NOTE: The following entry is one that I wrote at the end of November of 2013 and never published. Not because I felt my points were bad or opinions uninteresting as much as out of laziness and unwillingness to edit it. I came across it while looking up films to write about for this journal, and realized that many of the movies I wanted to talk about were on this list. So here it is!
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Since all but one of the films I saw at the festival were Asian,
this little banner fits kind of perfectly. |
As I mentioned previously I have for the last ten days been attending screenings at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Sweden is a small country and being someone who has gotten a taste for a pretty wide variety of cinema it can be slightly frustrating. I've mostly relied on Amazon to guide me to directors and works I might like, but now I had a chance to see some new releases on the big screen. I attended a total of fourteen screenings along with an event focused on Swedish short subjects. I will not be talking about the shorts since availability will be so varied and uncertain, but I want to make a list of all the movies I saw and order them by number to show how much I liked each film. So without further ado, let's get started!
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| I have never seen a movie make the act of characters changing clothes look as awesome as Cold Eyes does. |
1. Cold Eyes (Choi Ui-suk, Kim Byung-seo)
I have to say that Cold Eyes had me worried. South Korea as a country does truly excel at making tight, well thought out thrillers, but something about Cold Eyes made me think it would be a standard 2 hour macho-fest. In a way I feel some voice deep down inside me that's telling me "Christian, you're a film student! There has to be something else that was better that you saw? Something that had something to say!", but the majority of my heart and brain has an answer for that voice: "Cold Eyes has something to say! That spying on criminals and outsmarting people is fucking rad!". In fact it might be the film student in me that loves Cold Eyes most of all. It is so well-made that most American studios and their directors should see it just to see how you properly film, edit and pace a scene. There are moments in Cold Eyes that thrill more than any American action movie I have seen since Terminator 2: Judgement Day and in a way that is sad. I'll leave it at that since my last entry centered entirely around this movie and I feel I have covered enough to prove my point; Cold Eyes reminded me why I want to make movies in the first place. And yes, I know it's a remake of the Chinese film Eye in the Sky (which I have not seen) and it still ranks the highest. Because remake or not, great artistry is still great artistry!
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| Cousin's niece, being used as a subject by his equally playful nephew. |
2. The Story of Children and Film (Mark Cousins)
Mark Cousins is a name that any cineast or movie buff should know, not that I expect that to actually be the case. Cousins is a man who truly loves and understands the film medium with such great articulation that he has come to the forefront as a guru of sorts. His TV-epic The Story of Film is a 15 hour long masterpiece spanning film's history from the Lumiere brothers all the way to last year. Unlike most people however, Cousins uses his personal connections and information not as a neutral fact-spewing narrative but adds his thoughts, insights and own footage of the places that changed film the most from decades past to make you understand why he loves film.
The Story of Children and Film is similar to the show, only this time it doesn't focus on film's history as much as the way films portray and mirror the essences of childhood. The good thing about Cousins is how his journies and reputation has given him a vast network of contacts throughout the world. Not interested in telling the traditional story of the "hero child" that so many American movies about children focus on, Cousins instead highlights more obscure movies from all over the globe. The Story of Children and Film isn't just a fascinating achievement for the lovers of cinema, but is an excellent reminder of what children are like. I think it may very well be a near perfect tool for anyone who doubts their ability to write children in stories.
The Story of Children of Film is a gem I want to take home as soon as possible.
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| Real is a lot of things. But the title is not one of them. |
3. Real (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Real is one of the most sophisticated films I have seen all year. It story revolves around Koichi, a twenty-something who's girlfriend Atsumi has been left in a comatose state after a failed suicide attempt. The hospital that Atsumi is located at has a set of machines that through a technique called "Sensing" allows someone compatible with Atsumi's brain patterns to enter her subconcious and communicate with her. Koichi is sent in, and through a series of sessions starts to get closer to reaching Atsumi. Soon however things from the sensing sessions begin to bleed over to his reality, causing Koichi to start to doubt everything he sees and hears in front of him.
I found
Real to be a very fun experience. I described it to my friends as a film that would occur if
The Matrix and
Inception got together and had a baby that they raised to have an obsession with the Loch Ness Monster.
The movie's story twists and turns about as you would expect and even though I saw the final revelation coming it didn't impede my enjoyment of the film. The film's visual style and rather unique final act made up for it quite well. Highly recommended.
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| Bo-na suddenly finds herself the center of attention for the first time in her life. |
4. How to Use Guys With Secret Tips (Lee Won-suk)
I have learned a whole lot about my own tastes as of late, and this film festival has if anything given me the final comfirmation I needed.
How to Use Guys With Secret Tips is one of the dumbest movies I saw at the festival, but it's still a movie I can't wait to see again. It tells the story of Choi Bo-na, a struggling 30 year-old assistant director who just can't seem to catch a break. The same asshole steals her cab every morning, despite being structured and driven she still can't get passed being the second assistant director to a complete slob and the men at her workplace don't listen to her at all. After a particularly disastrous shoot, Bo-na stumbles upon a vendor who sells her a series of self-help tapes that he claims will teach her to get men to do whatever she wants. Much to Bo-na's surprise the tapes actually work and soon she is directing commercials, getting hit on and on the verge of a relationship with one of South Korea's biggest actors.
The humor of
How to Use a Guy With Secret Tips is classically Korean, filled with awkward moments, slapstick and characters acting completely mind-blowingly stupid. This movie is one of those films that I probably shouldn't like as much as I do, but something just clicks. South Korea has in recent years seemingly had somewhat of a revolt in their storytelling, finally questioning the lack of female leads in their films. Both this and
Cold Eyes have female protagonists, and even though they are both somewhat helpless and shy at their respective stories beginnings both learn to fight their way through "the man's world" and have by the end become strong characters in their own right.
My choice of this movie I can't really motivate much more than just saying that is is just plain fun and luckily it is one of few films from the festival that does have a solid European DVD release date in early 2014. (NOTE: it's out in the UK now, distributed by Third Window Films)
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| Zheng, trying to use her weaponized smile to get what she wants. |
5. So Young (Vicki Zhao)
So Young was after
Cold Eyes the biggest surprise of the festival for me. The longest film I saw, clocking in at 132 minutes I expected it to be an overly long unengaging drama. I guess most of all I expected it to be forgettable and lack anything to make it stand out.
So Young plays out much like a classic American college comedy, but with a Chinese twist to the whole proceedings. The story circles around college student Zheng, a remarkably cute girl filled with enthusiasm over starting her college career. The reason for her enthusiasm is that a boy whom she has been in love with since she was a little girl is attending the same school as her, and the two left each other making a non verbal agreement that they would finally be together when they were re-united. Zheng soon finds that the boy has gained a visa to study in America and has left the school.
Distraught, Zheng finds comfort in her roommates and before long finds herself head over heels in love with another boy. So Young is predictable and is oddly paced. The first two acts take place in the college and follows Zheng and the students she interacts with through their ups and downs, while the last third jumps forward in time to catch up with them years later. I have heard rumors saying that the original cut of the film was close to four hours long and that the studio forced director Vicky Zhao to make enormous cuts to the finished product. This would explain why some parts of the film feel really well paced while others feel almost criminally rushed. This being said almost makes me question my judgement and why I like this movie so much. Why is this movie so high on my list?
Simple really, it's charm lies in its characters. Zheng and her three roommates are all fun and through their first drunken night together we come to like them all and regard them as recognizable personalities, because nearly all of us had had one of those nights where you know that things have changed for the better. You are no longer roommates, you are friends. I liked these characters so much I didn't want the movie to end, because it would mean that my connection to them would be severed, no matter how shallow a connection it was. It should be a testament to any film that I can without a doubt say that if there is a four hour version of
So Young out there, and I would have the chance to see it I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I will hope, much like Zheng does for the love of the boy at her school, that one day that version will be mine. That or the actress that plays Zheng herself, because she is so cute it almost hurts to look at.
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| Quiming, still romantic, naive and hopeful. |
6. Trap Street (Vivian Qu)
Another film I covered in my last entry.
Trap Street is a serious look at how the Chinese government uses modern technology to monitor and control the populace. The film itself is rather basic from a technical perspective. Colorless, somewhat unpolished and filled with dirty, ugly environments. But that's why the movie works, at times you wonder if it's all right for us as an audience to see what is going on, because the film is so controversial in mainland China that it will never be seen there. The film focuses around Quiming, a surveyor who when measuring streets runs into a beautiful woman whom he soon develops a serious romantic attitude toward. Their paths cross several times and soon he is firmly wrapped up in the woman's personal life. But it becomes clear that the woman's job is classified governmental work and soon the surveyor finds himself being questioned by people he's never met before.
Trap Street is frightening and remarkably effective at conveying its message. I left the movie theater angry, sad and worried for the future. I think director Vivian Qu would be pleased, because I think that's exactly what she wanted.
(Again, covered heavily previously so I don't want to say much more than that).
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| Sunhi and the three men in her life. |
7. Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-su)
Hong Sang-su had two movies at the film festival this year, and
Our Sunhi was the second of the two that I saw. The other one,
Nobody's Daughter Haewon left me worried because of how similar their premises were. Both were about female film students, who have problems with the men in their life. The similarities transcend the script and litter the visual elements of the films. Both Haewon and Sunhi wear the same style coat and both spend a lot of time walking around talking about seemingly everyday things. The films are almost Ozu-like in the way they use similar locations, camera positions and script structure to tell two stories that are very similar to begin with.
Lucky for me I guess that one of these two movies was able to seriously grab a hold of me, then.
Our Sunhi is about Sunhi (imagine that), a film student who has a tendency to vanish for months if not years at a time. At the start of the film Sunhi has re-appeared from one of these absences and goes to her teacher to ask for a letter of recommendation. What follows is a comedic study of Sunhi, uncertain with what she wants and how the men in her life (the teacher, her ex-boyfriend and a mutual friend who links the other three) react to her. Sunhi herself, is somewhat of a blank slate. She mopes a lot, is reluctant to truly take responsibility and is seemingly only enthusiastic when the oppurtunity to consume vast amounts of fried chicken while getting drunk on Soju and beer appear.
However it functions within the story and the climax fits the character of Sunhi rather perfectly. It's funny, simple and filled with beautiful locations, and while it doesn't leave a huge emotional impression I think that's part of the film's greatness. It doesn't explicitly tell you how to feel, and much like Sunhi herself, you might not know how you truly do feel at the end.
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Jiale and his parents sit down for dinner, Terry is in the background,
much like the role she struggles with throughout the film. |
8. Ilo ilo (Anthony Chen)
In the Singaporean drama
Ilo ilo we are introduced to a upper middle class (maybe even higher by Singaporean standards) family who are struggling. The mother is pregnant, a few months away from having their second child, the father is a struggling salesman of glass and their son, Jiale, is a spoiled brat who can't seem to behave himself in school.
The mother, who still has to work despite being pregnant, hires a nanny from the Philippines named Terry. The movie centers around Terry, and the hardships she faces having been sent to this place she doesn't know, while also struggling with the emotionally taxing thought of having left her own 1-year-old son back at home with her sister.
Ilo ilo is a stable, interesting and well-told story, which only real problem is that it has been told so many times before. The things that still makes me really like it is the setting itself. Singapore is a fascinating backdrop and if anything bothers me about the film it is that we, all things considered get to se remarkably little of it. But the film is hardly weak narrative wise, just not overly strong either. Recommended, if only for the setting.
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| The protagonist of the bookend-segment, Se-young looking moody. |
9. Horror Stories II (Kim Whi, Kim Sung-ho, Jum Bum-shik, Min Kyu-dong)
Quality isn't always assured, but when it comes to horror themed anthology movies I rarely find myself unentertained by them. Be it
Creepshow,
Three... Extremes or
V/H/S there is always at least one segment which you usually leave thinking "I really liked that one where...", making the entire experience worthwhile. And as far as feeling that the whole experience was worth it
Horror Stories II definitely holds up. The movie consists of four seperate stories; three featured as their seperate entries and a fourth story acting as the bookend and transition between the other three. The story that leads us through the others is about two workers at an insurance company who are mulling over old cases one night. The younger and least experienced of the two is a goth girl named Se-young, who happens to be psychic which her superior uses to have her read off bizarre case files as to figure out if they really should have given payment on them.
The three case files the film shows us are all vastly different in their approach and better for it. The first segment which centers on two friends who have just made a succesful investment in stocks and come out with quite a bit of money, and decide to take a nice nature hike in the mountains to celebrate. They soon find themselves trapped with a Snickers bar as their only food supply, and paranoia threatens to consume them both.
The second is about three girlfriends driving home from a party. The two in the front seat are drinking and the third in the back is sobre. One thing leads to another and they crash the car, and now they have to walk back to the house, but the woods are cold and dark and the three soon get the feeling that someone or something is watching them from behind the trees.
The third and last is about a teacher who after having embarrased himself in front of his new class on the first day, is told by one of his students who just happens to like the dark arts that there is another world very similar to this one and that by riding an elevator and following certain rules you can cross over to that world. The teacher does this, but soon realizes that the trade is far from worth it and now one question remains: how does he get back?
Ironically the segments are featured in the order that I like them with the first being the weakest and the third and last one being the best, managing to include both unsettling imagery and that classic Korean humor that works so well because the situation itself is so unfunny. The first just seems very by the books, and the use of a Snickers bar, and yes they DO make sure the logo is always facing upward whenever it is shown, which just makes it feel so cheap.
The middle segment is the most visually solid, using creepy woods very effectively. It's story is rather predicatble, but it didn't bother me that it was because of how well executed the mise-en-scene was.The third one was something else. Managing to combine ridiculous slapstick with disgusting visuals to create a tension seldom seen in western horror stories. My only problem with this segment is the ending, which feels forced and somewhat mean-spirited.
All in all,
Horror Stories II was one of the few films I saw at the festival that I would be able to see myself watching with a group of friends. It's an easy watch, and now my only problem is finding it and the original on DVD...
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If your sexual embraces include knives? You MIGHT need
to rethink your life slightly. |
10. Moebius (Kim Ki-duk)
Kim Ki-duk certainly isn't one to shy away from controversy, and in writing this I wish I could say that
Moebius wasn't the first of his movies that I have seen, but sadly it is. I have actually collected nearly every major work that Kim has made and I let my copy of his probably most widely recognized release
3-Iron sit in front of my Blu-ray player all through the festival in hopes that I would eventually get to it, which I obviously didn't.
From what little I know about his movies Kim Ki-duk has a fascination with the concept of human sexuality and how various people relate to it. Be it a monk struggling with celebacy in
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... And Spring, young female prostitutes in
Samaritan Girl or a gangster's inability to forget a woman who he feels wronged him in
The Bad Guy, sex always seems to have a heavy role in any Kim Ki-duk film.
Moebius made headlines when it was both critically lauded and panned at the Cannes film festival this year. The movie was apparently so disgusting that some people couldn't stand the film, whilst others heralded it as genius and deeply profound.
The story of
Moebius centers around a teenage boy and his parents, of which none are ever given names as far as my non-Hangul-reading brain can recall. The father is having an affair with an attractive store clerk and the mother disgusted with her husband's promiscuous behavior decides to get revenge by cutting off his penis when he is sleeping. When the husband wakes up and stops her she instead moves to their son's room and proceeds to cut off his penis and vanish in the ensuing chaos.
What follows is an odyssey of self-exploration as the son (and to some extent the father) try to understand what role exists for a young man who has had his physical embodiment of manhood removed. The journey is filled with sexual fetishes, violent outbursts and abuse of women and is at spots really hard to watch and had Kim taken the straightforward approach with the story it probably would have made the movie a lot easier to like, for some people anyway. But the crux of
Moebius is that the film is done entirely without dialogue, none of the characters exchange any words that the audience is allowed to hear. The few conversations are heard only as mumbling through glass windows or behind closed doors.
This is
Moebius's best and worst move at the same time. It makes the proceedings feel more feral, at times making at least me forget that I was watching a movie with people in the modern world at all. The cast felt more like cavemen than modern people. They were feral. It makes the atrocities easier to accept. However it also becomes frustrating when the lack of dialogue forces characters to work around plot elements that could easily be resolved by just speaking a line. It also happens a few too many times to disregard as "that's just the format" and forgive it. Besides that there are moments that almost feel like farce I really liked
Moebius, but more for what it was going for rather than what it actually ended up being. I will continue my voyage through Kim Ki-duk's filmography, that has at least been assured.
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| Yumeko and Buusuke, un-merged. |
11. Nuigulumar Z (Noboru Iguchiy)
How to explain
Nuigulimar Z without making it sounds like something I'm just pulling out of my ass... It's about a... Japanese girl named Yumeko who moves in with newly divorced sister and her 12 year-old daughter. The daughter is excited because this day just happens to be her birthday and it is the first birthday she is sharing with her mother without her abusive father being present. The mother is in the process of finishing the sewing of a teddybear named Buusuke for her daughter when an alien spore flies in through the window and hears the plight of the daughter, and of how lonely she feels and how the mother works too much. The spore lands in the teddybear and vows to always protect the beautiful princess.
When Yumeko (who also happens to be a fan of the Japanese Lolita fashion craze) shows up, the daughter becomes furious by the notion that this stranger is going to live with them. The mother takes the two to dinner and tries to make her daughter get along with her sister. A zombie outbreak puts a stop to these plans however and the mother is killed. When the zombies theaten the life of the daughter the alien in the teddy bear makes his presence known and merges with the Lolita-loving Yumeko to become the titular "Nuigulumar" a shock-pink-latex-wearing super heroine with bearclaws, yarn grappling hook and awesome fighting moves! With Buusuke and Yumeko in agreement over their interest to protect Yumeko's niece the two promise to always be there for her, no matter what.
Nuigulumar Z is what you would get if you took Nakashima Tetsuya's
Kamikaze Girls, Seth McFarlane's
Ted and a classic ranger-sentai and put them in a blender. It's a film that looks cheap, filled with terrible dialog and is incredibly low on actual substance... But I still kind of love it. Though the characters are shallow (certainly Yumeko's niece's reluctance to warm up to her aunt FIVE YEARS after her mother's death and having lived with no one but Yumeko for said years is a classic example of "because the plot said so"-writing) there is some sense of fun in the proceedings that elevate it above just feeling aimless. In fact one thing that is rather fascinating about the movie is that it does actually present a profoundly strong cast of female characters. Except for the alien spore inside Buusuke (which just happens to have a male voice and is never explicitly referred to as male outside of this fact) and a small bit-player in the form of the daughter's guitar-aficionado friend, the only male characters in the film are villainous ones. First there is the ex-husband who clearly was an abusive bastard and both wife and daughter are glad he is out of their lives at the start of the film. The other male character is the film's villain Takeshi, who is a guy sick of being pushed around and rejected and bonds with an alien just like the one in Buusuke and sets out to conquer the world. He uses women, making them fall in love with him only to toss them aside when he tires of them, much like how he himself used to be treated. There is also a supporting character named Kill Billy, who just happens to be a tomboy. Billy straddles the line between good and evil and only when she finally chooses sides does she admit to being a woman. So in some odd way,
Nuigulumar Z is a feminist film. Exploitative, yes, but still never doubting it's female lead's competence, and whatever mistakes it's other characters make are easily forgiven. They are only teenagers after all.
Again, much like How to Use Guys With Secret Tips and Horror Stories II I guess I can't technically say that is necessarily a great movie (this one is actually far weaker than either of them by comparison, and would you call it bad I might have a hard time defending it) but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see it again as soon as possible, and having smiled a lot when reflecting back on it, and that has to mean something.
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Haewon and her mother, exemplifying the repeated lengthy
table conversations that Hong utilizes. |
12. Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-su)
From the same director that made
Our Sunhi,
Nobody's Daughter Haewon covers a lot of the same ground as
Our Sunhi does. In fact in researching Hong's previous work I was surprised to see that my mental comparison with Ozu was clearly not a fluke based on the two movies of his I had seen by the end of the festival. The use of film directors, actors and students seem to pop up rather often in his features and that can be both welcome and unwelcome depending on the utilization.
I actually saw
Nobody's Daughter Haewon before
Our Sunhi and became really worried as the film moved on. The film, much like
Our Sunhi (yes this text is essentially all about why I preferred
Sunhi to
Haewon so I apologize) focuses on a young woman and how people around her relate to her.
Whereas Sunhi was a film student, trying to get a recommendation from a director who is her teacher, Haewon is an actress who is struggling with her mother leaving to go live with her brother in Canada. Haewon, who much like Sunhi is rather distant and a self-chosen loner, calls up her teacher (a director, of course) with who she has had a relationship before. Soon old feelings come boiling to the surface and Haewon, the director and a myriad of people around the two are stuck in a spiral of negativity.
It's bizarre how two so similar movies can make me feel so different, despite the main characters being so similar. Both Haewon and Sunhi drink too much and lament this fact, they both get told and thus we, the audience are told how pretty they are and they even wear the same exact coat model as one another (though Sunhi gets bonus points for rocking a sweet purple Fjällräven backpark). In fact, neither Haewon or Sunhi are inherently likeable protagonists, and in fact out of the two, Haewon is actually the one who I would consider "better". Sunhi never seems to learn anything and essentially leaves the film the way she enters it in the first place. Haewon however has seemingly learned something about herself and seems prepared to face her life with a deeper insight by the end of her story.
But at the same time, Haewon's growth comes from her being a remarkably spoiled girl at the beginning of the film, self-absorbed, daydreaming about meeting celebrities and being complimented by them and (much like myself I might add) skates on the brink of being so oblivious to how others perceive her that it almost becomes tragic.
Sunhi seems more comfortable with her situation, she's withdrawn completely out of personal choice and doesn't ask for companionship by anyone else in the cast but either runs in to them by chance or seeks them out because she wants something from them for personal purposes.
But the main reason why
Nobody's Daughter Haewon appeals less to me is probably because of the fact that there is a very muted but still present humor in the dialogue of
Our Sunhi which isn't present in
Haewon. Both of these films have some impressive long takes that feel natural in their flow, but in
Haewon the most notable one is a very mean-spirited one, whilst the one in
Sunhi is more on the fun side of the spectrum. And the overall environment of the two films reflects that.
Our Sunhi has three potential suitors for our main characters and all of them are goofballs who honestly feel like caricatures of real people; the let's-get-back-together-ex-boyfriend, the lovelorn teacher and the goofball friend who listens but honestly doesn't give a shit. The ex-boyfriend in
Haewon feels a lot more sympathetic, being less goofy and tragically accepting of the fact that a relationship between someone as beautiful as Haewon and himself would always end with his heart being broken. Equally the teacher in
Sunhi is just a pathetic man who reads too much into her attempts to get a good recommendation out of him, whereas the director in
Haewon is a married family man. A lot less innocent. In the end that humorous twist works a lot better than the more serious tone of
Haewon, which feels overly long, meandering and unclear in its goal, which reflects its main character somewhat but still makes for a less enjoyable film.
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Now, I'm not sure... But I'm guessing the one in the middle is
the Mark Zuckerberg. The one on the... oh, who cares? |
13. American Dreams in China (Peter Chan)
I can't remember ever feeling as uncomfortable watching a current film in a movie theater. That feeling even more clearly manifested after having seen Trap Street earlier the same week. The festival compendium described the reception of the film as a "Chinese
The Social Network", which seemed promising enough. However, while that may be technically true there is something off about
American Dreams in China. At first there is an air reminiscent of
So Young, where a bunch of Chinese late teens/early 20's start college with the hopes of being able to gain visas and study in America.
However as the film progresses it becomes clear that though there is a definite character study on the screen, there is something else present too. Those who go away to America suffer defeat whilst those who stay in China succeed in opening a school for teaching English and preparing people for the questioning process involved when obtaining your visa.
It may seem cheap to suggest that the film is propaganda, but the pro-China subtext is there clear as day. The film starts with the three friends who start the business in a meeting with Americans claiming they've violated copyright laws and then proceeds to paint the picture of the struggle that Chinese society vs that of American society and the level of adversity the people in China face is much milder and "fair".
The worst part is, I like the basic story and even though some of the characters start acting surprisingly cold and terrible toward each other bizarrely quickly in the third act, there is a solid cast of characters to be found here.
Besides this the biggest flaw with the film is that it jumps very quickly from various years and doesn't really convince me that any real amount has passed. Three years isn't that long a time but it is still over a thousand days and more should have changed than just the calendar on the wall and that our characters now have new suits and a new teacher who's name isn't even established.
In short; all right movie, but it has too much underlying insidiousness for me to feel comfortable recommending it wholeheartedly. But don't take that as it having no good moments or interesting visual elements, just prepare yourself for what you're sitting down for beforehand.
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Carina Lau's Anna struggles to deal with the disappearence
of her husband. Unable to accept that things will never be the same. |
14. Bends (Flora Lau)
I have to admit,
Bends was the second-to-last film I was set to see at the festival. The last film on a day which consisted of school from 9-12 and then directly from there to a movie theater followed by another trip to another movie theater where I would stay until 8:40 PM. The odds were not in
Bends's favor, and I probably would have liked it a lot more if it wasn't for the fact that its themes mirrored the themes of another movie I had already seen;
Ilo ilo.
Both films were about differences in social class,
Ilo ilo focusing on a Sinagporean family and their Phillipino household worker, whereas
Bends is about a Hong Kong housewife and the relationship between her and the family chauffeur. The driver is troubled, having a wife back across the border to mainland China who is expecting their second child, a child which they can't afford to pay the tax for. When the husband of the rich housewife suddenly vanishes the wife does everything she can to ignore the problem for as long as humanly possible. She continues with her expensive habits, paying for ludicrously pricy feng shui-sessions, going to expensive luncheons and buying things she doesn't need. When it becomes clear that the husband isn't coming back everything starts tearing away at the seems more and more and soon the woman, and her driver are both stuck together in a whirlpool of despair. He needs the work, and she needs money that she doesn't have.
The only problem with
Bends is that it just didn't really grab me. Carina Lau's housewife is harmless, not striking you as cold or overly greedy, but when she is faced with the prospect of poverty she chooses to ignore it far longer than anyone should do. In fact she doesn't even start asking questions about her husband for several days, putting on a brave face and insisting that he's "probably around somewhere". It's this attitude which makes her hard to sympathize with, and the film tries to compensate with the story of her driver, which works to an extent, but when his employer is too much of a coward to admit to him that she doesn't know how long she'll be able to keep him it becomes so frustrating it makes it hard to care at all. The reason why this is at the bottom of my list is simple, even
American Dreams in China had interesting characters that stood out. They may have done illogical things because the plot required a conflict at certain moments, but the plot moved along with a rather fast pace. Here? No such luck. And for a second I considered putting it ahead of
American Dreams because of the duality of the two main characters, but I just can't do it. These two are probably the closest to being tied of all the movies I saw, and I saw them both on the same day and they are both filmed by Christopher Doyle, who is a brilliant cinematographer, who's work with Wong Kar-wai is modern day legend.
It's almost perfect that this is the case because it feels as if both of these films could easily be jobs Doyle was hired for because of worries about a weak script. And yes, both movies do look nice, but unlike Wong Kar-wai, there isn't that sense of auteurship to keep the films from feeling rather stale.
Bends is a movie that doesn't really leave a lasting impression, sadly and is one of the weakest films I saw at the festival for that very reason.
