The Top 40 Films of 2009 (15-11)

15. Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim, US/South Korea, 2008)

Read my review here.



14. Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly/Babi buta yang ingin terbang (Edwin, Indonesia, 2008)





13. Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani, US, 2008)



12. Still Walking/Aruitemo aruitemo (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2008)





11. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2008)

Read my review here.

BAMcinemaFEST Review: Bradley Rust Gray's "The Exploding Girl"

The Exploding Girl. 2009. Written and directed by Bradley Rust Gray. Produced by So Yong Kim, Karin Chien, Ben Howe, and Bradley Rust Gray. Cinematography by Eric Lin. Edited by So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray. Sound by Michael Sterkin.

Cast: Zoe Kazan (Ivy), Mark Rendall (Al), Franklin Pipp (Greg), Maryann Urbano (Mom).

Bradley Rust Gray's lovely second feature The Exploding Girl will screen as part of "BAMcinemaFEST," a film festival showcasing recent American independent films that will be at BAM Rose Cinemas from June 18 through 27. This festival will replace the "Sundance at BAM" series that ran at this time for the past three years, which, according to a Sundance spokesperson, is "taking a break" this year. Nevertheless, it looks like a pretty strong line-up, with at least a few films I'm looking forward to seeing, such as Tze Chun's Children of Invention, Ry Russo-Young's You Won't Miss Me, Robert Siegel's Big Fan, Lynn Shelton's Humpday, Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax, and Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. The festival also includes short films, live music performances, and selections from BAM's repertory film program, with director Arnaud Desplechin present for screenings of Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid and Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums.

Here is what I wrote on The Exploding Girl when it screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival:

The précis of Bradley Rust Gray’s film The Exploding Girl sounds like boilerplate mumblecore: vacationing college girl Ivy (Zoe Kazan, in a riveting, affecting performance), battling an epileptic condition, has halting, increasingly awkward conversations with the boyfriend she anxiously plays phone tag with, while her platonic buddy Al (Mark Rendall) inches ever closer to becoming something more than a friend. But in the masterful hands of Gray, this becomes a delicate and gorgeous slice of New York life, brilliantly observed and brimming with emotion. Much like his wife and filmmaking collaborator So Yong Kim (director of Treeless Mountain and In Between Days, who also co-edited and co-produced this film), Gray has a visual preference for sustained, intimate long takes, very often shot from middle and long distance, with physical obstructions such as doorways, windows, and crowds on the street often inserting themselves between the characters and the camera, as well as breathtakingly beautiful cutaways to sky and trees (a late rooftop sunset shot of Ivy and Al accompanied by pigeons flying in formation is a particularly exquisite one). These elements provide a depth that manifests itself in every gesture, every emotionally fraught pause in conversation that is captured here.

One of the great charms of The Exploding Girl is how evocatively and accurately it conveys the particularly slow, lazy feel of a New York summer. There are many nice passages of Ivy wandering the streets and lounging at parties, taking needed pauses from the drama of much of her life, not the least of which is her epilepsy, kept at bay by medication, but always threatening to overtake her. The title of the film, which also doubles as a neat metaphor for her condition as well as her emotional turmoil, actually comes from a song by The Cure (which happens to be the flipside of the Cure single "In Between Days,” the namesake of his wife’s debut feature). The Exploding Girl, again like Kim’s films, derives much of its power from a sensitive and magnetic central performance, in this case by the instantly winning Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of director Elia Kazan and daughter of Hollywood screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord), who in every movement and expression lends this film an uncommon grace. Kazan last appeared in a key role in Sam Mendes’ film Revolutionary Road, but here she proves immensely capable of being the main attraction. As impressive as all the film’s other collaborators are, Kazan shines as the true emotional center and makes The Exploding Girl much more than just a pretty object. And when the dreaded explosion finally occurs, an event we have been anticipating throughout the film, it leads to a quiet yet intense catharsis, both for Ivy and for us watching, that is a soul-satisfying conclusion to one of the year’s loveliest films.

The Exploding Girl screens on June 25 at 6:30. Click here to purchase tickets.

Additional reading: an multimedia article on So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray on the site FLYP, where you can view clips from their films.

New Directors/New Films 2009 Review: So Yong Kim's "Treeless Mountain"

Treeless Mountain. 2008. Written and directed by So Yong Kim. Produced by Bradley Rust Grey, Ben Howe, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, and So Yong Kim. Cinematography by Anne Misawa. Edited by So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Grey. Music by Asobi Seksu. Production design by See Hee Kim.

Cast: Hee Yeon Kim (Jin), Song Hee Kim (Bin), Soo Ah Lee (Mom), Mi Hyang Kim (Big Aunt), Boon Tak Park (Grandma).

So Yong Kim's ineffably lovely second feature Treeless Mountain, having already screened at the Toronto, Pusan and Berlin film festivals, is one of the major must-sees of this year's New Directors/New Films. Beginning from an autobiographical place in much the same manner as her auspicious debut In Between Days, Treeless Mountain focuses in almost microscopic detail on two sisters, 7-year old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim), and their increasingly precarious existence after their mother (Soo Ah Lee) suddenly decides to search for the girls’ absent father. She leaves them in the care of Big Aunt (Mi Hyang Kim) while she is away. Big Aunt, a boozy and neglectful guardian, reluctantly takes them in and afterward can barely be bothered to look after them, leaving the girls mostly to their own devices. When Big Aunt finally tires of having the girls around, she sends them to the countryside to live on the farm tended by their grandmother (Boon Tak Park). That’s the story of the film in a nutshell, as simple as can be. But this description doesn’t begin to convey the magic Kim works with her materials. Alternating close shots of the girls playing, fighting, and roasting grasshoppers with startlingly lovely static shots of the sky, trees, and other natural phenomena, as well as a stunning landscape that concludes the film (all testaments to the skilled cinematography provided by Anne Misawa), Kim allows everything to unfold with an uncommonly patient subtlety that yields rich rewards. The film is so subtle, in fact, that it took me a second viewing (I first saw the film in Pusan) to fully appreciate its gifts, proving that it often pays to revisit films. The first time I saw Treeless Mountain, I did appreciate its visual beauty, but I felt somewhat emotionally distanced from what was happening on screen. During my second screening, that distance dissolved as I got more in tune with the intensely intimate nature of this film, and as I began to understand that Kim was making evocative use of a fairy tale structure to inform the girls’ journey. Abandoned children are a perennial fairy tale motif, Hansel and Gretel coming immediately to mind. What brought me to this reading was the detail of the piggy bank that the girls’ mother gives to them just before she leaves them, telling them that if they listen to Big Aunt, they will receive a coin for the bank. When the bank is full, their mother promises to return to them. This piggy becomes a magical object that the girls invest all their hope and faith in. One of the film’s loveliest and most humorous sequences occurs when they discover that one large coin can be exchanged for much smaller ones, after which they rush from store to store to exchange their money. When the piggy bank is bursting, they rush to a large pile of dirt and rocks (the “treeless mountain” of the film’s title) to await their mothers’ return. What occurs afterward becomes the poignant aftermath of lost illusions, especially for Jin, forced to grow beyond her years as a surrogate mother to her sister Bin (whose beloved “princess” dress reinforces the fairy tale theme).

So Yong Kim proves to be not only a master of mise-en-scène, but a wonderful director of actors, of both nonprofessionals and veterans. Hee Yeon Kim and Song Hee Kim as the sisters are mesmerizing to watch, every gesture drawing the viewer further into their world, filled with as much humor and joy as sadness. (The two girls aren’t related in real life, despite a shared surname.) Song Hee is especially memorable, with her twinkling eyes and pixie smile. The fact that she is an abandoned child herself (So Yong Kim found her in an orphanage located in suburban Seoul) only makes her performance all the more remarkable. The adult actors impress as well. Soo Ah Lee, a veteran actress returning to films after a long absence, interprets her character with such bold strokes that she remains a strong presence in the film, even though we see her in very few scenes. Mi Hyang Kim skillfully conveys the delicate nuances of a character who is not simplistically evil despite her benign neglect towards her charges. The contrasts between the film’s two locales, Seoul City and Heunghae (Kim’s hometown), are rendered in vivid detail, making the film’s exquisite pastoral conclusion all the more moving.

Treeless Mountain screens at New Directors/New Films on March 27 and 29 and opens in New York on April 22 at Film Forum, and nationally soon after.

Interview with So Yong Kim on Treeless Mountain:

Treeless Mountain trailer:

TREELESS MOUNTAIN: Movie Trailer - Watch today’s top amazing videos here