Chun
Chiu Ma feels rather rootless and stateless, but you really can’t blame him.
According to the U.S. government, his country does not exist, even though we
have pledged to defend it should it ever be attacked. The young filmmaker will
shuttle between his native Taiwan and Japan, where a documentarian is trying
his best to profile him in Takehiro Ito’s hybrid-documentary (with the emphasis
on hybrid) Out There (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s First Look at MoMI.
It
is hard to say where the would-be documentary ends and the film project Ma is
trying to resurrect begins, because Out
There is that kind of film. At least we can easily differentiate the
countries, because the Japanese sequences are almost always shot in
black-and-white and the Taiwan scenes are in color. Ma (and the audience) get a
lucky break when Ayako auditions for him. They definitely have chemistry
together.
Throughout
the film’s (duly labelled) first part, episodes from Ayako’s audition, Ma’s
filming, his own interview segments, and his parents’ reminiscences in Taiwan
echo and repeat each other. Although Edward Yang’s influence is central to the
film, the initial half plays like Hong Sang-soo cranked up to eleven (but with
less booze). There is plenty of gamesmanship and the protagonist is even a
neurotic filmmaker.
Ito
lets the proceedings lose focus and veers a bit into Malickian excess during
the second part (we’re talking about a two and a half hour running time here), but
there are still moments of pay-off to be found. Despite fitting under a vaguely
experimental rubric, Out There is
surprisingly wistful and even sentimental. He and co-screenwriter Ma (playing a
meta version of himself) explore the nostalgia younger generations often feel
for their parents’ presumably simpler times. Yet, it is most centrally about
the fundamental but messy urge to forge human connections.
Ma
is indeed like an archetypal Hong protagonist—capable of self-analysis to a
crippling degree. Best known for her widely acclaimed adolescent debut in
Koreeda’s Nobody Knows, Ayu Kitaura
gives a smart, mature, exquisitely reserved, and altogether luminous
performance as Ayako.
