Island of Light ゴーヤーちゃんぷるー (Goya-champuru) [2006] • Japan

The least one can say about this film is that it won't hurt you. It's a bit thin, borderline trite, in it's I love the magic that is Okinawa message, but it's not offensive. There's this sixteen year old Tokyo girl whose mother abandoned her when she was two; her photographer father died mysteriously a month ago ("No body, so we prayed to his camera instead. That was quite weird to see"); she's bullied at school but jumps at the first chance to join the gang by targeting her best friend as the new scapegoat (she slaps her for no reason as an initiation rite); she quits school and secludes herself in her room because she can't relate to her guardian grandparents; she joins an online sort of hikikomori group, starts texting some guy (who befriends kids in the group because he feels superior to them) and tells him she wants to die. He says "might as well, it beats living ... but why don't you come visit me in Okinawa instead". All that's in the first ten minutes or so.

The girl isn't even off the ferry to the Island of Light before she is taken under the wing of a sweet old lady, the first of the fabulous Okinawans we'll meet as the film progresses. The old lady is a delivery driver which makes it convenient for quickly introducing the young girl to the community of wonderful people who will change her life. On one of their stops a man with terminal cancer has collapsed on his front porch so the girl gets a chance to be a hero by running to the clinic to fetch a doctor (on the way there she stops to ask directions of someone who is gardening and just happens to be the collapsed man's wife). She makes it to the clinic and delivers the message but collapses herself from all the running, and it just so happens that she collapses into the arms of a woman who, well ... if you haven't figured it out by now I won't spoil it.

Ordinarily a film like this would gross me out but this one gets a pass because it never gets melodramatic or histrionic. Most of the performers come off as non-actors (but most aren't) so maybe they lacked the chops to take it to that level. Even the coincidence heavy plot didn't roll my eyes too much because it unfolds in a "country" way, just like you'd expect on the Island of Light, not by building each scene to a crescendo, which is the "city" way. The scenery of Okinawa is soothing, too. In the end just remember: the film won't hurt you.

★★★

Director: Tetsuya Matsushima
Starring: Mikako Tabe, Jun Fubuki, Kôhei Takeda, Misako Ôshiro

IMDb
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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

IMDb
Wikipedia
Japan Times

M [2006] • Japan

A whole lot of twisted psycho-sexual drama going on here. A young woman has this made up story in her head about when she was a kid and her neighbor's father shagged her mom inducing her to start dating the boy next door as an excuse to be close to the father, but when the boy finds out the truth of her motivation he kills his mom and dad and she feels complicit. To atone for this Freudian guilt over something that didn't happen she takes on a Yakuza pimp, in that fucked up way that people do, to mistreat and abuse her, in that fucked up way that people do. We are given the possibility that all of these things are just fantasies of the young woman's impotent but well-meaning husband, but so what? What if? Doesn't change much of the experience for the viewer.

Meanwhile, a young man who really did kill his own father, and participated in a gang rape of his mother, wants to save the young woman from the Yakuza pimp so a bunch of drama takes place amongst the three of them. The whole thing comes off less like an exploration of psycho-sexual weirdness or repressed and imagined memories, and more like a director's fantasy of seeing how far he can go in abusing a young actress. Kinda creepy, imo.

Single-name actress Miwon, undoubtedly a pseudonym, is quite fetching as the protagonist, exuding a screen presence that's both strong and vulnerable. This is her only screen credit so I'll wonder out loud if she has acted, or is acting, under a different name, or if the experience of making this film put a great big damper on any hopes she had of making it a career.

Director Ryuichi Hiroki's extensive filmography is all over the place. From soft-core pink films to highly regarded film festival winners like Vibrator and It's Only Talk to innocent young love stories like April Bride and the Love on Sunday films. He's pretty good at what he does but I think he goes a little far here in heaping on the abuse without enough consideration of real reasons for why it's happening.

★★★

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring:
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Sakuran さくらん [2006] • Japan

Sure is colorful. There's a lot to write about when discussing this film but very little of it has to do with the story: In eighteenth-century Japan, a young girl is sold to a brothel by her mother; she's rebellious and tries to escape all the time; she's more talented and beautiful than all the other girls (suspension of disbelief required); she becomes an oiran (in the hierarchy of prostitutes, sort of like a four-star general in the army).

It's not that the story is bad or unimportant, it's that everything else about the film screams "Look at me! Look at me!" The sets and costuming, the soundtrack, and the casting of a mixed-race Polish/Japanese version of Courtney Love in the lead role all go against type. And one cannot help but notice that this is not Memoirs of a Geisha. Insight from the nearly sixty second montage of naked female breasts near the beginning of the film might be missed if one doesn't notice that the director Mika Ninagawa, the art director Namiko Iwashiro, the music director Ringo Shiina, the producer Chikako Nakabayashi, the scriptwriter Yuki Tanada, and the artist of the original manga Moyoco Anno are all women.

The film is beautiful to look at, if a little over-indulgent at times. No attempt is made to be true to the period. I don't speak Japanese, and subtitles are always deficient in nuance, but I'm sure the dialog is straight off the streets of contemporary Tokyo and not in any Edo period parlance. I'm not generally a fan of costume dramas or period pieces so on the one hand I was interested in seeing this modernized production, but on the other hand I felt a sense of incongruity while watching it. The bold colors of the sets and costumes didn't bother me but the soundtrack is a little odd. Not so much in the style—which swims through many modern genres of pop, rock, and jazz—as in the reverb. The music often doesn't sound like it is in the same size room as the action that is taking place. I like Ringo Shiina's music, have a few of her solo CDs and those of Tokyo Jihen, the band she also plays in. It's not that I think the music is bad, or that it is too terribly out of place. I think the sound design could have been better, and I think that some of the folks who find the soundtrack a little jarring would be less put off by it if more attention had been paid to the overall sound design.

Finally, I was not won over by Anna Tsuchiya in the lead role. I'm sure casting her was a well-thought out conscious decision by the director and I also, in theory, think she fits the package the director was trying to deliver. It's not that she doesn't look 'traditionally' Japanese, whatever that is. And it's not that she lacks a certain elegance I've come to expect of these types of characters, although I'm not surprised by the omission of her doing any of the arty things these pre-geisha geisha types were supposed to be fluent in like music, poetry, dancing, or witty conversation. It might be that she just isn't a very good actress. These rock star cum actress types often possess great charisma that passes itself off as good acting in the right context. I'm not sure this is one of them. I hope I haven't spoiled it for potential viewers by bringing up Courtney Love, but that's what it felt like to me, a little vulgar and somewhere between disappointing and distracting. Tsuchiya is a lot more attractive in her own musical environment than she is in this film. I just didn't buy her as a sophisticated beauty who rises to the top. Maybe I'm just upset that Yoshino Kimura is given short-shrift in the fake eyelash department or that the truly beautiful and engaging Miho Kanno is dispatched with too early in the film.

★★★

Director: Mika Ninagawa
Starring: Anna Tsuchiya, Yoshino Kimura, Miho Kanno, Kippei Shiina, Hiroki Narimiya, Masanobu Ando, Renji Ishibashi
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Ad Lib Night 아주 특별한 손님 (Aju teukbyeolhan sonnim) (2006) • South Korea

Yoon-ki Lee is a sit back and observe kind of auteur, a method he used to great effect when he directed Kim Ji-su in This Charming Girl. There is no one the caliber of that actress here, and character studies need strong actors to make them shine. Han Hyo-ju, the lead actress in Ad Lib Night is charming and competent, if perhaps a little low-key, but the film focuses on too many of her ad-lib family members at the expense of a clear center, spreading the interest too thin.

The story is intriguing, though. Han Hyo-ju plays a young woman enlisted by two men to play the role of a dying man's estranged daughter. She looks just like the dying man's real daughter and the two men assume she can fill in undetected because the dying man's mind and eyesight are decaying rapidly. The men want to give the dying man his last wish of seeing his daughter before he passes. It's unclear why the girl accepts the challenge or why she ends up taking it more seriously than the real family members do, or expect her to. Her revelation at the end of the film is more like a postscript than a movie explaining motivation.

The film is slow paced, getting a little lost in the middle amidst the family gathering, but there's nothing deal-breakingly wrong with the film. If it had been more tightly controlled, the revelation at the end might have tied things up with better results. I will probably watch it again, as I am a big fan of This Charming Girl and the director's 2008 film My Dear Enemy. I think knowing the girl's motivation from the beginning may result in a different viewing experience.

★★★

Director: Yoon-ki Lee
Starring: Hyo-ju Han, Il-hwa Choi, Ju-bong Gi, Jung-ki Kim, Young-min Kim

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

The Road 芳香之旅 (Fang xiang zhi lu) [2006] • China

I'm continuing my Zhang Jingchu marathon and it's going well. This may be her best and most challenging role yet, and it comes from very early in her career. When she is given a starring role (Night and Fog, Red River) she really shines, seeming less remarkable when she plays a supporting role (Overheard, Protégé, Beast Stalker). Here she plays a character who goes from a teenager to an old lady over the course of a film that spans more than four decades. These kinds of roles come along every so often for actors and actresses, their success relying quite a bit on makeup—which in this case is pretty good for such a low budget film—but the challenge, one which Zhang seems to rise to, is also to convince us that the character has grown and changed along with the events of the film.

Zhang is probably weakest as a teenager, not because she doesn't look the part or do it well, it's more like she is so good it's annoying. She's going at 150 miles an hour constantly and is just a little too charming. Moving along we see her as: a young woman coming to terms with her sexual desire amidst a conservative society; a dutiful wife in an arranged marriage; a middle-aged woman coming to grips with the challenges and changes in her marriage; and finally an older woman dealing with tragedy and a society that seems to have fully left her behind. She is better and more convincing with each progression.

Of course it helps when playing this kind of role if the film is good, and this one is beautiful. Filmed in the Yunnan Province of China, the cinematography is breathtaking, the story a poignant one. The film begins in the mid 1960s when the spirit of the Communist Revolution was still high and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution hadn't kicked in. Zhang plays bus ticket girl, Li Chunfen. The bus driver, played wonderfully by comedian exploring serious film roles Wei Fan, though much older than Li, has a crush on her (like almost everybody else). Li's affection, however, is for a frequent passenger, Dr. Liu, who's been transferred to Yunnan because his family was rich and he's a bit of an intellectual, qualities that are increasingly suspect as the Cultural Revolution begins its life. The doctor has been sent to a hard labor camp and when Li sneaks out to meet him one night and is caught, things change dramatically for her. She is forced into an arranged marriage with the bus driver who uses his clout with the local party leaders to help her avoid a fate worse than the surface level crime of losing face and bringing shame upon herself.

I don't want to give a complete play by play of the storyline, suffice to say The Road is not only a personal journey and a love story—a really touching one, it turns out—it's also an educational story for those of us unfamiliar, as a portrait of changing times in China, lovingly told. The "Old Days" are seen as both good and bad, depending on your place in society or point of view, but most noteworthy is how both sides are presented without judgement. It's a tone poem, an ode, to the complexity that is recent Chinese history. The film takes us from a time when a sense of community and shared values were alive, through the violence and upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, and into modern times where some celebrate the loosening of a moral structure and others remember it fondly. And it does it without any political agenda. It's beautiful. Bravo.

★★★★★

Director: Jiarui Zhang
Starring: Wei Fan, Yuan Nie, Jingchu Zhang, Jong Lin
IMDb 7.2 (185 votes)
Asianmediawiki

Green Mind, Metal Bats 青春☆金属バット (Seishun kinzoku batto) [2006] • Japan

This is a hard film to describe except to say that it's deadpan funny, delightful and successful in it's earnest attempt to remain off-kilter. It's about two guys who are bummed out their dreams of becoming baseball stars didn't pan out, and a girl who loves baseball and baseball players. One of the guys was a pitcher, played with finely nuanced body language by Masanobu Ando, who's become a bicycle cop and hates everything except himself. He uses his position of authority to do things like get shoplifting housewives to show him the color of their underwear. The other guy is a batter (of unknown position), played by Pistol Takehara, who still wants to make it, practicing his swing a thousand times a day. He's a little numb in the noggin, having been beaned by the bicycle cop pitcher ten years ago and becomes an accomplice in love and illegal activities with a drunken, violent woman who shares his love of baseball. The show stealing woman is played way over the top by Maki Sakai, and now I'm sort of in love with her myself. I generally dislike watching actors play drunk, but with the exception of some of her stumbling, Sakai creates a believable and engaging character who's pushing forty, still hot, not so nice, but fun to have around. She had to wear prosthetics to round out her role as "the chick with a rack".

Green Mind, Metal Bats is a low-key, low budget absurd comedy with an edginess that keeps it unpredictable and unsettling. A bit part by Noriko Eguchi, as the pitcher's wife, gets this one a bonus point. Anything with Eguchi is better for it.

★★★★

Director: Kazuyoshi Kumakiri
Starring: Pistol Takehara, Masanobu Ando, Maki Sakai, Noriko Eguchi
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Lost in Love (Sarang-eul nochida) [2006] • South Korea

This is one of the strangest, silliest romantic melodramas I think I've ever seen. It must be approached like a train wreck. It's not that it's bad in a sickening or cheap way ... it's just wrong at most every turn because it tries too hard to be controlling.

There are two fine actors in the lead roles: Sol Kyung-Gu as the guy, he's from Oasis and such, a great film. I think he's one of the best Korean actors behind Song Kang-ho, from The Host and Thirst and such. The girl is his real life wife, Song Yun-Ah. I haven't seen her before but she's very attractive and and has a genuine quality as an actress. I look forward to seeing more of her.

But gee whiz, this film plays the most sentimental music at all the right times ... which means all the wrong times. It's unabashedly blatant and tries but fails to be manipulative. It's basic blunder of a story seems ill-conceived and executed haphazardly. It will make you laugh at times when you're not supposed to.

I guess the characters are meant to be proletariat types because they use foul language when it's not called for and the guy has bad table manners. The girl's mom doesn't wear a bra and has sex with an unattractive yet sweet man, and she rides a motor bike scooter thing. She's hip. We like her. She might die.

No tears but it's good for a gawk.

★★

Director: Chang-min Chu
Starring: Sol Kyung-Gu, Song Yun-Ah

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

49 great films from the Oughts (the first decade of this century)

Just for kicks.

[Rec] (2007)
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Adrift in Tokyo (2007) aka Tenten
Antichrist (2009)
The Aura (2005) aka El Aura
Babel (2006)
Battle Royale (2000) aka Batoru rowaiaru
Blind Mountain (2007) aka Mang shan
City of God (2002) aka Cidade de Deus
The Equation of Love and Death (2008) aka Li mi de cai xiang
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
Eureka (2000) aka Yurîka
Green Tea (2003) aka Lü cha
Hero (2002) aka Ying xiong
Himalaya With Michael Palin (2004)
In The Mood For Love (2000) aka Fa yeung nin wa
Irreversible (2002)
The Isle (2000) aka Seom
Joint Security Area (2000) aka Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok
Let the Right One In (2008) aka Låt den rätte komma in
Lost in Translation (2003)
Lost Indulgence (2008) aka Mi guo
Love Exposure (2008) aka Ai no mukidashi
M (2007)
Memento (2000)
Memories of Murder (2003) aka Salinui chueok
A Moment to Remember (2004) aka Nae meorisokui jiwoogae
Mother (2009) aka Madeo
Next Door (2005) aka Naboer
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Noriko's Dinner Table (2005) aka Noriko no shokutaku
Oasis (2002)
One Fine Spring Day (2001) aka Bomnaleun ganda
Planet Earth (2006)
Queenadreena: Live (2006)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Secret Sunshine (2007) aka Milyang
Sideways (2004)
Snatch (2000)
Spider Forest (2004) aka Geomi sup
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Strawberry Shortcakes (2006)
Suicide Club (2002) aka Jisatsu saakuru
Summer Palace (2006) aka Yihe yuan
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
This Charming Girl (2004) aka Yeoja, Jeong-hye
The Unknown Woman (2006) aka La Sconosciuta
Visitor Q (2001) aka Bijitâ Q
What Time Is It There? (2001) aka Ni na bian ji dian

Heavenly Forest (Tada, kimi wo aishiteru) [2006] • Japan

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 could 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.

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.

★★★★★

Summer Palace (Yihe yuan) [2006] • China • Lou Ye

"Because it is only when we make love that you understand that I'm gentle."

That's all the character development I need. This is an ambitious film about the stalled maturation of an idealistic but troubled young woman flanked by the Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. The film spans a decade and a half from 1987 to 2003 so the misery of Three Gorges Dam didn't make the cut. The direction is a little chaotic at times but it reflects the nature of the film and doesn't come off as too much of a liability. The soundtrack is impeccably chosen and the film is ultimately very sad. I was glued to this 140 minute masterpiece. Politics aside, and they are on the side, this is a remarkable film in its honest portrayal of failure, not of personal character necessarily, but of circumstance.

This is another film that got its director and producer banned for five years from making films in China. Maybe it's the full-frontal nudity or the sheer quantity of sex scenes but I don't see the need for hubbub. The film is about a woman's self-reflection on why she finds comfort in the arms of different men. We see her naked inside and out. She is afraid to love out of fear, fear of something she hasn't yet experienced, which is the scariest kind of fear.

There are a number of things wrong with the film, perhaps, but very little could be done to improve it. Great films succeed in spite of their weaknesses. I'm not a fan of off camera narration but it works for me here. It seems additional rather than necessary. There is a maturity to the woman's voice as she narrates with entries from her diary that compliments, does not seem at odds with, the can't quite grow up activities of the woman on screen. In order to get from the Berlin Wall to the Hong Kong Handover, 1989 to 1997, we're treated to narrative onscreen text to fill us in on what's happening to the characters. Ordinarily that would be a deal breaker for me, in theory at least, but again, it works. Finally, as if this were a real story about real people, after the final denouement occurs we're given updates on what happened or didn't happen to the principle characters. Frankly, as gut-wrenchingly sad but true as the final scene is I wish it would have just faded to black. But I think it's a tribute to the strength of the characters that I found myself intrigued by the postscript.

Having said that, one could argue from a strictly script perspective that a little more fleshing out of character was in order ... and I don't mean full-frontal. But I would argue against a need to dish out explanations for why people act inexplicably. I think it comes down to this: if you've ever known passionate, poetic, misguided imperfect people, you know these people right away. They're part beautiful and part brutal, there's no talking them out of it. It's part of their charm. This film doesn't set out to explain, diagnose, or change its characters. It just wants to show them to us in all their painful glory; and I think it does a very good job of it. Then again, maybe it's just a case of been there, done that.

★★★★★

Right at Your Door (2006) • USA

Here's another apocalyptic tale. It's not a great film but its basic premise provides a thought provoking conundrum. A suburban Los Angeles stay at home husband has just seen his city working wife off to work when a couple dirty bombs explode in the city center unleashing a toxic airborne virus. Chaos ensues as the husband attempts to get downtown and rescue, or something, his wife. (The director overused a handheld camera in this first act in an attempt to portray the hoopla and almost caused me to give up on the film.) The city is very quickly sealed off and he is unable to get to ground zero, so he goes back home. The media, when it works, informs everyone to stay inside and seal up their homes, and most importantly, to not let anyone in who may have been infected with the virus. After many hours of franticly duct-taping plastic over all the doors and windows to seal the place up air-tight ... Knock Knock! Honey, I'm home!

So here's the conundrum. A husband and wife are facing the possible end of days, neither knows for sure if either one of them are infected, nor does anybody really know the full effect and extent of the virus. The wife does appear sick, what with the constant retching and all, but love is blind. Does he let her in?

The rest of the film, up to the point where one of the better big twists I've seen in a movie is quickly played out, deals with the answer to that question and its consequences. It also seems like it was shot by someone other than the person who shot the first act. The direction is controlled and captures the emotional intensity of the situation pretty well. And the acting is not too bad. Mary McCormack plays the wife, Rory Cochrane, the husband. There are all the last rites, confessions, and emotional revelations to move the film along to its feature length running time that you might expect in a situation like this, and then the aforementioned twist. If you are the type to guess ahead while watching a film you might see it coming, but probably not. And don't get caught up in analyzing the specifics of virus contagion vectors presented here, they're not the point, they're the plot. Focus on the story of the couple and you might enjoy this film.

★★★

Love Phobia (Domabaem) (2006) • South Korea

Melodrama is what the Koreans do best. Love Phobia is standard formula stuff: cute and funny for an hour and then it makes you cry for another hour without dashing your hopes for a happy ending. It's executed extremely well with quirky bits throughout. If you like melodrama this is a grand slam home run. It's an interesting allegory as well but I don't want to give away too much.

Love Phobia is about a girl, Ari, who claims she has a curse and that bad things will happen to anyone who touches her. She also claims to be an alien. The film starts off with her as an elementary school kid who befriends a young boy, Jo-Kang. After he touches her one day he comes down with the measles. Ari mysteriously disappears the next day. Ten years later she reappears just as mysteriously in Jo-Kang's life, and then disappears again. Ten years later, or so, she returns to Jo-Kang again and her true story unfolds.

Hye-jeong Kang plays Ari as a teenager and as a young woman. She is not only cute beyond words, she's one of Korea's best young actresses. This is something that sets Korean melodramas apart, they use real actors and actresses instead of flavor of the month idols. From The Butterfly and Oldboy to this, with a half dozen well-received films in between, including the controversial and complicated Rules of Dating ... Hye-jeong Kang, at just twenty-six, is on a roll. Seung-woo Cho is also very good as Jo-Kang. Both are convincing as teenagers and as young adults, a testament to the Korean epidermis, perhaps, as much as thespian prowess.

★★★★

The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta) (2006) • Italy • Giuseppe Tornatore

A little hard to follow and a little hard to swallow, this film by the director of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso is gritty and loose. A dark controlled chaos in skilled hands, it feels like an army of films rushing at you all at once. It's a bit overwhelming until the grabs you, sucks you in and won't let you go performance of Xenia Rappoport kicks in. She's a magnet in the middle of a mysterious mayhem. It's too bad that the style and substance of the film will prevent it from ever becoming popular because her portrayal of suffering and sheer determination is one for the history books. The woman's got chops. She moves like an insect through the undergrowth of her seedy milieu with an androgynous, unkempt beauty that's both tempting and invisible. She's able to shift her portrayal from one emotion to another, and then another, without moving a muscle in her face—a skill few actors possess. It's her story and we follow her through it not knowing exactly what she's after or what she will do with it when she seems to have it in her grasp. That's the unknown part and Rappoport plays the mystery for all it's worth. She works the complex narrative inside her head and lets the revelations drip out slowly, uncontrollably.

Director Giuseppe Tornatore says this film is about a woman reclaiming her power as a woman (there's a great big serving of motherhood with that) after it has been stripped from her from every angle imaginable. Rappoport's character is the victim of a human slave trade that uses immigrant Eastern European women to make babies for the upper-class. She's gotten out of it, but with a lot of baggage. Some of it is misplaced and some of it is hurled at us in short, chaotic flashbacks in the beginning of the film (that's the hard to follow part), slowly unfolding to more understandable scenes as they catch up with her present life at the end of the film—a nice structural technique by the director.

Roger Ebert wrote a review of this movie which essentially lists the aspects of it he thinks he understands and the aspects he thinks he doesn't. He scores a little above average, I think, which is about as good as anyone is probably going to do. There's a noir-ish component (not a stylistic one) to the film where major events and character traits are unleashed which are way beyond the reality of any mere mortal's life. There are also plenty of cause-for-pause moments when you will consider if the means justify the end. That's the hard to swallow part but I'm not complaining. It is a movie after all, and if you've read many of my reviews you know that I take all comers when it comes to plot gymnastics as long as they don't infringe upon the integrity of my players, as long as they don't cause incredulity to appear on the faces of the actors because they don't believe the script. Giuseppe Tornatore is lucky, or smart, to have enlisted an actress with the strength of Xenia Rappoport. ET coulda popped in here and I don't think she would have missed a beat.

Speaking of beats, Ennio Morricone scored this film with its groove in his back pocket. pwnage.

★★★★

Unholy Women (Kowai onna) (2006) • Japan

The only reason I picked this one up is because I'm stalking the four women who starred in the fabulous Japanese independent film Strawberry Shortcakes and one of those women is in this film. She's my least favorite of the four but it's probably not her fault, more likely it's due to her character in that film.

Unholy Women is three unconnected thirty minute shorter films packed together to make a longer ninety minute film. My target stars in the first of the three called "Rattle Rattle". She's hanging out with some guy who's married and that's all we need to know in order to proceed to the rest of the film where my heroine runs around screaming, all frightened and sweaty, trying to avoid the clutches of a J-Horror-Goth-Chick—which is another reason I picked this one up. I love the JHGC.

Usually the JHGC is depicted as a ghostly white, youngsterish, somewhat sympathetic, semi-sensuous spirit having a bad hair day. The one in this film is ugly with a capital F, and wears red. I think she is supposed to be more real than her genre sisters but she does have the signature slow, bone rattling shuffle that allows for lots of responsive screaming time. It's hard to say what "Rattle Rattle" is about because I don't remember it having much of a story beyond the running around and the infidelity setup, but I think it's pretty good because of several JHGC moments. I don't remember how it ends.

The second film is called "Steel" and it's pretty funny because it tries to be creepy but doesn't know which way to go. It stars a girl who is a burlap sac from the waist up and likes to sew. Her father pumps (literally, with a pump) gallons of what appears to be liposuction remains through a tube into her sac part and lures young men into dating her by offering them a job and showing them a picture of some hot babe. One guy, with the requisite diversity training I guess, dates her and sees beyond, through, around—I don't know—the burlap sac part and tries to have sex with her. He crawls between her legs in an enlightened post-feminism foreplay maneuver to get under her sac and never comes out. Surprise, surprise.

The third film is called "Sleep My Child", and it's about a cute young boy whose world is mysterious and confusing, has some dead people floating around behind him, a freaky grandmother, and an abusive mother with an overly kind public comportment, all of which is exacerbated by the fact that his mom always seems to be waving goodbye to him when she really means 'come here'. That confused me too.

All in all Unholy Women has some reasonably creepy atmosphere without a lot of plot to get in the way. Look for it in the cheap bin or on late night cable.

★★★

Strawberry Shortcakes (2006) • Japan

I let this one sit in queue too long. The title, Strawberry Shortcakes, led me to believe it would be a silly slapstick chick-flick about young women engaged in madcap antics which is second only to adolescent comedies about the sexploits of silly young men on my list of film genres I hate, Asian or otherwise. Turns out, Strawberry Shortcakes is an engaging indie film that takes a rather bleak look at the lives of four (at times I thought there were five, read on) young women who live mostly on the margins of life in contemporary Tokyo. Sex in the City it's not, quite.

One could critique this film as being superficial because it focuses primarily on the angst-ridden side of these twenty-something women's quest for love and happiness. This is a two hour movie about four very different women and I would, if I could, ask for a hand in marriage from any one of them because they are all intelligent (and dumb) and strong (and weak) and kindness means a lot to them. The portraits of these women are, almost unnervingly, complete.

There is a religious theme running through Strawberry Shortcakes. The film begins and ends with questions and thoughts about God (big G). One of the characters is commissioned to draw a picture of God for a book cover. Hope is a constant companion to these women throughout. It's the brand of cigarettes they smoke. At one point one of the women stops by a vending machine to buy a pack and they are unavailable. She looks to the sky and asks, "Is Hope all sold out?"

A brief synopsis of who these women are:

Toko Iwase is a bulimic, intense, sometimes bitchy, but very true to her art, artist, who makes a living doing illustration and designing book covers. Her onscreen, very visceral scenes of (binging and) purging are frighteningly realistic—very, very painful to watch. She masturbates while lying on the bed, and reading the "secret" diary of, her superficial roommate. She also folds her roommate's clothes, fixes her alarm clock, makes sure she gets to work on time, and she takes care of the funeral arrangements when her roommate's pet hamster dies. Her roommate is:

Chihiro She is a beautiful, perhaps naive, perhaps sheltered office worker who sucks up to her male superiors to the disgust of her female colleagues. She's the type of woman who doesn't have any girl friends. She tries and she hopes, in the face of all things pointing against it to have a meaningful and lasting relationship with some punk loser from her work. She buys herself a pair of shoes and has them gift wrapped for her birthday because no one else is going to honor it. When her boyfriend is too busy to see her on her birthday, she calls some dude, presumably from her past, that does nothing more than deposit his manhood on her face.

Satoko is a kind-hearted, sweet, plain but very cute, charming and adorable dreamer ::sigh:: who works as a receptionist at an escort agency named Heaven's Gate. When her boss asks her why she doesn't put herself on the market she says "I am not pretty like the other girls, no one would pick me." Her boss, who turns out to be falling for her responds, "Our customers like all kinds, even ugly girls. You should think about it." Ouch. She eats at a local shop where the noodles suck and the cook and sole proprietor is a young Chinese man. His "Japanese is no good" so she answers the phone for him and takes orders. She ends up working there after her boss at the escort agency treats her to an expensive dinner and makes his feelings for her known, causing her to quit. She's the type who is attracted to, and befriends, other loners such as:

Akiyo She sleeps in a coffin at night and works as an escort at Heaven's Gate. She has a suitcase full of cash, saving up for a condo. It has to be fifth story or higher, for when her body fails her but before she's senile. "Anything below five stories and the fall might not kill you." She's in her late twenties and the other girls, in their early twenties, don't like her because all the customers do. She has a certain Lena Olin tough beauty and submits to all kinds of sexual degradation in her job because it nets her more customers and more money, and because her long-time crush on an old college friend remains unrequited. Here's where the mysterious, non-existent fifth woman comes in.

Akiyo wears high heels, her hair down, a lost in space demeanor, and other escort garb to work at Heaven's Gate. When she jumps on her bicycle to meet her old college friend, a self-described late bloomer (i.e., he doesn't have a full time job yet) for beers at a local dive sushi bar, she wears Converse gym shoes, frumpy ripped up blue jeans and t-shirts, puts her hair up and dons a pair of very bookish glasses. She appears very sharp, happy and focused when she is with him. It isn't meant to be ambiguous, or a secret that this is the same woman, as a second screening of the film revealed to me. I just missed it first time through.

There are many, many more subtle and poignant events that make up the complex portraits of these complex women. For me, and I don't think I'm alone in my opinion, Toko is the centerpiece, the rock, the glue that holds this film together. The t-shirt she wears throughout most of the film has the Led Zeppelin lyric "TO BE A ROCK" on the front and "NOT TO ROLL" on the back. Turns out this actress who plays Toko is the artist/writer of a very popular manga, of nearly the same name, that this film is based upon. She is not an actress by trade and it took quite a lot of coaxing to get her to play the part. Her presence gave this film a realism I don't think it would have had without her. Strawberry Shortcakes is not an accurate portrayal of all women in contemporary Tokyo, not even a majority, but I think Toko, real name Kiriko Nananan who writes under the pseudonym Toko Iwase, put her heart and soul into painting a wonderfully authentic portrait of a segment of that population.


Having said all that about a picture I clearly enjoyed, the director's signature is all over this film as well. It's very episodic, sometimes unsatisfying in nature; many scenes are captured in an almost documentary fashion; I think the person who adapted the screenplay put in the stuff about God and Hope in an attempt to give the film a meaning others could talk about (successfully, I think, it just didn't appeal to me); and the ending was too happy and abrupt. I can't wait to watch it again.

★★★★★

World of Silence (Joyong-han saesang) (2006) • South Korea

When I saw the poster for this movie of the two guys and the girl with the big red clown lips painted on her face I said, "That's messed up, that's freaky. I'll gamble." It paid.

World of Silence, a.k.a. Missing Girl, is a classic who-dunnit mystery/suspense/thriller/melodrama drama/buddy cop comedy from South Korea. At its heart is the story of a world weary cop and his goofball partner investigating a series of murders of young orphaned girls who appear to have been tripping on non-indigenous magic mushrooms and otherwise treated very well before being killed. No visible signs of trauma. Dressed nicely. Woven into that is the story of a man who possesses extra-sensory abilities and a constantly unfolding history of sadness and loss who, coincidentally or not, appears ahead of the cops at each of the crime scenes and who, as plot would have it, takes custody of a young orphaned girl who has a plot moving special disease.

This film is sprinkled with throw-popcorn-at-the-screen, Crime and Punishment style coincidences and delivered with a controlled ominosity worthy of Brian De Palma and General Hospital. The more films I see from South Korea the more I see that this kind of mixed mellow drama genre bag is quite common. It might take a little patience and getting used to, but when it's as well executed as World of Silence it's a very fulfilling film experience. I hesitate to throw melodrama into the mix because it often conjures up associations of chick-flick, which this flick is certainly not. In the capable hands of director Jo Ui-seok, melodrama is a key ingredient, used almost as a heat check, a dare, alongside mystery elements and light-hearted humor to keep the audience engaged.

Despite the groan-out-loud-inducing plot moves and a few eye-rollers to boot, I loved this movie. The performances are all top-notch. Yong-woo Park (My Scary Girl) plays the world-weary detective with a cynical sense of humor, unkempt hair, and a cool leather jacket he steals from a co-starring criminal who plays a key role in solving the murder case. Sang-kyung Kim, who played that cool cop role in Memories of Murder, plays the mystery man here looking good in an elegant, long black overcoat putting some freak in the head of the world weary detective. A very pleasant surprise is the uncredited young girl who plays the orphan Soo-yeon Park. She is adorably able to transform her screen presence from sad orphaned girl whose father died in a car accident and whose mother's been in a coma for two years but is described to her as just having a really bad cold and needing to take a really long nap, a nap that Soo-yeon hopes she will awaken from in time to attend her upcoming talent recital, to a smiling and feeling-loved 3rd-grader in the length of a breath.

World of Silence peels off layer upon layer, uncovering about five film's worth of internal demons and other dramatic tragedies, but it ends, and it seems to end a few times, like a sportscaster screaming "No! No! I don't believe it! Don't ..." and then "Great shot!" when it goes in.

★★★★★

Cold Prey (Fritt vilt) (2006) • Norway

Not much here except for some beautiful shots of the Scandinavian Mountains at the beginning. It takes 45 minutes before there are any clues that this might be a scary movie, and then all we see is a anonymous swinging pick axe.

The heroine of the film is the only likeable character; I'm glad the rest of them get killed but it's annoying that it takes our Leatherface clone a couple of goes at each one. This is one of those stupid slasher flicks where somebody takes a pick axe to the face, end of scene, and then shows up later so they can be violently killed again. Their friends don't get to see the first kill which is done in private to try and build tension as the non-killed-yet wonder and fight over "what happened to so and so".

There is more gore to the snowboarding accident than any of the kills. The goofball of the group breaks his shin and we get to see the bone sticking out. Big whoop.

Fritt vilt fails to deliver on all fronts and the film's final shot at humanizing the big jerk Leatherface clone with the pick axe by going full circle with backstory is not worth mentioning. The film comes off like a genre exercise by a director who's not cut out for it.

★★

Love and Other Disasters (2006) • UK

I like Brittany Murphy a lot but this is not the right vehicle for her. She's not a fashionista and lacks the kind of poise it takes to walk comfortably in high heels. Almost all of the shots of her 'strutting' are cut to less than a step so you can see what she looks like but not how she moves. It's the same with the tango dance scene. Quick edits work as a disguise. I don't think the beehive hairdos work on her but if you like Brittany Murphy you should see this film. It won't make you dislike her and the film is mildly clever.

A handful of male actors perform well and give the film most of its charm. The two female actors, besides Brittany, are junk. The two women, mother and daughter, try to act likeably eccentric but are simply annoying, shallow and superfluous to the story. They aren't even acceptable caricatures of likeably eccentric. Chain smoking cigarettes does not eccentric make.

I don't think it really counts as a spoiler to let people know that Gwyneth Paltrow and Orlando Bloom are on the screen for about 20 seconds. That's part of the cleverness of this film. They play the parts of the 'happily-ever-after' couple in the Hollywood version of the movie we're watching as it is written by one of the characters in the movie.

★★★

Re-cycle (Gwai wik) (2006) • Thailand • Pang Bros.

One of the reasons the Pang Brothers' films are so engaging is they have an excellent grasp of sound design and good taste in music. Both this film and Diary (an Oxide solo effort) reach operatic proportions at times. They are not content to hire up a few jingles and play them over and over throughout the film in some sort of branding effort. Each scene has its own soundtrack. Oftentimes the soundtrack seems to lead the scene. I hesitate to call it music video-like because that smacks of demotion, but it is like a music video in the sense that the music is as important as the video.

Re-cycle reminded me of Terry Gilliam's work, but it's not as desolate or oppressive. It's a beautiful film made edgy by the Pang Brothers tendency to genre hop, mixing in horror and melodrama. I think most would agree the Pangs are quite skilled and creative in the visual department but seem to lack a command of the story telling part. I say, so what. I'm happy to be fully engaged while the film is playing, with my only after thoughts fond memories of the ride. I don't always need a deep philosophical discussion of what a film is trying to say.

There may be better ruminations on the basic idea of this film, and it's a good one--exploring a place where all that's forgotten or abandoned congregates--(Spider Forest comes to mind), but few will be as engaging as this multimedia masterpiece. I had no idea this film was going to take off into fantasy land and stay there for the duration of the film. It came as quite the surprise, and kept surprising me.

I loved Angelica Lee's man-shoes, and ... is there anything more adorable on this planet than an eight year old Chinese girl? Big round of applause for Yaqi Zeng!

★★★★