FCS ’17: Bitter Money

Even prior to the Ming Dynastic Era, Huzhou was known as a center of the silk trade and for the production of ink brushes. Somewhat logically, it is now a regional hub of the Chinese textile industry, but that does not necessarily make it a fun place to live and work—quite the contrary, in fact. Wang Bing documents the hardscrabble lives of a number of migrant workers laboring away in Huzhou’s sweatshop-like workshops in Bitter Money, which screens as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

There is more “reality” in Wang Bing’s body of work than the entire reality television genre, in toto. Yet, Bitter Money could almost be considered his Real World, given how much of it is confined to the dilapidated dormitory provided by the workshop owner for his employees. Initially, we meet two teen cousins as they take the long rail passage from Yunnan to Huzhou in search of work, but Wang will only follow them for so long. Like Linklater’s Slacker, he will hop from one textile worker to another that might happen to cross their paths. It looks random, but he seems to have inside info telling him when to jump. As a result, he captures a nasty confrontation between twenty-five-year-old Ling Ling and her defiantly unsupportive (and physically violent) husband Erzi.

By far, Ling Ling and Erzi represents the most extreme case in Bitter Money. Most of the dormitory residents are reasonably healthy, undeniably hardworking, and in some instances maybe even somewhat happy. Two teenage sisters certainly look and sound like teens you might meet anywhere else in the world, but it is a shame they aren’t in high school, where they could better enjoy gossiping about boys. However, hard-drinking Huang Lei is another hard case. Whether the boss’s refusal to pay him until he sobers up is protective or exploitative is a highly debatable question.

Frankly, there is more such ambiguity in Bitter Money than most of Wang’s uncompromisingly soul-crushing documentaries. Nobody appears to be making much money out of textiles, unless it is the “big factories” that factor so prominently in rumors throughout the film. From what the audience can pick up on, the margins just sound punishing. Yet people keep coming and they keep finding work, albeit at wages not far above subsistence level.

Once again, Wang is fleet of foot and handy enough with the handheld to capture some telling moments. Arguably, this is the most engaging group of subjects he has filmed since Three Sisters. We feel sympathy for nearly all of them, but we only despair for a select few, which gives it a considerably less downcast tone than most of his films. There is a lot of life going on in Bitter Money, as everyone tries to get by as best they can. Recommended for admirers of Wang’s intense examination of the human condition in contemporary China, Bitter Money screens this Thursday (2/23), as part of the 2017 edition of Film Comment Selects.

FCS ’17: Dogs

How do you keep 550 hectacres of strategically located land undeveloped for years, even during Romania’s Communist era? You have to be one bad cat, like Roman’s late grandfather, whom he hardly knew. Perhaps not surprisingly, the town’s terminally ill police chief and various low life thugs are less than welcoming when Roman takes possession of his property (with the intent to sell) in Bogdan Mirică’s Dogs (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

“Uncle Alecu’s” property comes with a cranky caretaker, a snarling guard dog ironically named “Police” and a drafty old farmhouse with a shotgun prominently displayed. Soon after his arrival Police the dog alerts him to two strange cars secretly meeting in the middle of Old Alecu’s barren scrub grass. A few days later, Roman and his sales agent Sebi Voicu interrupt another such nocturnal rendezvous. Rather ominously, Voicu’s car was discovered abandoned shortly thereafter.

Voicu’s disappearance is one of two cases Chief Hogas is trying to clear. The other involves a severed foot discovered floating in a nearby pond. Unfortunately, two serious complications have imposed artificial time constraints on Hogas. His precinct is imminently due to be replaced by a roving mobile unit and his body is fatally riddled with cancer. Before he goes, Hogas desperately hopes to take down his nemesis, Samir, the local drug trafficking kingpin.

Dogs could indeed be considered the Romanian No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water. It definitely has a contemporary western vibe, but it is still a Romanian film, so it should come as no surprise Dogs is a bit of a slow-starting slow-builder. Yet, Mirică organically develops the tension out of the moody, frontier-like setting. While the title is somewhat metaphorical, Police the junkyard dog still gets plenty of screen time. If you liked A Dog’s Purpose, you would probably be utterly horrified by Mirică’s Dogs, but it is still features some impressive canine screen work.

Dragos Bucur is actually a rather big fellow, but he manages to make Roman convincingly gawky and passive. Gheorghe Visu is quite salty and wry, playing Hogas much like a Romanian Jeff Bridges, except more emaciated. Constantin Cojocaru adds plenty of sinister local color as the caretaker, Epure, but Police’s constantly barking presence really makes the film.

Dogs steadily works towards some legit genre mayhem, while still staying true to its Romanian New Wave heritage. Mirică shows tremendous patience and a careful command of mise-en-scene, but it is still one of the more easily watchable Romanian films you are likely to see on the festival circuit. It really is a thriller and not just a film that inherits the category label, because it includes cops and guns. Recommended with enthusiasm for discriminating viewers, Dogs screens this Thursday night (2/23), as the conclusion of the 2017 edition of Film Comment Selects.

FCS ’17: Harmonium

Japanese cinema has brought us gracefully humanistic masterworks of domestic drama from the like of Yasujiro Ozu, Yasujiro Shimazu, and Yoji Yamada. This is not one of them. The Toshio Suzuoka and his family are not exactly happy, but they are essentially in a state of equilibrium until the arrival of an associate from his past in Kôji Fukada’s Harmonium (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

In all honesty, Suzuoka is not an especially loving husband or father, but he provides well enough with his garage-based metal-working shop. In fact, business is brisk enough, he can hallway justify bringing on Kusataro Yasaka as his assistant. Unbeknownst to his wife Akie, Suzuoka was the accomplice Yasaka never named for his role in the murder he has just finished serving a prison sentence for. Obviously, Suzuoka is acting out of guilt, but his wife and daughter Hotaru take a genuine liking to the new member of the household, even when Yasaka partially confides in Akie (diplomatically leaving out her husband involvement).

At first, Harmonium seems to follow the general trajectory of Down and Out in Beverly Hills, with Akie fighting to deny her sexual attraction to Yasaka, and ten-year-ish Hotaru looking up to him as a supplemental parent-figure (especially when he starts giving her lessons on the titular pump organ). However, the film takes a shockingly disturbing turn late in the second act that frankly might be too much for many viewers.

Regardless, the effects of the now missing Yasaka’s actions will remain ever present for his former employers. Yet, fate takes an almost Biblical turn when the grown son Yasaka never knew is unknowingly hired by Suzuoka to succeed him.

Harmonium is a taut, claustrophobic film, but it never observes traditional thriller conventions. In fact, it has a pronounced habit of zagging whenever you expect it to zig. Although certainly not a genre film per se, it is still something of a domestic horror story. In many ways, it compares quite directly with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata.

All four starting principals give impressively assured, stringently restrained performances, but it is especially harrowing to see Mariko Tsutsui go slightly, but not completely nuts as Akie Suzuoka. It is also rather remarkable how Tadanobu Asano can shift Yasaka from quietly world weary to fiercely ominous with almost imperceptible alterations in body language and tone of voice. Yet it is Momone Shinokawa and Kana Mahiro who really tear up viewers as the younger and older incarnations of Hotaru.

Arguably, the ending is maybe a bit too indeterminate for such an otherwise uncompromising film. Regardless, it is definitely the work of an assured stylist of distinctly Japanese sensibilities. Highly recommended for the unsentimental, Harmonium screens this Tuesday (2/21) as part of the 2017 edition of Film Comment Selects.