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

IMDb
Asianmediawiki


★★★★ 

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

IMDb
Wikipedia

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin) [2004] • China • Xu Jinglei

Xu Jinglei, may I have some more, please? This film really excites me about Xu Jinglei. The directorial hand is very mature and accomplished. The film has a great period look and feel to it. The cinematography by Lee Pin Bing is gorgeous and I’m sure that helped. The acting is all quite good. Strange, then, to have to say that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the movie. Again, as with Xu's directorial debut, My Father and I, it's the story that let me down. I know it's an old story, one I haven't read nor seen any previous adaptations of, but I think I can say that while it might look good on paper, in outline form, it doesn't fare very well in this particular presentation.

There may be some cultural nuances that were lost on me, and I do have to say that the subtitles that came with the film were really, really bad. The character development didn't seem secure enough for me to accept the first disappearance of the writer after the initial affair. Frankly, it shocked me. I went along with it for the sake of the story, but it left me twitching a little. Then when they meet again and the writer doesn't recognize the woman, I lost it. I can accept not recognizing someone with a different hairdo eight years later passing them on the street but once you've gotten to the naughty bits, I don't buy it. I imagine this is all nit-picky to a story about the sadness of an extremely one-sided love affair, but I wanted something to assure me that this one-sided love was warranted and I didn't get it.

I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys a good love story. It's a beautiful film, and if you're not a lion in the tall grass, stalking, just waiting to pounce, like me, when you think that Xu Jinglei has failed in her exposition, the story is probably pretty good too. Stories for movies often come from outside sources but it ultimately falls on the director to tell the story in a convincing manner. Xu Jinglei, I'm officially a fanboy. Get to work.

★★★

The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008) • South Korea

My expectations for this film were through the roof. It's basically a Korean all-star game: directed by Ji-woon Kim, he of A Bittersweet Life and A Tale of Two Sisters fame (not to mention The Quiet Family), and starring three of Korea's finest (or at least most popular) actors, Woo-sung Jung, Byung-hun Lee, and (one of my favorite actors, Korean or otherwise) Kang-ho Song.

Unlike a number of people, I have absolutely nothing, in or on principle, against remakes. But this isn't a remake. Let's call it remake-esque. This one's got Weird, the other one had Ugly. And they do different stuff in this one, the treasure is different, and some other stuff is different, but the basic story arc is similar.

The production values are top notch, the direction creative and self-assured, the special effects worth the time and money spent on them. I love the kill scenes as directed by Kim, especially one of the first ones where a tough guy is running from train car to train car, bursting through doors like they don't exist and then BAM! He's five feet behind where he was. You have to see it to appreciate it, I guess. The timing and the focus on the result instead of the impact makes the impact seem more impactful. Whoever edited this film did a great job.

Woo-sung Jung plays the Good, and he's a cute guy who oozes goodness, so that's good. His character is perhaps a bit under-played/under-developed but that's the nature of Good, isn't it? Byung-hun Lee as the Bad has a little bit too much contemporary in his swagger and look. He's more arrogant than Bad, but we're supposed to dislike him so that's good too. Not surprisingly, it's Kang-ho Song, as the Weird, who steals the show. He runs through this movie like a poultry item (I can't remember if the saying is about a chicken or a turkey) with its head cut off but never misses a beat. He's having a good time and makes sure that we do too. He's able to do things that many other actors are incapable of like delivering predictable lines with equal parts sincerity and irony so that we won't even think of groaning out loud. He's so adorably slightly plump and likeable that even when ... well, I don't want to give it away ... we like him. We really do.

Caught up in all the fun and excitement I almost forgot that, with very few exceptions (especially in these modern times of technological machismo), movies with lots of gun fights are really fucking stupid.

★★★

Funny Games (2007) • USA • Michael Haneke

This is a shot for shot remake by the same director of the 1997 film. It's not quite as slimy or as creepy as the original, probably because I knew the story, Naomi Watts is too beautiful, and Michael Pitt's shorts aren't short enough.

Pitt and Brady Corbet do a stand up job, as good as the original duo, which is a pleasant surprise, but Roth and Watts, while good, don't seem as terrorizable as the original pair of vacationers. Maybe Tim Roth's resume precludes the requisite suspension of disbelief.

My vote is for the original and recommend it over this one unless you don't like subtitles. Both films are very good, but for American audiences I think it adds to the WTF? effect if the characters are unfamiliar. This version is definitely worth seeing if you don't want to go the subtitled route. The bad guys are a unique and surreal experience in terror.

As I wrote in my comment on the original, all the pretentious talk about "making a film that sends a clear message about violence, and the audience's view and involvement with violence on film" or "a deconstruction in the way violence is portrayed in the media" is (utter and complete) NONSENSE. Where does that kind of silly talk come from? Feed someone sugar and then berate them for liking it because it's sweet? There is nothing didactic or pedantic about this film. It is terror for terror's sake. Sweet.

★★★