NYAFF ’09: All Around Us

Despite its peaceful reputation, Japan evidently also has its share of violent criminals. During 1990’s the Japanese economy crashed, causing further ripples of disillusionment throughout society. As a courtroom sketch artist, the aimless Kanao sees the worst of it, while struggling with his own domestic drama in Hashiguchi Ryosuke’s All Around Us (trailer here), which screens during the New York Asian Film Festival.

Kanao is not exactly adored by his wife Shoko’s family. Kanao has been content working in a shoe repair store, with little future prospects, until a friend simply hands him his courtroom sketching gig. Shoko, his art school sweetheart, has been more career-motivated and has tried to impose order on their marital relations. However, a personal tragedy sends her spiraling down into depression, which might tear their marriage asunder if the happy-go-lucky Kanao is not able to provide Shoko the emotional support she needs.

Perhaps Kanao’s work has somewhat desensitized him to grief, since he sees mothers mourning children killed in unfathomable ways in court on a regular basis. However, it is more likely that his emotionally distant persona is the result of his peculiar life experiences. Like Shoko, he also experienced a kind of paternal abandonment, but will never have the opportunity for closure she eventually seeks.

There seems to be a recurring motif of problematic fathers or family patriarchs in several Japanese dramas recently imported onto American movie screens, including Yojiro Takita’s Academy Award-winning Departures, Kore-eda Hirokazu’s soon-to-be-released Still Walking, Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s Happily Ever After, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata. While it would surely be a stretch to read anything sociological into such a trend, Around certainly fits the pattern.

Director-screenwriter-editor Ryosuke offers some subtle social commentary in Around. Yet the film is more concerned with its closely observed portrait of a marriage suffering under prolonged strain. To survive, the formerly assertive Shoko and passive Kanao must essentially reverse roles, but the question remains, how much can individuals truly change? He also adds some intriguing color and eccentric supporting characters through his use of the courtroom milieu. Emoto Akira is a particular standout as the appealingly crusty veteran print reporter Yasuda. “A sketcher?” he sneers with ill-concealed contempt when first meeting the clueless Kanao.

Though real-life graphic artist and author Lily Franky might seem like the lead as Kanao, the movie really belongs to Kimura Tae as Shoko. Her precipitous mental decline is frighteningly realistic and her anguish is palpable. It is an intense, heartrending screen performance.

Around is a quiet film, but a heavy one. It confronts head-on the intimate pitfalls of marriage with some scaldingly honest dialogue and its remarkably genuine lead performances. It screens July 2nd and July 5th at the Japan Society as part of the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival.

NYAFF ’09: Climber’s High

In 1985, the North Kanto News was a decent paper for reporters to learn their trade, but those with talent never stayed long. However, when JAL Flight 123 crashed in their prefecture, a national tragedy became the paper’s greatest challenge. For Yuuki Kazumasa, the mountain-climbing reporter quarterbacking the paper’s crash coverage, it would be an especially trying time, both professionally and personally, in Masato Harada’s Climber’s High (trailer here), now screening as part of the New York Asian Film Festival.

After a brief moment of national glory covering the United Red Army terrorists in the 1970’s, the Gunma regional paper is now only distinguished by a potentially explosive sexual harassment suit filed against the owner-publisher. Many assume the old man appointed Kazumasa to head the JAL desk because of malicious rumors involving the reporter’s mother, allegedly a woman of dubious repute. However, nobody at the paper better understands the mountainous terrain of the remote crash-site than Kazumasa, except perhaps his mountaineering friend Anzai. Unfortunately, the overworked circulation clerk slipped into a coma following a freak aneurism, adding to Kazumasa’s worries.

Climber takes the audience into the hothouse environment of the newsroom, where the editorial staff is not necessarily working together to the same ends. Like typical journalists, they have decided biases (like the publisher who refuses to show the Japanese security forces in a positive light), and remain largely oblivious to the devastating grief of the victims’ loved ones. However, Kazumasa comes to understand how important his paper’s coverage is to the bereaved families after a quietly devastating encounter with a new widow and her young son. You have to appreciate a journalist who can tell a colleague: “520 people did not die so you could preach.”

There is an atmosphere of sadness that hangs over Climber, even beyond the catastrophic circumstances of the crash. Kazumasa is a sorrowful figure himself, a slave to his heartless newspaper, but nearly a complete stranger to his own son. Throughout the film, the metaphor of mountain-climbing as a fresh start is certainly never subtle and the contemporary scenes of Yuuki’s redemptive climb of the Partition border on melodrama.

Still, aside from a few heavy-handed father-and-son scenes, Harada’s direction is quite sure-footed. He immerses the audience in the North Kanto’s world, where sexism runs rampant, professional jealousy is common place, and cynicism is the air they breathe. Climber’s ensemble cast all look appropriately tired and jaded, both physically and spiritually. In particular, Shin’ichi Tsutsumi is the personification of world-weariness as Kazumasa, while convincingly hinting at the roiling storm submerged beneath his placid exterior.

Though based on a novel by Hideo Yokoyama, Climber echoes many of the lingering doubts regarding the cause of one of the worst air disasters in Japanese history. Climber’s gritty depiction of the provincial paper ranks as one of the most realistic, least sentimentalized portrayals of professional journalism seen anywhere on-screen in recent years. Yet ultimately, it is a love letter to the zen-like qualities of mountaineering, rather than journalism. It screens June 30th and July 2nd at the Japan Society, as part of a co-presentation with the NYAFF.

NYAFF ’09: Equation of Love and Death

Driving a cab might not be prestigious work, but it ought to serve LiMi’s needs perfectly. She is doggedly searching the city of Kunming for her boyfriend who mysteriously vanished several years ago. Unfortunately, the missing Fang Wen does not seem to want to be found in Cao Baoping’s Equation of Love and Death (trailer here), which screens today during the New York Asian Film Festival.

Li-Mi is cute and tough, but she has serious neurotic tendencies as Equation opens. She compulsively rereads Fang’s letters, obsessing over their dates, hoping to glean a numerological clue to his fate. Yet all she has to show for her efforts are some alarmed customers. One day, two lost souls from the countryside hail her cab, setting in motion a tragic chain of circumstances.

For reasons initially kept obscure, the provincial fares have a rendezvous with a hipster poet on a highway overpass. However, when their contact takes a surprising nosedive into traffic, it causes a nasty accident, ensnaring another man who happens to be a dead-ringer for Fang. Back in Li-Mi’s cab, the desperate yokels become increasingly belligerent, as Equation suddenly takes a detour into thriller territory.

Equation is the sort of film where everything and everyone are ultimately related somehow. However, rather than feeling forced, it all seems like the inevitable result of the film’s internal logic. Cao deftly stage-manages his intricately constructed tale of fickle fate, holding back a few genuinely surprising revelations for the third act.

In a deliberate departure from her glamorous image, Chinese actress Zhou Xun gives a tour-de-force performance as the hardboiled but vulnerable Li-Mi. Her uncannily expressive eyes are truly haunting, belying her gruff, street-smart exterior. Zhou owns the film, but she has some able support, notably from Zhang Hanyu, as an ostensibly sympathetic investigating officer, Ye Qingcheng.

Thanks to Zhou’s remarkable lead performance and Cao’s sensitive direction, Equation is a smartly constructed, richly rewarding film. Highly recommended, it screens today and July 1st at the IFC Film Center as part of the New York Asian Film Festival.

NYAFF ’09: High Noon

If ever there were a place where kids grow up in a socially structured environment, surely it must be Hong Kong. Well, maybe not always. While the prospect of the fast-approaching Beijing Olympics would seem to be a harbinger of great things, seven Hong Kong kids are not immune to the ill effects of broken homes, peer pressure, and street violence in Mak Hei-yan’s High Noon (trailer here), which screens tomorrow afternoon at the New York Asian Film Festival.

Hong Kong kids have never been so connected, seamlessly networked to each other through i-phones and psps. Yet, they also seem to be completely alienated emotionally, living meaningless lives of hollow hedonism. Seven such boys have banded together in what might uncharitably be called a gang. However, they do provide each other some semblance of social support as they drift aimlessly through life.

Each of the seven fits a certain personality type. There is the overweight joker, the slightly older ladies man, and the Billy Elliott-like would-be dancer. Wing, the newest member of the clique, is an aspiring artist who will suffer for his sensitive nature as tragedy starts to envelope his circle. When loverboy seduces a young innocent girl, he naturally films it on his handheld device to share with his friends. Much to the poor girl’s humiliation, it inevitably spreads like wildfire across the internet, leading to recriminations within the group, cracking their sense of solidarity. From that point on, life degenerates precipitously for the boys.

Directed by the twenty-four year old Mak Hei-yan, and featuring a primary cast of the average age of seventeen, Noon has an explicitly youthful look and feel. Mak gives the kids deliberately camping teeny bopper introductions, but eventually settles into a gritty documentary style, which often looks as if it could have been filmed on one of their phones. All seven boys are quite natural on-screen, with Lam Yiu-Sing a particular standout as Wing, the conscience of the group. Also notable is Yu Mun-Ming’s small but heartbreaking supporting turn as their exploited victim.

Noon is part of The Winds of September, a triptych of films conceived by Eric Tsang as an examination of contemporary youth culture in three closely-related Asian territories: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the forthcoming Mainland China. While screening as part of NYAFF’s focus on Hong Kong films, Noon is a radical departure from the HK action tradition. Though many of the kids are borderline delinquents, when violence erupts it is absolutely shocking and disturbingly realistic.

The relentless Noon can be an exhausting viewing experience. It is not for all tastes, but its unsentimental portrait of youth in existential crisis has an undeniable power, which heralds the arrival of a talented new filmmaker. It’s only NYAFF screening will be held Tuesday afternoon (6/23) at the IFC Film Center.

NYAFF: Old Fish

It is tempting to think of Yu Liquing as the Chinese Abe Vigoda. Affectionately known as Old Fish, he is a jaded flatfoot, more interested in ice-fishing than police business. Strictly speaking, he has little formal training in explosives. However, he is the best option available to the Harbin police when a mad bomber starts leaving fiendishly constructed explosive devices throughout the city in Gao Qunshu’s gritty character-driven police procedural Old Fish, which screens as part of the New York Asian Film Festival.

The Northeastern city of Harbin is still largely influenced by its Russian cultural heritage and harsh climate. Winters can be pretty grim. It is not a good time to be rushing around the city, defusing one deadly package after another, but that is the position Old Fish finds himself in. Previously, most of his bomb disposal work involved unearthed WWII-era landmines and munitions. Suddenly, he finds himself contending with ticking time-bombs and sophisticated remote control detonators. It all makes for a dangerously exhausting day for Old Fish, depicted with exacting realism by Gao Qunshu.

Gao leaves the business of chasing the bad guys to other off-camera officers, concentrating on the Old Fish’s nerve-wracking role as a one-man bomb squad. He seems to be more interested in capturing the working conditions and processes of the Harbin cops than building traditional movie suspense. Through his lens, we see a bureaucratic police force rife with cronyism, where officers have trouble expensing a simple length of rope. This naturalistic approach is perfectly served by the dark, dilapidated tenement sets and cinematographer Luo Pan’s coarse visual style.

Former policeman Ma Guowei brings complete credibility and sincerity to the title role, clearly conveying the sharp intellect beneath his laconic facade. His veteran copper is not really world-weary per se, just a bit disillusioned after years of service. The surrounding cast also has that unquantifiable cop look down pat, including Pan Xingyi as a spirited younger colleague and screenwriter Lan Jinglin as their captain.

Gao’s choices in Old Fish are certainly unconventional, de-emphasizing most of the tried and true elements of the crime thriller. However, the drama and tension of the story remain inescapable. It is an intriguing film, featuring a richly textured lead performance from Ma. It screens at the IFC Film Center during the NYAFF on June 23rd and June 25th.

NYAFF ’09: When the Full Moon Rises

Which are more dangerous, supernatural phantoms or Communist guerillas? Both stalk the jungles of a provincial Malaysian village in Mamat Khalid’s When the Full Moon Rises (trailer here), a wildly comedic homage to Malaysian B-movies that screens during the New York Asian Film Festival.

Saleh is the Malaysian Carl Kolchak. Recently fired by his newspaper for his sensationalistic stories, Saleh finds himself stranded in a secluded village following a truly freak accident. Forced to swerve off the road, his tire is punctured by an ancient dagger clasped in the hands of a skeletal body—mysterious circumstances guaranteed to arose the suspicions of an intrepid newsman such as he.

Fortunately for Saleh, he quickly encounters a helpful mechanic, who as an added bonus has his beautiful sister Cik Putih along for company. Of course, Saleh quickly falls head-over-heels for the mysterious beauty. Stuck in town, Saleh starts investigating the unexplained disappearances that have plagued the outlying area. He also attracts the attentions of Miss Rohayah, a sultry but scrupulously proper night club singer. Others are determined to see him leave, which they make clear even to him through their repeated beatings.

Moon might be a specific tribute to the lost Malaysian cinema of the 1950’s, but viewers only familiar with American low-budget genre pictures will still get all the jokes. It is a great looking film, shot in gorgeous black-and-white. It hits all the film noir notes, like the lamenting flashback framing device, with the right degree of irony.

At times, the actual plot is nearly incomprehensible, but arguably that too is in keeping with the genre, and the likable Rosyam Nor holds it all together nicely as the befuddled Saleh. Umie Aida, Avaa Vanya, and Corinne Adri also add plenty of appeal as the femme fatales vying for the innocent reporter.

At times, Moon brings to mind the best aspects of Roger Corman’s early films, including the totally cool retro graphics of the opening title sequence. It also features a swinging jazz-flavored soundtrack by Ahmad Kamal Baharudin, featuring a groovy combo credited as “The Pallbearers.” Frankly, Vanja’s songs as Miss Royayah are also far better than one might expect.

Clearly, Khalid has a genuine affection for the noir thrillers and horror films which inspired Moon. He keeps the lunar madness moving at good pace, spinning a whirlwind of oddball characters and things that go bump in the night. His humor runs the gamut from clever verbal asides to broad physical comedy (sometimes involving poor Saleh’s hernia). It is a fun little movie with a fantastic look and sound. It screens at the IFC Film Center during this year’s NYAFF June 20th and July 1st.

NYAFF ’09: Dachimawa Lee

Dachimawa Lee might be a 1940’s secret agent, but his look and attitude are vintage 1970’s. A true-blue Korean patriot, Lee has a score to settle with a cabal of Japanese spies in Ryoo Seung-wan’s Dachimawa Lee (trailer here), a send-up of low budget Korean hwalgeuk action fare, which screens during the New York Asian Film Festival.

Dachimawa Lee loves his country so much, he can spontaneously break into patriotic song. However, when Geum Yon-ja, his lover and partner in espionage, is killed by the Japanese, it gets personal for the humorless action hero. Fortunately, Lee is teamed-up with Mari, another bombshell agent, but being a moody 1970’s era male chauvinist, it takes him a while to warm up to her.

Dachimawa’s crazy cast of characters are chasing a golden Buddha, concealing a list of Korea’s global network of agents—sort of a 1940’s version of Mission Impossible’s NOC list. Along the way, it pokes fun at most of the spy film conventions, like the Q-like gadget inventor. There are also plenty of high energy fight sequences, using some of the tried-and-true moves perfected by the Stooges.

The helmet-haired Im Weon-heui plays Lee unyieldingly straight. Essentially, he is a constant sight gag, sticking out like a sore thumb, but unfortunately as a rooting interest, he is not particularly likable. However, Park Shi-yeon (seen in the weepy melodrama A Love during last year’s NYKFF) exudes a luminous sex appeal and fragile vulnerability as the mysterious Mari. No question about it, she has star quality.

While Dachimawa has some reasonably engaging intrigue and double-crossings, it gets bogged down with a long subplot involving amnesia midway through. Still, it builds to the film’s best fight scene, featuring a meat clever. Despite its period charm, Dachimawa does not quite live up to the early promise of its super-groovy retro-70’s titles sequence. Still, Choi Seung-hyun’s appropriately funky themes give the action sequences some real flair.

The comedy of Dachimawa is broad and slapsticky. Clearly, it is not Crouching Tiger or The Hero, but genre fans should enjoy its relentlessly goofy spirit and its old school action aesthetic. It screens as part of this year’s NewYork Asian Film Festival on June 21 and 26th at the IFC Film Center.

NYAFF ’09: K20 Legend of the Mask

Had Japan made peace with America and Britain, they would have been spared the destruction of WWII, but would have regressed into a Dickensian world of strictly segregated social classes and Victorian fashions. Such is the alternate historical backdrop of Shimako Sato’s K-20: the Legend of the Mask (trailer here), a Japanese homage to 1940’s pulp fiction and movie serials, which screens during the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival.

Heikichi Endo has no intention of becoming a gentleman thief. However, when the notorious K-20, the so-called Fiend with Twenty Faces, frames the innocent circus acrobat for his crimes, Endo must don the mask of K-20 to clear his name. Given the rigid class system of Mask’s 1949 Japan, the deck is stacked heavily against the working-class Endo. He can trust nobody, except for some street urchins who could have come straight out of Oliver Twist and the mechanical tinkerer from his former circus. However, he might find an unlikely ally in the Duchess Yoko Hashiba. She is attractive too, but unfortunately engaged to Baron Kogoro Akechi, the police detective who has become K-20’s Javert-like nemesis.

Mask works far better than other American-produced retro-costumed caper films, like The Shadow, The Phantom, and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Sato has a real talent for the aerial action sequences, including the particularly cinematic rescue of the Duchess during her wedding dress fitting. The period costumes and production designer Anri Kamijo’s grand set pieces create a richly realized steampunk look for the film. It also cleverly integrates colorful historical details, like Tesla’s experiments and the 1908 Tunguska explosion, into its alternate universe.

As Endo, Takeshi Kaneshiro is a pleasantly sympathetic reluctant hero. Likewise, Takako Matsu is engagingly charismatic as the plucky Duchess. Yet, Toru Nakamura probably shows the most intriguing screen presence as the aristocratic detective.

Sato usually keeps it all moving along at an agreeably frenetic pace, with a lot of caped people flying through the air. Unfortunately, the excessive class warfare of her screenplay is a periodic distraction from the otherwise pulpy entertainment. Still, she gets high style points for overall execution.

Mask is the kind of energetic genre fun the NYAFF programs better than anyone else. Stylish and colorful, it easily holds its own with most of Hollywood’s special effects laden fare. It screens at the IFC Film Center June 20th and June 30th.