New York Asian Film Festival 2009 Review: Yau Nai-hoi's "Eye in the Sky"

Eye in the Sky (Gun chung). 2007. Directed by Yau Nai-hoi. Written by Yau Nai-hoi and Au Kin-yee. Produced by Johnnie To and Tsui Siu-ming. Cinematography by Cheung Tung-leung. Edited by David Richardson. Music by Guy Zerafa and Dave Klotz. Art direction by Raymond Chan. Sound design by Martin Chappell. Costume design by Mabel Kwan.

Cast: Simon Yam (Sergeant Wong/"Dog Head"), Tony Leung Ka-fai (Shan), Kate Tsui (Bobo/"Piggy"), Lam Suet (Ng Tung/"Fatman"), Maggie Siu (Madame Fong), Cheung Siu-fai (Chief Inspector Chan), Xie Xue Xin (Master's Wife).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)

From Johnnie To’s mighty Milkyway Image film factory comes Eye in the Sky, Yau Nai-hoi’s tense and visually dynamic cat-and-mouse thriller which often gives the viewer a Big Brother view of the characters. Yau, a screenwriter of many of Johnnie To’s best films (Running Out of Time, The Mission, PTU, Running On Karma, Throw Down, the Election films), makes his debut as a director with this film. While Yau’s set pieces lack the visual flair of To’s films, as a whole Eye in the Sky is a lean, limber piece of entertainment that is a worthy addition to the impressive films emerging from this great production house.

The film opens with a great, nearly wordless opening sequence of surveillance and pursuit, but who exactly is the pursuer and the pursued is left teasingly unclear at first. It begins on a crowded streetcar, moves out into the street, and finally into a café, where it all is revealed as a test for Bobo (Kate Tsui), a rookie member of the Hong Kong police’s Surveillance Unit, a undercover force complementing the many street surveillance cameras manned by the Criminal Intelligence Bureau. Her boss, Sergeant Wong (Simon Yam), is her tester, the man we have seen Bobo following, and he peppers her with questions about what he did, where he went, and who he talked to. “Surveillance literally means ‘the eye in the sky,’” he tells her, stressing the importance of paying attention to every detail. However, under both of their noses, a jewel heist has been going on, masterminded by Shan (Tony Leung Ka-fai), who much like his police counterparts, has been keeping a close eye from above on the ragtag crew he has assembled to pull off the heist. It all nearly goes awry when one of the crew breaks their carefully orchestrated schedule to grab more goods. They manage to get away before the police descend on the scene.

Meanwhile, back at police headquarters, Wong (nicknamed “Dog Head”) and Bobo (whom Wong saddles with the handle “Piggy”) are given their new assignment: catching the gang of jewel thieves, who they have been led to by identifying one of the gang, “Fatman” (Lam Suet), who makes the cops’ job easier by going to the same mini-mart every night like clockwork to pick up his nightly snacks. Wong reminds Bobo that their job is undercover surveillance, not playing beat cop: they must stay focused on their mission and not get involved in anything else happening on the street. Not yet as hardened as her more seasoned superiors, Bobo can only watch in distress as thugs brutally beat down a man who owes them money. In a later scene, when the police have Shan in hot pursuit, Bobo breaks the rule of not getting involved, with very serious consequences.

Eye in the Sky (co-written by Yau and regular writing partner Au Kin-yee) moves with a breathless pace, its jagged editing and restless handheld camera giving it a nervier feel than the more classically composed films of Johnnie To. The film refuses to get bogged down in social or political analysis of the erosion of privacy represented by the all-seeing “eye in the sky.” Even though the film has been criticized in some quarters for not taking a stance on this subject, in this case it’s a refreshing asset. There are plenty of other films that deal with this subject, and if the filmmakers have nothing new to add, it’s better to just leave it alone instead of rehashing arguments that have been better made elsewhere. Yau is greatly aided in his rookie stint in the director’s chair by many members of the sturdily reliable stock company of actors To has assembled over the years, who give compellingly lived-in performances. Simon Yam is aces as the grizzled veteran cop; he reportedly put on 20 pounds for the part, although the extra weight looks like an ill-fitting fat suit. Tony Leung Ka-fai is a compelling live-wire as the criminal mastermind, his cool exterior barely disguising the feral animal underneath. Some of these To stalwarts shine even in smaller roles, such as the great Lam Suet as the constantly hungry jewel gang lookout, and Maggie Siu as Wong and Bobo’s hard-assed, foul-mouthed superior. Kate Tsui, a popular TV actress (and former Miss Hong Kong) making her film debut, is also excellent, beautifully handling her role as the true heart of the film, her character forced to learn very quickly on the job. Tsui more than holds her own with her seasoned co-stars; she took home a Best New Actor prize at last year’s Hong Kong Film Awards. The film also won an award for Yau as Best New Director and an editing prize for David M. Richardson. Eye in the Sky once again solidifies the members of the Milkyway Image production company as some of the best in the business. As long as these master practitioners of action films are on the case, Hong Kong is assured of remaining a major player in world cinema.

Eye in the Sky screens on June 19 at 2:00 and June 22 at 3:35 at the IFC Center as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. Click here to purchase tickets.

Death Becomes Him

Departures (Okuribito). 2008. Directed by Yojiro Takita. Written by Kundo Koyama, based on the book "Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician" by Shinmon Aoki. Produced by Toshiaki Nakazawa. Cinematography by Takeshi Hamada. Edited by Akimasa Kawashima. Music by Joe Hisaishi. Production design by Fumio Ogawa. Sound recording by Satoshi Ozaki. Costume design by Katsuhiko Kitamura.

Cast: Masahiro Motoki (Daigo Kobayashi), Tsutomu Yamazaki (Ikuei Sasaki), Ryoko Hirosue (Mika Kobayashi), Kimiko Yo (Yuriko Kamimura), Takashi Sasano (Shokichi Hirata), Kazuko Yoshiyuki (Tsuyako Yamashita), Tetta Sugimoto (Yamashita).

When you die, you want to die a beautiful death. But what makes for a beautiful death is not always clear. To die without suffering, to die without causing trouble to others, to die leaving behind a beautiful corpse, to die looking good – it’s not clear what is meant by a beautiful death. Does a beautiful death refer to the way you die or the condition of your corpse after death? This distinction is not clear.

Though the faces of the dead engross me, in the course of being in contact with the dead on a daily basis, I began to notice that the faces of the dead were invariably gentle ones. During their lives I don’t know what right or wrong they might have done, but it seems to have no bearing on them now. It doesn’t matter whether their beliefs were thick or thin, whether they belonged to this denomination or that, whether they were interested in religion or not. Nothing they have done goes to making the dead wear such gentle faces.

Day after day all I see are dead people. And so the dead appear to me as serene, even beautiful. By contrast, the despicableness of the living began to irk me – the living, who, out of their fear of death, peer into the faces of the dead with fear and trepidation in their eyes. As they watch me washing the deceased, I can sense their lines of sight mixed with feelings of alarm, fear, sadness, affection, and anger piercing me from behind.

-- Shinmon Aoki, Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician, the basis for Departures

At this year’s Academy Awards, an event at which every result seems more and more to be preordained far in advance, there was a very rare occurrence: a genuine surprise. That would be Departures, the latest film from veteran Japanese director Yojiro Takita, winning the best foreign film Oscar, shocking all observers (including the filmmakers themselves) and throwing a monkey wrench in Oscar pools across the nation. Such a turn of events would have been the last one would have expected for a director who got his start in the “pink film” (Japanese soft-core sex film) industry, turning out films with such titles as Groper Train. Since then, Takita moved into mainstream features, becoming quite successful doing so, a versatile and eclectic filmmaker working in many different genres, having box office success with Onmyoji (The Ying-Yang Master) (2001) and When the Last Sword is Drawn (2004).

As baffling as the victory of Departures at the Oscars over much more highly touted films may have seemed to many, once one actually sees the film, it’s not hard to see why this upset happened. The style of Departures is as straightforward and old-fashioned as it gets; in many ways, the film is a throwback to older films released by Shochiku Studios, the famed Japanese studio that released this film in Japan. Departures also deals with the subject of death – combine that with the fact that many of the Academy voters are, shall we say, of somewhat advanced age, it’s no surprise that these themes resonated greatly with many who saw the film.

Departures centers on Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist whose orchestra has been dissolved because of bankruptcy. Now forced to give up on his dream of being a world-famous musician, he moves from Tokyo back to his hometown, his loving wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) in tow. Answering a deceptive newspaper ad (a typo in the ad copy leads him to believe he's applying for a travel agency), Daigo becomes an “encoffiner” (or nokanshi in Japanese), one who performs the ritualistic practice of washing, dressing, and placing the deceased in coffins for cremation, all done in the presence of the bereaved. Daigo gets over his initial squeamishness to become quite adept at his new profession, all under the watchful eye of his boss, Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki). However, he must suffer the prejudice of others who find his profession shameful, unfortunately including his wife. Also, Daigo’s own attitudes about death and closure are challenged when he must perform these duties on a long-lost relative.

Departures has been tagged by a number of commentators with that dreaded adjective “sentimental,” which these days has become an epithet, a mark of shame. And indeed, there is much about this film that is not very fashionable, from its slow, deliberate pace to its gentle comedy and unabashedly tear-jerking scenes. Sentimental it may be, but so what? There is nothing wrong with sentiment if it feels truly earned and not crudely manipulative, a feat that Departures succeeds at swimmingly. I found the film very moving, and it spoke to me quite powerfully. Viewers (and critics) willing to drop their cynicism will find themselves reflecting on the losses of their own loved ones, and what it means to confront death, much as I did. The result is a moving, powerful experience. The repeated depictions of the careful and respectful honoring of the deceased’s passage to the afterlife gain resonance with each successive scene. The film is not all tears and somber atmosphere, however; there is much room for humor in this scenario. One great example occurs in the film’s very first scene, in which Daigo, while preparing the body of a deceased young woman, finds that she is not all she appears to be.

Yojiro Takita, much like his protagonist, is a consummate professional as a filmmaker, his unadorned, un-flashy style always at the service of his narrative and the wonderful performances across the board, especially Masahiro Motoki (Shall We Dance?, The Bird People in China) the driving force behind this film. This project originated with Motoki, who was greatly moved and inspired by the book Coffinman, the memoir by Shinmon Aoki, a nokanshi who set down his reminiscences of a life in this profession. Departures is not a direct adaptation of the book, to be sure. Aoki’s book has a far more contemplative and philosophical tone, with frequent digressions on Buddhism and literature that serve to inform Aoki’s reflections on his life experiences. However, like Departures, Coffinman is a beautiful work in its own right, and well worth seeking out.

Departures is buoyed by its excellent cast, who are all given ample opportunities to shine. Motoki deftly handles the myriad changes his character experiences, and has obviously put great care into his preparation of the encoffining ritual, as well as playing the cello (Motoki played the instrument live on set), which beautifully deepens his portrayal. Tsutomu Yamazaki (High and Low, Tampopo, A Taxing Woman) brings a wonderful deadpan humor to his role as Daigo’s boss. Kimiko Yo (Café Lumiere) is also quirkily funny as the funeral company secretary, and Ryoko Hirosue (Wasabi) is quite affecting as Daigo’s wife, a role that becomes much more than the standard long-suffering wife portrayal that it initially appears to be.

Shinmon Aoki's book Coffinman can be purchased from Amazon.

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.

The Long Goodbye

100. 2008. Written and directed by Chris Martinez. Produced by Chris Martinez and Marlon Rivera. Cinematography by Larry Manda. Edited by Ike Veneracion. Music by Ricci Chan and Brian Cua. Production design by Aby Jamnague-Rivera.

Cast: Mylene Dizon (Joyce), Eugene Domingo (Ruby), Tessie Tomas (Eloise), T. J. Trinidad (Rod), Ryan Eigenmann (Emil).

Chris Martinez’s debut feature 100 was a film I avoided when I came across its plot description while trying to figure out what I would see at last year’s Pusan International Film Festival. The scenario threatened to be unbearably mawkish: a woman about to die from cancer follows a series of Post-Its that detail what she wishes to accomplish before she dies. However, after seeing the film at the opening night of the IndioBravo Film Festival, a new film festival in New York showcasing recent Filipino cinema, I am happy to report that my fears were unwarranted. 100 (the film’s title refers to both the days she has left to live and the number of tasks on her list) is a funny, heartfelt, and surprisingly tough-minded and unsentimental film. Joyce (Mylene Dizon, superb), the dying woman, is a no-nonsense corporate shark who prides herself on conducting her life with order and structure. She handles the news that she is about to die the same way she does everything else in her life: systematically, thoroughly, and logically. She makes sure to leave no stone unturned in putting her affairs in order, from the style and price of her casket to the music to be played at her wake. The structure of the film is very simple and straightforward; it follows each task written on Joyce’s notes, one by one. With the help of her best friend Ruby (Eugene Domingo), Joyce not only takes care of practical matters, but follows through on a wish list of everything she has ever wanted to do in her now very truncated life: from cooking all her favorite dishes, indulging herself with tons of ice cream and chocolate, smoking pot and kissing a complete stranger, to taking a whirlwind vacation to Hong Kong with her best buddy and “visiting Europe” (mindful of her limited time, she does the latter virtually via YouTube). She also takes care of more emotional tasks, such as breaking things off with Rod (T.J. Trinidad), the married man (complete with pregnant wife) she has been seeing, looking up Emil (Ryan Eigenmann), an ex-boyfriend she has never gotten over, and the hardest of all, telling her mother (Tessie Tomas).

Martinez takes the very best strategy possible with this material: he stays out of its way, filming with a cool, dispassionate eye, making the viewer a fly on the wall observing Joyce’s life. Martinez dials the melodrama way down, always undercutting things with sharp humor, while always keeping in sight Joyce’s ticking expiration clock. And when the inevitable draws near, the emotions this engenders are all the stronger for being truly earned, by immersing us into the details of Joyce’s existence, and not manipulating us into it. Even more impressively, the film affords its protagonist the dignity of not subjecting us to a protracted death scene, an irresistible temptation to lesser filmmakers. (There is, however, a last-rites scene that is as heartbreaking as it is beautifully staged.) Dizon delivers a marvelous performance, adept at rendering her character's prickly exterior as well as the very vulnerable person underneath. Domingo transcends her standard best friend role by being a peerless foil to Dizon; she reveals herself in many scenes as a master of the comic reaction shot. Martinez wittily draws a clear distinction between his film and others about dying women when he shows us a snippet of a tearjerker Joyce and Ruby watches on a DVD featuring their favorite actress. (“It’s great to be alive!” the woman in the film declares, right before she drops dead in her lover’s arms.) 100 is a crowd-pleaser in the very best sense; it delivers an emotionally potent and engaging story without pandering and always respecting the audience’s intelligence. Word to the wise: do not watch this film on an empty stomach. Much of Joyce’s wish list revolves around her favorite Filipino dishes, which Martinez films as some of the most luxurious food porn you’ll ever see.

100 won, among other prizes, the audience award at last year’s Pusan International Film Festival. It screens again at the IndioBravo Film Festival tonight at 7pm, at the Visual Arts Theater. To purchase tickets, visit the festival website. The festival itself runs through tomorrow.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Jia Zhang-ke, "24 City" (2008)

24 City (Er shi si cheng ji). 2008. Directed by Jia Zhang-ke. Written by Jia Zhang-ke and Zhai Yongming. Produced by Jia Zhang-ke, Shozo Ichiyama, and Wang Hong. Cinematography by Yu Lik-wai and Wang Yu. Edited by Lin Xudong, Kong Jinlai, and Li Haiyang. Music by Yoshihiro Hanno and Lim Giong. Art direction by Liu Qiang and Chen Rongchao. Sound design by Zhang Yang. Costume design by Zhao Tong.

Cast: Joan Chen (Gu Minhua), Lu Liping (Hao Dali), Zhao Tao (Su Na), Chen Jianbin (Zhao Gang).

Jia Zhang-ke's magisterial, mesmerizing documentary/fiction hybrid, 24 City, opens today in New York at the IFC Center. Surely one of the best films of the year, it's scheduled to play for just a week, so get thee to the theater immediately. The proximity of this film's release to the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising may or may not be coincidental, but the occasion certainly provides much food for thought on the massive changes that have occurred in China since then. (For a great assessment of the ongoing legacy of the Tiananmen Square protests, check out this post on Edwin Mak's blog.)

Below is a (slightly modified) review of 24 City that I wrote when it screened at last year's New York Film Festival:

Perhaps the most famous of cinema pioneers the Lumière Brothers’ works is “Workers Leaving the Factory,” a 50-second film which consists of a static shot of what its title describes. This ancestral cinematic image is echoed by several shots of Jia Zhang-ke’s extraordinary, and extraordinarily beautiful, documentary/fiction hybrid, 24 City. The film focuses on 420 Factory in Chengdu, Sichuan province, a former military munitions plant which is about to be torn down and moved to another area to make way for an ultramodern housing complex known as “24 City,” a name which has a vaguely Alphaville-esque, sci-fi tinge to it.

24 City is structured as a series of nine monologues, five of which are spoken by actual workers in the factory, and four of which are delivered by actors, including a trio of great actresses – Lu Liping, Joan Chen and Jia regular Zhao Tao, representing three generations of Chinese history. The experiences of Chinese women are very prominent in this film, much more so than in Jia’s previous work, thanks to the influence of Jia’s co-screenwriter, female poet Zhai Yongming, a native of Chengdu. This is Jia’s densest and most complex film to date, encompassing reality and fiction, and peppered with quotations from Chinese poetry and William Butler Yeats. Music, especially, plays a key role: excerpts of the Internationale play on the soundtrack, workers in the film sing both patriotic anthems and romantic pop songs, and a Chinese opera troupe (led by Joan Chen) performs within the crumbling walls of the factory.

24 City was originally conceived by Jia as a straight documentary; however, the film slowly transformed into a rich collage of stories and physical memorabilia (worker ID cards, photographs, letters) that document the changes across fifty years of Chinese history, refracted through the collective consciousness of this factory. “As far as I’m concerned, history is always a blend of facts and imagination,” Jia says in the film’s press notes. This could refer to both Maoist policies and propaganda that shaped the fortunes of this factory and to the nature of Jia’s project. Jia keeps his focus on individual human stories, a riposte to the Chinese government’s insistence on requiring workers to constantly take it on the chin for the good of society, to be displaced and replaced at will, to always be on time and never miss a day, and never protest or complain.

Far from the vapid, simpleminded analyses of China offered by most American mainstream media, Jia explores these issues with poetry and melancholic beauty. Construction and factory life have surely never been given more vivid and lyrical form than here. Although the film has its share of poignant moments, Jia manages to inject a fair amount of humor in this scenario, one example being a particularly cheeky meta-cinematic reference: Joan Chen’s character, Little Flower, is a “factory beauty” famed for her uncanny resemblance to … Joan Chen.

24 City cements Jia’s status as perhaps the most vital and poetic chronicler of present-day China, and the economic and physical changes wrought by this country’s rapid upward mobility. “I see movies as a tool to record memory,” Jia told me last year during an interview I conducted with him at last year’s New York Film Festival, after a press screening of his previous film Useless. His latest film fulfills this stated aim, and then some. The stunning, hyper-real digital images provided by cinematographers Yu Lik-wai and Wang Yu bring the history and the architecture of this factory into nearly three-dimensionally vivid focus. 24 City is initially challenging and unsettling, due to the unusual nature of his project, but Jia, as always, richly rewards the viewer’s patience, and in the final shots that cap Zhao Tao’s tour de force performance (what a treasure this actress is!), the film culminates with a stunning visual epiphany.

Click here for the schedule of screenings at the IFC Center.

DVD Review: Lee Joon-ik's "Sunny"

Sunny (Nimeun meongosae). 2008. Directed by Lee Joon-ik. Written by Choi Seok-hwan. Produced by Oh Sung-hyeon. Cinematography by Na Seung-yong. Edited by Kim Sang-beom and Kim Jae-bom. Music by Bang Joon-seok and Lee Byung-hoon. Production design by Kang Seung-yong. Costume design by Hyun Seob-shim.

Cast: Soo Ae (Soon-yi/"Sunny"), Jeong Jin-yeong (Kim Jeong-man), Eom Tae-woong (Sang-gil), Jeong Kyeong-ho (Yong-deuk), Joo Jim-mo (Seong-chan), Shin Hyeon-tak (Cheol-sik), Lee Joo-sil (Mother-in-law).

Lee Joon-ik’s filmography so far includes two period films (Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield, The King and the Clown) and two contemporary music-themed films (Radio Star, The Happy Life). Lee’s latest, the Vietnam War drama Sunny, combines these two modes, its story inspired by the phenomenon of music stars who traveled to the front as “consolatory bands” to boost the morale of the many Korean soldiers who fought in Vietnam on the American side. Over 300,000 Korean soldiers fought in Vietnam, some of whom were accused of war crimes, making this period as crucial a part of Korean history as it is of American history. The Vietnam War has been explored in other Korean films, two significant ones being Jung Ji-young’s White Badge (1992) and Gong Su-chang’s horror film R-Point (2004). Lee’s take on this subject adds a couple of intriguing wrinkles, the first being its musical focus – the Korean title translates as “My Love is Far Away,” taken from the name of a song by the popular 70’s female singer Kim Choo-ja, which is sung by the film’s protagonist. Also, Lee tries something new, for him – making a film with a female character at its center, in direct response to critics who found fault with the almost exclusively male-oriented milieus of his previous films.

The film's protagonist, Soon-yi (Soo Ae), is introduced to us singing a plaintive love song in front of some older women in the countryside where she lives. She is trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to Sang-gil (Eom Tae-woong), currently serving in the army, and her hostile mother-in-law (Lee Joo-sil) makes her visit him once a month at his barracks. This leads to a particularly tense scene in which we learn that Sang-gil has been carrying on an affair with an old girlfriend. “Do you even know what love is?” Sang-gil asks her, coldly turning away from her. Sang-gil later gets into a brawl with his superior, and is sent to the raging war in Vietnam as punishment. When Soon-yi relates this news to her mother-in-law, she unleashes a vicious round of invective against Soon-yi, blaming her for it all, and accusing Soon-yi of driving her son to war, especially because of her failure to produce a grandson. Sang-gil’s mother packs her bags, determined to go to Vietnam to search for her son, but Soon-yi stops her, saying she will search for him. After she unsuccessfully petitions the army base to let her go to Vietnam to search for Sang-gil, Soon-yi stumbles on an agency that sends entertainers to Vietnam to perform for the troops. When she is turned down here as well, she runs into bandleader/hustler Jeong-man (Jeong Jin-young, from The Happy Life) who, after a blowout with his previous lead singer, makes Soon-yi his new singer. Jeong-man owes people left and right, and sends his band to Vietnam in order to earn money to pay off his debts, a fact he neglects to mention his band mates. They perform at bars and army bases, Soon-yi (now known by her stage name “Sunny”) getting over her shyness and soon slinking on stage in ever more revealing outfits. These events are paralleled with scenes of Sang-gil on the battlefield, often set to Soon-yi’s singing on the soundtrack.

As admirable as Lee’s attempts are in expanding his cinematic focus to include women, he ultimately fails at this goal in Sunny. Lee and his regular screenwriter Choi Seok-hwan are clearly on much less sure ground than in their previous films, and Lee often seems flummoxed by his female character. The reasons for Soon-yi’s all-encompassing fervor for searching for a man that by all accounts she doesn’t really love, and who certainly doesn’t love her, remain fuzzy almost to the end, and Lee clearly doesn’t have a clue as to what is motivating her. Lee eventually falls back into more comfortable territory, and a great deal of screen time is devoted to the internecine squabbles among the male band members. Soon-yi’s story gets lost among the male band members fighting and the war scenes, and at times, it’s almost as if the film is struggling to remember that this story is supposed to be about her. The wonderful actress Soo Ae, so good in such films as A Family (2004) and Once in a Summer (2006), is almost wasted here, her character too often relegated to bystander status in her own story. Still, whatever heart and emotion this film retains, as well as its best scenes, belong to her alone. The depiction of the Vietnam War also fails to convince; the film too often traffics in the hoariest of war-film clichés, especially in two fairly risible scenes where the band encounters Vietcong and American troops. The film becomes more and more divorced from plausibility as it progresses, and my heart sank near the end when the story calls for Soon-yi to degrade herself in a way which really shows the film up for the ridiculous male fantasy that it is. And while the conclusion tries to restore at least some bite to Soon-yi’s character, it doesn’t erase the illogic of what came before. In the end, despite Lee’s declared good intentions, this film is just as male-centered as the rest of his films.

Sunny can be purchased from YesAsia.

DVD Review: Wayne Wang's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers"

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. 2007. Directed by Wayne Wang. Written by Yiyun Li, based on her short story. Produced by Yukie Kito, Rich Cowan, and Wayne Wang. Cinematography by Patrick Lindenmaier. Edited by Deirdre Slevin. Production design by Vincent De Felice. Music by Lesley Barber.

Cast: Faye Yu (Yilan), Henry O (Mr. Shi), Vida Ghahremani (Madam), Pasha Lychnikoff (Boris).

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, based on a short story by Yiyun Li, is one half of a diptych conceived by Wayne Wang as a return to his indie-film roots after a long sojourn making Hollywood studio films. The other film is The Princess of Nebraska, also based on one of Li’s stories. Of the two, Thousand Years is the far more accomplished and satisfying work. Unlike the self-consciously arty strenuousness of Nebraska, Thousand Years derives its affecting quality from its simplicity, economy of storytelling, and a quietly powerful central performance by Henry O as Mr. Shi, an elderly man invited by his daughter Yilan (Faye Yu, also quiet and compelling) for a visit and a tour of the U.S., after twelve years apart from each other. Mr. Shi, a self-described “true believer” in Communism, his posture held aloft by a back brace, comes to live with his daughter in a bland and eerily anonymous suburban community. They have quiet dinners each evening, Mr. Shi clearly wanting more information about how his daughter is doing, and making valiant attempts to reconnect her after his long absence from her life. Yiyun, however, keeps her personal life a firmly closed book, and she seems increasingly annoyed at his intrusiveness. Bored, and with little to do around the home, Mr. Shi wanders around the neighborhood, which leads to a few dryly comic encounters, most notably with a sunbather who eagerly tells him about her passion for forensic science, and an odd visit by a pair of Mormon proselytizers. Mr. Shi tries to reduce the language barrier by jotting down English words and phrases in his book, and in his conversations with others, he freely mixes his native Mandarin with halting English. Mr. Shi soon meets an Iranian woman (Vida Ghahremani), and they begin having daily conversations on a park bench, and even though they speak Mandarin and Farsi with one another, with some English mixed in, they are able to reveal intimate details with their lives that they can with no one else. Mr. Shi eventually confesses to the woman, “I no good father.” As a rocket scientist back in China (a fact he loves to mention to any American he meets), he was wrapped up in his work, and was mostly absent to his own family. The latent resentment of his daughter towards him has clearly never been resolved. In the film’s closing passages, the weight of the secrets and lies told on both sides finally take their toll on the father and daughter, resulting in a cascading rush of revealed (and painful) truth.

This film is a model of elegant simplicity, both in its narrative and visual design. The soullessness and emptiness of the environment depicted in the film, where Mr. Shi, with the weight of personal and national history evident in every gesture and line on his face, is so clearly out of place, is paralleled by the years of silence between father and daughter. The silence and secrets are intertwined with the legacy of the Cultural Revolution in China, a major theme of Yiyun Li’s fiction. The sharp cinematography (by Patrick Lindenmaier) and editing (by Deirdre Slevin) serve to highlight the appealing concision with which Li’s story is rendered (she also penned the screenplay). Henry O, a veteran actor in China and the U.S. whose lengthy resume includes Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, is a remarkable presence, adept at both deadpan comedy and poignant, rueful reflection. (The DVD contains a fascinating interview with Henry O in which he relates his personal experiences and early struggles as an actor during the Cultural Revolution.) Faye Yu (who previously worked with Wang in The Joy Luck Club) is also excellent, conveying Yilan’s sadness in a role that often requires her to express this without dialogue, a task at which she succeeds enormously.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers can be purchased from Amazon. Yiyun Li's original short story can be found in the collection of the same name, also available from Amazon.

Cannes 2009 -- And The Winners Are:

Fresh off the press, here are the winners of this year's Cannes Film Festival:

Palme d'Or: The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke











Grand Prix: A Prophet by Jacques Audiard

Best Director: Brillante Mendoza, Kinatay





Jury Prize: Fish Tank by Andrea Arnold and Thirst by Park Chan-wook

Camera d'Or: Samson and Delilah by Warwick Thornton

Camera d'Or -- Special Distinction: Ajami by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani

Lifetime Achievement Award: Alain Resnais

Best Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Actress: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist

Best Screenplay: Mei Feng, Spring Fever

Artist-Technician Prize: Aitor Berenguer, sound technician, Map the Sounds of Tokyo

Prix Un Certain Regard: Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos

Un Certain Regard Jury Prize: Police, Adjective by Corneliu Porumboiu

Special Prize Un Certain Regard 2009: No One Knows About Persian Cats by Bahman Ghobadi and Father of My Children by Mia Hansen-Løve

Director's Fortnight Awards:

Prix SACD, Prix Regards Jeunes, Prix Art Cinema Award: I Killed My Mother by Xavier Dolan

Prix Europa Cinema: La Pivellina by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

Prix SFR: Montparnasse by Mickael Hers

Mention Art Cinema Award: The Misfortunates by Felix van Groeningen

Coup de coeur d'Olivier Père: The Wolberg Family by Axelle Ropert and The King of Escape by Alain Guiraudie

Critic's Week Awards:

Critic's Week Grand Prix: Adieu Gary by Nassim Amaouche

SACD Award: Lost Persons Area by Caroline Strubbe

ACID/CCAS Support Award, OFAJ/TV5MONDE (Very) Young Critic Award, Prix Regards Jeunes: Whisper With the Wind by Shahram Alidi

The Virtual Director's Fortnight (Quinzaine Des Réalisateurs), Part 2

(All synopses from the official Director's Fortnight site.)

The King of Escape (Le Roi de l'évasion) (Alain Guiraudie)

Armand Lacourtade, a 43-year-old farm equipment salesman, can no longer bear his homosexual bachelorhood. When he meets Curly, a plucky teenage girl, he changes orientations. With everyone pursuing them, they defy dangers of all kinds to live their forbidden love. They make for a strange pair. But it this what Armand dreamed of?



Les beaux gosses (Riad Sattouf)

14-year-old Hervé is an average teenager who lives alone with his mother and struggles to cope with his urges, unprepossessing physique and mediocre intellect. He just gets by at school, surrounded as he is by his best buddies. Going out with girls is his major preoccupation. Sadly, in this field, he keeps striking out. But he never says die. One day, without really knowing how, he finds himself in the good books of Aurore, one of the prettiest girls in class. Surrounded by a gallery of saucy, wild characters, Hervé tries to grow up in this little world in perpetual movement, this world of adolescence in which emotions must be dominated.













Ne change rien (Pedro Costa)

Ne change rien began as part of a friendship between actress Jeanne Balibar, sound engineer Philippe Morel and Pedro Costa. Jeanne Balibar, singer, from rehearsals to recording sessions, from rock concerts to classical singing classes, from an attic in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines to the stage of a Tokyo café, from Johnny Guitar to Offenbach's La Périchole.





Polytechnique (Denis Villeneuve)

Based on the true story events that occured on December 6, 1989, at the Montreal's Polytechnique School, the movie tells us about that specific day through the eyes of two students, Valérie and Jean-François. Their life has been changed forever, when a young man entered the school with one idea in mind: kill himself and take with him as many women as possible.



Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola)

Fresh faced and naïve, 17-year-old Bennie arrives in Buenos Aires in search of his older brother who has been missing for more than a decade, and had sworn never to see any of his family again. The family of Italian immigrants settled in Argentina, but with the great musical success of their domineering father Carlo, an acclaimed symphony conductor, moved to New York. When Bennie finds his brother, the brilliant but melancholy writer 'Tetro,' he is not welcomed with open arms.

The Virtual Director's Fortnight (Quinzaine Des Réalisateurs), Part 1

(All synopses from the official Director's Fortnight site.)

Carcasses (Denis Côté)

For more than 40 years now, Jean-Paul Colmor has collecting hundreds of automobile carcasses on his lot. More than just recycling and selling car parts, Colmor has created an unthinkable site, full of memories. Every day he visits his lot, carts scrap iron, inventories his parts and other rusting gems. His little house is no less strange: a kind of shelter where one can make out the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom in the jumble. One day, others arrive, eager to share some of Jean-Paul's solitude and eccentric fringe existence.



The Misfortunates (De helaasheid der dingen) (Félix van Groeningen)

Gunther Strobbe, 13, shares his grandmother's roof with his father and three uncles. Daily, Gunther is steeped in ambiance of frenzied binges, shameless womanizing and unending bumming around... Gunther looks likely to suffer the same fate. Unless he can find a way to get the hell out of there.



Humpday (Lynn Shelton)

It's been a decade since Ben and Andrew were the bad boys of their college campus. Ben has settled down and found a job, wife, and home. Andrew took the alternate route as a vagabond artist, skipping the globe. After a night of perfunctory carousing, the two find themselves locked in a mutual dare: to enter an amateur porn contest. But what kind of boundary-breaking porn can two dudes make? After the booze and "big talk" run out, only one idea remains - they will have sex together... on camera. It's not gay; it's beyond gay. It's not porn; it's an art project. But how will it work? And more importantly, who will tell Anna, Ben's wife?



I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa)

The true story of an ex-cop, ex-husband, ex-insurance swindler, ex-model prisoner and eternal lover of cellmate Philip Morris. Steven Russell will do anything to avoid being separated from the man of his dreams. Which means not rotting away in prison. How far can one go for love? Quite far if you believe the incredible story of Steven Russell, an escape artist whose romanticism gets the better of him.



I Killed My Mother (J'ai tué ma mère) (Xavier Dolan)

Hubert Minel doesn't love his mother. The 16-year-old haughtily regards her with contempt, and only sees her tacky sweaters, kitsch decorations and the breadcrumbs that get stuck on the corner of her lips when she munches. In addition to these irritating surface details, there is also his parent's cherished mechanisms of manipulation and guilt. Confused by this love/hate relationship that obsesses him more and more each day, Hubert drifts through the mysteries of an adolescence both marginal and typical - artistic discoveries, illicit experiences, the opening-up to friendship, sex and ostracism.



Like You Know It All (Jal Aljido Motamyunseo) (Hong Sang-soo)

Not rich, nor famous, Ku Kyung-nam is stick with the label of an 'art-house film director'. When he attends the festival in a small town as a jury, he bumps into an old friend Bu, who has settled in the town. Over drinks Ku is dragged to Bu's house and meets his wife who claims to know all about his films. The next day after a long night of heavy drinking, Ku returns his hotel and find a message from Bu which says "never to come near us again". But he can't remember what happened last night...



Karaoke (Chris Chong Chan Fui)

Set in a village estate of a Malaysian palm oil plantation - Betik returns home. During the day, Betik helps shoot karaoke videos, while at night; he lends a hand to his reluctant mother at the family's karaoke joint. This is the place where he falls for Anisah. A job, a love and a family. His return home comes together quickly. But life isn't so innocent. Everybody wants something. Subtle manipulations driven by self interest and personal desires seep through yet the songs continue to be sung. Unwavering. The home has changed. The palm oil trees have grown in endless symmetry. The landscape rusts and the nostalgia turns.