Tag: 2020 Reviews

Review: Wonder Woman 1984

It’s fair to say that DC Comics has struggled to find a consistent screen voice over the last decade. Where the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to celebrate comic bookery with abandon, the DC Extended Universe‘s grimmer fare has forced out a continuity despite itself.

The exceptions, of course, are the success of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn (Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey), the underrated Shazam!, and Gal Gadot’s breakout turn as Wonder Woman. Her second solo outing begins brightly, with a kind of soft reboot on Themyscira and a wonderful action sequence that firmly establishes the updated 1980s setting.

Yet once the scene is established, the screenplay – by Patty Jenkins, comic book legend Geoff Johns, and David Callaham – fails to maintain the momentum. A convoluted plot sees a crystal McGuffin discovered by scientist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), granting her the confidence and strength she’s always craved.

Meanwhile, struggling businessman Maxwell Lord (The Mandalorian‘s Pedro Pascal) also craves the crystal, and Diana/Wonder Woman’s old beau Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) quantum leaps his way into the 80s. Each of these three storylines could have sustained the film by itself. The problem is that the lengthy WONDER WOMAN 1984 (or WW84 to use its onscreen title) never quite sticks to any narrative effectively, falling into the familiar trap of too many villains and not enough story.

Yes, there are some spectacular individual set-pieces, including a wonderful Egyptian highway action run, but it never feels coherent. To pave over any narrative sins, like changing continents from one scene to the next, Diana’s powers also seem to manifest whenever the plot requires them. Similarly, the finale relies too heavily on digital puppetry and a cheap denouement trick that arguably makes everything we’ve just watched redundant.

On the plus side, Zimmer’s score is one of his more joyful to date, and there’s a general air of positivity we’ve not seen in DC films for a long time. It’s a technically proficient film as well, although a few special effects wobbles – including a horrible villain look – can probably be attributed to the difficult circumstances that history will record as “the year 2020.”

Likewise, the cast of this thing are working their little leg warmers off to make the most of the material. Pascal in particular owns every inch of his screen time, so much so that there are points we’re left wondering if this is still a Wonder Woman film. It’s also great to see Wiig channelling her comedic timing into something more sinister. The return of Pine probably wasn’t needed, but he does add a charming presence and provides an opportunity to churn through dozens of 80s outfits.

With no tangible links to the rest of the DC Extended Universe, or even post-credits pieces teasing future productions, WONDER WOMAN 1984 is still a refreshing break from relentless world-building. It’s wish fulfilment in its purest form and there are certainly worse ways to end this year.

2020 | US | DIRECTOR: Patty Jenkins | WRITERS: Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, David Callaham| CAST: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros./Roadshow Films| RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 December 2020

December 26, 2020
Review: Soul

In any other year, we’d all be lining up in cinemas right now to see the annual slate of post-Christmas releases. 2020 has been, for want of a curse word, different. As such, SOUL makes its way directly into our living rooms via Disney+.

About half of Pixar’s last 10 films were sequels or prequels, a self-perpetuating trend that seems to have been solidified by their Disney acquisition. As if in answer to that, Pixar have returned in 2020 with two original films (alongside Onward) that had atypical digital releases. SOUL is quite easily the best of the two.

In this film, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) is a middle school music teacher who has always wanted to be a professional jazz musician. When he gets a chance to play with a legend, he thinks his life is finally on track – until he falls into an open manhole and dies. Now in the afterlife, he must work with soul in training 22 (Tina Fey) for a chance at returning to Earth.

While there are elements that are similar to Pixar’s earlier Inside Out, mixed up with a few doses of Chuck Jones’ The Phantom Tollbooth or similar, here is a film that is simply and joyously exploring its heritage. While ‘cartoon’ has become a reductive term in modern animation, director Pete Docter displays a deep visual knowledge of the medium in every frame.

Yet on a more fundamental level, SOUL explores many of the things we question in ourselves every day. Things that often get overlooked in overwhelmingly positive family fare. If Inside Out reminded us that it was ok to be a little depressed sometimes, and you can have more than one feeling at a time, here is an acknowledgement that maybe we are all unsure if we’re doing enough. If we are, to paraphrase the character of 22, ‘good enough for living.’

On a technical level, SOUL may be one of Pixar’s most accomplished films to date. From the opening moments of trippy Great Beyond animation, this is visually unlike anything Pixar or Disney has ever put to screen. The deceptively simple voids contrast spectacularly with the New York City streets, one of the most complex, photorealistic and sophisticated animated films sets we’ve ever seen.

Massive props to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who, together with their work on Mank, have delivered two of their most interesting soundtracks this year. For a film that is so infused with jazz, their typically precise work blends seamlessly and warmly with the musical set-pieces.

A minor caveat is that it briefly falls back on Disney/Pixar’s habit of turning minority characters and people of colour in particular into animals for chunks of the running time. Cases in point are Brother Bear, The Princess and the Frog, The Emperor’s New Groove and the short film Out. Even with the presence of acclaimed playwright Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami, Star Trek: Discovery) alongside Docter and Mike Jones, it’s a trope that the studio can’t seem to shake.

Nevertheless, here is a film that tells us that just living life with its warts and all is something unique – even if you’re not into jazz. “I’m worried that if I died today,” says Joe at one point, “my life would have amounted to nothing.” It’s a thought we’ve all shared at some point, regardless of what we’ve accomplished, and SOUL is a beautifully illustrated acknowledgment that failure is as much a part of living as success.

2020 | US | DIRECTOR: Pete Docter | WRITER: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, Kemp Powers| CAST: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, Angela Bassett | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney/Pixar| RUNNING TIME: 106 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 25 December 2020 (Disney+)

December 26, 2020
Review: The Midnight Sky

George Clooney’s seventh feature as a director is arguably his most ambitious in scope. Yet despite its post-apocalyptic backdrop and sci-fi setting, it’s also one of his most intimate character-based pieces, one that somehow perfectly hits on the isolation of 2020.

Deliberately obscuring details of world events, and based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s Good Morning, Midnight, Mark L. Smith’s script introduces us to scientist Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney) three weeks after an undisclosed event in 2049. Left alone at an Arctic research station, he tries to contact the Aether, the last of Earth’s space borne vessels. He is soon surprised to find that a small girl (Caoilinn Springall) is also living in his station.

The larger world is slowly introduced through a series of flashbacks to a young Augustine (Ethan Peck) and a parallel story aboard the Aether. There the crew (Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler) makes their way home from exploring the possibility of colonising another planet, unaware of any fate that has befallen the Earth.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY recalls an era of meditative sci-fi. Think Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris by way of Duncan Jones’ Moon with a dash of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine. Clooney lets his two stories, one on the ground and one in space, play out at their own pace. Sitting at opposite ends of the sci-fi spectrum in a way, with one represent fatalism and the other a bit of hope, they intersect at critical junctures to show that they are mutually exclusive in our future.

More than anything, this is a beautifully photographed film. Martin Ruhe (Control, The American) fills every millimetre of his lens with Icelandic backdrops, including one shot in 50-mile-per-hour winds. The Lone Wolf and Cub journey of Augustine and Iris alternates between these exteriors and a studied interiority, punctuated by several action set-pieces that completely envelop the viewer. The Aether scenes are clean lines by comparison, save for the obligatory post-Gravity spacewalk sequence. Scenes on a fictional planet are as gorgeously rendered, and as stunning as the Icelandic vistas.

This remarkable cast plays out this timely story of isolation against the larger landscape of saving all of mankind. Yet it works because it’s primarily about individual relationships, and the need for connection. This feels authentic now more than ever. Indeed, speaking of authenticity, Jones’ actual pregnancy was worked into the script after production had started and it gives new dimensions to her character and portrayal.

There are elements of the denouement that will frustrate some viewers, while others may simply find the ending cold. In a Q&A with Cate Blanchett, Clooney said that some might see it as a film about regret while others will find the ending to be about redemption. Regardless, here is a smart bit of sci-fi that funnels our hopes and fears for the future into a microcosm, and one suspects multiple viewings will be required to unpick all of its nuances.

2020 | US | DIRECTOR: George Clooney | WRITER: Mark L. Smith| CAST: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler, Caoilinn Springall | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix| RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 10 December 2020 (Limited theatrical), 23 December 2020 (Netflix)

December 10, 2020
Review: Caught In Time

It’s been five years since Lau Ho-Leung’s directorial debut Two Thumbs Up, an elaborate heist film set in the New Territories. His follow-up, by way of screenplays for Johnnie To and several shorts, lands back in the same genre with panache.

Based loosely on a series of real robberies in the 1990s, Detective Zhong Cheng (Wang Qian Yuan) leads a task force in pursuit of Eagle, a criminal gang led by Zhang Sun (Daniel Wu) aka Falcon. Over the better part of a decade, their cat and mouse game inches them closer to a confrontation.

CAUGHT IN TIME (限期破案) is well aware of the massive history of heist and action films that have come before. There is the obvious comparisons with Heat, of course, and John Woo’s The Killer is visually referenced (with an actual clip from the 1989 cult classic used several times). Yet this is not to imply that Lau’s film is wholly unoriginal, as it has its own style and vibe to match.

From its slickly shot locations to elaborate bank vault break-ins using rope, Lau’s screenplay is all about the interplay between the characters. Due to the ’90s setting, it’s refreshingly free of techy gadgets, save for a few pagers that were all the rage in Stars Hollow a few years later.

Through a series of impressively staged set-pieces, including a street shoot-out that’s properly Michael Mann-ish, it all builds to a showdown in a bathhouse that would make Viggo Mortensen proud. It’s a fast and brutal fist fight that uses its environment well, a throwback scene that wouldn’t have been out of place on-screen in the ’90s it is depicting.

There’s a minor subplot involving Jessie Li as a suicide-inclined love interest, mostly there to give the impressively mulleted Wu something to fight for. Of course, running through the film is a pervasive thread of the triumph of law and order. Lots of CCTV, demonstrations of police force, and a big poster reading ‘Persistence without Respite’ are all there to reinforce the idea of police power. Indeed, a pre-credits coda gives us arrest stats for the era! It’s like all the boxes of the 1930s Hollywood Hays Code being ticked in real time.

Still, while CAUGHT IN TIME may not revolutionise the heist genre, it’s going to please a lot of existing fans. Lau solidifies his reputation as a writer and director, and it will be interesting to see if he continues down this path.

2020 | China | DIRECTOR: Lau Ho-Leung | WRITER: Leo Hong, Lau Ho-Leung | CAST: Daniel Wu, Qian Yuan Wang , Michelle Wai | DISTRIBUTOR: China Lion (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 10 December 2020 (AUS)

December 9, 2020
Review: Queer Japan

Japan has one of the more complex and arguably misunderstood relationships with its LGBTQI+ community. Canadian writer, fashion designer and filmmaker Graham Kolbeins explored this in the course of editing several books on gay erotic manga.

What he discovered from his interviews was that Japan was “in the middle of an LGBT boom.” Yes, there is still some way to go when it comes to recognition of same-sex couples and anti-discrimination laws. Yet QUEER JAPAN posits that Japan isn’t culturally homophobic so much as it is slow to change traditions.

Kolbeins doesn’t explore these issues with any depth, instead taking a broad brushstroke approach via a series of character studies. There’s always the danger with a project like this that it will be a goggle box of outsiders looking in, an all too common thread in western films about Japan. Thankfully, this fairly comprehensive look at LGBT representation and life in Japan is an incredibly detailed and empathetic examination of the spectrum.

Nogi Sumiko, Atsushi Matsuda, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Gengoroh Tagame, Akira the Hustler, and Tomato Hatakeno

“Maybe it’s a kind of theatre,” says Japanese drag queen and artist Vivienne Sato, “but the starting line is much further back.” Yet if Sato’s recognition of how far the culture has to go, Kolbeins’ 100 interviews conducted over three years ensures that her comments are not presented in a vacuum. Prominent voices like Akira the Hustler, non-binary performance artist Saeborg, and manga artists Hiroshi Hasegawa and Gengoroh Tagame (G-Men) appear alongside Aya Kamikawa, first openly transgender elected official in Japan. There’s also video game designers, performance artists, bar owners, academics and YouTubers.

Kolbeins also takes the time to explore the politics of various scenes, from the women-only party that’s been running at Bar Goldfinger since 1991 through to broader ‘gay quarter’ of Tokyo in Shinkuku Ni-Chome and associated Pride March. There’s a completely exploitation-free exploration of various fetish scenes too, albeit peppered by some cheeky and deliberately provocative interviewees. “This world just exists in tangent,” comments Margarette, the organizer of the Department H fetish club. Through the compilation of their intersecting perspectives, Kolbeins’ message is clear: the LGBTQI+ culture in Japan is as diverse and deep as the global culture. It’s also growing.

From a technical point of view, it’s a slick affair. Starting with bright neon titles that flicker between romanji and hiragana/katakna, Kolbeins and co-photographer John Roney ensure that the visuals are as interesting as their subject matter. Their camera never flinches away from explicit imagery either, making this a refreshingly frank exploration of sex and sexuality that contrasts with Japan’s perceived conservatism.

By the end, there’s a feeling that we have a thorough understanding of this group of people – and that seems to be the main point. “In the midst of all this attention,” laments one subject, “Japanese people aren’t ready to move on yet.” Hopefully this excellent document brings mainstream Japan one step closer to understanding that this culture is part of their tradition as well.

2019 | US, Japan | DIRECTOR: Graham Kolbeins | WRITER: Anne Ishii, Graham Kolbeins | CAST: Nogi Sumiko, Atsushi Matsuda, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Gengoroh Tagame, Akira the Hustler, and Tomato Hatakeno | DISTRIBUTOR: Altered Innocence | RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11 December 2020 (Online)

December 9, 2020
Review: Mank

Whether Citizen Kane is still the greatest film ever made is a matter of regular debate, one I’ve engaged in from time to time. Yet almost eight decades after its release, it is unquestionably one of the most influential movies in the canon.

Even more fascinating is the story behind the printed legend. The debut work of talented wunderkind Orson Welles and his war with newspaper magnate William Randolf Hearst has been covered in the documentary The Battle for Citizen Kane, and later fictionalised in RKO 281 (1999). Both acknowledge the importance of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, best known at the time as the fixer of other people’s screenplays.

Now co-credited as the writer of Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz’s life and process serves as the focal point of David Fincher’s MANK, his first feature in six years. Based on the screenplay of his father Jack Fincher (who died in 2003), the film casts Gary Oldman as the titular Mank.

The writer is introduced as a literally broken man: an alcoholic exiled by Welles (Tom Burke) to a remote house, and his leg in plaster from a hitherto undisclosed accident. Tended to by secretary Rita (Lily Collins) and a German nurse, the writing process unfolds through flashbacks to his tumultuous relationship with Hearst (a magnificent Charles Dance), Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) and MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard).

While the Finchers lean a little heavily into Pauline Kael’s (largely debunked) 1971 essay claiming Mank’s sole authorship of Citizen Kane, not to mention Mank’s own contention of sole writing credit, this is a mighty fine piece of filmmaking from Mr. Fincher the younger. Maybe even one of his best.

On a technical level, Fincher and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (Mindhunter, Gone Girl) pay tribute to much of Welles’ style – from the non-linear narrative to the prodigious emphasis on light and shadow. The period accurate Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score is a revelation from the duo who, let’s face it, have produced some excellent but samey pieces over the years.

It’s a strong portrait of a flawed human, played with characteristic aplomb by Oldman, while Welles and co take a serious backseat to the the Mank/Hearst dichotomy. In a stark contrast with RKO 281, it’s nice to see Seyfried’s Marion Davies given more agency than the Melanie Griffith version. Indeed, Fincher goes in the opposite direction by casting Davies as a self-aware wit and equal to Mank’s own mind.

Yet she is one of the few women who gets a strong outing though, as most other women in the cast – from Tuppence Middleton as Mank’s wife (‘poor Sarah’) to Collins as a captive audience – are merely background players.

Instead, there’s an entire sidebar about the political war in Hollywood around the gubernatorial race of socialist Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye). Already slightly discombobulating in its shifting perspectives, the race is a symbolic but arguably extraneous detail, one that only feels like its there to draw parallels with Kane‘s narrative beats.

Nevertheless, MANK is a constantly compelling portrait. Critic and historian Robert Carringer may have put the authorship debate to bed over 40 years ago, but thanks to Fincher we have a lovingly detailed and vividly realised time capsule of this endlessly intriguing period.

2020 | US | DIRECTOR: David Fincher | WRITER: Jack Fincher| CAST: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Charles Dance, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton, Ferdinand Kingsley, Tuppence Middleton, Tom Burke, Joseph Cross, Jamie McShane, Toby Leonard Moore, Monika Gossmann | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix| RUNNING TIME: 131 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 November 2020 (Limited theatrical), 4 December 2020 (Netflix)

November 23, 2020
Review: American Utopia

In 1984, David Byrne, Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme elevated the idea of the concert with with Stop Making Sense. With this hybrid film, he joins forces with Spike Lee to elevate both theatre performance and modern music performance.

At its most basic level, this is a recording of David Byrne’s Broadway show. It’s a performance that features the former Talking Heads frontman, 11 musicians and 21 career-spanning songs. That’s a perfectly serviceable account of what happens in the 105 minute runtime, but to leave it at that would be selling this show monumentally short.

On a simple blue stage, surrounded on three sides by dangling chain links, all of the performers use wireless equipment. This allows the performers freedom of movement across the stage, liberating the band from the fixed positions we’re used to seeing. Plus, by removing everything from stage except what “we care about,” Byrne and his amazing ensemble strip away the clutter and present new songs and old in completely original ways.

Byrne sets the scene with ‘Here’ – a newer song written for AMERICAN UTOPIA – and places us in “another dimension/like the clothes that you wear.” Yet Byrne immediately takes us on a journey through songs off Rei Momo (1989), Talking Heads: 77 (1977) and his 2002 collaboration with British House duo X-Press 2.

When ‘This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)’ drops a mere five songs in, and ‘Once In a Lifetime’ shortly after, you might wonder if he’s peaked too early. Yet that would be also be forgetting just how many influential tunes this man has been involved with over the years. That said, one of the most powerful moments is a cover of Janelle Monae’s ‘Hell You Talmbout,’ a group chant that names people like Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sharonda Singleton and other black Americans killed by police.

The latter is the most direct link to Lee’s dramatic films, although it should be noted that he has been filming stage shows since at least since 1998’s Freak. (Indeed, Lee’s next project is said to be a musical about the invention of Viagra!) The steady hands of Lee and regular cinematographic collaborator Ellen Kuras guide us through this world. The camera is no more static than the performers, finding new angles throughout and all culminating in the band marching through the audience like a Dixieland troupe.

At the end of a very long year, one that has served up some of the biggest hardships we’ve had to face as a generation, it’s wonderful to see something that is just a joy to behold. At times freewheeling, and at others marching to the beat of an unencumbered drummer, but it’s always tightly controlled. This is Stop Making Sense on contemporary HBO money, and that’s better than a bag of chips.

2020 | US | DIRECTOR: Spike Lee | WRITER: David Byrne | CAST: David Byrne, Chris Giarmo, Tendayi Kuumba, Karl Mansfield, Angie Swan, Bobby Wooten III, Mauro Refosco | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 November 2020 (AUS)

November 22, 2020
Review: His

Following the double-punch last year of Just Only Love and the wonderful Little Nights, Little Love, I was excited to see a new film from the prolific Rikiya Imaizumi this year. Here he brings his delicate touch and character eye to contemporary LGBTQI+ issues in Japan, specifically the right for a same-sex couple to be recognised as parents.

The film takes its time exploring the dynamic between Shun (Hio Miyazawa) and Nagisa (Kisetsu Fujiwara), and seeing how their brief school romance plays out years later when Nagisa arrives with his 6-year-old daughter. Like Little Nights, Little Love, Imaizumi achieves this through well-paced vignettes of their lives in a small town.

By comparison, Nagisa’s (soon to be ex) wife (played by Wakana Matsumoto) is a career-minded woman in the big city. I would be remiss if I didn’t reflect on he portrayal being one of the more troubling tropes in the film: she is mildly abusive to her child, and is initially unable to juggle parenting and work without the aid of alcohol. The simple dichotomy with Nagisa and Shun makes it easier to side with the couple, especially when the courtroom sequence begins.

Which is the other tropey moment in the film, where homosexuality is briefly put on trial as part of the custody hearings. It’s a familiar path for cinema, and a heavy-handed one perhaps. Despite Japan’s comparatively liberal attitude towards LGBT issues (especially when compared with other parts of Asia), there’s still some way to go when it comes to recognition of same-sex couples and anti-discrimination laws. Mind you, Matsumoto’s character gets an equal serving in court for being a woman trying to “have it all.”

This doubles-down on the conservatism the court still defers to. In the 2019 documentary Queer Japan, several interviewees point out that it’s not so much prejudice as it is an inability to break away from “tradition.” To Imaizumi’s credit, he doesn’t use his fictional courtroom to try and resolve any of these issues.

Despite these relatively minor issues, Imaizumi’s film is about a gentler path to acceptance. The 6-year-old daughter (played by the adorable Sakura Sotomura) accepts her father’s new relationship without question, and the small town barely bats an eyelid when the couple officially ‘outs’ themselves. In this way, Imaizumi has his cake and eats it too, showcasing where progress is needed by laying it down on a bedrock of hope.

2020 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Rikiya Imaizumi | WRITER: Atsushi Asada | CAST: Hio Miyazawa, Kisetsu Fujiwara, Wakana Matsumoto, Sakura Sotomura | DISTRIBUTOR: Phantom Film (JPN) | RUNNING TIME: 127 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 24 January 2020 (AUS)

November 22, 2020
Review: Fukuoka

As an ethnic Korean born in China, filmmaker Zhang Lü’s works have often examined people straddling cultural bridges. Following a lighter beat from 2014’s Gyeongju and the excellent A Quiet Dream (2016), Zhang’s latest film once again returns to the concepts of otherness and outsiders in a foreign landscape.

With FUKUOKA (후쿠오카), Zhang quite literally straddles two countries by taking his characters from Korea to Japan. Je-Moon (Yoon Je-Moon) owns a bookstore, and his regular customer So-Dam (Park So-Dam) suggests (strongly) that they should travel to Fukuoka. There they meet Hae-Hyo (Kwon Hae-Hyo), who shared Je-Moon’s love for the unseen Soon-Yi almost three decades earlier.

It’s almost impossible not to compare Zhang with Hong Sang-soo. Well, maybe not impossible. It’s entirely possible I could have not typed that sentence but I did anyway. The similarities come in a drifting narrative that concentrates on long character-based takes, and slow revelations about the past coming out through these conversations.

The big distinction is that there isn’t that sense that the other shoe is going to drop at any moment, and Zhang is content to follow this trio through their random encounters across the northern shore of Kyushu. So-Dam seems to be able to communicate with practically anybody she meets, despite protesting that she isn’t multilingual, all the while toting around a classic Chinese erotic novel. Symbolism is found everywhere, including a communications tower that is visible from almost every spot in Fukuoka – and mirrors the Eiffel Tower on So-Dam’s tote bag.

Three excellent lead performances are a masterclass. Through their casual interplay and meanderings, revelations about the past slowly emerge within the context of this foreign place. By the time So-dam suggests that she play Soon-yi in some kind of throuple situation, the film’s tongue is planted so firmly in cheek that’s it’s practically bulging with coy irony.

Zhang’s next film, his first Chinese film in over a decade. It will explore a similar theme, as two brothers travel from China to Yanagawa in Fukuoka to find the girl they loved in their youth. It’s just as well, because this is the kind of film that could keep going all day and you’d be cool with it. Now, to find the shortest path to the bar.

2020 | South Korean | DIRECTOR: Zhang Lu | WRITER: Zhang Lu | CAST: Kwon Hae-hyo, Yoon Je-moon, Park So-dam | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 29 October – 5 November 2020 (KOFFIA)

Read more coverage of South Korean cinema from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Korea with more film from Asia in Focus.

November 3, 2020
Review: Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982

Originally released in its native South Korea in 2016, Cho Nam-Joo’s book shot to fame in South Korea when floor leader of the Justice Party’s Roh Hoe-chan gifted the book to President Moon Jae-in. The book, which concerns a stay-at-home mother with depression, was inscribed with a message that read “Please embrace ‘Kim Ji-young Born ’82.’”

The film adaptation of KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982 (82년생 김지영) arrives in a timely fashion as the global #MeToo movement shares similar true tales of everyday discrimination. Most descriptions will tell you that the titular Kim Ji-Young (Jung Yu-Mi) is an ordinary woman in her 30s who starts experiencing signs of being someone else. Of course, that spooky sounding plotline speaks more to the ‘otherness’ she has been experiencing her whole life as a woman in Korea.

This film signals the feature directorial debut of actor Kim Do-young, perhaps best known for roles in films like The Righteous Thief (2009). In translating the novel to the screen, she and co-writer Yoo Young-ah (On Your Wedding Day) have managed work Cho’s vignettes into a single narrative while maintaining the cumulative impact of institutionalised sexism. From dealing with groping as a schoolgirl to familial and societal expectations of Ji-young as a mother, her wants and needs have consistently been secondary to those of her brother, husband, and father.

Ostensibly about indoctrinated misogyny in South Korea, there’s a universality to Ji-young’s experience. Following the book’s structure of a life as a case study, albeit without the bookends of a male doctor analysing her experience, Ji-young’s life might be viewed by the men in her life extraordinary but the truth is that it’s the cumulative and systemic micro (and let’s face it, macro) aggressions that determine her fate.

Early in the film, Ji-young overhears someone referring to her coffee break with child in tow as a “comfortable life,” a viewpoint shared by many men in her circle. Her father gets easily outraged by any woman’s role that is not child-rearing, while Ji-young’s mother-in-law is furious that her return to work might jeopardise her own son’s career.

Jung Yu-Mi – known for her roles in Oki’s Movie, Train to Busan and Psychokinesis – delivers a powerfully understated and award-winning performance. Her stoicism in the face of prosaic prejudice gives added weight to the film. Equally fierce is Ji-young’s mother, who’s vocal opposition to the men in their lives leads to a semi-breakdown on screen. The men, of course, stand about impotent in the face of emotion.

When the book and film were released in Korea, headlines spoke of it increasing tensions in the local market and couples breaking up over it. The messaging is not necessarily subtle, but neither is the discrimination against women. It’s precisely the ordinariness of these (typically male) viewpoints that, when taken together in a single document such as this, demonstrate how stacked the system is against career-minded women. Yet it would also be very easy to dismiss this as a Korean problem, and if this timely tale shows us anything it’s that society has a collective culpability in perpetuating it or a responsibility to instigate change.

2019 | South Korean | DIRECTOR: Kim Do-young | WRITER: Kim Do-young, Yoo Young-Ah| CAST: Jung Yu-mi, Gong Yoo, Kim Mi-kyeong | DISTRIBUTOR: Little Monster Entertainment/Korean Film Festival in Australia (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 29 October – 5 November 2020 (KOFFIA)

Read more coverage of South Korean cinema from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Korea with more film from Asia in Focus.

November 2, 2020