The Top 40 Films of 2009 (10-1)

File this under "Better Late Than Never." Just in time for the end of 2010, here are my picks for the Top 10 films of 2009.

10. Adventureland (Greg Mottola, US, 2009)





9. Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, US, 2009)





8. Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins, US, 2008)





7. Hunger (Steve McQueen, UK, 2008)

Read my review here.



6. Night and Day/Bam gua nat (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2008)

5. Desert Dream/Hyazgar (Zhang Lu, Mongolia/China/France/South Korea, 2007)

4. You, the Living/Du levande (Roy Andersson, Sweden/Germany/France/Denmark/Norway, 2007)

3. Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina/France/Netherlands/Germany/Spain, 2008)

A man working on an industrial freighter asks for leave while his ship is docked at port to return home to see his sick mother and the daughter he has never met.  Having been away for a very long time and essentially abandoning his family, he receives a decidedly chilly reception, especially from his father.  He gives his daughter some money, and takes off again, this time perhaps for good.  This is pretty much the entire plot of Liverpool, the latest (and greatest, so far) film by Lisandro Alonso, a stalwart of a crop of immensely talented filmmakers coming out of Argentina in recent years.  Alonso, to my mind, is perhaps the most intellectually and aesthetically rigorous of them all, his framing and editing as precise and as perfect as any I’ve seen.  His films, the previous ones being La Libertad, Los muertos and Fantasma, are not exactly the most accessible, although Los muertos possesses a frightening and mesmerizing intensity.  They make great demands on audiences, requiring them to pay careful attention to subtle details, and to stick with seemingly monotonous, mundane details, and trust that they will lead somewhere.  Liverpool represents the apotheosis of this strategy, compelling us to stick with the journey of its initial protagonist, a silent, solitary figure who interacts very little with others, and whose most constant companion is a vodka bottle he frequently takes swigs from.  His face is an impassive, impenetrable mask – he undoubtedly lives a harsh, lonely existence, but his expression gives us nothing.  He is a man resigned to his fate, and seems unwilling or unable to do anything to change it.

The film has a binary structure, and the second part of the film begins when the man we have been following disappears again from his daughter’s life, and from the film itself, which now refuses to follow him.  Instead, we stay with the man’s family, and their life on the farm.  The daughter seems to be mentally slow, and has a slight stutter.  The only thing she says to her father is, “Are you going to give me money?”  No emotional reunion here – it’s not that kind of film.  But the film ends on an exquisitely beautiful moment of tenderness.  Without giving too much away, I’ll say that it’s Alonso’s version of “Rosebud.”

2. My Dear Enemy/Meotjin haru (Lee Yoon-ki, South Korea, 2008)

1. 35 Shots of Rum/35 rhums (Claire Denis, France, 2008)

Read my review here.

One of the film's major highlights -- the beautiful dance scene late in the film:

The Role of Her Life

Ad-Lib Night (Aju teukbyeolhan sonnim). 2006. Written and directed by Lee Yoon-ki, based on a short story by Azuko Taira. Produced by Lee Yoon-ki and Yun Il-jung. Cinematography by Choi Sang-ho. Edited by Kim Hyeong-ju. Music by Kim Jeong-beom. Art direction by Kim Seong-dal. Costume design by Jeon Hong-ju. Sound by Steve R. Seo.

Cast: Han Hyo-ju, Kim Yeong-min, Choi Il-hwa, Kim Jung-gi, Shin Yeong-jin, Yoon Hee-seok, Yeo Min-gu.

Lee Yoon-ki’s third feature Ad-Lib Night, based on a short story by Japanese author Azuko Taira, is an intimate and beautifully observed drama which takes place, as per the title, mostly over the course of a single night. Within this compressed time frame, Lee’s searching and perceptive camera-eye shows us a world of pain, humor, and revelation, delivered with the finely honed attention to detail and human psychology he was so adept at in his first feature, This Charming Girl (2004), and in his second, the underrated Love Talk (2005). His latest film, like his debut, has a woman (Han Hyo-ju) at its center, whose true identity isn’t revealed until a startling and poignant scene near the conclusion. She is accosted while on her way to meet someone by two men who mistake her for Myeong-eun, the long-estranged daughter of a dying man. After a protracted, and nicely staged, scene in which after much argument back and forth they slowly realize that she is not who they thought she was, they convince her to pose as this long-lost daughter in order to fulfill the dying man’s wish to see his daughter one last time. They travel far from Seoul to their small town, where the other members of the family are keeping a night-long vigil, since he is so near death.

The set-up is quite simple, but this works all the more to highlight this film’s considerable virtues. Ad-Lib Night is shot almost entirely handheld, with the camera often very close to the actors, and both the family conflicts and the provincial nature of the small town are laid bare over the course of this long night. The scenes of the family arranged in a circle, first debating over whether to go through with the plan to deceive the dying man, and later fighting amongst themselves over long-simmering internal grievances, are vividly rendered by the excellent ensemble cast. In these scenes, the missing daughter looms even larger by her absence. And as we do with many of the characters, aspects that are revealed about them force us to cast aside our initial judgments of them. Myeong-eun, who at first seems to be “unfilial daughter,” as one family member puts it, becomes a more sympathetic figure as we get to know more about the family she left behind. “Now I see why she went away,” one of the young men observes late in the film, as he talks to Myeong-eun’s stand-in.

This film, as much as anything else, is about acting, or more precisely, performance, in both art and life. Interestingly, both the Korean title, which translates as “A Very Special Guest,” and the English title contain references to the performing arts. The young woman is indeed a “special guest” actor in the intense family drama she witnesses, and she must “ad-lib” her way through this night. She rehearses her one line – “Father, I’m sorry” – repeatedly on the long drive to the family home. In one funny scene, after one of the men criticizes the young woman for not being convincing enough, the other retorts, “We’re not shooting a film.”

The young woman, whose role is supposedly so essential, is quickly shunted to the side and is kept peripheral to the family’s squabbling. She spends most of her time in Myeong-eun’s room, searching through her possessions and trying to get some sense of who this lost daughter was. She remains a silent enigma throughout the film, raising many questions, not the least of which is why she allows herself to be brought along on this unusual trip.

“Everybody has their reasons,” Jean Renoir famously stated in Rules of the Game. This film is a wonderful expression of that statement, proving that films need not be sensational and action-packed to be engrossing and suspenseful. Even the smallest gesture, like the young woman exchanging her own socks for the lost daughter’s socks, speaks volumes about character and irresistibly draws us in. Poetic and beautifully crafted, Ad-Lib Night is one of the very best of recent Korean films.

Ad-Lib Night can be purchased from Seoul Selection.