A Film a Week - Fragments of Belonging / Tragovi pripadanja

 previously published on Cineuropa

Ideally, belonging is a two-way agreement defined by two parties – the individual and the collective – in good faith and on the basis of free will. In practice, however, belonging is a one-way street in which the individual submits entirely to the collective. The trouble is that, since childhood, we have been taught that we need to belong to a nation, religion, political system or language group, and to take pride in belonging to one group or another.

But what if we move around, even wander for a while, only to realise that we still want to belong somewhere, but on terms we can negotiate and only to a certain extent, so that we do not have to surrender completely? That is one of the key questions posed by Tatjana Božić’s documentary Fragments of Belonging, which has just premiered in the regional competition at ZagrebDox, and it serves as the film’s starting point.

As the filmmaker states in her own narration, she spent much of her life on the move, relocating roughly every ten years. She lived with her grandparents in Bosnia, with her parents in Croatia, moved with them to the Soviet Union, then went alone to London, returned to Zagreb in the newly independent Croatia, and eventually settled in Amsterdam, where she married, gave birth to her son Waldemar, separated from her partner and remained to care for him. She wants and needs to belong, but does not know how: her manner is too quirky and direct for otherwise restrained Dutch etiquette, yet too artsy and refined for the usually working-class circles of the former Yugoslavia. She therefore visits a number of relatives and friends who moved abroad, successfully integrated or failed to integrate into their new environments, and either stayed there or returned, in order to examine their experiences and reach her own conclusions about belonging.

In that process, however, Božić also touches on other important issues surrounding immigration and integration, such as the different labels one may be assigned according to perceived “desirability”. For instance, a single woman with a good job is an expat; a friend’s foreign wife is charmingly exotic; but a single mother doing odd jobs to survive is simply an immigrant, and potentially a problem or a burden to society. Ultimately, what if she does not truly want to belong somewhere, but simply feels pressured to do so?

Fragments of Belonging is certainly a deeply personal and emotionally charged documentary that touches on a number of topics and issues in the modern world. As such, it will ring painfully true for those who have uprooted their lives and moved to environments that cannot fully understand them and are not always welcoming. Yet even viewers who have not experienced such circumstances should have no trouble relating to the film and the emotional landscape it paints.

Truth be told, it is quite a “talky”, energetic, slightly hyperactive and even unfocused piece of work, in which its author and narrator jumps from one topic to another in seemingly no order at all, yet it remains faithful to the personality – or at least the screen persona – of Božić. The line between the filmmaker and the film character is considerably blurred, and this ultimately works in the film’s favour. The blending of newly shot footage (by cinematographers Sven Jacobs and Ton Peters) with material from the personal archive is dynamic, yet smoothly handled in the editing by Jacobs, Božić, Vanja Kovačević and Frank Müller. In the end, Fragments of Belonging is at times a little chaotic, but remains a documentary that leaves a lasting impression and raises important questions.

A Film a Week - Women, Loonies and a Few Good Gays / Žene, luđaci i malo dobrih pedera

 previously published on Cineuropa

The sophomore feature by Croatian filmmaker Ivan Salaj, Women, Loonies and a Few Good Gays, is dedicated to, and based on, the life, poetry, prose and, mainly, the titular autobiographical novel of late writer, journalist, dramaturgist and occasional actor Robert Roklicer (1970-2018). The fact that it entered domestic distribution (on 9 October, courtesy of Plavi mjesec) without a festival premiere seems reasonable, since Roklicer’s unique character that he showcases as his literary alter-ego is not that easy to translate to environments outside the region of the former Yugoslavia or the time frame of the war-torn 1990s and transitional early noughties. Think of a Croatian version of Charles Bukowski, with war-induced PTSD as an added bonus.

Robert (Filip Detelić, mostly active on television) spends his days scheming how to get drunk, either alone or with his buddies Marin (Frano Mašković), Nino (Franjo Dijak), Darko (Janko Popović Volarić) and Marković (Živko Anočić), who all seem only a tad more functional than him, as well as how to get laid. Every woman is fair game for him: a waitress from his local, Anita (Ana Maras Harmander), her teenage daughter Megi (Dora Dimić Rakar, the real revelation of the film), his former colleague’s daughter Dana (Sanja Milardović) and even Marin’s much younger wife Ines (Romina Tonković). We follow him over the course of a few days, during which time he manages to get fired from his weekly magazine, get hired as a scriptwriter for a cop series, contract pubic lice (which he tries to treat with insecticide, only to make things worse), get burned and maybe infected with hepatitis B, become a father and a godfather, and get entangled in numerous love triangles fuelled by jealousy – all without ever getting sober.

Robert has such low ethical standards that he could be written off as a despicable human being, with only his talent, creativity and – when he gets inspired – productivity as his saving graces. He is the type of man who likes stirring trouble and who mistakes a lack of tact for honesty. His friends are not much better than him (hence the “loonies” from the title), the women he gets involved with are either desperate or have an agenda of their own, and the few good gays are... closeted. One might wonder why viewers would want to spend almost two hours of their lives in such awful company, other than out of pure curiosity to see Robert getting into trouble and clawing his way out of it.

The thing is that the film pretty accurately captures the spirit of Roklicer’s body of work, which, on the other hand, paints a naturalistic, raw picture of the (post-)transition reality in Croatia, specifically where the trauma of war met the social injustice that ensued. The performances by the carefully picked ensemble go deep beyond the surface of the characters, while the technical qualities are also top-notch. Alen and Nenad Sinkauz’s original score combines drums-heavy jazz with electronic drones to set the manic, delirious atmosphere, while Slobodan Trninić’s hand-held cinematography adds to the sense of rawness and Tomislav Pavlic’s editing keeps the pace up so that the movie does not fizzle out after the exposition.

However, the literary origins of Women, Loonies and a Few Good Gays can be sensed easily and may even pose a problem, especially since Salaj often relies on the unsubtle tool of voice-over narration to paint the protagonist’s distorted stream of consciousness and surprisingly clear-eyed observations. Nevertheless, Women, Loonies and a Few Good Gays’ rawness, dirtiness and complete disregard for political correctness are quite new and refreshing in the realm of Croatian cinema.

A Film a Week - Whites Wash at Ninety / Belo se pere na devetdeset

 previously published on Cineuropa

In 2018, Slovenian writer Bronja Žakelj debuted with her autobiographical novel Whites Wash at Ninety, in which she, as a character, has to deal with a troubled childhood and youth during the 1980s and early 1990s, as she has to contend with tragedies and the passing of her loved ones. It became a bestseller in her home country and was later translated into eight more languages. Seven years later, the film adaptation of Whites Wash at Ninety by Marko Naberšnik, who also co-wrote the script with the author, has premiered at the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival, in the Open Air section.

Young Bronja (Mei Rabič) is growing up in a vibrant household with her brother Rok (Jaka Mehle), mother Mita (Tjaša Železnik), father Janez (Jurij Zrnec) and grandmother Dada (Anica Dobra). Just as she is about to finish primary school, the first tragedy strikes, as she loses her mother to cancer. The second happens just as she finishes secondary school and starts her further studies, as she (with Lea Cok taking over the role) gets diagnosed with lymphoma. Shortly after she gets better, Rok (Žiga Šorli plays the part in adulthood) gets killed in a fatal climbing accident, and Dada gets ill and eventually dies. Bronja cannot count on much support from her father, who seems only to be passionate about politics and the end of communism, nor from her friends or boyfriends, who can scarcely cope with the intensity of her life. However, luckily, she always has something to live for.

As he demonstrated in his previous works, Marko Naberšnik is capable of handling multiple characters and directing actors as an ensemble (Rooster’s Breakfast), pulling off an epic story unfolding over an extended period of time (Shanghai Gypsy), and paying a lot of attention to period details, even when working on a tight budget (The Woods are Still Green). The latter is definitely the strongest point of Whites Wash at Ninety, since there are no flaws to be found in Maja Moravec’s production design, Nadja Bedjanić’s costumes or the authentic props deftly captured in Max Sušnik’s cinematography. On the level of each individual scene, Naberšnik showcases his precise execution.

The trouble, however, stems from the script, as the director and the novelist do not manage to “translate” the story or the emotions it carries from one medium to another. With the help of editor Milica Jelača, they have tried to introduce flashbacks to break up the chronological order and make the film appear more cinematic, but some more serious errors can be observed in the almost non-existent character development, as most individuals come off as borderline caricatures relegated to a single trait or emotion for a certain portion of the film, or even for the duration.

Lea Cok does her best to convince us of Bronja’s resilience and determination to go on with her life, and Tjaša Železnik channels Mita’s ethereal energy in the flashbacks, but Jurij Zrnec repeatedly hits the same notes as Janez, and Serbian star Anica Dobra seems miscast for the role of Dada. Dobra does her best, as she usually does, but the role of a caring granny does not suit the naturally glamorous thesp.

In the end, Whites Wash at Ninety might be viewed as way less than the sum of its parts, some of which are outstanding. It’s an example of something getting lost in translation between the media of literature and cinema. However, the status of its source material might make it at least a minor hit on home turf, despite the movie being so clunky.

A Film a Week - Cent'anni

 previously published on Cineuropa

Sometimes, a documentary filmmaker ends up with a completely different film than was originally planned or even imagined because we never know what reality might bring further down the line. For instance, this happened to Slovenian filmmaker Maja Doroteja Prelog and her debut feature-length documentary, Cent’anni. After the long process of shooting, editing and structuring it, as well as the world premiere that took place at Trieste earlier this year, Cent’anni enjoyed its international premiere in the documentary competition of the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival.

The film was originally envisioned as a triumphant, celebratory affair, just like the event it portrays: the filmmaker’s partner in life and art, Blaž Murn, embarks on his own Giro d’Italia-inspired cycling endeavour from the Dolomites in the north all the way down to Etna in the south in order to celebrate his all-clear from leukaemia and to serve as inspiration to the patients still fighting the disease. Along the way, however, it became a chronicle of their long relationship finally falling apart and them falling out of love with each other. For the filmmaker, from whose point of view we watch the events unfold, some figuring-out has to occur…

Before the fateful trip and project, their relationship seemed to be able to withstand every challenge, from abortion to his illness and her nursing him back to health, even though she is not really the type. The reason for this was Maja’s fascination with him and her determination to be the “cool” girlfriend who would not bother him too much. But the illness changed him into an ego-maniac who likes the sound of his voice so much that he speaks in long monologues, and maybe even into a narcissist who demands awe masked as respect – but is not able to give any to others. In “his” film, her role was one of technical support and a communicator between the star and the crew.

Maja Doroteja Prelog is pretty hands-on regarding her approach, given that, other than writing and directing the documentary, she also filmed most of the material herself, giving the camera to another cinematographer, Lav Predan Kowarski, Blaž or another crew member only when absolutely necessary. The cinematography itself is beautiful, thanks mainly to the choice of attractive locations that also have a foreboding, or at least slightly perilous, edge to them, but the focus also remains faithful to both Blaž’s heroic effort to complete his “race” and Maja’s to make a film in such conditions. Other technical components are stellar as well: Uroš Maksimović’s editing is precise, Sebastian Zawadzski’s music corresponds with the landscape of Maja’s state of mind and emotions, while Julij Zornik’s and Ricardo Spagnol’s sound design satisfyingly fills the sonic landscape.

Cent’anni is a rare personal and sincere film in which its filmmaker gives her all. It is also a highly subjective one, but rightfully so, since its topics are sensitive, and the director does not judge anyone apart from herself. Rarely do we see a person willing to expose her inner life to us to such an extent.

A Film a Week - Our Children / Naša djeca

 previously published on Cineuropa

Parenthood is certainly not a walk in the park. To make things more complicated, whether we are successful at raising children is not measurable, and there are no firm criteria to rely on when defining what good parenting means. Croatian cinematographer, filmmaker and father of three Silvestar Kolbas tries to figure this all out in his newest documentary Our Children. It premiered earlier this year at ZagrebDox and won the Golden Arena Award for Best Directing at Pula, and just had its international premiere in the documentary competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

A cinematographer by trade (he collaborated with Igor Mirković on most of his feature-length projects), Kolbas turned to documentary filmmaking more than 20 years ago. Throughout his feature-length body of work, his approach is highly personal and self-reflective. With his debut All About Eva (2003), he chronicled the effort and the pain his second wife Nataša went through in order to conceive a child through artificial insemination. In his subsequent one, War Reporter (2011), Kolbas dealt with his childhood memories, his first marriage with Irena and his career as a war reporter during the 1990s in an uncompromisingly autobiographical way. Our Children serves as a sort of spiritual sequel to both of those films, thematically more aligned with the first, but stylistically with the second, given that his inner thoughts and fears are communicated through his own voice-over.

Kolbas opens the film with a scene establishing the primary setting, namely the house in the town of Samobor, near Zagreb, where he lives with his family: his wife, their three children, a dog and a cat. But that family is not quite a typical one and each of the three children, whom we might remember from his previous documentaries, has a different background story. Jakov is his son from his first marriage, who grew up living with his mother and moved to live with his father and the new family in adulthood; Eva is Silvestar's and Nataša's only biological child; and Ante was adopted. 

Given the differences between them regarding age (Jakov is much older than his younger siblings) and character (Jakov is depressed about stepping into adulthood, Ante starts behaving problematically in adolescence, and Eva, as the calmest and most centred one, cannot wait to leave the house for her studies abroad), the challenges get greater and greater for the whole family. Silvestar questions himself constantly, debating whether his delayed emotions could be read as cold distance driving the rift between him and the rest of the family, while Nataša is not too supportive of the idea that the whole thing should be shot as a documentary that would expose them all.

Apart from being a filmmaker, Kolbas here also serves as his own director of photography (there is some additional cinematography from other family members) and sound recordist. The material he brings to the film can be entirely defined as a load of home videos from different periods and of various technical qualities such as aspect ratio, resolution and lighting. Editor Denis Golenjak does heroic work to arrange all of that same-sourced but stylistically different material in a way that does not bother the viewer who gets involved with the story.

Telling his story in a frank manner (highlighted by expressing the wish for the film to be taken as an expression of love by his family), Kolbas manages to find the right balance between clarity and excitement, structuring his presentation in a unique way so that every child, every problem and preoccupation and every challenge for the parents gets its deserved time. Our Children becomes and remains a very sincere, emotionally charged documentary.

A Film a Week - Lunatic / Šterkijada

 previously published on Cineuropa

The central figure here is the filmmaker’s father, Jure Šterk (played by Janez Škof), a seaman and adventurer who was the first Slovenian to sail around the world and the first man to do so in a boat that was only 6.5 metres long. In January 2009, he disappeared in the Indian Ocean, following a technical issue with his vessel, the titular Lunatic, and his own attempt to fix it. Šterk was sailing around the world again, but this time, it was a non-stop trip, and since he was 73 years old at the time, if he had completed his voyage, he would have been the oldest person to do so.

However, Lunatic is less of an account of Jure’s maritime adventures, and more a study of the family dynamics Jure shared with his wife Vojka (played by Silva Čušin) and son Igor (played by Tito Novak as a child and Jernej Gašperin as a young man). Right from the start (the mid-1970s), one can see that said dynamics are volatile, as the opening scene is a heated argument in which Jure’s womanising clashes with Vojka’s jealousy, while little Igor is in bed, listening to his parents fighting. But when Jure is at home, he can be a fun father who bribes his son with scoops of ice cream to get him to do some more swimming and who smuggles him into a music school so he can practise the piano. However, Jure can also be a strict disciplinarian who does not tolerate the carefree moments of childhood.

Jure can also be pretty careless himself, which is amply demonstrated in the next sequence, set during the 1991 Slovenian War of Independence, in which Jure jeopardises his planned trip around the world, for which he accepted sponsors’ money and got into debt, so he can take part in the war. But even when he triumphantly completes his quest in 1994, he does not wish to rest on his laurels, so he thinks up new outings and manages to persuade Igor to invest in a newer, bigger and more advanced boat. As Jure’s actions get less and less predictable, Vojka slips into superstitions and alternative medicine, which brings on physical illness, and Igor, unable to strike a balance between these two selfish and impulsive people, starts to snap under the pressure.

In the script, Šterk might have been aiming for some more humour of the absurdist kind and some more warmth to balance out the toxicity of the family relationships, but in the end, Lunatic serves better as a densely packed, intense family drama in which Jure’s absence can be as stressful as his presence. Šterk’s tone is sincere, rendering his motivation to try to figure out how living with these two people affected him completely believable. However, his execution in the form of long, dialogue-driven scenes puts a lot of pressure on the actors, who sometimes lose control and end up in the realm of theatrics.

Technically, Lunatic is an accomplished work. Miloš Srdić’s cinematography smoothly transitions from the warmth of the 1970s, through the murkiness of the 1990s, to the coldness of the new millennium, the production design by Marco Juratovec is fabulous, while Petar Marković’s editing keeps the running time more than pleasant at 77 minutes. However, a less linear approach could have generated some additional tension and – why not – added some lunacy to the picture.

A Film a Week - So Long Daddy, See You in Hell / Servus Papa - See You in Hell

 previously published on Cineuropa

 For various reasons, ideals and ideologies struggle to withstand reality, so they must adapt to new circumstances. Religious cults, colonies and hippie communes of the 20^th century might serve as a faithful illustration of this claim. One such commune, along with its leader and a bright, rebellious teen, stands at the centre of Servus Papa – See You in Hell, which is the latest film co-written and directed by seasoned German director Christopher Roth. The film had its world premiere on home turf at the Munich Film Festival, while its first international premiere took place within Black Nights’ Official Competition in Tallinn.

It's Austria in the late ‘80s. The Cold War is coming to an end, but news from the outside world has little effect on a commune located on a river island (or is it a peninsula?) somewhere near the Hungarian border. This commune is a central part of a wider system of similar establishments located in or around various European cities, such as Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam and Zurich. It’s led by its chief ideologist, the self-appointed “King” and “Daddy” Otto (Clemens Schick), who employs a mixture of brainwashing, menace and manipulation. His ideology blends counter-culture with Marxism: sex is encouraged, but romantic relationships and nuclear families are forbidden as bourgeois inventions. The kids grow up and go to school together under the auspices of Otto and his predominantly female aides, while their parents are only allowed to visit them every once in a while.

Jeanne (Jana McKinnon) has lived and grown up in this commune since she was two years old. As an adolescent, however, she starts to feel more than just physical attraction for the commune’s horse handler Jean (Leo Altaras), which is against the rules and noticed by Otto, who also takes an uncomfortably perverse interest in the young woman. Jeanne is perceptive and smart enough to fend off the leader’s advances, but she might need to find a more permanent solution. On the other hand, the commune, its ideology and its way of life are the only things she knows.

Co-written by Roth and Jeanne Tremsal, the script is based on the latter’s own experience of growing up in such a commune, whose leader was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1991, for various crimes including sex offenses against minors. At the beginning of the film, Roth opts for a style which simulates an observational documentary, with shaky, hand-held camerawork by Lydia Richter, faux-VHS shots blended into the wider footage, and occasional jump cuts in the editing, which is taken in hand by the director himself. The film’s exposition is also prolonged, taking up almost half of the film’s nigh-on two-hour runtime, with Roth and Tremsal seeming more interested in exposing the commune’s functioning than in exploring the plot and characters. Meanwhile, the framing technique which sees the whole first half of the film reduced to a flashback seems a little stale.

The real plot kicks off with a change of style - calmer camerawork and cleaner cutting - but it turns out to be a little too late for developing all of the film’s important ideas on totalitarian practice and how it contradicts ideals of freedom, and the need for a revolution against the tyrannical powers that be. Luckily, the spot-on casting and eclectic musical choices, which range from pop to punk tunes, help this ambitious near-miss to go down smoother than expected.

A Film a Week - Tigertail

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has, at least temporarily, disrupted the film distribution channels and shifted the focus from the usual ways (festivals, then theatrical releases in different territories) directly to internet. It works for now for the world-wide audiences since there is a list of films that already had their festival premieres earlier this year (or in the later stages of the last year) and the completed films to be released. For filmmakers, producers and production companies, the glass could be half-full (getting the widest possible, global releases) or half-empty (taking some not so good deals with streaming giants). How it looks like in the case of Alan Yang's directorial debut "Tigertail" that premiered earlier this month on Netflix?

As a writer and a producer, Yang comes from television background, best known for his credits on the series like "Parks and Recreation" and "Master of None", so, theoretically, he should not be bothered too much with the fact that his directorial debut got the small screen release. The trouble is, however, that some of the "movie magic" always gets lost in translation and some films work differently in different release contexts. That is the case with "Tigertail", a film that should have been seen on a large screen, preferably at a film festival, before hitting the internet. Simply put, television or laptop screen, pretty much robs it of visual flair that makes this earnest, well-acted but predictable family drama stand out.

Like recently reviewed Lulu Wang's last year's outing, "The Farewell", "Tigertail" is a semi-fictionalized (auto)biography in its core, dealing with the generational and lifestyle differences within the frame of a Taiwanese-American family. The central character of the film is Pin-Jui, played by Tzi Ma (who also had a supporting role in "The Farewell" and who is becoming a synonym for the role of the father in the Asian-American cinema), a working-class immigrant form Taiwan who made it in Bronx as a hard-working corner store owner, but who had to sacrifice everything for that kind of success. Pin-Jui is based on Yang's own father and his life in Taiwan and in New York.

Pin-Jui grows up with his grandmother, since his mother (Yang Kuei-Mei) left for the city in order to find work after his father's death. The times are hard: Taiwan is a military dictatorship, the army is hunting the dissidents and Mandarin is being imposed as the official language, discriminating the local majority of Taiwanese-speaking people. It is especially the case for Pin-Jui who basically has no chance of social mobility in life. Later on, Pin-Jui (played by Lee Hong-Chi as a young man) works alongside his mother in a sugar factory, lives with her in a small house and spends his time going out, listening to covers of American pop-rock hits, dating his childhood sweetheart Yuan (Fang Yo-Hsing) and dreaming about leaving for America with her.

Part of his dreams come true with the help of the factory owner who finances his trip across the ocean under the condition that Pin-Jui takes his daughter Zhenzhen (Li Kunjue) with him. The life in America is not anything like Pin-Jui dreamed of, so he has to work even harder if he wants to provide for himself and his family conceived in a loveless marriage. The end result is that he is estranged from his own daughter Angela (Christine Ko) and that he cannot offer her any emotional support in the times of her own personal hardships.

The plot jumps back and forth between the different timelines, with the periods of the late 60's Taiwan and early 70's New York being told as flashback of Pin-Jui memories. The protagonist is also introduced early on as a narrator, and Yang uses that device from time to time, creating the feeling of a screen adaptation of a proper memoir. That kind of narrative structure takes some time to set in, but once the viewer is adjusted to it, the events and the topics become predictable. Some of the solutions are a bit too abrupt (the divorce of Pin-Jui and Zhenzhen), and Pin-Jui's inability to communicate with Angela could have used more of an in-depth approach. On the other hand, Yang is not making the unnecessary audience-friendly compromises, as he does not go for the melodramatic clichés (although Yuan comes back to the screen, played by Joan Chen). The earnestness and the portrait of a life as it is remains one of the greater qualities of "Tigertail".

The other good thing Yang is especially good at is channelling the emotion through the gentle and fond memories. There are the traces of Wong Kar-Wai and Edward Yang in the portrait of the romance between Pin-Jui and Yuan and in choice he has to make between a chance of a better life and his true love. The feeling is highlighted with a use of analogue cinematography on 16mm stock by Nigel Bluck, where the warmth and the graininess blend together perfectly. However, the part of the mood gets lost when the film is watched on a small screen.

The actors do their best to bridge their sometimes under-developed characters. Luckily for the principal star of the film, this is not the case for his character, so Tzi Ma's acting is on the money all the way through. The biggest casting challenge, however, was to assign at least two actors to play the same character in different periods of time and life stages, and to make the transformation as smooth as possible, which Alan Yang does in the best possible way. That is apparent especially in the case of the protagonist, where the youthful optimism channelled by Lee Hong-Chi (famous for the role of Wildcat in Gan Bi's "Long Day's Journey into the Night") slowly and compellingly transforms to resignation that is key to the character in the later stage in life.

Overall, "Tigertail" is a good film, especially judged as a debut feature. Alan Yang certainly had a clear vision and the discipline to follow it through. The film could benefit of a bit longer runtime and a better development of the supporting characters (who are usually relegated to a couple of traits), while it is also expected for a film about the immigration to be more generous on the social context. Then again. it would be a different film. This way, focused on a toll that dreams of a better life take on the inner living of a person, "Tigertail" is both brutally honest and universal, which is a merit on its own.

A Film a Week - The Farewell

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

With a better awards season campaign, Lulu Wang's sophomore feature "The Farewell" could have ended up with more than one Golden Globe award. The film premiered to stellar reviews at last year's edition of Sundance, which are usually enough to create a significant buzz. The decision to ship it off to wide distribution in late summer / early autumn and in anglophone countries first lead to a decent box office success ($22 million against the budget of $3 million) for an indie film, but it affected the film's chances for the awards. In 2020, The Farewell is available on video platforms and on BluRay.

The plot follows Billie (played by Chinese-American rapper/actress Nora Lum better known as Awkwafina) and her coming to terms with the fact that her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) is dying at the opposite end of the world. She is diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer, but the diagnosis is not told to her, but to her family members in order to make her live her last weeks, maybe months without unnecessary worries. From a Westerner's point of view, this kind of practice seems highly unethical (since everybody has the right to know the truth), but in China it is not that uncommon.

Nai Nai's sons and their families live outside of China. Billie might be born there, but she grew up in New York where her parents, Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and Lu Jian (Diana Lin) moved when she was six years old, so her upbringing, as well as her sense of ethics, is more American than Chinese. However, her parents have made the decision to use an already scheduled wedding of Billie's cousin and Nai Nai's grandson Hao Hao (Chen Han) who grew up in Japan as a pretext for the whole family to gather and bid a farewell to the loving matriarch without letting her know the severity of her health condition.

It is all based on a not-so-little, but completely white lie, and Wang is not a bit shy about it, as we can see on an introductory title card that states "based on an actual lie". This is true on another level, since the story is semi-autobiographical, concerning her own experiences with her ill grandmother. Billie is a clear stand-in for her: a brainy, but underachieving millennial with dual cultural heritage of which at least one feels completely foreign to her. The wedding becomes an opportunity for her to get re-introduced to the home town she has only vague memories about and to her family and their ways of handling thing, while resisting the urge to speak the truth and hurt everyone around her.

In some other film, it could serve as a pretext for a broader comedy with clashes (cultural and generational) serving as the driving force for both character development and scoring the humour points. The fact that Awkwafina, who built her acting reputation by playing fast-talking supporting and funny characters in the big studio projects like "Ocean's 8" and "Crazy Rich Asians", plays the lead here would also be a hint. But, counter-intuitively, "The Farewell" is a completely different animal: the humorous moments are subtle, the tone is a unique blend of seriousness, warmth and melancholy, with a clear-eyed perspective of ever-changing life and ever-changing world. The city of Changchun in China's north-eastern province of Jilin also has its part that exceeds a mere location and a metaphor of a fast-growing city, it is also a place of memories and very specific codes of conduct in life that present a challenge to the protagonist. The fact that the most of the film is in Mandarin adds another layer of authenticity to the whole thing.

Awkwafina is superb in a largely dramatic role, reaching for emotional depths to deliver a great, toned-down performance where spelling out is relegated to bare minimum. On the other hand, Zhao Shuzhen, otherwise a stage actress with over 100 roles under her belt, is tasked with most of the film's subtly humorous, heart-warming moments, while the Chinese-Australian actress Diana Lin provides most of the intra-generational conflict in the film, because for her hard to please, "tiger-mom" character it goes both ways, towards her daughter and towards her mother in law.

The whole ensemble of actors and actresses is conducted masterfully by Lulu Wang and that was most of her work in the directing department. She is not reinventing the wheel when it comes to visual flavour, but assumes the role of a keen observer (she has some background in short forms, including documentaries) and tells a very personal story with astonishing clarity and uninhibited emotion. The result is a very good, sincere and heart-felt film.

A Film a Week - Coming Home Again

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Wayne Wang is one of the pioneers of Asian-American cinema, often providing a unique voice on the topics of identity, immigration and integration. In his long and fruitful career, listing 22 feature-length films over the course of 44 years, he has made some of the biggest and most beloved indie hits like “The Joy Luck Club” (1993) and “Smoke” (1995), had his chance of earning Hollywood fame with “Maid in Manhattan” (2002), but he always came back to Asian-American themes. The other thing characteristic for Wang is the tendency to work with the material sourced in literature. Both stated facts hold for his latest film, “Coming Home Again”, which was shown at Toronto and Busan before having its European premiere in the official selection at Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn.

However, “Coming Home Again” will take a special place in Wang’s filmography. The reason for that is the type of the material he works with: a deeply personal, autobiographical and essayist reflective stream of consciousness-type short story written by Lee Chang-rae. It is a challenge, but Wang has always been unorthodox in his choice of literary bases for his cinematic works, preferring to adapt short stories rather than novels and even experimenting with his own and his creative partner Paul Auster’s observations on their two-tome 1995 collaboration consisting of “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face”.

Wang opens the film with narration by Chang-rae, played by Justin Chon, about a special way to prepare beef short-ribs by almost filleting it, but leaving the bone attached to the meat on the side, so the meat can suck its richness. On that one, he is quoting his mother (Jackie Chung), the woman who had been always treating him with good food. But the mother’s cruel sickness, stomach cancer, is the reason why Chang-rae left his well-payed job in New York and went back to his childhood home: he feels obliged to take care of his dying mother who was always the first to sacrifice her own happiness for the well-being of the family, since his college professor father is busy with work and his career-pursuing sister lives in South Korea.

The plot of the film (sort to speak) takes place over the course of one day, but through flashbacks, narrations and reminiscences, Lee as a writer and Wang as a filmmaker reveal more background details about the family’s past, making the movie more of a meditation on the subjects of family, ambition, self-sacrifice and the constant fear of death. “Coming Home Again” is far from an easy watch due to its sombre topic and essay-like storytelling through voice-over narration with only a small portion of dialogue and in the complete absence of “action” of any kind. On the other hand, it is clearly a work of a filmmaking master and one of the best films of its kind.

The reason for that is Wang’s sure-handed directing and meticulous approach to the material that makes “Coming Home Again” easy to follow and navigate. The scenes set in the present are cold in terms of colours, the camera is usually fixed and it observes the characters from behind, while those set in flashbacks, memories and reminiscences are richer in colour, filmed with hand-held camera and more dynamic. The absence of external music (that is not the part of the plot) until the very end is also telling what kind of emotions Wang aims for and actually scores, for which he also has to thank his crew, the cinematographer Richard Wong as well as Ashley Pagan and Deirdre Slevin, who were handling the editing.

The actors also deserve to be considered among the film’s highlights. Justin Chon (“Twilight Saga”, “Gook”) finds a good balance between the multiple roles he has to fill in as a character, but also as an observer and narrator, aiming either for more of a cerebral effect or for pure emotion. Jackie Chung has even a harder mission playing a character who barely moves and talks, but she handles it with grace, making “Coming Home Again” an emotional and cinematic experience hardly comparable to anything else.