Restart (a.k.a. A New Beginning)

It's been almost 10 months since my last post, but I've decided to start blogging again. Much has changed during this period, both personally and the people/events around me, but some things remain the same: my procrastination, my writer's block and my passion for cinema and politics. Any particular reasons for why I'm restarting this blog? A sudden reminiscence for what I've written, the ensuing drive to pick up the activity again, and the same motivations you'll find here. Let's see how it'll go this time...

In the meantime, here's something to whet your cinematic appetite:





Selections for this year's programme that I can gather from the trailer: Marco Bellocchio's Vincere, Claire Denis' White Material, Sabu's Kanikosen, Alain Resnais' Wild Grass, Theo Angelopoulos' The Dust of Time, Patrice Chéreau's Persecution, Takashi Miike's 三池崇史 Yatterman, Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro, Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, Hitoshi Matsumoto's 松本人志 Symbol, Rabbit Without Ears 2, Harry Brown, The Messenger.

Other leaks about the programme from various sources: Frederick Wiseman's La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet; Pianomania; The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers; short films by Clara Law 羅卓瑤, Peter Chan 陳可辛 and Heiward Mak 麥曦茵; Guru Dutt, Krzysztof Zanussi and Shimazu Yasujiro 島津保次郎 retrospectives; brand new restoration of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes; and a complete restoration of Fei Mu's Confucius (by which they inserted the post-credits footage in last year's screenings into the main film).

And of course there's the must-see, one-off screening of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a new version featuring 30 minutes of newly discovered footage and featuring live music accompaniment from the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Buy tickets through UBRTIX here.

Film review 影評: Love Exposure 愛之剝脫

Original Japanese title: 愛のむきだし
Director: Sono Sion 園子溫
Cast: Nishijima Taahiro 西島隆弘, Mitsushima Hikari 満島ひかり, Ando Sakura 安藤サクラ, Atsuro Watabe 渡部篤郎, Watanabe Makiko 渡辺真起子
Length: 237 mins
IMDB

Sono Sion's Love Exposure has all the hallmarks of a great cult film. It's brave and ambitious (it's nearly 4 hours long), has copious amounts of sex and bloody violence, and picks its satiric targets wisely. It even references another cult flick (the Female Convict Scorpion series). While some may feel it's bloated, the film has enough creative energy to sustain your attention for the most part.

Yu Honda's (Nishijima Taahiro) father Tetsu (Atsuro Watabe) becomes a kindly Catholic priest, several years after his wife's death. Tetsu's personality changes abruptly after his brief romance with wild Kaori (Watanabe Makiko). Obsessed with sin, Tetsu forces Yu to confess to him everyday. Sensing his father's nonchalance towards his minor sins, Yu meets a 'master of the obscene' and picks up the art of upskirt photography, all to get closer to his father. Obtaining no sexual arousal from such 'perversion', Yu recalls his late mother's wishes that he finds 'his own Virgin Mary'. Soon, his goddess arrives in the form of men-hating Yoko (Mitsushima Hikari). Meanwhile, Aya Koike (Ando Sakura), a sinister figure of the local cult Zero Church (more like a Christian sect than an Aum Shinrikyo 真理教 clone), is spying on all of them...

Love Exposure provides plenty of guilty pleasures, regardless of whether it's deliberately satirical or simply indulgent. The barrage of panty photos may be shocking at first, but Yu's kung fu panty photo skills transforms it into a hilarious (if a bit repetitive) joke. Then there's the continual presence of the penis, the porno aesthetics, and the surreal religious imagery that leaves a good deal to gaze/flinch at. Most impressive is Ando Sakura's take as a demented villain, something I didn't expect watching her in Torso 性軀幹.

Sono has dabbled into serious issues before (e.g. suicide in Suicide Circle and Noriko's Dinner Table 紀子之食桌) with mixed results. I certainly didn't expect him to produce something didactic this time around, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of themes touched and ridiculed here. The obvious targets of religious fanaticism and puritanism are present, but it's the intersection of love, sex and religious morality that forms the core of the film. The religious dedication to the idea of love coinciding with activities considered outside of sexual norms is refreshingly rebellious.

However, the mediocre image quality inhibits the potential flair of certain scenes- the hazy yellow does spoil our visual appetite. Is Love Exposure a deliberate experiment in digital video (in which case, it fails), or was it originally intended to be a straight-to-video low budget release (hard to believe since Sono's films have done well in the box office)?

Furthermore, the film feels like a stretch in the final hour, not only because of the sudden change of pace (one recital of Corinthians 13 is necessary, two isn't) but also the rather insubstantial and predictable conclusion. It seems that Sono had run out of ideas to fool with, or simply needed to close the film. Sono originally came up with a 6 hour cut- one wonders how many more (interesting) things does he have to say. (Cue the inevitable 'original director's cut' DVD?)

Nevertheless, Love Exposure is an enjoyable, if overlong, ride worth savouring. You certainly won't find this gleeful, politically incorrect mishmash in mainstream cinema.

Love Exposure is showing in the HKIFF.

Film review 影評: Timber Gang 木幫, Survival Song 小李子

Director: Yu Guangyi 于廣義 (Simplified Chinese: 于广义)
Length: 90 mins, 94 mins
Year: 2006, 2008

Sometimes the best films are made at places that the director knows inside out. This is the case for Yu Guangyi, a man without prior filmmaking training or experience, who has created two award-winning documentaries capturing old, impoverished lifestyles in the face of rapid social change in China.

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Yu was raised in Heilongjiang province 黑龍江 in Northern China, and only left at 26. A graduate at the Chinese Academy of Art 中國美術學院 and working as a woodblock print painter, he returned home after 20 years in December 2004, following a group of loggers trekking up the Changbai Mountains 長白山 to cut down trees throughout the winter.

Largely observational, Timber Gang documents the harsh climate and working conditions that the loggers, many of whom Yu knew personally in his childhood, face while trying to make a living. We observe their joyfulness displayed in their opening ritual to the 'Mountain God' slowly dissipating, as their manual labour consumes their 4 months in the wilderness. The primitive working practices take toll on the loggers themselves, who resort to the questionable fire cupping treatment (拔罐), and the horses they use to carry the logs.

Though shot on grainy digital video (don't expect the Discovery Channel treatment), Yu manages to capture some striking scenes. The cutting up of the horses' corpses may be an example of the loggers' resourcefulness, but seeing their sadness suggest that they treat them on equal terms as human colleagues. The poetic ending of death and birth warps into cruel irony when juxtaposed with the end titles, as we are informed that logging is no longer allowed in the area in order to make way for a reservoir.

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Yu's attempt to trace the loggers results in Survival Song, which is not so much a sequel as a separate story. There are more scenic images, and the video quality has improved, but the human drama is even more intimate and pronounced.

It's October 2006, and with the construction of the reservoir it means villages are flooded and relocation necessary. Mr. Han, who Yu knew since army service and once a worker at the Forestry Ministry, lives in an abandoned lodge, relying on illegal hunting and poaching to feed her wife, a cat and two dogs. Xiao Lizi, fired from his job, returns from hiding and stays at Han's home. Their house is 15km away from the reservoir and there are no neighbours within a 5km radius. Loggers occasionally visit, but essentially they're living in the middle of nowhere.

If Timber Gang is a portrait of men at work, then Survival Song shows a family's daily struggle to live. We're not seeing any feats of men conquering (or defeated) by nature, but rather Han's disappointment and resilience, his desire to sleep under a roof and get on with life.

Curiously, Survival Song's centre gradually shifts towards Xiao, a character part quirky and part disturbing. The peculiar relationship between Han and Xiao feels like a buddy movie at times, with Xiao being the useless/helpless partner that gets the laughs. But the 'third act' (if that's an appropriate term for a documentary) reveals there's more strength to him than we suppose.

Yu's involvement within Survival Song is greater, simply because there's less characters (46 in Timber Gang) to work with. We get oddities such as Xiao holding an imaginary microphone and singing a pop song. But the revealing parts come from Han himself. Frustrated by his lowly existence, Han launches tirades questioning his purpose in life, attacking corrupt officials and even the Communist Party. This, combined with the unfortunate turn of events later on, leaves us with a man and his environment being left behind in China's rush towards modernisation.

(N.B. In the post-screening Q&A, Yu said that Xiao is currently a road construction worker living in a normal family, and Han is now single and living with a friend, fulfilling a housewife role.)

Timber Gang and Survival Song were shown in the HKIFF.

Simplified Chinese articles on Timber Gang and Survival Song

Film review 影評: Torso 性軀幹

Director: Yamazaki Yutaka 山崎裕
Starring: Watanabe Makiko 渡辺真起子 Ando Sakura 安藤 サクラ
Length: 104 mins

Don't be misled by the programme guide that Torso is another quirky indie like Lars and The Real Girl (never released in Hong Kong but somehow in Taiwan and Singapore). Instead, realising that Yamazaki Yutaka is a regular collaborater with Kore-ada Hirozaku, and you may expect a quiet, observational and contemplative drama. (You won't, for example, expect Christopher Doyle 杜可風 to direct a Michael Bay-blow-shit-up, unless if he's really drunk.)

However, Yamazaki's directorial debut is a disappointing effort that leaves many loose ends undeveloped and unexplored.

Film review 影評: Tony Manero 周末殺人狂熱- Just a psychopath?

Director: Pablo Larrain
Starring: Alfredo Castro, Amparo Noguera, Paola Lattus, Héctor Morales, Elsa Poblete
Length: 98 mins
Year: 2008
IMDB

Raul (Alfredo Castro) is a 52 year old man with only one goal: to give the best impersonation of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever 週末夜狂熱. He's staging the dance act with a bunch of amateurs at a local restaurant, but he's aiming for a bigger prize: winning a lookalike contest on a TV variety show. But his dedication takes a murderous turn...

As the premise suggests, Tony Manero can easily be a darkly comedic skit on obsession. Raul is Tony Manero- he uses his name, he gets the same suit, he rehearses the same dance routine, and he repeatedly watches Fever to get every detail exactly right. Occasional out-of-focus shots further add to the depersonalisation of Raul. He stops at nothing, and even resorts to violence, to reach full immersion into the character. His acts and antics are both repulsive and humorous, and Castro does a good job playing Raul as a rather pathetic and unfeeling man.

But not satisfied (and rightly so) with mere oddball caricature, director Pablo Larrain sets the film in 1970s Chile, during General Pinochet's rule, and makes Tony Manero a potent social and political allegory. Army patrols, summary executions, the secret police- the lawlessness of the government breeds the lawlessness of its citizens, and perhaps Raul is the personification of the 'anything goes' brutality. The political critique in Tony Manero isn't pointed, but pervasive.

The poverty of Raul's environment, complemented with the grey and grainy lensing, adds another dimension to his character. Though Raul never voices this, his fellow dancers clearly think this act is their getaway key out of the ghetto. While the film doesn't humanise Raul, several scenes, including the telling use of local music and Raul's almost religious experience in watching a certain crucifix scene in Fever, hints to some undercurrents in his character.

We may be witnessing a case of the intoxicating effects of pop culture as a means for escapism, or someone who simply wants to escape from his surroundings, whatever it takes. And it's the eventual TV dance off and its aftermath, with Castro's gestures and movements, that leaves further room for interpretation. All these subtexts add up to make Tony Manero an occasionally amusing, but ultimately a rich, haunting character study.

Tony Manero is showing in the HKIFF.