HKIFF 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.

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.

******

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.

******

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