ND/NF ’17: Autumn, Autumn

Chuncheon is a popular tourist attraction among Koreans, because of its lakes and temples, and partly due to the hit K-drama Winter Sonata that took place there. However, there will be no melodrama for the three characters we follow as they drift through the resort town. They already understand life’s disappointments too well to indulge in any sort of cheap theatrics. Instead, they will attempt to find temporary respite from loneliness in Jang Woo-jin’s Autumn, Autumn, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Ji-hyeon does not know the middle-aged couple, but he is sitting uncomfortably close to them on the commuter train. Although they seem to have an ambiguously romantic relationship, Se-rang and Heung-ju still seem awkward in each other’s presence. Splitting the film’s structure in two (and inevitably prompting a chorus of Hong Sang-soo comparisons in the process), Jang follows Ji-hyeon first. For reasons that are never fully explained, the recent college graduate is having an unusually hard time landing professional employment, so he understandably finds sleepy Chuncheon absolutely stifling. Yet, a horribly awkward encounter with a former classmate will ultimately yield small, but potently bittersweet revelations. Frankly, those will be Jang’s specialty.

When Jang shifts his focus to Se-rang and Heung-ju, they will revisit many of the same landmarks we passed through with the listless Ji-hyeon, but they will try to enjoy them as touristy day-trippers. It turns out they met through a Korean internet dating site, so you know they must be lonely. Technically, Se-rang is not divorced like Heung-ju, but it is doubtful her husband would notice or even care if she started having an affair.

As you should have assumed by now, Autumn, Autumn is not about plot, per se. Despite the parallel construction, it really is not about narrative gamesmanship (in the tradition of Hong) either. Arguably, Jang is not so far removed from the aesthetics of Kore-eda, closely observing his damaged characters in long takes, but inviting sympathy and forgiveness for them at every turn.

Lee Se-rang is utterly heartbreaking yet also affirmingly radiant as her namesake. Likewise, Woo Ji-hyeon’s performance as the graduate is almost shockingly open and vulnerable. Yet, for some reason Jang and Yang Heung-ju largely keep Heung-ju’s defenses up, so we never feel the same sort of empathetic connection to him. Still, he forges an undefinable rapport with Lee, helping facilitate her genuinely moving confidences.

Autumn, Autumn is a wonderfully wise and patient work that conveys the feeling of loneliness in a crowd as well as any of Tsai Ming-liang’s films. Granted, Jang does not have Hong’s wit, but he stays true to himself, never trying to compensate with undue whimsy or sentimentality. Highly recommended for those who appreciate mature human drama, Autumn, Autumn screens this Tuesday (3/21) at MoMA and Thursday (3/23) at the Walter Reade, as part of ND/NF 2017.

ND/NF ’17: By the Time it Gets Dark

Doing justice to controversial historical tragedies on film is a tricky business—just ask Thai filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong, or her analog, or her analog’s analog. Although billed as a meditation on the 1976 Thassanat University Massacre, her recursively self-referential film is more closely akin to the logical-universe-be-damned auteurism of Lynch’s Lost Highway or Zuławski at his most outré. Prepare for déjà vu all over again in Suwichakornpong’s By the Time it Gets Dark (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Ann’s plan was to interview Taew, a highly-respected “public intellectual,” who survived the 1976 incident, in a comfortable vacation home in the provinces. However, it is not clear Ann has the proper depth and maturity for the project. At least she is self-aware of her shortcomings, which results in some rather expressionistic scenes of soul searching. Fortunately, the character based on her will fare better when she interviews the more fashionable Taew in an even nicer McMansion.

There is a fair amount of identity-shifting and sharing in Gets Dark, including Peter, a tobacco worker, who is actually a movie-star having a clandestine affair with his co-star, who will play an “Ann,” but really wants to direct herself. Whenever the various characters or cast-members of the films-within-films are out in public, they are invariable waited on or in some way serviced by the silent Nong. Indeed, she is the constant. No matter which side is currently in power, folks like Nong have to clean up their crap, regardless what sort of ideology the powers-that-be spout.

Gets Dark is impressively ambitious, but the execution is spotty. Instead of keeping careful tabs on each of the film’s sequential Russian dolls of narrative reality, Suwichakornpong essentially hands us mismatched halves, in the hopes that we get the idea of how everything ought to fit together in theory. Still, her commanding visual vocabulary makes quite an impression, particularly the filming of the 1976 atrocities (which we do not immediately recognize as an in-film sequence of movie-making).

Despite the film’s intellectual distance, it boasts some potent performances, including all of the Anns (Visra Vichit-Vadakan, Inthira Charoenpura, and Soraya Nakasuwan) and Taews (Rassami Paoluengtong, Penpak Sirikul, and sort of Waywiree Ittianunkul, as the student activist). Even though she is more or less playing a symbol, Atchara Suwan also has tremendous presence as Nong.

Frankly, there is so much Borgesian gamesmanship in Get Dark, we lose sight of the massacre. In fact, Ming Kai Leung’s warm, hazy cinematography will make viewers more inclined to visit Thailand, so they can sink into its tropical lushness. Ultimately, the film is too awkward and ungainly to hold together, but it is often an interesting misfire, which counts for something. For those who find Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul too mainstream commercial, By the Time it Gets Dark screens tomorrow (3/19) at the Walter Reade and Monday (3/20) at MoMA, as part of ND/NF 2017.

ND/NF ’17: The Future Perfect

Pretty much the first step to assimilation is learning the local language. The national customs and values will not necessarily follow, but just having a frame of reference shaped by the lingua franca can change your outlook. At least that is the experience of a seventeen-year-old Chinese immigrant to Argentina in Nele Wohlatz’s The Future Perfect (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

After years of separation, Xiaobin’s parents have finally brought her over to Buenos Aires. She never says exactly how long they have been apart, but this is the first time she has met her five-ish-year-old sister. Frankly, it is not an especially tearful reunion. They just want her to work. Possibly, they might also arrange a marriage with another Chinese immigrant, but they expect her lead the sort of insular unassimilated life they have accepted.

Yet, despite her initial difficulties, Xiaobin might actually like living in Buenos Aires (though her poker face makes it hard to say with absolute certainty). Regardless, she resolves to learn Spanish after getting summarily fired from a grocery deli for her lack of fluency. It turns out to be a fruitful decision, because her lessons also give Xiaobin a social network, beyond Vijay, the young expatriate Indian computer programmer deli customer, who takes an instant interest in her.

With incredible subtlety, Wohlatz blends the class’s stilted conversation exercises with apparently real life. Slowly but surely, Xiaobin and her classmates meet for coffee or enjoy the local sites, exchanging basic but grammatically correct pleasantries (which can indeed be pleasant). The film’s tense also shifts with the lessons being taught in class, starting with Xiaobin relating her backstory in the past tense as part of an oral exam and ending with her speculating on her possible futures.

It all sounds very stiff and effected, but Zhang Xiaobin makes it work, thanks to her wonderful natural performance. She is scrupulously reserved (some might say deadpan), but Zhang always projects a sense of alertness and intelligence under the guarded façade (which the immigrant teen is undoubtedly entitled to).

Globalization gets a bad rap, but Future Perfect, a film helmed by a German expat about a Mandarin speaking Chinese teen acclimating to Argentina, demonstrates how multinational synergies can produce challenging and idiosyncratic results. Xiaobin’s future remains uncertain, as it must always be, but it is rewarding to watch her take small but steady strides and develop options.

Future Perfect is truly a film of offbeat charm. It is quite highly recommended, but its sixty-five-minute running time makes theatrical distribution challenging (perhaps some adventurous distributor could put it on a double-bill with Sanaz Azari’s fifty-minute language-themed I for Iran). ND/NF pairs it with Wohlatz’s four-minute short Three Sentences About Argentina, which also takes the form of a language lesson, but represents a more formal, intellectual exercise. In any event, anyone interested in The Future Perfect should make a point of seeing it when it screens this Saturday (3/18) at MoMA and Monday (3/20) at the Walter Reade, as part of ND/NF 2017.

ND/NF ’17: The Last Family

Polish surrealist artist Zdzisław Beksiński’s paintings were Giger-esque but his habits were downright Nixonian. He taped a lot. Far more than his family realized. As a result, he left behind a treasure trove of source material for his bio-pic treatment. Home is where the dysfunction is for the Beksińskis, as viewers witness in no uncertain terms throughout Jan P. Matuszynski’s painfully faithful drama, The Last Family (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

The senior Beksiński is afraid of spiders, which further adds to his eccentricity. His son Tomasz is essentially afraid of life, which makes him a constant burden on his parents. Old Zdzisław is inclined to take a more “tough love” approach, but his wife Zofia coddles and indulges him. Although never a household name, Beksiński was already famous enough in the 1970s to lead a life of relative comfort. However, his fateful meeting with Paris-based art journalist and gallery agent Piotr Dmochowski takes him to a much higher level of remuneration.

Dmochowski also facilitated Tomasz’s career as a DJ and pop culture commentator by schlepping over the latest music and VHS releases from the West. Unfortunately, Tomasz’s severe depression coupled with what might have been mild schizophrenia remain a constant source of anxiety for his long-suffering parents.

There are some enormously discomfiting scenes in Last Family, especially when you consider Beksiński probably left behind a tape of each meltdown in question happening in real life. Matuszynski focuses exclusively on the family angst, barely noting the revolutionary macro changes sweeping across Poland. Knowing what they are ignoring, we can get a sense of how distracting and wearying it must have been for the Beksińskis to constantly worry about Tomasz’s fragile state of mind, assuming viewers have that a priori knowledge. However, many might not necessarily understand the stigma attached to mental illness during the Communist era and the dubious treatment options (including sanitariums, whose primary function was the interrogation of political prisoners), which surely made their situation worse.

Regardless, the primary cast-members are all apparently scary dead-ringers for the Beksińskis. Andrzej Seweryn makes the patriarch’s self-absorbed prickliness strangely human and forgivable. Frankly, Dawid Ogrodnik’s Tomasz is such a face-palm inducing disaster area, most viewers will quickly align themselves with Team Zdzisław. His implosions are so convincing, they become excruciating to watch. Poor Aleksandra Konieczna is stuck playing the thankless sainted mother role, but Andrzej Chyra (recognizable from Katyń and Strike) adroitly tethers the film to reality as Dmochowski, the slightly mercenary audience surrogate.

Well, okay then. Maybe your family isn’t so bad after all. Arguably, Matuszynski’s voyeuristic take on Beksiński family values is everything the laughable Ossage County was cracked up to be, succeeding where the Meryl Streep vehicle face-planted, because it is not undermined by embarrassingly hammy, cornball performances. Rather, Matuszynski and company take the audience to some disturbingly true places. Recommended for those who take their coffee and their family drama bitter and black, The Last Family screens this Thursday (3/16) at MoMA and Saturday (3/18) at the Walter Reade, as part ND/NF 2017.

ND/NF ’17: The Summer is Gone

The sad truth is China has become far more oppressive than it was in the 1980s. It was not paradise, but you could breathe under Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang (remember, it was the death of the latter, purged in 1986 that helped spark the Tiananmen Square protests). Things would take a turn for the worse in the 1990s, but a young boy growing up in Inner Mongolia is blissfully oblivious of the macro forces at work, at least until they directly intrude into his life in Zhang Dalei’s The Summer is Gone (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Young Zhang Xiaolei looks up to his father, Chen, whose work at a local film studio gets then admitted to the movies for free. He basically tolerates his school teacher mother Guo, because she is the practical one who worries about getting him admitted to a respectable middle school. He is small for his age, but he still enjoys a largely carefree summer. However, a chance encounter with a teenage bully stokes some unhealthy hero-worship in Zhang. His irresponsible nature will also finally start to try his parents’ patience as they struggle to care for his dying great-grandmother just as Chen loses his job in the first wave of state enterprise privatizations.

Summer boasts Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden as one of its producers, but it feels most aesthetically akin to the work of Edward Yang. You can feel the sun and humidity and smell the wild flowers through the starkly beautiful black-and-white cinematography of Lu Songye (who also lensed Tseden’s Tharlo). It is a coming-of-age story, but Zhang’s attitude towards the era is more bitterly elegiac than sentimentally nostalgic, essentially lamenting: “if only they had known what was in store for them.”

Much like Tseden, Zhang employs a “non-professional” cast of actors, who are really quite professional. As Zhang Xialoei, Kong Weiyi is convincingly bratty in a Huck Finn kind of way, but he also conveys great depth and sudden maturity when faced with personal disappointments and familial tribulations. Zhang Chen plays his father with slow-burning intensity, but it is Guo Yanyuan who really gives the film heart and soul as his quietly forceful, chronically under-appreciated mother.

Zhang’s postscript: “Dedicated to the generation that birthed ours” is a massively potent kicker, because it basically confirms the nature and frequency of sacrifices the third act implies are soon to be visited upon provincial families like Zhang Xiaolei’s. Yet, Zhang Dalei only blames himself (and his analog) for not making better use of the time they had. It is a film of exquisite sensitivity, but it is also surprisingly tough. Highly recommended for those who follow independent Chinese cinema and anyone who likes a good family drama, The Summer is Gone screens this Thursday (3/16) at the Walter Reade and Friday (3/17) at MoMA, as part of ND/NF 2017.