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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Duelist (Hyeongsa) [2005] • South Korea

I'm a big fan of of director Lee Myung-se's M, consider it a top ten favorite film of all time. It's an audio visual masterpiece. The man has undeniable multimedia chops with an unconventional approach to storytelling.

Duelist shares M's visual beauty along with its fragmented narrative style. It's not hard to get the basic story in either film but you do need to step back and just go with the flow rather than keeping notes on how A leads to B leads to C, and so on. Set in the Joseon Dynasty, the story here is your basic good (in this case) girl cop falling for the bad guy she's supposed to capture and put behind bars, with the romantic angle competing with, and coloring, the chase. There's a mystical twist to it too, wherein the would be lovers don't do a lot of talking to one another, instead, they fight. With swords. This allows director Lee to stage some dramatic and very elegant battle scenes, but the motivation here is romance so the dueling is presented as dance rather than combat, and probably won't satisfy fans of traditional action movies. There's a lot of killing but very little blood. The battles are emotional, internalized and stylized without all the grunting and macho posturing that usually accompanies this kind of action.

One of the many dualities of the film is the unrefined, gut level nature of the cops versus the refined ways of aristocratic bad guys. Another is the way the cat and mouse game shifts back and forth between sleuthing and the romance. The Duelist knows the young lady cop is infatuated with him, that his capable mysteriousness in matters of crime and conflict occupies her heart as well as her head. So he toys with her. She is his equal in combat but not in love and he uses this to his advantage.


Ha Ji-won shines in her role as the young police officer who plays the mouse to the Duelist cat. She gets to be goofy, girly, and kick ass all at once. You can tell she is doing most of her own stunts and she's got surprisingly good comic timing. This film is also quite funny at times. A lot of the humor is of the bumbling kind but it's not cheap slapstick. It's more good natured (unfair to characterize it as) loser type struggle. Veteran actor Ahn Sung-Kee, who elevates every film he is in, plays mentor to Ha Ji-won, and he's just great. Supermodel Kang Dong-Won plays the Duelist, named "Sad Eyes", and does a respectable job of playing a hairstyle with depth.

Duelist is a beautiful, if loosely constructed film that won't satisfy hardcore action fans. For me, even though the fighting scenes were mostly stylized dance pieces, and the film wouldn't work without them, there were just too many of them for me to want to watch the film again and enjoy all the other good stuff about it. Take a look at the clip below to see how awesome this guy is at shooting film and marrying music to it.

★★★

Director: Lee Myung-se
Starring: Ha Ji-won, Ahn Sung-Kee, Kang Dong-Won

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The Man Behind the Scissors (Hasami otoko) [2005] • Japan

Random acts of weirdness turn out to be clues to an unsurprising, yet reasonable reveal. I had a lot of fun watching this. The Japanese are my favorite at plowing through absurdity with a straight face. The director employs a few visual flourishes to remind that this isn't a real crime thriller. The cops provide comic relief while the bad guys are almost frozen in their steadfast psychological drama. Asô Kumiko and Abe Hiroshi are present for credibility. I love Asô Kumiko and the film is mostly hers. She's pretty low key, doesn't swing her arms much when she walks, but she's still engaging, becoming more so as the film progresses and you get onboard with her and her hilarious attempts at suicide. The moral of the story needs a bucketload of salt but who cares? It's not laugh out loud funny but it's a good dark comedy of inner-child pain and murder. Not a lot, but a little, blood. The goriest thing has to be the nicotine stew Asô cooks up for herself.

★★★★

Director: Toshiharu Ikeda
Starring: Kumiko Asô, Hiroshi Abe, Etsushi Toyokawa
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Hellcats (Ddeugeoun-geosi joh-a) aka I Like It Hot [2008] • South Korea

What a surprise this turned out to be. I couldn't get past the poster for the longest time. It's dumb and makes Hellcats look like a film I wouldn't want to see.

I recently watched An Affair (Jung sa), and although I didn't like the film at all I liked the performance by Lee Mi-Suk and wanted to see more of her. So this was it, a film about three stages of womanhood (high-school, twenty-something, just over-the-hill) and the angst of relationships.

The film owes most of its success to brilliant casting. The film's first casting coup, Lee Mi-Suk, turns in a solid performance as a forty-one year old (she's several years older than that in real life) stage designer confronted with 'early onset' menopause. As a result, or in conscious reaction to this news, she runs hot and cold in intelligent and honest ways with an actor working on the same production as her who's twelve years her junior. The guy is a bit of a playboy but seems earnest in his intentions and the fact that Lee is beautiful and still has the hot factor makes it a believable relationship.

The film's second casting coup was landing Ahn So-hee of the popular K-pop group, the Wonder Girls, to play Lee's teen-aged daughter. She's both precocious and naive and wants nothing more than to land a first kiss from her boyfriend of three years who seems more interested in motor bikes and video games than her. Many of the film's more bitingly humorous moments originate in the interactions she has with her mom and her aunt (played by Kim Min-hie, more on her later). The three women live together but it's Ahn who seems the mature one, suffering the emotional vicissitudes of her elders with aplomb. In her personal life, not sure how to get what she wants, she's helped along by the charming Brazilian born and exotic Jo Eun-ji. Their youth lends itself to a credible confusion between love and friendship, creating a relationship that's touching without being melodramatic.

Finally, the biggest and most welcome surprise is the performance of Twiggy model Kim Min-hie who anchors and narrates the film. She's a twenty-seven year old screenwriter, and younger sister to Lee, who ends up torn between pursuing her career (and her self, really), living the bohemian life with her never gonna make it dead-beat musician boyfriend, and marrying a successful, good-looking guy who seems to love her. Her performance is genuine, pulling off the impossible: acting drunk and shrill without losing any of her charm. She won't appeal to everyone, but for context let me state that I seldom, if ever ... in fact I almost always hate when actors play drunk, but Kim's performance worked for me. She's not drunk all the time. It's only a few scenes, but under normal circumstances this is enough to ruin a role, if not a film, for me.

Kim Min-hie burst into the limelight at a very young age with a very low body fat ratio as a model and fashionista. Her first few attempts at acting were met with chuckles and derision. She took six years off to study the craft of acting, including voice control and breathing techniques and, if her performance in Hellcats is any indication, it worked wonders. What's remarkable is that she doesn't seem to be acting at all, even in the drunk parts. She's just being filmed, being herself. I think that's the best kind of acting. She is also blessed with a facial structure (and I'm aware I'm being subjective here) that allows all kinds of different personalities to emerge, depending on camera angle, hair style, and internal motivation. I'll quit with the hyperbole now and just say she is a joy to watch in this film.

Hellcats isn't high brow art fluff nor mumblecore indie bullshit. It's an intelligent, mainstream feminist comedy. The male characters may not be much more than stereotypes but they aren't needed to be. They aren't belittled for being men and they are given enough substance to engage us, but this is a film about the women. Director Kwon Chil-in had success in 2003 with the hit Singles, which explored similar territory, and this is a worthy follow-up if you follow this kind of thing. I should give it five stars but I don't think many would believe it, so ....

★★★★

Director: Kwon Chil-in
Starring: Lee Mi-suk, Kim Min-hie, Ahn So-hee

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An Affair (Jung sa) [1998] • South Korea

So-Hyun is a thirty-eight year old woman unhappy with her life. We can see it in her eyes but nowhere else. The only clue we get is that her husband fails to notice that the electrical wiring in her kitchen needs a complete overhaul. Never underestimate the bond between woman and kitchen, I guess. When her more than a decade younger sister's fiancé shows up things get tense. Her sister and the fiancé had been living in the States but the sister has not returned to Korea just yet. This gives So-Hyun the opportunity to have sex with the fiancé.

So-Hyun is portrayed wonderfully introspectively middle-aging by veteran actress Lee Mi-Suk, but the burden falls upon her to play the whole scenario out inside her head and inform us through her eyes. The film itself doesn't help. Directed with the rugged determination and overbearing woe-is-me of a bad stage play the film does a reasonable job suggesting that reasons for the affair might well exist outside its universe but fails to put them on screen.

The fiancé, miscast by a mile and played woodenly by Lee Jung-Jae, has about as much charm as a turnip. He has a typical guy job, which we see him engaged in once, of telling other people what to do. Beyond that he just stands around with his hands in the pockets of his high-waisted pants, brooding. Javier Bardem, he's not. It's impossible to fathom why So-Hyun would hurt so many people who are more important to her than this guy, by not only having sex with him, but also falling in love with him. A lot of the responsibility for the failure of this film is due to this casting error.

I suppose we're to come away with the notion that it wasn't him she fell in love with as much as the idea of falling in love, of falling in love with someone before she gets any older and the possibility of requited love eludes her. In a scene harrowing for its gross out factor the fiancé pretty much lays out this argument for her: "You'll get old. No one will pay you any mind. You'll be sick with no one to tell you they love you. And you won't have any more chances to love. Tell me you love me ." Eew.

★★

Director: Je-yong Lee
Starring: Lee Jung-Jae, Lee Mi-Suk

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Why Did You Come to My House (Woo-ri-jib-e wae-wass-ni) [2009] • South Korea

This is an ugly film. Yes, it's about a suicidal man and a homeless lunatic woman who invades his life but that doesn't mean the photography has to suck. It could just be a poor DVD transfer but many parts of the film are too dark to make out what's going on. There's a fine line between making actors unattractive and making them unappealing. The script for this film helped land its actors on the unappealing side of that line.

The film starts off with the suicidal main character being interrogated by the police. Right away we know this isn't going to be an active story but a passive one that is revealed through the telling of various stories. This kind of technique isn't that uncommon and it can result in effective engagement, but that didn't happen here. As the man tells his story, the homeless woman is introduced. She in turn, within the story that the man is telling, has to tell her story so we understand who she is and why she's in his story. Her story introduces us to another character who has to have a story and the net effect of this is that the film never gets out of background mode until the very end where the cliché of love that arrives after death has intervened to make it impossible, and consequently tragic, attempts to tickle our heartstrings and make us forget that we really don't care.

Kang Hye-jeong is a wonderful actress and is almost able to make something of her character but she isn't given enough raw material to get completely there. This film relies on background stories for its grill so she is required to be a twenty-something hobo for most of the film and then a high school kid for some of the background. I don't know what it is about her face but she is able to believably portray a realistic looking teenager. This film is only for devoted fans of hers who must see every minute they can of her on the big screen. It is not recommended for anyone looking to see a good movie.

★★

Director: Soo-ah Hwang
Starring: Kang Hye-jeong, Park Hie-Sun

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Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience [2009] • USA

I've finally seen Avatar in all its glorious 3D IMAXness. I applaud the commitment and the massive amount of work that went into making it, which is just a different way of saying I give it an A for effort, but I'm not sure I'm ready to respond to it as merely an experience and set aside thoughts on how it fares as a film.

The problem with, like, solidly professional filmmakers who make big ass films like this is that they often rely on cardboard cutout stereotypes for character development. For every beautiful set piece, every touching ritual or philosophical bit of soul candy in Avatar, and there are lots of them, there are moments of groan out loud, eye-rolling plot points and dialog. I understand the need for expediency when creating a brand new world and trying to tell a story within it (within the running time of a movie) but that doesn't mean it's exempt from taking hits for it. If you are the type to overlook things like this, like so many seeds in a watermelon, then you will probably enjoy this movie, a lot. And by 'things like this' I mean almost all the moments and characters in the film that are negative in some way. The Colonel, why is he so shiny? Maybe there are tools like him in real life but he seems more irratating than badass. As good as Giovanni Ribisi is, he really goes dumpster diving for this role. Sigourney Weaver plays an ultimately good character, and it's actually developed pretty well, but every time she has to act tough, or act like a bitch, I sighed silently in protest of the script. The same is true of Tsu'tey, the jilted heir.

Creating conflict and character development in films is tough. At almost three hours, the film didn't feel long to me at all. I was never bored and if some of the blunt shallowness could have been presented in a more ripened form by extending the running time I would have been happier, overall.

I don't mind one bit that Avatar is a story that we've heard before and will hear again. That's the nature of good stories, educational fables. They keep getting retold. All in all, Avatar has some incredibly beautiful scenes and some very uplifting and touching moments and if you're not a film creep like me who prefers character studies to fantasy and action, you will love this movie.

★★★★

Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez

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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

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One Million Yen and the Nigamushi Woman (Hyakuman-en to nigamushi onna) [2008] • Japan

This film will appeal to fans of Yû Aoi even though there isn't much range to her performance. What we get is exclusively the shy, sad, and awkward Yû Aoi with none of the radiant, confident, and smiling. She's on screen almost the entire two hour running time so the appeal may come from sheer quantity more than anything else, but she performs well and demonstrates she is capable of carrying a film on her own even if the value of that labor remains a question mark.

Yû Aoi's character has brought shame upon herself and her family by having a criminal record so she decides to run away, drift from town to town, staying in one place only long enough to earn one million yen and then move on. She wants to be anonymous, always one step ahead of any accusatory gaze that may be following her tortured soul. But what happens if she finds love? Will she reveal her ... true nature, that she's a criminal? No, that's not it. Her ... horrifying secret? No, that's not it either. The whole thing is kind of silly but I will grant the film some kudos for its final resolve even if it has little to do with illuminating its central conceit.

I'm no expert on Japanese culture but the basic premise of the film seems weak to me. Yû Aoi and a girlfriend agree to rent an apartment together so they can share costs and save money. They sign a lease and then Yû Aoi discovers that her girlfriend's boyfriend will be moving in as well. On move-in day only the boyfriend shows up and he informs Yû Aoi that his (and her!) girlfriend dumped him and will not be moving in. Fuck that. The guy turns out to be a total jerk, of course. Amongst many other idiotic attitudes, behaviors, and talking points, when Yû Aoi adopts a kitten and the guy doesn't like it, he throws it away, whatever that means, and we're gifted with a shot of a dead kitty on the road. In retaliation, Yû Aoi throws away every single piece of her roommate's property. The guy files charges and wins a criminal case against her, which she could have avoided by saying she had sex with the guy, even once, whether true or not, thereby making it a domestic issue and the police would've washed their hands of it. I'd proudly share that story at cocktail parties, but for Yû Aoi it's a scarlet letter.

The film's script has a number of weaknesses. One of them is Yû Aoi's little brother. He gets a subplot of being bullied by his peers. At first, he and Yû Aoi are at odds with one another. Then she leaves and massive love shows up. The little brother is only there to play on the heartstrings of unconditional blood love thriving in the face of a cruel world as it kicks brother and sister about. He's no good and his story is banal. Yû Aoi, and the film, would have been better served if she were cast out on her own, alone.

Yû Aoi's first stop in her search for anonymity finds her at a beach resort where everyone's hair is lighter than hers and their skin is darker. Oops. Her next stop is a rural mountain village where there are no young people left—let alone anyone as beautiful as Yû Aoi. Things get a little creepy and it's ironic that in this second stop the director achieves a nice symbiotic relationship between form and content but it only serves to bring the film to an unendurable lull. These rural village people are slow—in every way—and obstinate, and the film's pace follows suit.

Yû Aoi's final stop finds her in a semi-urban setting where she takes a job in a lawn and garden shop. This is where the "What if she finds love" card gets played, and we can only presume that deep down this is what Yû Aoi had been looking for all along because, even though she struggles against it at first, it's pretty hard to fathom any sane interest on her part in what she ends up with so she must be settling. The film does finish with a nice little kick, if not swift, and it's interesting that the reveal validates what you're hoping was the case, as unlikely as it may seem, but it promotes a dishonest sympathy through failure rather than disgust by virtue of assholeness. Had it gone any other way, though, the whole thing would have been a disaster.

All in all, a reasonably pleasant two hours spent with Yû Aoi as she weaves her way through a mostly mediocre film. There's nothing about the story which excites and other than Yû Aoi there are no characters worth paying attention to. The production values are good, though not remarkable in any way. If you are a fan of the actress, who does quite well in creating likable characters in the many smaller roles she takes on, One Million Yen and the Nigamushi Woman is worth seeing just to see her perform in a film that belongs entirely to her. But if you are a cinephile you'll probably walk away non-plussed.

★★★

Director: Yuki Tanada
Starring:Yu Aoi, Mirai Moriyama, Terunosuke Takezai

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