M/Other [1999] • Japan

Suwa Nobuhiro's follow up to the marvelous 2/Duo. This is another mostly improvised, watching-paint-dry indie flick—although it's more mature in content and character. Makiko Watanabe is superb as Aki, a young woman who's shacked up with an older guy, Tetsuro, who brings his eight year old son to live with them while his wife recuperates from a car accident. At first Aki resents the idea, mainly because she wasn't consulted. She knows she will be tasked with most of the chores related to caring for the child, but soon comes to like her new role and is conflicted when it's coming to an end.

M/Other is a subtle film. Competing, confused emotions and transformation of character are observed, and executed, at a very high level.

★★★★★

Director: Nobuhiro Suwa
Starring: Tomokazu Miura, Makiko Watanabe, Ryudai Takahashi, Hiroo Fuseya

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Moonlight Whispers 月光の囁き (Gekkô no sasayaki) [1999] • Japan

One of those "only from Japan" psycho-sexual dramas which explores adult themes of desire, domination, and twisted mind-fuck games and perversion ... acted out by teenagers. No comment on this peculiar film tradition.

Boy with fetishes meets girl with Dom proclivities. At first the girl, played exquisitely by Tsugumi, thinks the boy's over-zealous displays of desire are perverted, but then she realizes his fetishistic personality gives her great power over him so she makes him do pretty much anything degrading she can think of, from licking her feet, nay, her entire leg clean, to locking him in a closet while she has sex with another guy. He goes along with all of it because he is also madly, sadly, and pathetically in love with her. It's a little harder to tell what her motivation is because, well, she's a girl. Depending on the viewer's orientation to things, the film might seem erotic, but no matter which way the wind blows there's no escaping the film's ominous, eerie, and sad emptiness (in an indie good way). This film just broods along beautifully.

This is Akihiko Shiota's directorial debut and probably his strongest film. The focus is clear and concise. The powerful but flawed Harmful Insect would have benefited from such focus. It was the first one of his films I had seen and it pissed me off for days. Then I saw Canary and wasn't sure what to think. There wasn't much new to it and it seemed less well done. Now that I've seen Moonlight Whispers I have to go back and watch those two films again, and I will be seeking out all of his films. Funny how that works.

★★★★★

Director: Akihiko Shiota
Starring: Kenji Mizuhashi, Tsugumi

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Secret (Himitsu) [1999] • Japan ... & ... The Secret (Si j'etais toi) If I Were You (2007) • France

I saw the 2007 French/American version of this film first without knowing it was a remake. I liked it, especially the performance by Olivia Thirlby, but when I discovered the 1999 Japanese version, which I liked even more, it highlighted for me a little of why I like Japanese films in particular, and East Asian films in general. It's a lot sweeter and more subtle. More sad too, casts a wider emotional net. As a matter of disclosure I'll point out that I am not a remake basher, on principle, at all.

The basic story centers on a seventeen year old girl whose body is inhabited by her mother's soul. The two of them were in a terrible accident, and while in the hospital, just as the mother is about to die she reaches over, all ceiling of the Sistine Chapel like, and transfers her soul into the body of her daughter. The daughter keeps her body but becomes her mother in personality and memories. When she goes to school and hangs out with her friends she doesn't really know what's going on, who the people are or what her homework assignments are, because ... well, she's her mother now, for all practical purposes. It takes her a while to come to terms with what's happened and even longer to convince her father/husband.

Now, to cut right to the chase in case you can't see the 400 pound gorilla in the room, once the father is convinced that his wife is living in the body of his daughter and they, well, ya know, they're all in love and stuff ... so what about sex?

Things get a little creepy but I give both films high marks for how delicately the sex question is handled. I'll leave it at that and say it's not the main theme of either film, just one of many issues that come up.

The English version is loud and antagonistic. It's not a horror movie (not sure how it got marketed as such) unless you consider David Duchovny spooning with a seventeen year old girl to be horror. The daughter is in rebellion mode against the mother before the accident and their relationship takes center stage—the mother discovering her daughter’s world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll while the daughter comes to recognize the love that her mother has always had for her. The Japanese version is much quieter in comparison. The mother and daughter love each other very much and the antagonism angle focuses on the husband/wife relationship. The husband becomes sad and wimpy, feeling oppressed by having his wife around only as a roadblock to his moving on. The diet of sadness is served in small introspective doses, though, and changes how the film resolves. In the English version the resolution occurs between the mother and daughter. In the Japanese version it is between the husband and wife and involves a big twist that should serve to remind viewers that this has been a fantasy film, after all. As mentioned, I saw the English remake first and it didn’t do the twist, and when I watched the original (with the twist) I thought to myself “This is why I like Asian cinema.” It is so Japanese. Just when the limits of despair seem to have been reached, another complex layer of sadness is revealed for your weeping pleasure. (I wonder how the book they're both based upon ends.)

I’m not a remake basher but I think if I had seen the Japanese version first I might have railed against the remake for changing focus and tone. Having seen the English version first allowed me to enjoy it for what it was, and it didn’t in any way impinge upon my enjoyment of the original. I recommend both films but suggest, oddly, seeing the remake first. Both films explore, and handle, the creepy dilemma of “Would you have sex with your wife if she was living in your daughter’s body?” quite well. They’re both sweet and touching ... except for some of the touching.

★★★★ 

(Japanese version)
Director:  Yojiro Takita
Starring: Ryoko Hirosue, Kaoru Kobayashi

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★★★★ 

(English version)
Director: Vincent Perez  
Starring: David Duchovny, Olivia Thirlby, Lili Taylor

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Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neng shaocom) [1999] • China

Somehow thirteen year old Wei Minzhi, who appears unable to act her way out of a paper bag, turns in the performance of a lifetime. Blushing, awkward body language, a drifting gaze, and a pre-adolescent thespian's grasp of dialog pacing, filmed docu-realistically, come together to create the most endearing character I've seen in a long time. The film employs nonprofessional actors throughout, mostly children, to amazing effect. It's painful to think that this film portrays a reality of rural China so the story all by itself will probably make you cry. Seeing the story presented by a cast of real people makes it all the more powerful. The stubborn persistence of Wei's character, at first unrealistic, becomes poetic and inspiring. She has been tasked, as the substitute teacher in a rural village school, with delivering the class intact to the school master when he returns, Not One (student) Less. When one of the students leaves the school to find work in the city she follows him and tries to bring him back. The village scenes paint a harrowingly sad portrait of life there and the city scenes illustrate the divide between the two worlds. The ending might seem contrived but if ever there was a story that deserved a happy ending it's this one. A remarkable film.

★★★★★

Director: Yimou Zhang
Starring: Minzhi Wei, Huike Zhang, Zhenda Tian, Enman Gao, Zhimei Sun

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The Harmonium in My Memory (Nae maeumui punggeum) aka Organ of My Heart (1999) • South Korea

I love Do-yeon Jeon and what I love about her is that she always appears completely genuine in performance. In this film, however, her every move is riddled with acting. It's hardly her fault as she is given the mighty task of portraying a fifth-grade girl. What is that? Ten years old? Eleven? Her character could be seventeen for all I know, given the poverty and functional illiteracy of her community, but she's still a fifth-grader. All the self-conscious insecurities and pouting of a girl that age—not to mention a girl that age whose day to day life is overwhelmed by a mad crush on her new twenty-one year old school teacher—all the mannerisms are forced. But enough about that. No use crying over spilled milk, or, thank god in this case, unrequited love.

The Harmonium in My Memory is a sweet little nostalgia film set in rural South Korea sometime after the war around 1960, give or take, centering on the teachers and students at a community school. Many of the students can't afford basic school supplies, are often rowdy in class and prove to be quite a handful for the rookie teacher played wonderfully by Byung-hun Lee (A Bittersweet Life; Joint Security Area). It's the youthful idealism of Lee's character who wants to treat the students with respect and tolerance set against the older teachers' old-school values of beating and discipline that serves as the film's basic theme. The other likeable character in the film, played by Mi-yeon Lee, is another young teacher who takes her students outside to make noise and run off steam, much to the chagrin of her elders. She's Lee's love interest, and she and he share a passion for music, providing for many a musical moment in The Harmonium in My Memory. "Don't Break The Heart That Loves You", sung by Connie Francis, captures the torchy milieu of these characters perfectly—perhaps a little too easily.

The Harmonium in My Memory isn't a bad film, but expectations are extremely high for Do-yeon Jeon, and she disappoints; all the characters in the film are cliché; the use of dramatic music seems like a shortcut to emotions the characters aren't capable of making us feel; and the ending is manipulative, tacked on to make us get happy about a film that left us empty.

And what's the deal with kids bringing stool samples to class?

★★★

An Affair of Love (Une liaison pornographique) (1999) • France

A cute, yes cute, 40ish French couple recount the stages of their pornographic affair to an interviewer while we are treated to flashbackical scenes of meetings and memories. I call the couple cute because most of their acting is thoughtful, sincere reflection, and they are cute doing it.

BIG SPOILER: We are never told nor shown what kind of kinky sex constitutes the affair even though it is referenced a number of times. Instead, the focus is on how they come to actually like one another, going against the code established for the relationship, and then sadly decide to stop seeing one another.

Even though I liked the characters the film seems a bit of a cheap tease, and tries to pull on the heartstrings too much, too artificially. I don't know what the goal for the film is and the ride by itself isn't good enough to compensate. It is not particularly erotic nor sexy, and for a talkie film it has too much yardage between the goal posts. This is one of those films that comes off like a screenwriter's catharsis more than a slice of life.

★★★

Humanité (L' Humanité) (1999) • France

I don't know what Humanité was about, or what the director was trying to say; it would be boring if one was after some plot. There was one there, but all together there was about five minutes spent disclosing it. At first blush the ending was silly, trying to be provocative for no reason. I don't care.

Pharaon gives Joseph a big smooch to thank him for giving him Domino?

Emmanuel Schotté as Pharaon is mesmerizing. He lets you see inside his head. His walk is modern dance. I can't imagine him being anything else but this character. All three of the male actors were masters of the facial expression. So subtle. The sound design is spectacular. I noticed it as much as anything else.

Many of the scenes which seemed to have nothing to do with anything more than revealing character were captivating. There is one scene of Pharaon riding his bicycle several miles that takes a few minutes of real time. He gets to a random place, stops, looks back and breathes heavily for a few moments. Then he rides back the other way. Fade to black, next scene.

★★★★