There’s a long tradition of Japanese pop culture being named for something from The Beatles’ songbook, from Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood to the 1997 indie film Strawberry Fields – not to mention the chain store called Yellow Submarine. Shô Miyake’s AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING (きみの鳥はうたえる) may not have any direct connections with the Fab Four’s song, but it does follow a very Murakami-esque vibe.
Set against a long summer in Hakodate, Miyake’s freewheeling script (based on an original story by the late novelist Yasushi Sato) follows three figures who have a carefree attitude to life. Sachiko (Shizuka Ishibashi) is in a no-strings-attached relationship with the unnamed slacker narrator (Tasuku Emoto) who in turn lives with his unemployed roommate Shizuo (Shota Sometani).
Much of the film follows the trio as they stumble in and out of bars, fall asleep and wake up at odd hours or simply show a non-committal attitude towards their work. As a bizarre love triangle inevitably forms between the three leads, it’s a curiously closed world we are drawn into. The lack of certainty (or caring) in what happens next begins to spill over into the relationships, and what was once a seamless unit becomes unsteady. It’s really about the moment when you realise that ‘coming apart at the seams’ is synonymous with ‘coming of age.’
Shizuka Ishibashi is a standout, especially following her outstanding performance in Yuya Ishii’s sublimely bleak The Tokyo Night Sky is Always the Densest Shade of Blue, and is rapidly becoming a go-to star for the indie scene. Tasuku Emoto is the polar opposite of his Dynamite Graffiti role form last year, while Shota Sometani (already a veteran at 27) has demonstrated an interesting career progression from Sion Sono’s Himizu to Takashi Miike’s First Love more recently.
Miyake doesn’t necessarily give us all the connective glue between moments, allowing long takes to give us some breathing space around their cyclical actions and a fair bit of loitering. A lengthy nightclub sequence might have felt indulgent or editable in someone else’s hands, and while it is noticeably long it’s also a microcosm of their entire lives (but under tinted lights).
While there is certainly an argument to be made that this covers similar thematic ground to adaptations of Sato’s The Light Shines Only There and Over the Fence, this sharply contemporary take on a modern Japanese favourite has some universal themes. The abruptness of the finale doesn’t give us any easy answers, so you may find this film lingering with you like so many disaffected Japanese love triangles.
2018 | Japan | DIR: Sho Miyake| WRITERS: Sho Miyake (based on the novel by Yasushi Sato) | CAST: Tasuku Emoto, Shizuka Ishibashi, Shota Sometani | DISTRIBUTOR: Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 92 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)
Have you ever stared at someone’s face for a long time? What was their reaction? If it was someone you knew, there’s a good chance you were noticing every line, crease and dimple with a degree of affection and warmth. The act of staring, of noticing, is by its nature an intimate activity.
Filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang’s documentary pushes this idea to its limits with a series of extreme close-ups of various people, letting the camera linger for long takes. Some speak while others remain silent. At least one subject is asleep, and another plays the harmonica. When the spotlight is turned glaringly on an individual, you simply can’t predict how they will respond.
Reversing the gaze
Case in point is the first ‘face’ in YOUR FACE (你的臉), a blend of talking-head documentary and visual experimentation. The older Taiwanese woman can’t quite look at the camera at first, eventually breaking into laughter. “It feels strange and intriguing,” she confesses when prompted, which is a pretty apt description for this film.
What’s even more interesting is how uncomfortable we begin to feel as an audience. Back when I was in first year university, I once found myself being stared at by a fellow student at a bus stop. I got shy, turned away, but found it impossible to ignore. Despite my lack of confidence, I eventually spoke to her, and she didn’t respond. Eventually she too found herself laughing, revealing that she was doing her psychology assignment and I was her first ‘experiment.’ While the theory was explained in my first-year sociology study of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, here I learned the unpredictable power of the gaze first-hand.
Tsai has a history with this kind of experimentation too. The Stray Dogs director has spent much of the last decade dealing in shorts and playing with the camera. 2017’s The Deserted, for example, used VR to immerse the viewer in a longer narrative that has been described as a kind of ghost story. “Since it was VR, there was no composition in the traditional sense and no close-ups as well,” he told Film Taiwan in a statement. “After I made the film, I had a sudden desire to film close-up shots. I decided to make a film made up of only close-ups.”
Each shot is lit with a massive attention to detail, allowing audiences to read the faces of people we are encountering for the first time. While many of the subjects are older men and women from Taiwan, there’s a middle-aged woman who speaks about the importance of money, and candidly talking about meeting the son of a former lover. A similarly aged man tells stories of past girlfriends and his addiction to Pachinko parlours. In this way, the camera becomes a confessional, like those cutaways in a reality show.
Shining through the dark
At most festival screenings, YOUR FACE is accompanied by LIGHT (光), a short film shot immediately following the feature. In contrast to the close-ups of faces, this short uses a similar long-take approach to examine objects in context.
The opening shots study the Spanish Islamic highlights, in all their geometrically symmetrical glory, of Taiwan’s Zhongshan Hall exteriors in the pre-dusk light. Even though these shots only account for a fraction of the 18-minute film, the time Tsai takes to complete these details places this historical building in the context of its surrounds.
The remainder of the film can broadly be described as “Zhongshan Hall with the lights off,” literally using only natural light to explore the hallways and features of the formal building. Or as Tsai put it: “I switched off all the lights and allowed the warm winter sun to shine on her face.”
The site itself has a lot of significance to Taiwanese cinema: the location played host to the Golden Horse Film Festival for many years, where Tsai reportedly volunteered as a ticket seller while studying at university so he could see films for free. (He would, of course, go on to win several awards at the same festival). Tsai even shot YOUR FACE inside the building’s Guangfu Auditorium (or Grand Ballroom).
In LIGHT, the rooms are transformed into something otherworldly by exposing them to their most natural defaults. Shafts of sun playing off rows of benches suddenly make them look like they are inside a cave opened for the first time. Likewise, Huang Tu-shui’s plaster cast of The Water Buffalo (水牛群像), also known as South Land, is a national treasure in Taiwan. It dominates the back half of the film in all of its glorious detail, filling the screen with the titular animal, naked bodies, and straw hats. Regardless of whether you are familiar with the piece or not, it feels like a private art viewing for you alone, and as immersive as Tsai’s VR work.
These films will not be for all tastes. By their nature, they are akin to slow cinema, and would perhaps find a more natural setting as an installation piece in a museum. Yet the communal setting of a cinema coupled with the intensity of these long gazes is transportive. As you find yourself staring at these objects and faces, don’t be surprised if you find them looking back at you.
YOUR FACEandLIGHTplayed at the Melbourne International Film Festival between 1-18 August 2019.
While THE NIGHTINGALE made its Australian debut at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2018, following a premiere in Venice that year, Jennifer Kent’s second feature has rapidly become one of the most divisive films of 2019. Her follow-up to the cult hit The Babadook made headlines during the Sydney Film Festival this year when the film’s content prompted multiple walkouts and vocal departures.
Set in colonial Tasmania in 1825, Kent’s screenplay follows 21-year-old Irish convict Clare (Aisling Franciosi). After being raped and beaten by British officer Hawkins (Sam Claflin), her husband and infant are murdered by his fellow soldiers (including Damon Herriman as Ruse). As a former convict, her story is dismissed, so she takes the reluctant Aboriginal guide Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) to help her navigate the dense wilderness and find a kind of revenge.
THE NIGHTINGALE is a difficult film to navigate. Multiple rapes, acts of violence, and racial vilification might be an accurate summation of life for women and Indigenous peoples of the era, but that doesn’t necessarily make for easy access. Kent doesn’t want us to be comfortable, of course, as these are issues and moments that should continue to shock well into the 21st century. It’s not like violence against women or Indigenous land rights have been solved with the passing of time.
One of the points of contention with some members of the audience is the sheer amount of sexual assault on screen. By the midway point of the film, there have been at least five counts of rape perpetrated on screen at length. Indeed, one viewer reportedly yelled “I’m not watching this, she’s already been raped twice” as she left the theatre. Which naturally sparks a debate around whether this film had gone “too far.”
In the essay “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence” in Bad Feminist (2014), Roxane Gay talks about how most media depictions of rape, such as the weekly escalations of violence on Law & Order: SVU, have made us “numb” to the shock of it. “We need to find…ways of rewriting that restore the actual violence to these crimes and make it impossible for men to be excused for committing atrocities,” she adds. Which is precisely what Kent aims to do here, offering something that it is impossible to be ambiguous about.
Kent tackles the treatment of Indigenous peoples with similar directness. Sexualised violence is directed against one Aboriginal woman in particular throughout the film in a series of troubling scenes, but also acts as a catalyst for a different revenge story. The narrative around Baykali Ganambarr’s character leans towards being a little didactic, although at its best he plainly states: “This is my country. This is my home.” At other times, the attempted moments of understanding (“You know what it’s like to have a white fella take everything from you”) feel too simplistic.
Franciosi is excellent in the lead role, carrying virtually every scene in the film. There are times when the camera stays entirely on her face during moments of great anguish, and at others times she is carried away by a nightmarish series of cutaways and dream sequences.
It’s unfortunate then that the violence escalates to a point of splatter gore and about the halfway mark, such that we might actually be numbed to the remainder of the film. Indeed, after the arresting first half, Kent’s relentless vision will continue to polarise audiences until the very end. Nevertheless, it’s an unquestionably important film, and one can’t help but wonder if a film of this nature could ever be made in a contemporary setting.
2018 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Jennifer Kent | WRITERS: Jennifer Kent | CAST:Aisling Franciosi,Sam Claflin, Baykali Ganambarr, Damon Herriman | DISTRIBUTOR: Transmission Films (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 29 August 2019 (AUS), 1-18 August 2019 (MIFF)
Director Ying Liang’s 2012 film When Night Falls, loosely based on the real-life case of a Chinese man who killed six policemen after he was harassed by them, resulted in Liang’s own threats of arrest by Chinese authorities upon its release. In A FAMILY TOUR (自由行), Ying fictionalises his own exile in a very personal narrative.
Ying projects himself onto filmmaker Yang Shu (portrayed by Chan Wai), who has also been exiled to Hong Kong following the release of a subversive film five years earlier. Separated from her mother Chen Xialon (Gong Zhe), she travels with her husband to Taiwan for a complicated reunion. As the ailing Chen Xialon can only travel under the watchful eyes of an organised tour, Yang Shu must steal moments with her mother as they make pit-stops along the way.
Adapting his own short film I Have Nothing To Say into a feature, with his wife Peng Shan and novelist Chan Wai as co-writers, Ying’s six years of living in Hong Kong gives him an outsiders perspective on the bureaucratic system. As someone says of his fictionalised proxy, “You haven’t been an ordinary Chinese daughter for a long time.”
Nai An (Girls Always Happy) is excellent as the exhausted Yang Shu, carrying the anxiety of not being in her home while being admired as a filmmaker abroad. Yet it’s Gong Zhe (Trouble Makers) as her ailing mother who quietly commands every scene that she is in. The most revealing moments between the two of them come from what is not being said, as their brief snatches of interaction expose some of the assumed resentment that has underlined their shared trauma. Towards the end of the film, there’s a moment where they sit together in a tour bus, a powerful moment where this subtext becomes tangible.
Filled with long takes, something that is winkingly referenced by a cab driver in the film, the measured pace of the film allows for an intimacy rarely seen in a family drama. Although much shorter than some of its contemporaries, it follows the trend of “slow cinema” by allowing audiences to soak in every one of cinematographer Otsuka Ryuji’s (The Foolish Bird) shots.
Playing within the context of a film festival, as will be the case with most viewings of this film, the act of watching a film can be as much of a political act as making one. Indeed, speaking to the disappearance of indie film festivals in China, Yang Shu carries the bags and ephemera of long defunct events and festivals. Referencing the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement – and at the time of writing, political protests in Hong Kong are playing out as mass airport sit-ins – A FAMILY TOUR shows that sometimes the very act of maintaining a family can be political statement.
2018 | Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia| DIR: Ying Liang | WRITER: Chan Wai, Ying Liang | CAST: An Nai, Pete Teo, Xin Yue Tham, Zhe Gong | DISTRIBUTOR: Golden Scene Company (World Sales), Melbourne International Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 – 18 August 2019 (AUS)
There’s been a number of films in the last few years that have dealt with the fallout of China’s ‘One Child’ policy. From the epic So Long, My Son to the documentary Leftover Women, the expectations on women and families in China has been demonstrably immense. Hide and Seek director Jie Liu explores some of that impact in micro thriller BABY (Bao Bei Er).
Former foster kid Jiang Meng (superstar Yang Mi) attempts to help kids in less than ideal homes. Her own upbringing was the result of a congenital condition that required multiple surgeries. Having just turned 18, she’s unable to stay with her foster mother, and works as a cleaner in a children’s hospital. There she discovers a baby with multiple ailments that the father simply wants to let die. Meng is determined not to let that happen.
If you saw Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (The Assassin) attached to the publicity for this film, you might get a fixed idea of what this film is about. It is a thriller of sorts, and a kind of heist film at that, but Jie Liu’s socio-political approach is more of the slow-burn variety. Indeed, this film is so deliberately paced as to make it feel like a much grander enterprise.
Which isn’t to say the film isn’t engaging, thanks in large part to the excellent work of Yang Mi. A recognisable face from Chinese television (most notably the Three Lives Three Worlds series and its spin-off), her performance here is both understated and mesmerising, totally nailing a perpetually pained expression of urgency. Also of note is Lee Hong-Chi’s (Long Day’s Journey Into Night) role as Meng’s deaf friend, a fellow foster kid doing his best to make ends meet.
BABY becomes a little frustrating in the second half, when the slight plotting and repetitive points about an uncaring bureaucratic system give way to a cycle of fatalism. Once Meng involves the police, there’s a lengthy back and forth between her, the father, and the authorities that restate the basic issues over and over.
Yet if BABY is to be believed, the foster system and the long-term impact of the One Child policy is culturally complex along with being a bureaucratic nightmare. If Jie Liu’s film is at least able to shed light on the hypocrisy of the current laws, then this small film has made a major impact.
2019 | China| DIR: Jie Liu | WRITER: Jie Liu| CAST: Yang Mi, Lee Hong-Chi | DISTRIBUTOR: Wild Bunch (World Sales), Melbourne International Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 – 18 August 2019 (AUS)
As the title of the film would imply, there is a mystery at the heart of HIS LOST NAME (夜明け). Yet there is more than one puzzle to debut writer-director Nanako Hirose’s narrative, a film that is doggedly determined to downplay the drama.
Tetsuro (Kaoru Kobayashi) finds the unconscious body of a young man claiming to be called Shinichi (Yuya Yagira) by the river. Tetsuro brings the young man home to live with him and work in his woodworking shop. As Shinichi begins to learn a trade and bond with the small community around him, it becomes evident that both men harbour secrets.
Nanako Hirose has mentored under the legendary Hirokazu Kore-eda, working on second unit or as a directorial assistant on Like Father, Like Son and Our Little Sister. There’s echoes of the master’s thematic leanings here, with Hirose taking a largely observational approach to the interactions between Tetsuro, Shinichi, and the people in Tetsuro’s life.
The other Kore-eda connection, of course, is Yuya Yagira (The Fable, Gintama). The actor, now in his late 20s, made his debut as the lead in Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows. Yagira’s subdued performance is a blank slate, rarely letting anybody around him (or the audience) for that matter too close. More intriguing is Kaoru Kobayashi’s character, who has far more mystery around him through his relentless acts of kindness. Weighed down with years of guilt, there’s a dimensionality to his role that doesn’t always transfer to his co-stars.
After revealing some of the secrets in their respective pasts, Hirose’s script loses some of its momentum. The distinct lack of expected drama is admirable on some levels, although Hirose’s exploration of this father-son dynamic through static scenes and conversations lingers a little longer than it should. Little more is revealed about their motivations from these moments, marking them as something of a missed opportunity.
With HIS LOST NAME, Hirose marks herself as a filmmaker with an incredible sense for mise en scène, and the potential for character-based drama. Yet between the elongated running time and the jarringly abrupt ending, it’s ultimately a project that feels unfinished.
2018 | Japan | DIR: Nanako Hirose | WRITER: Nanako Hirose | CAST: Kaoru Kobayashi, Yuya Yagira | DISTRIBUTOR: GAGA Corporation (JPN), Melbourne International Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 113 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 18 January 2019 (JPN), 1 – 18 August 2019 (AUS)
Welcome back to The Read Goes Ever On: a structured reading (and in some cases re-reading) of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
As a casual fan who has read the ‘popular ones’ several times, this series is an attempt to explore Tolkien’s grand legendarium chronologically. Hundreds of scholars have already done deep reads, so this is just me trying to better understanding of Tolkien’s myths and legends by seeing them in context. Or to just point out cool stuff I liked along the way. Legendary spoilers abound.
THE FALL OF GONDOLIN is the third and last of Tolkien’s Great Tales of the Elder Days. Along with Beren and Lúthien and The Children of Húrin, they are the most important stories of the First Age of Middle-earth. Beginning with the awakening of Men in Hildórien, and ending with the defeat of Morgoth, they are also the pillars upon which The Lord of the Rings is build.
If Beren and Lúthien is the most romantic of these tales, and The Children of Húrin the most tragic, then THE FALL OF GONDOLIN is the one with the most destruction. It broadly tells of the coming of Tuor son of Huor (and cousin of Túrin Turambar) to Gondolin, the hidden city of the Elves. Gondolin is betrayed by Maeglin, the son of the dark Elf Eöl and Arendhel (remember them from The Silmarillion?), and is ultimately sacked by Morgoth after a war with King Turgon’s forces.
If you’re like me, and came to the non-LOTR parts of the Legendarium much later, you may find that we’re really getting into the weeds here. Yet in many ways this is where it all began for the saga. Tolkien first wrote the earliest version of ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, according to notes in Christopher Tolkien’s prologue, “during sick-leave from the army in 1917.” In a letter written to W.H. Auden in 1955, the elder Tolkien described it as “the first real story of this imaginary world.”
Detail from “Turgon Strengthens the Watch” (Artist: Alan Lee)
As an early tale, there is so much of the grand storytelling that Tolkien would become known for, albeit in a much more compact structure. The seeds were planted back in Nírnaeth Arnoediad (or the “Battle of the Unnumbered Tears”), with Morgoth’s loss so great that he cursed the line of Húrin and swore vengeance on Gondolin. If and when he found it, of course. Indeed, this Tale is truly Great, from the dragons to the Elven warrior battling a Balrog.
In compiling this volume, Christopher Tolkien has followed the same approach he took with the standalone Beren and Lúthien in 2017 (when he was but a slip of a lad at 93 years young). He presents various versions of his father’s tale: one he calls “The Earliest Text” (from around 1917), “Sketch of the Mythology” (1926) and the “Quenta Noldorinwa” (1930). The chapter called “The Last Version” comes from around 1951, before Tolkien abandoned the tale. It is the most detailed of the crop.
Whether you are a scholar of Tolkien or a process junkie, THE FALL OF GONDOLIN in this form is a vital exercise in understanding the life cycle of a story’s development. Writing to Allen & Unwin in 1937, Tolkien said:
“The magic and mythology and assumed ‘history’ and most of the names (e.g. the epic of the Fall of Gondolin) are, alas!, drawn from unpublished inventions…I believe they give the narrative an air of ‘reality’ and have a northern atmosphere.”
Recounted in Christopher Tolkien’s chapter “The Evolution of the Story,” this ambition was part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s biggest struggle: trying to make the “one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings” (as he wrote to Milton Waldman in 1951) built around his “made-up languages,” while simultaneously crafting an accessible version of the world in Lord of the Rings.
Which will always remain slightly frustrating to Tolkien aficionados, one Christopher says is “perhaps the most grievous of his many abandonments.” This inability to find a balance between publisher and vision cut his work short on the last “fully evolved” version of The Fall of Gondolin, just after Tuor passed through the last of the Seven Gates and “beheld a vision of Gondolin amid the white snow.” While the sketches and notes he left behind tell us exactly where the story goes from here, the 60-odd pages of “carefully written manuscript” were indicative of a saga worthy as a companion piece to Tolkien’s most iconic works.
Detail from “Glorfindel and the Balrog” (Artist: Alan Lee)
In fact, there’s so much here that will appeal to casual Lord of the Rings fans. The Elven warrior Glorfindel fights a Balrog, and after running him through the creatures “fell backward from the rock, and falling clutched Glorfindel’s yellow locks beneath his cap, and those twain fell into the abyss.” If that doesn’t recall a certain moment found in The Fellowship of the Ring, then you definitely need to read a bit more Tolkien.
There’s an Elf named Legolas of the House of the Tree too: he’s not the same one we later meet from Mirkwood, but his name (translating to “green leaf” and “keen sight”) echoes down through the ages to his LOTR counterpart. You’d almost recommend a fan to jump in here, but for the masses of context needed from the previous Great Tales (especially anything to do with the Silmarils).
Christopher Tolkien has said that “in my ninety-fourth year THE FALL OF GONDOLIN is (indubitably) the last” book after many decades of editing and republishing his father’s work. Which is all fair enough really, especially for someone who had been listening to his father’s works since he was one of the first to hear The Hobbit as a child. What he has achieved in the 82 years since that book was published is remarkable. Even if you have issues with his editorial intervention, he has shone a light on the importance of The Silmarillion and elevated the overall saga into something bigger than we ever realised.
In the next instalment of The Read Goes Ever On, I’ll dip into Unfinished Tales. Or more accurately: Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. It presents the more unified fragments of The Silmarillion in their original form, once again giving us insight into Tolkien’s mind.
The Legend of the White Snake, also known as Madame White Snake, is counted as one of China’s Four Great Folktales. The subject of countless retellings, it has been adapted to the screen dozens of times, beginning with Xinhua Studio’s 1939 film and carrying through to several web dramas released in 2019. So, while Amp Wong and Zhou Ji’s WHITE SNAKE (白蛇：緣起) isn’t the first time the tale has been animated, it is arguably the most beautiful.
Damao’s screenplay reinterprets the legend as something of a two-hander, as a young woman who has lost her memory is rescued by Xuan, a snake catcher. As the duo attempts to find out more about the young woman’s past, an entire mystical world is opened up to them both.
Fans of Hong Kong and Chinese cinema will be no strangers to variations on this tale, and will arguably be most familiar with Tsui Hark’s 1993 Green Snake with Maggie Cheung or the Jet Li starring The Sorcerer and the White Snake, notable at the time for its use of 3D. In comparison, this WHITE SNAKE is a more ‘Disneyfied’ affair, although it’s still filled with a wuxia vibe and is filled with familiar touchstones of Chinese cinema.
Where this edition separates itself from all others is in the stunning animation. Light Chaser Animation Studios, the production house behind 2016’s Little Door Gods, brings an elegance to everything on screen. Every shot looks like a photograph. There’s one sequence where the lead duo float through the landscape on an umbrella, and it is possibly one of the best examples of CG rendering on screen in the last year. It can happily sit alongside Big Fish and Begonia as a top example of China’s contemporary animation industry.
There is a slight tonal tension though, or at least a mix that western audiences may not be as familiar with. On the one hand, there’s the animated staple of a talking dog providing comedy relief. On the other, there’s a fair bit of animated violence, some scary monsters (and super creeps), and at least one bit of of PG-13 sexy times in a temple that you would definitely not see from the House of Mouse.
Yet there is so much to love here, from the delicately crafted action sequences to monsters appearing out of the mists like a Gareth Edwards film. If the post-credits sequence is anything to go by, it won’t be the last we see of these characters either.
2018 | China | DIR: Amp Wong, Zhao Ji | WRITER: Damao| CAST: Zhang Zhe, Yang Tianxiang | DISTRIBUTOR: Joy Pictures (China), Warner Bros., New York Asian Film Festival (US) | RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 7 July 2019 (NYAFF)
When debut director Kwon Man-ki won Best Film at the Macao Film Festival 2018, he beat out the likes of Hiroshi Okuyama’s Jesus and Barnaby Southcombe‘s Scarborough. CLEAN UP (호흡) stands apart from its contemporaries as a tightly controlled drama about people on the fringes, and the lasting impact of trauma and guilt.
Kwon’s script slowly unfolds like a mystery, but is also honest about its portrayals of these characters. Jung-ju (Yoon Ji-hye) is a woman barely making ends meet working as a cleaner and a kitchen hand, drinking herself to sleep most nights while praying for repentance. When ex-con Lee Min-gu (Kim Dae-gun) begins working at the company, we learn why: 12 years earlier, she and ex-husband Tae-gyu (Kim Su-hyun) kidnapped the young Min-gu.
Filled with an overarching sense of loss and mourning, director Kwon doesn’t make it easy for us to make quick moral judgments. There’s no doubt Jung-ju committed a crime years ago, but how responsible is she for taking on the whole of Min-gu’s fate? Min-gu has suffered terribly: his mother is dead, his father committed suicide, and he has served terms in prison. Yet Jung-ju has also lost her son to a heart condition, and subsequently her husband and sense of self.
Kwon draws out these observational moments through a series of flashbacks to the kidnapping. Shot with a quiet and low-key intensity, these moments are tactile, terrifying from Min-gu’s point of view, and matter-of-fact from Jung-ju and Tae-gyu’s. All three of these principal characters look back at these pivotal moments as if they forever dominated their collective destinies.
In the present day, the gaze is turned towards the nature of Jung-ju and Min-gu’s work and their relationship. As the very definition of working poor, Kwon’s own experiences on the borderline inform a sympathetic portrayal of cleaning maggots out of a deceased estate, or Min-gu living rough in a toilet block. Kwon is attempting to project a vulnerability, one that makes the relationship between the leads (both as a romance and a kind of mother/son dynamic) all the more complex.
Although religion forms a large part of Jung-ju’s means of coping with the world, Kwon isn’t so much commenting on faith as he is on the way some people use it to assuage their own guilt. Through reconnecting with Min-gu, Kwon observes that guilt and forgiveness aren’t linear concepts or a one-way street, but an exchange between individuals. CLEAN UP explores them all in a moving and deeply enveloping way.
2018 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Kwon Man-ki | WRITERS: Kwon Man-ki | CAST: Yoon Ji-hye, Kim Dae-gun, Kim Su-hyun | DISTRIBUTOR: M-Line Distribution| RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 9-11 June 2019 (SFF)
Following its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival last year, director Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s MANTA RAY (Kraben Rahu) has been winning awards across the world. A contemplative refugee story that never wholly answers its own questions, it’s as beautiful to look at as you’d imagine from a cinematographer turned director.
Off the coast of Thailand, a local fisherman (Wanlop Rungkumjad) finds an injured man and helps him back to health. While the injured man goes mute, the fisherman names him Thongchai and gradually involves him in every aspect of his life. When the fisherman disappears, the man called Thongchai takes over the fisherman’s life.
Before his directorial debut, Aroonpheng was known for photography duties on Thai films The Island Funeral and Vanishing Point. So it’s no surprise that as a director he leads with his visual feet. (Just go with that analogy, it can’t hurt you). With a forest and an armed soldier wrapped in flickering party lights, we are introduced to the coastline region known for Rohingya refugees.
Aroonpheng doesn’t tackle this crisis head-on, but forms a thematic twin with his short film Ferris Wheel (2015), the story of a mother and son who leave Myanmar in hopes of a better life. The unnamed fisherman unquestioningly takes in the refugee and cares for him, offering him everything his has, perhaps indicating that his fills in a void that was missing for him.
As the film goes on, we realise this is the actual truth. The fisherman tells the passive “Thongchai” about his estranged wife, and how he is pleased to not be living alone any more. Using the recurring motif of party lights, Aroonpheng envisages this melding of lives as the pair dance slowly in the bokeh during one of the film’s more visually striking moment.
With the fisherman missing, Thongchai takes on the responsibilities of his missing friend, right down to forming a relationship with the unexpectedly returned wife. She even recrafts him to look like the fisherman, complete with a new hairstyle and clothing. The realties of this poverty-striken life slowly merge with fantasy as gems emerge from the ground, lights levitate into the sky, and rapid cutaways make us question what we are seeing.
In the closing moments of MANTA RAY, Aroonpheng breaks with reality almost completely as all of his cinematic mastery culminates into a cacophony of overlapping images. It may not all make literal sense, but as a handy set of visual metaphors, it certainly emotes the inner world of a refugee. As some beautiful underwater photography of the titular manta rays fade into white, you may find that the feelings Aroonpheng leaves you with lingering for some time to come.
