

The renaissance in South Korean film was in many ways powered by the action blockbusters that barreled onto the scene in 1999 and 2000. They were films that clearly took their cue from Hollywood, but blazed a trail of their own in story and style. From the high-octane espionage action thriller Shiri (1999) to the ultra-stylish police mystery Nowhere to Hide (1999) to the testosterone driven fight-til-you-drop Die Bad (2000) to the brainy DMZ Hitchcockian political drama JSA (2000) to the touching coming-of-age action epic Friend (2001) and the comic book high school actioneer Volcano High (2001), South Korea was putting every other country to shame for their diverse line-up of action films. Na Hong-jin's debut feature film The Chaser is a product of this decade of honed genre fueled films. A barn-burner that is unapologetically brutal and relentlessly clever, The Chaser is anything but your stereotypical serial-killer thriller. It quickly takes hold of you and keeps you guessing the entire 125 minutes.

Jung-ho is a sympathetic ex-cop turned pimp who runs a small prostitution operation that has fallen on tough times. Two of 'his girls' have gone missing and Jung-ho is convinced they have taken their monetary advance and run off. He finally realizes that the women went missing after visiting the same client, but only after forcing one of his last remaining workers, Mi-jin, to take the same client. Convinced that this john is hiring then kidnapping and selling the women, Jung-ho sets out for revenge. And the chase is on, or so it seems.

Chance and perseverance lead the film down a road that seems to be over in only 30 minutes. But that is when the film takes its first turn against common action narrative, but in favor of genuine drama. Jung-ho unknowingly captures a serial killer, but does so serendipitously during a time when the police department is under great political pressure. Not only are the police being blamed for not protecting the mayor from a poop attacker—or an attacker with poop, as the case may be—but they are also fighting against the bureaucracy of policy procedure. As the police play their cards very carefully Jung-ho's frustrations builds, further fueled by the possibility that the last victim, Mi-jin, his working girl, may still be alive.

With the police stymied by hesitation, Jung-ho settles into the rebel with a cause role. Revenge underscored with a black-and-white notion of justice incites him to follow leads faster than the police can get untangled from the red tape. What he slowly finds out is something we already know: the suspect is a sick sap and is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But with no evidence, Jung-ho simply looks for the trail to where Mi-jin might be, dead or alive.

You can actually feel Jung-ho's transition from foolhardy working-class pimp, to angry immolated stooge, to compassionate cause-driven antihero looking for redemption. Kim Yun-seok digs into this role like he means it, without giving the audience much pause for authenticity. Unlike Ha Jung-woo's conventional serial killer character, Jung-ho is a character of dimension that we spend the entire film trying to understand: a thug and a hero that Kim is able to wrap up in his amazing performance.

Na makes it very clear early on that he is not above visceral brutality. The savagery, brief but unforgettable, not only redirects your expectations of the film, but also builds a great deal of disgust for the villain, helping us to align with Jung-ho. The film's major misstep comes in the form of a finale of stylized unrelenting violence, but it is only the finale to the finale. The scene is so demanding and, to some extent, resolute, that asking viewers for another fifteen minutes detracts from the entire film.

The first hour and 45 minutes represents one of the best acted and cleverly paced action films to come around in some time. Put in perspective, the last 15 minutes act as an end chapter in the form of an homage. That final chunk of film is representative of those to which it owes a debt. If you don't recognize image of Jung-ho raising the hammer or the eerie contents of the fish tank, they are emblems of South Korean action and horror films and their influences. It's the only part of the film that feels even slightly derivative—not an easy task for an action film. Unique and destine for a US remake, The Chaser opens the door for a new era of South Korean action.

The Chaser plays this weekend at the Oak Street Cinema: Friday, May 22- Sunday, May 24 at 9:30pm.
The Chaser is available on R3 Hong Kong DVD and on demand from IFC.

Kim Jee-woon's THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD

The Western is one of those irresistibly iconic genres, and it's finding a whole new life in the ready-to-recycle global village. Locally, HBO pumped grit and vigor into the Western with "Deadwood"; globally, Takashi Miike turned out his own private Sergio Leone with Sukiyaki Western Django; and obscurely, Piotr Uklanski did the Western up in a Polish way with Summer Love. Even Ramin Bahrani wants to try his hand at the wild Wild West. The biggest entry last year, at least on the film festival circuit, was Kim Jee-woo's huge budget project The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Unfortunately, its high production values far exceed any of its other slightly disappointing virtues.

The set-up takes little imagination: three heroes, one treasure map, and a league of factions that would exist in the lawless early-20th century Manchuria. It is important to note that the three heroes are not on the same team, and all want the map and the treasure for themselves. Do-won (Jung Woo-sung) is a bounty hunter sent for the map, but may well take the large reward for killing wanted man Chang-yi. Chang-yi (Lee Byung-heon) is a ruthless hit man also sent after the map. Tae-gu (Song Kang-ho) is a petty thief who happens to be in the wrong place to rob a train, but in the right place to nab a map. Within a barren dry landscape of epic horizons, the narrative goes out the window in favor of boarder towns, guns and high-speed chases involving horses, motorcycles and jeeps. The glossed over violence attempts to entertain with a very high, but also very stylish, body count.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird is not just an example of how you make a slick vacuous Korean Western, but it is also a showcase for the three high profile actors. All have meaty roles, but it is Song's character that steals the show with his buffoonery and extremely charismatic performance. Song may very well be one of the most talented and versatile actors working today, as displayed in this film, Secret Sunshine, The Host, Memories of Murder, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and so on. He is 'The Weird' in the film and lives up to the moniker despite the fact that he is much more cunning than he lets on. During a particularly nasty shootout involving a good two dozen people, Tae-gu nabs a deep-sea diving helmet ala Jacques Cousteau and parades his gun shooting prowess, head fully protected. The scene is easily the funniest, but in a movie that is supposed to be full of comedic moments, it was also the only one to elicit an audible laugh.

Jung and Lee certainly do their part, but they are little more than cardboard cutouts. Jung as Do-won is the righteous bounty hunter who longs for an independent Korea. He certainly has the classic Western look with the duster and the shotgun, but you never got to see any Musa-like manly emoting. Lee as Chang-yi is just over-the-top with his fitted three-piece suit with tails and his mod-punk hair. He takes suave and sleazy to a whole 'nother level. The scene when Lee hops out of bed in his knickers to throws a knife into a centipede (and nails the knife in from across the room with his gun) was like some sort of contractual excuse to show him with his shirt off.

Kim's impressive slate of films in his short ten-year career has earned him a fare amount of critical and commercial success. His first film, The Quiet Family, was a cutting and dark comedy that inspired Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katakuri's. His twisty-turny, highly ornate horror film A Tale of Two Sisters was unfortunately watered down in a US remake, The Uninvited. A Bittersweet Life from 2005 was his gangster magnum opus. The violent noir had an admirable balance of entertainment, depth and style. The Good, The Bad, The Weird pushes those first two attributes to the side to make room for bigger style. Ironically, his biggest budget film, and the one that people outside of Korea are most likely to see, is his most disillusioned.

Official Korean website here.
Trailer for The Good, The Bad, The Weird here (without English subtitles, but you don't need them.)
The Good, The Bad, The Weird is available on Korean or Malaysian R3 DVD or UK Blu-Ray with English subtitles.
IFC apparently has the US distribution rights, but who knows if this will get a theatrical release.

MSPIFF: Day 14

As the lights came up on my last screening of the Festival, I wanted a bubble filled Lawence Welk farewell (Good night, sleep tight, and may all your dreams come true...), but St Anthony Main was little more than a ghost town as all MSPIFF staff and groupies attended the closing night film Brothers Bloom and gala party at 7 Sushi. For me seeing interesting films (ie not Brothers Bloom) outweighed the impulse to hob-nob and booze. The two screenings I attended may have not offered a grand finale that would be appropriate, but it came pretty close. Had I went home after The Chaser, the Fest would have ended with a blood pulsing bang, but I insisted on watering down the evening by also attending Apron Strings:

The Chaser (2008) directed by Na Hong-jin

I had seen Na Hong-jin's The Chaser on import DVD, and while I was impressed, I was also let down by an overworked ending. The two fade-to-black endings was my last and lasting impression of The Chaser, but seeing it again has led me to reevaluate not only its problems but its overwhelming merits. The Chaser is a heart-pounding action thriller that is apologetically brutal and clever. It is a film of shifts—not turns, but shifts—that questions social conventions, genre playbooks, and political power. I'm committed to giving this one some more thought in perhaps another screening and a full review. The Chaser was the first Korean language big screen offering in the Twin Cities since the last MSPIFF (but only one, Woman on the Beach) and that is just not right. And before that? Probably three years ago or whenever Oldboy was in town (for one week.) I appreciated The Chaser and Tokyo Sonata, but the Film Fest need to bone up on their East Asian film offerings in a big way. Seriously. Give me a call.

Apron Strings (2006) directed by Simu Urale

Apron Strings was a mash-up of so many movies that we have all seen before. This drama from New Zealand focuses on two families amongst a culturally diverse backdrop. Lorma is the owner of a traditional cake shop who is trying desperately to understand her lay-about son and her single daughter who is pregnant and vegetarian and macrobiotic. The other story is of two sisters of Indian decent who have not spoken to each other in 20 years. Anita, cut off from her family years ago, has moved away from Indian tradition as her sister Tara continues the family curry house and her Sikh traditions. False divides and stereotypes dominate this film about familial relationships. Although it wasn't terrible, it was pretty bland.

I'll do a Fest recap as soon as I get some space and some laundry done.