The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (Les Filles du botaniste) [2006] • France, China

There has to be a million movies made which ask us to sit through watching some man be a complete asshole so that we can witness the long suffering of the women around him. Often there is a subtext or symbolic undercurrent that the characters and their relationships are meant to represent. This is one such movie.

The asshole in this film is the Chinese botanist and he represents a tyrannical and repressive society. He makes ancient herbal remedies in a botanical paradise he has constructed on an island that is supposed to be somewhere in Yunnan Province, China. The long suffering woman in the film is his twenty year old daughter. She waits on him hand and foot. She cuts his toenails. She represents all that is good and new and wonderful yet shackled in the modern world.

The film has good intentions and attempts to expose some of the lingering absurdities of Chinese traditional values in general and those of the Cultural Revolution in particular. One day another young woman arrives on the island to intern with the botanist. She brings a talking bird that squawks "Long live Chairman Mao" all the time. The two women fall in love, the father sees this forbidden love in the flesh and dies of a heart attack. Really. The two young women are put to death for the crime of the disease of homosexuality that caused the death of a prized botanist.

The director wants to make a point of how fucked up the situation is but he takes it to a ridiculous extreme, much like the film's soundtrack of crescendoing choruses and violins. It's too bad because the film has a strong and very sensual visual appeal. As mentioned, the film's location is supposed to be somewhere in Yunnan, one of the most beautiful places in the world, but because of the homosexual content Chinese authorities prohibited the director from filming there. The irony. So it's filmed in Vietnam where it's green and lush and dripping wet. If all the scenes of the father being an idiot were removed The Chinese Botanist's Daughters would be a gorgeous film.

Sijie Dai, the film's writer and director, was sent to a reeducation camp as a young man during the Cultural Revolution. He's clearly exorcising demons and I would like to applaud his efforts but while the theme of The Chinese Botanist's Daughters is worthwhile the particulars are schmaltzy, unpleasant, and far too melodramatic. Dai's earlier film Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a much better film dealing with the Cultural Revolution.

Mylène Jampanoï, who stars as the woman with the talking bird, went on to star in the French extreme horror film Martyrs.

★★

Director: Sijie Dai
Starring: Mylène Jampanoï, Xiao Ran Li, Ling Dong Fu, Wei-chang Wang

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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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Antichrist [2009] • Denmark, Germany, France, Sweden, Italy, Poland

I didn't get, or like, the ending, but I don't know what else could have been done. I also don't know if the ending was supposed to be the natural, or predisposed, outcome of all the symbolism and allegory that lead up to it—which I couldn't completely process either. The film appears to have a vision, as if it's following a story that's already been told. It's gorgeously composed and photographed but it evaded my full comprehension. There's grief with rational and emotional responses to it. There's nature, green and essential, history, symbolically surreal animals, and genital mutilation which is poignant to the story, but yikes! The film is never boring, it's beautiful to look at, Charlotte Gainsbourg is magnificent, but it's a little hard to endure. I imagine this was Lars von Trier's goal and he made it loose enough for those so inclined to spend time decoding it. I'm not so inclined but it's one of the best movies I've seen this year.

★★★★★

Nanayo (Nanayomachi) [2008] • Japan

I’m not exactly sure what director Naomi Kawase set out to accomplish in her latest film, Nanayo, but there is something both strangely compelling and very frustrating about it. It seems like an intelligently crafted work that took a big, well ... not really a big swing, but a swing nonetheless, and missed. The film starts off well enough. Ayako (Kyoko Hasegawa, Three Extremes, Female) arrives in Thailand, for reasons unknown and never explained, sweaty, braless in a tank top, and improvises her way around for a bit, deals with language issues and tries to get help in locating her hotel. She’s very engaging and the milieu is rich.

I point out that she is sweaty, braless, and wearing a tank top, because the way the director films this woman and plays with sensuality throughout the film is a constant but I’m not sure as to what ends. And I point out improvising because this film is clearly half improvised and half scripted; the former being quite good and the latter somewhat of a preposterous mess. That’s my initial judgement, anyway. Kyoko Hasegawa exudes a confident and charming strength and sexiness while she is improvising but gets lower marks for the scenes where she is called upon to act.

After the steamy introduction we witness Ayako witnessing a Thai girl and white guy getting out of a taxi. The white guy is angry and screaming at the driver: “You are shit, I should kick your ass!” Ayako decides, against my better judgement but apparently not hers, to ask this cab driver to take her to her hotel, if he knows where it is. The driver seems uninterested but waves her in. She has to open the trunk of the cab and put her big, heavy suitcase in there by herself. We’re getting some pretty good character development of this taxi driver guy right away.

After getting in the cab, Ayako asks the driver if he knows where her hotel is. The driver doesn’t seem to understand but they drive away. Ayako rubs some lotion on her chest in a rather sensual manner coming precariously close to her breasts (I’m just sayin’) and notices the driver eyeing her in the rearview. More character development on that guy. She puts on her sunglasses and falls asleep. When she wakes up they appear to be in the woods. The driver opens one of the rear doors and signals for Ayako to get out. She fears she is about to be robbed, or worse, and crawls out the other side. The driver chases after her along some wooded trail as Ayako throws things at him and eventually gets away. The cab driver has a scary movie limp so it wasn’t difficult but she’s left all her belongings either in the taxi or on the trail.

Ayako runs further into the woods, where we see some monks walking about, and eventually into the arms, literally, of some guy who turns out to be French. She cries on his chest while he strokes her hair. Strange and creepy. He takes her to the home where he is staying and studying the fine art of Thai massage from the matriarch of the place. I’m not making this up.

They all drink some tea, the French guy behaving way too touchy-feely with Ayako for my taste, and then the taxi driver walks up. Turns out he is the brother of the massage teacher. Oops.

Before you know it, taxi man is lying there getting a massage from his sister and Ayako is instructed to lie down beside him so the French guy can practice on her. All of a sudden Ayako is on top of the French guy, massaging him but she digs her fingernails into him so he throws her off and she lands with her head on the taxi guy—and just lays there for a very uncomfortable moment. Uncomfortable for me, at least, because we have not had the character development turn-around where we’re supposed to think we’ve misjudged taxi man’s behavior and he’s really a nice guy. That comes later. As does one of those “I have no idea what you are saying but I understand you” moments where the French guy tells Ayako he’s homosexual. Presumably, we are to reassess our first impressions of the French guy’s behavior.

(Is this supposed to be some didactic multicultural essay? I think it’s a bit more akin to Rachel Getting Married in that it’s more of a celebration of diversity than a manifesto. )

Pretty soon everyone is having fun together, shopping, eating, dancing, and etc., until the massage teacher’s little boy comes up missing. Big loud cross-language arguments ensue. The French guy’s been just chillin’ in Thailand to center himself, practicing yoga. We’ve seen him do a headstand and child’s pose. So I can’t for the life of me understand why he hauls off and whacks Ayako during this argument.

Ayako heads out into the woods to find the little boy. She gets stuck in some kind of boggish swamp and we can see through her muddy and damp sweat pants she’s wearing a sexy thong. (I’m not looking for this stuff). This struggle tires her out so she naps against a tree and dreams about this other unknown, unexplained character who gets to play the massage game with a clearly naked but not revealing Ayako in a few of the films momentarily erotic and cinematically sensual scenes.

Ayako wakes up and finds the boy. Everybody sings and dances, there’s some family drama about sending the boy to temple or not, and a couple ducks fly up a river. Roll credits.

There are some incredibly sensuous moments throughout this film, from landscapes to facial expressions. Kyoko Hasegawa is engaging when she appears to be winging it but gets lower grades when called upon to act. Grégoire Colin is french as the French Guy. I don’t get Thai acting. It all seems way over the top, but Thailand and its people are beautiful.

★★★

What Time Is It There? (Ni na bian ji dian) [2001] • Taiwan, France • Ming-liang Tsai

This is the best plotless film where nothing happens I've ever seen. The film focuses on three characters, their loss and loneliness. If there is a story arc it's that each of them finally reaches out to make a connection, a sexual connection, with varying degrees of success. Throughout the film we simply observe them doing, well ... not much of anything, but practically every scene is cut so that you wish you could stay with it for at least a moment longer, to be with that person in that situation for just a bit more time. You can't make a film like this without masterful execution of the crafts of acting, cinematography, and direction. Check, check, and check. I was stunned by this film ... even without considering its many symbolisms and allegories.

★★★★★

La Capture (2007) • France

This semi-arty little semi-revenge flick from France features a refreshing performance from Catherine de Léan as Rose, a young woman who wants more than payback for the abuse she witnessed and suffered as a child at the hands of her father. She wants her father to understand that his legacy, and the continued abuse of her mother and younger brother, is wrong. So with the help of a couple friends she captures him, gives him a great big grown-up time out and ties him to a radiator in an empty rehearsal studio and attempts to enlighten him.

La Capture also features some nicely nuanced direction from veteran French actress Carole Laure who also wrote the screenplay. Employing not so much a vignette technique as a chaptered one, scenes fade in and fade out the way someone might illustrate a process using bullet points. Sometimes details are left out or unresolved but that only serves to underscore their unimportance in the telling of this story. For example, a scene of Rose doing a poetic reading to her father of man as social animal philosophy is followed a little later by a scene where several animals populate the rehearsal studio and do nothing more than look upon this man tied to a chair. It's a powerful and interesting scene without explanation of how the animals may have come or gone, but it's not that far-fetched a scenario given the portrait Laure has painted of Rose as a seemingly well-adapted, well-liked, sexually happy and satisfied young woman whose life is grounded in practicing that new-age acting technique where people pretend to be animals.

Catherine de Léan has a tough, natural beauty well suited, for the most part, to the role of skirt and boot wearing Rose. Part of the story arc involves changes to her character that occur after she becomes the one in power exerting control. I wasn't as convinced by her portrayal of the gun wielding crazy sister who rescues her brother from drug dealers, but that may be due to the overall inferior telling of that part of the story. Her brother hasn't fared as well in life, hasn't yet "gotten away" and serves as a more typical case juxtaposition to Rose. Director Laure uses a few provocative, though not too explicit sex scenes showing Rose as more atypical from many victims of abuse. Sexually fulfilled is a necessary ingredient in a happy life, right? There's only an implicit case made for the power of new age consciousness in Rose's well adjusted living.

La Capture does a better job showing us than telling us, but that's not a criticism. This is an engaging film to watch and I think the director set out to make it that way and succeeded. I was in the mood for French and La Capture delivered a well crafted, smartly done package. Nice to see Pascale Bussières as la mère (the mother). It's not a big role, and her character is medicated and abused to the point of numbness—a woman who "floats, barely there ... invisible by choice", but just having her around adds to the film's rep.

And the ending is magnificent!

★★★★

Boarding Gate (2007) • France • Olivier Assayas

If it weren't for the smoldering performance of Asia Argento, and I'm not talking about the parts where you get to see her tattoos, I would admit defeat and zero this one out. I don't know why the film is called Boarding Gate; the plot is thin and confusing; Michael Madsen can whisper and grunt all he wants and nobody is going to mistake it for good dramatic acting; the film seems to meander along in prologue mode for about forty-five minutes and then, BANG! somebody dies with great surprise; despite the fact that the location moves to a new country, the film doesn't seem to go anywhere; and not understanding the story won't prevent me from saying with confidence that the ending is lame.

Ms. Argento doesn't need to act. She lives the role of Sandra, relying on her naturally scary-cool charisma and complex heart to suck us in to her character—the script isn't going to do it. She's transcendentally tough and vulnerable at the same time. From one moment to the next she is spitting razor sharp barbs and then crying but never weeping, never weak. The incomplete script works to her advantage here. It's not clear why she is attracted so deeply to either of her love interests with the net result that she appears twisted, courting danger and abuse to feel alive.

Contrary to what the movie posters might lead one to believe, Argento doesn't parade around the entire film in her underwear. There's one quick shot of her being thrown to a bed by her lover where upon she delivers the most authentic and erotic response I've seen in a movie, and there's an extended scene in Madsen's apartment where she's in and out of her dress a couple times. The latter is the best scene in the film, not for its limited display of flesh but for the warped cruelty in their battle of wits—mirrored in stop/start kinky sex they never manage to get very far along with for one reason or another.

Boarding Gate is billed as a thriller and, given its writer/director's resumé, is supposedly about how selfishly cruel and inhuman the world of contemporary multi-national capitalists can be. Blah blah blah. Who's arguing that point? What emerges from the film is a portrait of a modern day neo-femme-fatale who doesn't dress nice or comb her hair trying to juggle a couple of corporate wackbirds (I stole that word from somebody) to her meager advantage and gets a lesson in betrayal along the way. The action parts of the film, the parts where people run around and shoot guns and stuff, aren't interesting at all. The thriller parts, the parts where mystery and suspense are supposed to propel the film, aren't articulated very well. It's the parts where the players settle down to talking smack on one another to gain psychological advantage that are good. If you are a fan of Asia Argento and like your eroticism dark and implied, or are interested in finding out what Argento is capable of as an actress, then check out Boarding Gate. If you are looking for a good thriller, or a film with a little action and good production values, look somewhere else.

★★★

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.

★★★

HIdden (Caché) (2005) • France • Michael Haneke

The worst of all possible scenarios is when a director sets out to intentionally and patronizingly bore the audience and succeeds. There is no story here. The plot is incomplete. It takes a stab at trying to implicate 'bourgeois' life in ... in what, I'm not sure it's very clear.

Juliette played a couple scenes really well, but I think they were a reaction to the script rather than a reading of it. One of the grossest scenes in cinematic history involves some one petting her head trying to create some story. It fails, he fails, it's gross.

This film is not strong enough in character(s) to be a personal story--man against himself. Troubled pasts are not a class exclusive. There was no one and nothing to care about, fear, or empathize with in this film. None of which is absolutely necessary but it might have been sufficient.

★★

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.

★★★★