A Film a Week - The Stories

 previously published on Cineuropa

When we get to see some of “big history”, such as wars, political assassinations and military coups, unfolding virtually right before our eyes, it is safe to assume that, if we come out the other side unscathed, we will have many stories to recount about said events. This is the premise of Abu Bakr Shawky’s (Yomeddine) newest feature, The Stories, which has premiered in the official competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The place is Egypt, the time between 1967 and 1984. The film is structured into five chapters, each following our hero Ahmed (Amir El-Masri) and his colourful extended family during an episode set against a historical event, such as two wars against Israel in 1967 and 1973, the street riots against the pro-market reforms in 1977, and the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981. When we first meet him, Ahmed is a gifted pianist living in a cramped house with his homemaker mother Fairouz, civil-servant father Ragheb and two brothers: his twin, Russian language and Soviet politics enthusiast Hassan, and Sharaf, who is into football, particularly the unlucky Zamalek club.

Their home is often visited by uncles and neighbours, his father might have got into trouble for uttering the word “corruption” on live television, the whole family is waging a “noise war” against the neighbour upstairs, and the brothers are targeted by bullies who support another club. Hassan has been drafted into the army just in time to participate in the Six-Day War, and Ahmed has started a pen-friendship with an Austrian girl called Elizabeth.

Six years later, Ahmed is in Vienna on a scholarship, courting Elizabeth (Valerie Pachner, from A Hidden Life), trying to dodge the proverbial bullets from her family, which is as chaotic as his own, and navigating his academic life under the wing of a casually racist bohemian professor and in the shadow of his more industrious rival Shams. When he hears the news about his brother getting killed in the Yom Kippur War, he has no choice but to return home. Four years later, Elizabeth comes to join him and his family, to fall into their chaotic dynamic, to witness the turmoil, to listen to their stories and start writing her own…

The Stories is a rare animal on the festival circuit, as it is an audience-friendly form of organised chaos that operates in a heightened emotional register and speaks about troubled life experiences in a fairly light-hearted way. In order to do so, Shawky relies heavily on a number of clichés, tropes and commonplaces, such as the actors’ rapid-fire dialogue, some hectic pans in Wolfgang Thaler’s cinematography and rapid cuts in Roland Stöttinger’s editing, as well as the loud sound design and even louder music, usually consisting of nationalist anthems and marches from the TV, contrasted with the modern, virtuoso pieces that Ahmed plays.

The thing is that these broad strokes usually work perfectly well, although more demanding viewers may pan the film on the grounds of exoticism exemplified by the slightly kitschy production design, the wild acting and the over-the-top sentimentality. But those things are here for a reason: they work in movies. And The Stories is just that, a fun movie that would fare better in theatres than on a festival circuit dominated by gloomy arthouse pieces. In a milieu like this, it constitutes a refreshing change.

A Film a Week - Daydreamers / Nguoi Mat Troi

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

The vampire trope in movies is almost as old as the art of cinema itself. They are invented as something foreign, exotic, usually quite elite that does not belong to the “ordinary world”. There are, however, numerous variations regarding their lore, so we, for instance, got an action hero who was born as vampire and grew to look like Wesley Snipes in his prime or a glittery day-walking, self-loathing highschool kid seeking for some sort of redemption in a soap opera masked as a saga. The point is that the vampires are tough to pin down (pun intended!) because one can vary the rules and the cosmology so much. Vietnamese filmmaker Timothy Linh Bui tried to do so in “Daydreamers” and, after a promising start, failed.

The start is actually an animated sequence set against a voice-over narration which explains how we got such a chic European phenomenon in Vietnam. The answer is, of course, colonialism and debauchery that ensued. The people rebelled soon afterwards (see another parallel with the Vietnamese 20^th century history) and chased the vampires into the illegal. The remaining ones either blended with humans or went to live in the wild, but they had to obey the law that forbade them to taste human blood hoping that the diet of animal blood and humane approach would grant them redemption.

Unfortunately, that cheeky anti-colonial angle stays locked in the first sequence of the film, as the filmmaker and his co-writer Doan Si Nguyen decided to tell a “contemporary” story about what happens when the law gets broken. The story revolves around two brothers, Marco (Thuan Nguyen) and Nhat (Tran Ngoc Vang), a young mortal woman, Ha (Trinh Thao) taken to the vampire underground, and the struggle for power between the “humanist” and “anarchist” fractions within the vampire clique ruled by the benevolent “queen” Trieu (Chi Pu).

Basically, what we get is a one season of a vampire-laced soap opera squeezed in a two-hour movie that feels both rushed and lagging. The trouble is not that Timothy Linh Bui does not understand the concept of vampires and their symbolism, because he apparently does, but the fact that he takes his story way too seriously, but without employing the right means to tell it compellingly.

His directing style is either completely plain in more ordinary, clearly dialogue-driven scenes, or hyper-stylized in the action ones, but the style he goes for is simply derived from video-clips or computer games. Everything is overdone, from the lighting, the abundant use of cheap visual effects (the supervisor Nguyen Anh Viet is signed pretty high up on the ending credits, which is significant) all the way to the omnipresence of music, alternating between the otherwise decent neoclassical score by Jérôme Leroy and MiSS NiNE’s electronic loops. The same goes for acting, which is constantly in the over-expressive register, often over the limit of theatrics, which is not the fault of the actors themselves, as they are instructed to go all in all the time. Maybe some of the saving grace could be found in the attempts of the DoP Phu Nam to capture an occasional eye candy of a shot or the editors Dat Tran and Pham Quoc Dung to calm the things down by delaying their chops, but there is only so much they can do.

Eventually, “Daydreamers” is a trash movie, which might be legitimate if it would be a conscious decision by its director to make it exactly that way. Unfortunately, this is not a case here, as the whole trash seems quite involuntary, as a by-product of a combination of high ambition and sloppy execution.

A Film a Week - Sugarland

 previously published on Cineuropa

Will romance save us? Or is it dead, and are we living in a “post-romance world”? That is the question that young, up-and-coming Austrian filmmaker Isabella Brunäcker asks in her feature debut, Sugarland. Its world premiere has just taken place at the Diagonale, while its universal topic might make it a reasonably good fit for an international tour of small festivals.

Iga (Jana McKinnon, of The Trouble with Being Born fame) drives a car alone down the highways of Europe, taking the occasional break to smoke a cigarette at a petrol station. On one such occasion, Ethan (Bill Caple, glimpsed in The Buckingham Murders) asks her for a lighter, only to go even further and ask for a ride. Reluctant to have company in the car at first, Iga eventually offers to drive him to the next stop on the way.

They bond over the music they listen to and start opening up to each other: Iga admits that she is not dropping the car off for a friend, but driving all the way to Scotland to see her ex-boyfriend and bring him the stuff he left behind in Vienna after they broke up, while Ethan says he is coming back early from a party trip to Italy with his friends, subsequently admitting that he is trying to find himself and attempting to make some money in order to go back to studies that he abandoned earlier.

The “next stop” keeps getting postponed. It seems that there is some chemistry between them, but no one has enough determination to take one final step. Or is it all just the random stuff people tell each other to kill time while travelling together? Anyhow, a turn of events just before they board a ferry to cross the English Channel will expose the truth about them, their vulnerabilities and their position in life.

Brunäcker fights an uphill battle initially, given that the whole first half of the film is virtually devoid of a plot and serves only as exposition for the third-act developments. Sure, the filmmaker has to start slowly, but the whole setup where we have two ordinary people in an ordinary and very static situation proves to be a huge obstacle, if not a burden. There are films that subvert viewers’ expectations, but Sugarland is not Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, even though Brunäcker tries to channel that kind of energy, and the two leads draw inspiration from Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, too. However, the setting of a city to walk and talk in proves to be far more interesting than one of motorways and motels. Once the plot kicks in, though, Sugarland becomes a way smoother watch that eloquently checks the boxes of contemporary young people’s anxieties.

The filmmaker eventually answers the questions from the first paragraph – not directly, but with a hint that has been with us right from the start. Sugarland was filmed on 16 mm stock by cinematographer Matthias Helldoppler, which seems quite romantic in today’s digital age. More than this, it creates a sense of natural warmth, even if the weather is misty, the landscapes are grey and mundane, and the characters try to keep each other at a safe distance in order to prevent themselves from falling in love and getting heartbroken too quickly. The romance of film tape might not be able to save the world, but it could just save cinema and a movie like Sugarland.

A Film a Week - Love in the Big City / Daedosiui salangbeob

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

People navigating love life and life in general is hardly a new subject in cinema and other art forms. Even the setting in which a straight woman lives with a gay man in the same apartment is not that new. However, Park Sang-young’s novel “Love in the Big City” is not merely a Korean riff on, let’s say, Will and Grace TV series. On the contrary, it aims for something more earnest, realistic and aware of the wider societal context.

The best-selling novel is actually getting two releases this fall. While the TV series adaptation will hit the small screens later this month, the big screen one, penned by Kim Na-deul (“Perheps Love”, 2021) and helmed by E.oni, formerly known as Lee Eon-hee (of 2016 “Missing” fame), has already premiered at Toronto and screened at Hawaii International Film Festival.

E.oni opens her film with a man running up the stairs to reach the rooftop terrace where a woman in wedding gown leans on a fence and smokes a cigarette. Loud music on piano and choir vocalising and a drone shot of downtown Seoul send the rest of the action into a series of flashbacks marked by numbers suggesting our protagonists’ age, starting when the two of them meet as a part of the same large French language-majoring group at college under the mentorship of the professor Olivier (Salim Benoit).

Jae-hee (Kim Go-eun) is a free-spirited, some would say “wild” girl. Although an over-achiever by nature, she is concentrated more on having fun than on studying. After all, she lived in Paris and is quite fluent in French. Contrary to her, Heung-soo (Steve Noh, also known as Noh Shang-hyun) is an aimless and timid guy who chose to delay his military service by studying French, drawn to the language because of Albert Camus’ “Stanger”. He seems to be the only guy in the group who is not in love with Jae-hee, and there is a good reason for it: he is gay, but he hides it even from his mother.

After an incident draws them closer, they become close friends and he moves to her apartment. They confide in each other and navigate their love lives together, while raising suspicions that they are a couple. Although their adventures might seem goofy and funny at times, they can also take a darker turn. After all, Korean society is still conservative, patriarchal and with strict hierarchy, while the acceptance of either LGBTQ+ people or male-female friendships as such is not implied.

Although the story has the clear beginning and ending, the seemingly integral choice of things in-between taken from the source novel can prove to be a bit troublesome, especially for fitting into a single movie. Although it is quite generous in the terms of runtime, the material simply seems a better fit for a one-season TV show. E.oni’s opting for a few clubbing montage sequences early on, kinetic camerawork (executed by the DoP Kim Hyoung-ju) and quick cutting saves some of the runtime, but seems a bit counter-intuitive for a romance drama. Later on, when the comedic elements evaporate, the style also gets calmer, and more fitting for the serious topics the novel, the script and the film try to explore.

The two leading actors remain on the centre stage of the film for the whole time, playing their characters evolving the best they can. Still, they are better at nailing the basics of them laid out early on than at getting to the characters’ emotional depth and complexity as the film moves to the more serious territory. Kim Go-eun, of “A Muse” (2012) fame and recently seen in “Exhuma” (2024), enjoys walking on the wild side and defying the strict and patriarchal society as Jae-hee, while Steve Noh, one of the stars of 2015 “Seoul Searching”, plays Heung-soo with tact and just the needed amount of swagger.

In the end, “Love in the Big City” is a film that opens certain aspects of contemporary life in Seoul and Korea in general from the point of view of young(er) people. It might not prove to be a seminal piece of work, but it is still decent.

A Film a Week - My Late Summer / Nakon ljeta

 originally published on Cineuropa

We have watched enough Croatian movies by now to know that those “wacky” islanders have their own saints and relics that should not be defiled, touched or disrespected in any way. In the newest film by Danis Tanović, My Late Summer, the pantheon of an unnamed, remote, miniature island consists of Comrade Tito, the Virgin Mary, the Hajduk Split football club and the golf cart belonging to the mayor (who also happens to be the owner of the only bar). There, we also find a female World War II veteran who cannot stand any German- or Italian-sounding music, free-roaming cows that get high by ingesting marijuana, hidden bottles labelled as “experiments”, not-so-friendly neighbourhood affairs, and dirty secrets involving the most highly respected locals, which are not that well concealed after all.

It seems like Bosnia’s most highly decorated filmmaker Tanović (who was behind the Best Foreign-language Oscar winner No Man’s Land) has now become a regular Sarajevo Film Festival opener. Three years ago, it was with Not So Friendly Neighbourhood Affair, and now we have My Late Summer. Both films could be defined as romantic comedy-dramas (with a dash of melodrama) infused with humour connected to specific places and the mentalities of their locals, which makes them a hard sell for the international festival circuit. But, like its predecessor, My Late Summer should fare reasonably well in the region of the former Yugoslavia.

Our protagonist, Maja (Anja Matković, also the co-screenwriter), comes to the island on a very specific mission: to prove that the late sea captain Jakša was her father and to collect her fair share of her inheritance. Since the procedure can be lengthy, she decides to stay there for a while. The only option for her is to take a waitressing job at the only bar, owned by Mayor Ićo (Goran Navojec), which also comes with free accommodation. There, she meets an older US expat of Yugoslav origin, Saša (Uliks Fehmiu), who fancies himself as an aspiring writer and moved there for the nostalgic aspect of the place. A romance sets in, but his life situation is just as complicated as hers. As the summer season comes to an end and seemingly innocent incidents threaten to destroy the fragile “ecosystem” of human relationships on the island, all three will have some serious figuring out to do…

My Late Summer starts off strong and snappy, with rapid-fire jokes, but the director cannot maintain this pace, so he chooses to switch the tone first to romantic comedy, and then to (melo)drama, while frugally using what is left of the humour reserves to keep viewers at least mildly entertained until the end. Apart from Anja Matković, who was promoted to the big screen by Tanović in his previous film, and who really owns her character here, the rest of the actors, in supporting and episodic roles, are basically left in improvisation mode, so they opt for recycling their usual types with some minor variations to them, which just about does the job.

The splendorous production and craft values serve the film well. Miloš Jaćimović’s cinematography alternates between intermezzos of the picture-perfect Adriatic vistas and the seemingly floating hand-held mode that imitates the predominant state of mind on the island. The production design by Veronika Radman complements the locations perfectly, making My Late Summer an easy, watchable viewing experience. However, its low-risk philosophy and the fact that it runs low on fuel for the better part of the second half hinder its ambitions.

A Film a Week - The Funeral / Cenaze

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Although Turkish cinema scene is more associated with mainstream art house efforts, its more genre-oriented pole is also quite strong and recognized globally. One of the newer examples of it, a multi-genre crossover “The Funeral” written and directed by Orcun Behram is touring the festivals since its world premiere at the last year’s edition of Sitges. Most recently, it was showcased at the official competition of Grossmann Fantastic Wine and Film Festival in Ljutomer, Slovenia, where it scooped the main Viscious Cat award.

Behram opens his film with a sequence mostly located in a hearse van touring the back roads of Turkey to a small village graveyard where a funeral takes place in the rain. Its purpose is to establish the character of our protagonist, the driver named Cemal (Ahmet Rifat Sungar, best known for his roles in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” and “The Wild Pear Tree”) as a loner and a man of few words who possibly holds a secret. Soon enough, Cemal is approached by his colleague with a hush-hush offer he cannot really refuse. His job is to make a certain corpse disappear for a period of time, until the situation settles, so it could be buried properly, and the reward for his effort would be a hefty, but not unbelievably large sum of money.

Initially, Cemal is wary that the offer might be a set-up, but he reluctantly agrees. The corpse he should carry around for a month or so belongs to Zeynep (Cansu Türedi who built her career on Turkish television), supposedly a victim of honour killing done by her influential family. Cemal drives the van away, checks into a no-questions-asked roadside motel and engages in his routines of chain-smoking and solo-drinking, until he hears some not-quite-dead noises coming from the back of his van. Well, Zeynep is a bit undead and quite hungry, and, since Cemal develops certain feelings for her, he starts caring and providing for her, urging them to be constantly on the move, while the police starts the search for a serial killer. However, there is no safe place in the world for the two of them, not even Cemal’s native home, and the day of meeting with Zeynep’s family is approaching…

“The Funeral” is a genre salad of sorts, blending the ideas of the road movie, “necromantic” comedy, love-on-the-run, horror and revenge thriller and doing so in a pace that often tests the audiences’ patience during the (almost) two hours of runtime until the make-it-or-break-it moment for the ending. To do so, Behram has to exercise the full control over the material in order to converge the interesting ideas he has towards a point. There is a constant threat that the multitude of ideas would take the film over, but the filmmaker barely manages to hold a grip over them.

The first of the film’s strong points is the acting. It is not a surprise that Ahmet Rifat Sungar is reliable in a role of a cryptic loner, since those roles suit him well. On the other hand, Cansu Türedi is a proper revelation of the film, since the actress nails the role with limited means of expression, given that her character does not speak. The supporting actors also create a rich tapestry contributing to the second of “The Funeral’s” strong points – its atmosphere. The realistic bleakness of it is conjured in the drained colours in the work of the art director Tuncay Özcan and the cinematographer Engin Özkaya who also lensed the filmmaker’s previous film “Antenna” (2019). However, Burk Alatas’ editing could have been a bit firmer.

But the reason the film mostly succeeds in making a point is the point itself. Behram packs a punch against the inherent conservativism, patriarchy and misoginy still present in the Turkish society, but is smart enough to hold it until the right moment. However, marketing “The Funeral” as a purely genre experience does not do the film any favours, since it serves better as an example of a hybrid of a genre- and an art house movie.

A Film a Week - Black Tea

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

The Mauritanian master Aberrahmane Sissako reached the glory with his previous feature, the foreign-language Oscar-nominated Timbuktu (2014). It was a harrowing, beautiful and potent film that hit the soft spot in combining the no-nonsense panoramic overview of the Islamist occupation of the titular city and the humaneness of the resistance to it. Ten years later, Sissako is, once again re-united with his co-screenwriter Kessen Tall, back on the festival circuit with his attempt at the globe-trotting cinema called Black Tea. It premiered at the competition of Berlinale and continued its tour at the Belgrade International Film Festival – FEST.

Sissako opens his film with a sequence set, but not actually elaborated in any way, at a mass wedding ceremony in Abijan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Like other brides, Aya (Nina Melo) is excited, but when her time comes to say the magic words, she makes a monologue, explaining that her husband needs a better wife than she could ever be, and storms out to the crowded, dusty alleys. After a slow cross-fade, set against an Afro-world-music cover of Nina Simone’s standard Feeling Good, we see her once again, this time dressed in red and with a different hairdo, walking the streets of the Chinese port city of Guangzhou. Judging by the appearance, she might either be a beautician or a person that uses their services almost on daily basis.

As it turns out, apart from the regular, but not that frequent visits to the African hair salon in the part of the town called Chocolate City, she is not associated with a beauty industry by any means. Instead, she works at a tea shop as a saleswoman and an apprentice tea-sommelier, learning the trade from her boss and mentor Cal (Chang Han) to whom she slowly falls in love with. The trouble is that Cal, who is also attracted to Aya for obvious reasons, is married to Ying (Wu Ke-Xi), with whom he has son Li-Ben (Michael Chang). Everybody loves Aya, but the things are about to get more complicated, as Cal plans a visit to his daughter from the previous relationship, Eva, who now lives in Cape Verde.

After the promising start and the transition to the slightly (but not overly) pretentious meditation on the topic of the tea and the tea culture in the Far East, Black Tea quickly lands to the territory of a soap opera powered by “shocking” revelations and nonsensical twists and turns. It is the fault of Sissako’s and Tall’s sloppy scriptwork that, for the most of the times, seems simply random and ultimately fake in putting a myriad of different ideas together instead developing them properly. More cynical viewers could easily come up with a theory that the script was put together with a singular intention of milking different state funds (it is a co-production of four countries in three different continents) with the now-trending anti-colonial undertones.

It simply feels fake and forced, which also transfers to Sissako’s directing. The helmer tries to infuse the influences of different masters, from Edward Yang and Wong Kar-wai, to Stanley Kramer and Pedro Almodóvar, but it all feels like a mandatory box-checking. Acting-wise, the cast members are better off when they are let to rely on their own instincts, since the character development is almost non-existent, while the aesthetics often feels cheesy, complete with Aymerick Pilarski’s surprisingly flat camerawork, Véronique Sacrez’ production design that channels the vibes of equipping a soundstage with the goods from a dollar-store and equally cheap CGI.

All in all, the best Black Tea can hope for is a status of a curious piece of exoticism that simply lacks any ingenuity. Unlike, for instance, Le Bao’s oneiric and gripping Taste, this mixture of African and Asian motives simply screams: “FAKE!”

A Film a Week - The Vanishing Soldier

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Countless films have been made around the premise of people making a decision that turns out to be wrong, which further triggers the chain reaction of events. But when the army, especially Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is involved, the usual SNAFU (Situation Normal All F***ed Up) quickly goes to FUBAR (F***ed Up Beyond All Repair). That would, in short, be the case with Dani Rosenberg’s (of 2020 dramedy “The Death of Cinema and My Father Too” fame) “The Vanishing Soldier” that has just premiered at the main competition of Locarno.

Shlomi (Ido Tako) is an 18-year-old boy drafted in the army and stationed somewhere in the middle of combat zone. When the action comes too close for him, he uses his wits to lag behind and desert from the front line. Is it a conscious decision? An anti-war statement? Or it is just an instinctive reaction of a young man driven by fear or urges of some kind? We would soon find out, but not before the Army authorities learn about his disappearance. That kind of event has to be put in a narrative framework, and for the Army the most suitable would be that he got stranded from his company and is captured by the enemy.

In the meanwhile, we learn that Shlomi is not a coward, a quitter or a frightened young boy prone to panic, and neither he has a strong anti-war and anti-militaristic sentiment. Actually, he is a driven, resourceful young man that comes from a decent family of Israeli patriots that never defied the state. The reason he ran away more or less straight to Tel Aviv is the relationship with his girlfriend Shiri (Mika Reiss) who is preparing to leave the country and go for studies in Canada. But is there a way back for a silly romantic soul that deserted for the reason of mixed signals, and does Shlomi has to face the consequences of his act?…

One can argue that Rosenberg and his co-writer Amir Kliger rely too much on the clichés of silly young people doing silly things, convenient plotting with mostly predictable twist (some of which, like the whole slapsticky thing with the couple of French tourist Shlomi robs of clothes on his way, are played just for laughs) and that Rosenberg’s direction is simply too showy in order to mask the lack of originality in the idea department. But this is not completely true, since Rosenberg demonstrates considerable skills in both of his roles. He masterfully plays with genres, making “The Vanishing Soldier” partly a heart-warming romance, partly a drama, partly an eloquent satire, partly a broad comedy and partly a thriller, and does so in style that is kinetic rather than simply busy.

On his course, he enjoys the help of the exhilarated actors who gladly go into interplays with one another. While the chemistry between the main couple is palpable, there is still a reality check that the relationships of 18-year-olds are made of misunderstandings, misread signals and the selfish motivations sometimes including grand gestures and nonsensical decisions. However, the film moves into a higher comedic gear when Shlomi encounters his concerned parents (Efrat Ben Tzur and Shmulik Cohen), his semi-demented, but still kindhearted grandma (Tikva Dayan) or the aforementioned French couple.

The technical components are not lagging behind either. David Stragmeister cinematography usually in longer, kinetic and tracking takes serves Rosenberg’s vision perfectly, Nili Feller’s editing keeps the beat up throughout the 105 minutes of runtime, offering breaks only when they are absolutely needed, while Yuval Semo’s music adds to the tension up to the boiling point.

The greatest thing about “The Vanishing Soldier”, however, are not the things that are said, openly shown or even that easy to spot. It is never mentioned, but it works as an exposé of the sometimes lethal contradictions of daily life in Israel. It is not just the matter of the country giving a lot of effort to defend itself from its neighbours, but not enough effort in negotiating some kind of functional peace with them. It is about careless partying that can easily be interrupted by the sirens resounding or, in more extreme cases, bombs exploding, of a uniformed soldier being a common sight on the street and on the beach, and of the fact that drafting the 18-year-old kids that are often lovestruck, and even more often impulsive, is never a good idea.

A Film a Week - To the Supreme! / Motto chouetsu shita tokoroe

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Coupling is difficult and relationships are difficult. That would be the basic premise of pretty much any romantic comedy or drama ever. Santa Yamagishi’s second feature To the Supreme!, based on a stage play by Shuko Nemoto, is not different in that department, as we get to see four couples or almost couples struggling with their love life on almost day-to-day basis in two different timelines. The film plays at the 2023 Nippon Connection.

Atsuko Maeda plays the nerdy costume designer Machiko who starts a relationship with her high school friend Reito (Fuma Kikuchi) who presents himself as an influencer, but is actually a parasite. Former child actress Suzu (Shuri) lives with her gay roommate Tommy (Yudai Chiba) after giving up hope to return to her job and harbours certain feelings for him which he prefers not to notice. Miwa (Marika Ito) is a freelancer whose pregnancy scare turns to be cancer, while her otherwise loudmouth boyfriend Taizo (Reiji Okamoto) keeps silent about paying his part of the rent and tries to dodge any responsibility whatsoever. Finally, we have a sex worker Nanase (Mei Kurokawa) and her steady client, also a child actor Shintaro (Takahiro Miura) who is now relegated to working as an extra on sets, which is a blow to his ego.

After the exposition set in the early-pandemic time of March 2020, the plot jumps two years backwards. We still have the same eight people, but they are coupled differently. We might have sensed it from the previous dialogues, but here it goes. Machiko and Tommy are roommates, and she hopes for more. Two former child actors Suzu and Shintaro live together and struggle to relive their careers. Reito parasites of Miwa and at Miwa’s, while Taizo got Nanase pregnant and urges her to have an abortion, albeit she does not want any commitment of him. Long story short, the women are doing their best while men are useless at best and abusive at worst: patriarchal, parasitic, ego maniacs or irresponsible selfish pricks. The plot keeps jumping back and forth between the two timelines all the way to the unearned, fantastic (happy) ending.

The dialogues as the driving force clearly signal the stage origins of the film. It could be also observed from the fact that it is predominantly set indoors, in four apartments that might as well be integral parts of the same studio, which also might be a give-away that To the Supreme! is an example of Covid-times filming. The pandemic also makes up for a minor plot-point in the film.

Working with a script that is a bit on the clever side, especially by the way it weaves the hints into the dialogue fabric, Santa Yamagishi proves to be a serviceable as a director who can forge a comprehensible language by opting for static takes for as long as it takes (until being forced to introduce reverse shots), as well as opting for predictable, yet still effective editing tricks of matching the end of a scene with the opening of the next with the shots composed the same way. The camerawork by the cinematographer Yuki Nakamura is also decent, although the lighting contrasts can sometimes be too striking.

It all works nicely in the first half of the film, until the stakes are risen to prove a point. The biggest victim of it is acting: as the anticipated climax approaches, its expressiveness tends to get a bit over the top. It is not the ensemble’s fault, mind you, as the actors have already proved that they can play their roles in a controlled way in the earlier, calmer scenes, but Yamagishi’s, since his instructions are not as precise and measured later on.

In the end, To the Supreme! lands in the realm of mediocre, although it showed some potential to be better. Not exactly revolutionary in the terms of genre of romantic drama, but still...

A Film a Week - Spring in Between / Hazama ni ikiru, haru

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

The spectre of autism can prove to be a slippery slope for filmmakers. Even if it does not necessarily end up on the territory of exploitation, it tends to be the defining characteristic for the characters with it, as we testified with the films like Rain Man and Forest Gump. Having that in mind, making a compelling, convincing and believable romance movie with at least one character somewhere on the spectre seems like a difficult, if not downright impossible task, and the Japanese filmmaker Rika Katsu undertook it for her debut feature Spring in Between that we had the chance to see at Nippon Connection.

Katsu opens the film with a parallel montage of a man seemingly playing with blue paint on its hands, but actually painting and a woman running to some kind of an open show, against the backdrop of music consisting of gentle piano and melancholic strings. He is actually an accomplished, even celebrated painter Tohru Okunai (Hio Miyazawa), and she runs to meet him at his exhibition. As we find out in the next string of scenes, she, Haru (Sakurako Konishi) is a low-rank journalist often berated by her boss, and her newest task is to interview Tohru and write a piece on him and his art.

As she prepares for the task, she gets more and more into Tohru’s art and Tohru himself, his quirks, rituals and self-imposed structure, although they reveal his diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, making him prone to obsessions and finding fascinating patterns in seemingly random things, acting on his impulses and apparent inability to empathize. For her, who finds some of those traits, although in a milder form, also in her own personality, it is not a game-changer. For her, it seems that Tohru is the only one able to really understand her, since her boss, colleagues and even her patronizing boyfriend (Yoshihiko Kosoda), also a journalist, but of a higher status in different type of paper definitely do not. But are those traits between the diagnosis and the relative functionality in the world really a promising beginning of a love story?

Working with her own script, Katsu manages to treat her characters with gentleness and even empathy, making their interest in each other seem genuine. The trouble is that, after a refreshing and promising start, she starts more and more relying on the romantic drama clichés in the terms of building up the events. However, the word play between the protagonist’s name (Haru means “spring” in Japanese) and her romantic interest’s obsession with natural phenomena, including cherry tree blossom in springtime add up to another meaning of the title, quite poetically so.

Directing-wise, her language is steady and clear, with the employment of usually controlled camerawork by Jun Fukumoto that tends to get a bit too fidgety in the scenes that try to signal some emotional uncertainty. Also, the way the director uses Toru Ishitsuka’s original score to mimic the emotions of the leading character and to trigger them within the viewers sometimes seems too obvious and therefore heavy-handed.

Hio Miyazawa, seen recently in Daishi Matsunaga’s Egoist (2022), continues to raise his profile with solid roles and good casting choices. But Sakurako Konishi, of Takashi Miike’s First Love (2019) fame, is really in command here, showing the complete control over her character. With the filmmaker’s noble intentions and the actors’ seamless effort, Spring in Between is definitely worth a watch, especially for festival-going, romance-loving crowds.

A Film a Week - Call of God / Kone taevast

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Before he fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and a tragic personality of sorts due to the circumstances of his death (he died in a foreign place, in Riga, Latvia, a therefore was not recognized by anyone), Kim Ki-duk was somewhat of a controversial figure in Korean cinema. The thing in question were not his films (although, a tome or two about the controversies, the shocks, the hidden meanings and the ambiguous comments there could be written), but his on-set behaviour that included physical and even sexual violence towards the actresses, by himself or by his collaborators, so he was basically cancelled from his own country’s cinema and spent the rest of his life in different Asian and European parts of the former Soviet Union, where he also filmed his two final movies. “Call of God” is a Kyrgyz-Estonian-Lithuanian co-production.

It is questionable if “Call of God”, that premiered at last year’s Venice and we caught it at Belgrade FEST, could be called his proper movie, since it was not finished by him, but his Estonian colleagues led by Artur Veeber. However, Kim completed the photography process even before the pandemic and took his time completing the post-production, while also developing his next, Latvia-set project, before the illness took him. That is probably the main reason why “Call of God” is marketed as a tribute to Kim Ki-duk rather than his own last film, but, whatever is the case, it is questionable whether this particular film could serve as the filmmaker’s last testament and the ultimate proof of his creative genius.

Call of God is the story of love, death and dreams set in Kyrgyzstan with Russian-language dialogues. It opens with a young woman (Zhanel Sergazina) doing her mouth-opening routine in front of the mirror, putting on her white mini-dress and going out. On the crossroads, she meets a man, later known as Daniel (Abylai Maratov) who asks her, flirtatiously, to show him the way to the Dream Café. Since the place is close, she offers to walk there with him. On the way, her purse gets stolen, and he manages to catch a thief and get it back, sacrificing some minor harm to his body. He asks her on a date and she accepts, maybe out of gratitude.

Then the story is interrupted by a phone call to the same young woman, informing her that it is a dream and asking if she wants to dream the rest of it or she would rather wake-up. As it turns out, the voice on the other side belongs to God (voiced by the Uzbek-Russian actor Seydulla Moldakhanov), so think about the added layer of mysticism to the “Open Your Eyes” / “Vanilla Sky” premise to be on the right track.

The dream goes on, and so does the relationship of the main couple. At first, there is some reluctance, than it makes way for the pure passion. Soon enough, though, another sentiment takes the lead: jealousy. He is jealous of his ex-girlfriend (Aygerim Akkanat) moving on with her life with an older man, and she is jealous that she is not the object of his jealousy. There are other things to be revealed from their past, present and personalities, which eventually results with some indecent conduct, bad decisions and the necessity to hide from the world, to stick together, eventually spoiling something as beautiful as love.

Sure, the framework of a dream that turns into a nightmare (is not it a perfect, albeit too obvious, metaphor for every relationship that had to be broken up) is efficient enough as an alibi for many things, but is it enough to lock our attention to the one-dimensional, unsympathetic characters like those two? It is a bit hard to say, but Kim obviously had other things on his mind to deal with and to unload them into what it turned out to be his final film. Pinpoint something and name it whatever: it could be some sexually perverse fantasy (since there is a scene of passionate love-making on the gravestone of the dead girlfriend), it could be the auteur’s cynical view towards love, or a love letter to the French Nouvelle Vague cinéma.

On their part, the two young actors do their best to colour and to add some depth to their characters that are clearly envisioned as simple devices. Zhanel Sergazina adds some tactility and fragility to her character that could otherwise be easily written off as a psycho (oddly, a woman is not just a recipient of violence in Kim’s film, but is capable of inflicting, or at least commanding it), while Abylai Maratov adds some artsy swagger to the character of Daniel. The best part of their work is their interplay that does not seem (completely) forced, but more like a “follie a deux” in a nightmare world.

Behind the camera, however, craft components vary. Kim’s own cinematography in black and white (up to the point when he decides to add some colour to it near the end) is a bit referential (to the aforementioned movie history period / artistic movement) and more than a bit poetic, with perfect using of the urban and rural landscape scenery elements as framing devices. On the other hand, the editing is at times too choppy, but the final editor Andrius Juzenas is not the right person to be blamed for that, since he had no input from the filmmaker, and Veeber, actually a producer by trade, is simply not equipped with making filmmaking decisions, especially with such material. The main trouble with the film lies within its script and can be attributed to Kim himself: written in a language he is not fluent in, the lines of dialogues seem simply ridiculous, especially when translated to another language. On another note, there had to be a reason why Kim avoided the useful vessel such as dialogue so often in his films, and we might have just got the answer to the question we did not dare to ask…

It would be a fair thing to say that “Call of God” opens much more questions than it gives answers to them. It is not always a good thing, especially when it comes to those regarding the potential “method” to the artistic “madness”, and even more especially in the case of such a controversial auteur (firstly for his films, then for his life and finally for his death) such as Kim Ki-duk. It is a confusing, even perplexing ending of a story that defies logic, which is, come to think of it, very much Kim Ki-duk-alike.

A Film a Week - The House With No Man / Nha Ba Nu

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Tran Thanh is a popular Vietnamese TV-show host, actor and, from recently filmmaker who has found a formula that works, at least from the financial point of view, with the success of his debut “Bo Gia” (2021, co-directed with Ngoc Dang Vu). The recipe was simple: a family-themed comedy-drama with slight romantic overtones was released in the less-busy winter period and earned over 17 million dollars, mostly domestically and in the nearby territories. With his newest film, and his first solo directorial effort, “The House with No Man”, he upgraded the formula by amplifying the romantic angle and timing the release in the time of the Tet holiday (the fact that it is also close to the Valentine’s Day also helps), and it resulted in the income of 18 million dollars so far, before even opening outside Vietnam.

Originally titled “Nha Ba Nu” (translatable as “Grandma’s House”), the film follows the youngest daughter in a three-generational household, Nhi (Hyunh Uyen An), and her attempts at love and life. The household is commanded by her mother Nu (Le Giang) and the conservative and rough “management style” she employs in the house is similar as the one she employs in the family-owned crab restaurant. Nhi wants to make a career as a designer, but she has to work as a server there, together with her sister, while the brother-in-law (played by the director himself), the only man in the house, but certainly not the man of the house, does the deliveries. The loving grandmother is there to provide some much needed support for the young women.

The things get complicated when Nhi is introduced to the young, rich and handsome John (Song Luan) through her friend. The two fall in love with each other, but the problems occur in the form of their parents. Nu is distrustful towards men in general and John’s parents are basically snobs who reject Nhi because of her class. On top of that, they already met her: she accidentally spilled soup over them in the restaurant. Can love conquer everything once they lose their support network: Nhi her family and John his parents’ money?

No matter how adept Tran Thanh as an actor is, he is still pretty green as a filmmaker, which is one of the core problems with “The House with No Man”. Firstly, the script written by Nguyen Huu Tuong Vi is far from perfect: dialogue-wise, it is too clumsy and it heavily relies on the tropes of the genres it adopts and sheds way too often. Sometimes it is refreshingly counter-intuitive, but more usually it feels like a missed opportunity. For instance, when this Romeo-and-Juliette-type of story takes a turn, we do not get to see a serious story about a young couple trying to make it on their own, but an equally rigid, cliché-ridden melodrama.

The feeling of intensity and extremity is amplified by the equally clumsy directing that aims for exaggeration of basically everything the movie consists of. The music is almost omni-present and always along the lines of the topic of a singular scene. Colour scheme of Saigon in the festive Tet times is beautiful, but camerawork is usually too busy. The actors always work in a through-the-roof emotional register. Finally, the treatment of the film genres is quite simplistic: comedy is on the verge of slapstick, romance feels phony and melodrama comes dangerously close to the realm of involuntary parody with its over-the-top sentimentality.

However, low-brow as it is, “The House with No Man” will have absolutely no trouble finding its audience among those who are looking for a family friendly comedy-drama covered in a thoroughly sanitized romance. But the critics will prove to be a tougher nut to crack.

A Film a Week - Twenty Hacker

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

From a film titled “Twenty Hacker”, one might expect that we are going to get some hacking action in the world of financial, corporate cyber-crime. But with Han Hyun-seok’s debut effort, we are simply not that lucky.

Working from the script written by Ahn Jeon-joo, Han actually opens the film with an action-type of scene. Our protagonist Jae-min (Kwon Hyun-bin) is in a darkened corporate building, working some “magic” with computers there while constantly being on the phone with the rest of the crew. His time is running out, and on his way back, he is interrupted by the security guards. That intro sends the first half (or even more) of the film to the realm of flashback…

We learn that Jae-min is a computer science student whose father was a victim of a hacking fraud, so he strives for revenge. When he is not studying or spending time with his only friend and love interest Jo-hee (Lim Na-young) who is, unfortunately, in love with the university’s alpha-dude and sportsman Chan-ho (Lee Su-woong), Jae-min hacks into the systems of fraudulent companies and alarms the police of their illegal actions anonymously. His actions draw the attention of a group called Better World, of which the two of his former school “frenemies” Man-gook and Hye-so are already members. Could they work as a team in order for Jae-min to execute the revenge on the rival group?

The story and the idea behind it are simple enough, but the whole thing is crippled by both clumsy plotting and equally unapt genre-mixing with romantic comedy. In that the whole cyber-crime and hacking angle gets lost and feels sacrificed for the unfunny, poorly-timed and ultimately slapstick-y jokes. The sense of meandering is even enhanced with tone-deaf directing that, in theory, probably serves as Han’s showcase of solutions that are, unfortunately, largely wrong.

That notion gets quite obvious with the technical components, especially the editing that uses all the tricks and tips applicable to television, such as zooms and horizontal camera rotations as editing tools, montage sequences and abrupt cutting. They all make the already artificially convoluted plot even harder to follow. The overbearing use of soundtrack that shifts in music styles and sometimes even relies on the many-times-heard loops and jingles is also a dead give-away that the creative time has no idea what they are doing.

The same TV-qualities could be applied for acting that is never above the level of K-drama series. In the defence of the actors playing the roles of the main couple, they are pretty much amateurs, coming from the ranks of music with only previous experiences in the drama series. The rest of the cast pretty much goes along the given lines.

All in all, “Twenty Hacker” does not seem like a movie at all, but more as an extended pilot for a run-of-the-mill TV series. The sooner we realize it, this bitter pill gets easier to swallow, but it still does not mean that the show made out of it would be particularly worth watching.

A Film a Week - Silence 6-9 / Isyhia 6-9

 previously published on Cineuropa

This year, the Greek Weird Wave has added another name to its roster of auteurs. Christos Passalis, formerly recognised for his acting (he played the role of the son in Dogtooth and the part of Manolis in The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea), has turned his attention to filmmaking, first with the Berlinale-premiered experimental essay documentary The City and the City, which he co-directed with Syllas Tzoumerkas, and now also with a fiction feature, Silence 6-9, which Passalis directed on his own. The Crystal Globe Competition at Karlovy Vary might prove to be a fitting launch pad for a cryptic, dream-like, retro-futurist love story like this.

The title comes from one of the key rules in the largely abandoned dystopian town that our hero Aris (Passalis himself) comes to: the inhabitants must remain in complete silence between 6 and 9 o’clock in the morning, so the antennas surrounding the town can do their recording. And what do they record? Anything related to the people of the town who have gone missing, not to be found. But before they went missing, they recorded their own cassette tapes so that the others who stayed would be able to remember them.

Similarly to the beginning of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, here, a stranger comes to a strange town to do a strange job for a strange man, called the Manager. His new post is not yet entirely his, and he has to wait for confirmation from the Manager, who might have lost his mind. While waiting, he is stationed in a hotel with Anna (played by Passalis’ co-star in both Dogtooth and The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea, Angeliki Papoulia), a woman whose job it is to act in a show based on the recorded cassettes of the missing people. Since they have a lot of time on their hands in a desolate town, they get closer and closer until they fall in love. Or is it just a dream that two strangers share while comatose in the hospital, perhaps a reference to Christopher Nolan’s Inception?

Stories set in an altered world, such as a dystopian future or present, demand some additional attention to the world-building details, and are usually hard to pull off in a brisk format of just 80 minutes. In that regard, Passalis’ work is commendable in all three roles he takes on here – as the leading actor, director and co-screenwriter. His vision is well written to the extent that it keeps the audience intrigued for the whole running time, while slowly revealing the information, and it is also perfectly executed on a visual level, along the lines of the Greek Weird Wave classics, with thoroughly composed and highly symmetrical, largely static shots of an arid landscape lensed in sun-bleached colours by Giorgos Karvelas, accompanied by the melancholic and toned-down retro soundtrack by Yiannis Loukos and Antonis Georgou. The production design by Márton Ágh, in which there is no item from a period more recent than the mid-1990s (apart from the antennas), is also one of the highlights, while the love story is convincingly powered by the chemistry between the two lead actors.

The only potential trouble with Silence 6-9 is its cryptic nature. A film like this is clearly a metaphor for something (or things), and the answer to the question of what this movie might be about will not please some audiences, especially given the potential meaning of the anti-cassette and anti-silence protests, and the new government that leads them. But still, Silence 6-9 is a smooth blend of style, substance, emotion and provocation that leaves the viewer with plenty to ruminate on.

A Film a Week - America

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

There is hardly more exploited concept in literature and cinema as it is a love triangle, and there are few filmmakers that could pull it in a new and fresh way. The Israeli filmmaker Ofir Raul Graizer has a difficult task to stir the water in his unique way with his sophomore feature “America” that has premiered in the official Crystal Globe competition at Karlovy Vary. Some sort of a festival tour might be expected judging by the tone of film, its execution and Graizer’s own reputation: his debut “The Cakemaker” (2017) that also premiered at KVIFF went to become the Israeli official entry for 2018 Oscar and a minor arthouse hit.

The title, which later proves to be quite misleading, comes the place where our protagonist Ilay Cross (Michael Moshonov) resides and works as a swimming coach. One day, he receives a phone call from his father’s attorney that informs him that the father has passed away and that Ilai inherited the house. Once he gets back to Israel, we learn that his actual name is Eli Greenberg, that his father was a national hero and a local sheriff, that his mother is long gone and that Eli had a complicated relationship with his family.

In the meanwhile, Eli reconnects with his childhood friend and swimming rival Yotam (Ofri Biterman) who now owns a florist shop and is engaged with Iris (Oshrat Ingadashet). For the old times’ sake, Eli and Yotam go swimming in the creek where they played when they were kids, but, while Eli takes a nap in the sun, Yotam slips and falls to end up in a vegetative state. Ten months later, Eli is still in Israel, refurbishing his house in order to sell it well. Iris’ shop is deeply in debt, so she accepts Eli’s offer to help him with the garden and while doing so, the two get closer and fall in love. When Yotam suddenly wakes up from coma, the relationship dynamics are about to be re-evaluated again…

While the plot description and the film’s structure in four chapters (the last of them serves actually as an epilogue) seem a bit Almodóvar-esque, “America” is actually a film that plays by its own set of rules. Each character we encounter is quite complex and life-like, which is especially true for our central trio whose traits, past and trauma we get to learn slowly through the drips of information Graizer feeds us through his script. Also, each of the central three chapters is centred around one of the relationships in the completely drawn triangle: Eli’s and Yotam’s platonic bro-mance, Eli’s and Iris’ passionate affair coming out of desperation, and Iris’ and Yotam’s rekindled love through which they both survive.

Graizer’s directing style is toned-down and discreet, but also quite tactile. He demonstrated it also in “The Cakemaker”, which also had a queer angle and was more focused on relationship building through enjoying and preparing food. In “America”, Graizer focuses more on the tactile aspect of the intrapersonal dynamics in relationships that always have some physical component, whether they are sexual by nature or not. The only thing that breaks that unity is Dominique Charpentier’s score that is a bit too revealing.

Shot in the colours of the eternal warm season in Israel, suggestively edited and equipped with fitting production- and costume design, “America” is very much competent piece of work. The amount of storytelling control achieved through the fine-tuning process by Graizer actually makes “America” resemble an American film, whether it be a higher profile indie or a smaller studio production.

Graizer’s detailed and layered writing also allows the standout performances in the acting department. Michael Moshonov has the most complex, but also the most thankful task as Eli, a decent man of high ethical standards, but also of strong emotions and deeply hidden traumas covered with a layer of mystery. As Iris, Oshrat Ingadashet gets to play the most emotional and vulnerable part, while Ofri Bitterman has to show the multitude of moods, from joviality to helplessness to determination.

“America” is definitely very well made and very accessible film that could do very well with different audiences. Watching it gives the sense of reading a fine novel. Maybe Graizer just has to follow the footsteps of the protagonist he created and takes a jump across the pond where he could be a reliable “money player”.

A Film a Week - Far Far Away / Yun lou saan go lo

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Amos Why got some notoriety with his debut feature, the romantic drama “Dot 2 Dot” (2014) which revolved around a girl who came to Hong Kong from mainland China and got fascinated by the place’s culture. His next film was “Napping Kid” (2018), a tech thriller with some political undertones that ultimately suffered from the convoluted plot.

Why is back to the romance genre with his latest work, “Far Far Away” based on a simple premise of a shy and nerdy IT guy who all of a sudden draws the interest of five different good-looking girls. The film premiered at the last year’s edition of Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, while its theatrical release was scheduled for this year’s Valentine’s Day. We caught it at Osaka Asian Film Festival, where it had its international premiere.

Hau (played by very charismatic Kaki Shum) is a 28 year-old computer geek who worked as a developer of a dating app despite his dating history is short. Once he gets the courage to ask his pretty co-worker (Cecilia So) out, the whole new world opens up to him. At the preparations for his friends’ wedding, he meets the “professional bridesmaid” Fleur (Crystal Cheng) who feels pressured to get married and have kids herself soon and also Lisa (Hanna Chan) on whom his high school friends all have crush. A chance encounter with Mena (Rachel Leung) who has the same car (brand, model and even colour-wise) as he does results in a fling. And finally, there is also his college friend Melanie (Jennifer Yu) he feels very comfortable around.

Apart from dealing with Hau’s prolonged growing up, Why also deals with the geography and contemporary life, including also social, economic and toned-down political aspects, in Hong Kong. The reason for that is that all the five girls live in different remote corners of Hong Kong, and the sheer “geography” is one of the reasons why keeping up a relationship with any one of them demands some compromises on Hau’s side.

“Far Far Away” starts pretty much as a basic romantic flick with some attempts at broad comedy, laced by forced structure (the first half of the film is divided in chapters called “lessons”), stereotypically underwritten characters (the nerdy guy is simply too nerdy, while the pretty girls are approaching the movie star-level of prettiness) and even predictable directing in which Why tries to overcome the blandness with some flashiness in the graphics department and the mandatory slow-motion entries. Even the more appealing local aspect seems aimed at the local audiences and connossieurs of Hong Kong’s layout, while the outsiders could remain confused with bits and pieces of data Why feeds them with.

Luckily, it gets better later on in almost every aspect once the structure is dropped and the plot starts evolving more freely. The romantic and other issues feel more organic and even the directing style loosens up, replacing the endless reverse shots from the fixed positions in conversational scenes with controlled camera movements. Even the predictable gentle pop tunes make more sense. That way, the viewers can appreciate not just the story, but also the details in the background of it, the inter-personal dynamics between the friends and love interests and the numerous details of the Hong Kong culture and way of life, making the film actually more of a love letter to the city than a story of one’s search for true self through the relationships.

What works best here is casting. Why deliberately chose his cast from the ranks of the younger up-and-coming actors and actresses who might not be as recognizable as the bigger stars, but who make up for it with their youthful energy and compelling chemistry in the scenes they share. Finally, “Far Far Away” is quite an enjoyable little movie.

A Film a Week - The Cloud Messenger / Meghdoot

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Tragic love stories are the staple diet of every culture, mythology and civilization. Lovers themselves can be sinful or just star-crossed, but their common trait is defiance to the order represented by gods, kings and other power figures by the sheer power of love. Details may vary, but the essence remains the same, from Orpheus and Eurydice to Romeo and Juliet to Katniss and Peeta from “Hunger Games”.

The story of Jaivardhan and Tarini, the protagonists of Rahat Mahajan’s feature debut “The Cloud Messenger” (or “Meghdoot” in original) might be one such story. The film premiered at the main, Tiger Competition of IFFR.

In the ancient version told in prologue by the means close to the Yakshagana theatre, Jaivardhan (the director Mahajan plays the role himself) and Tarini (Lalita Shivani) were the “yakshas” (spirits) under the rule of the lord Kuber whose brother, the king Dashananan (Peesappilly Rajeevan) wanted Tarini to be his wife and queen. The whole thing did not end well for neither of the lovers, to put it mildly. If there are parallels to be drawn from this story to the titular lyrical poem written by Kalidasa, you are probably proficient in Sanskrit language literature. The connections to the story of the kidnapping of Rama’s wfie Sita by Ravana, the king of Lanka, from Ramayana will be made later on.

Back to the modern days, let us say the 90s, before the cell phone age, and welcome to the exclusive boarding school somewhere in the foothills of Himalaya. Jaivardhan (Ritvik Tyagi), or JV as he is called by his friends, is a sensitive young lad prone to mischiefs, which puts him in trouble with school principal who uses the colonial times rituals to maintain the military grade of discipline. But when the new girl Tarini (Ahalya Shetty) arrives to the school, he is completely smitten. Luckily, both of them were selected for and partnered-up in the photography class given by the famed and wise professor Sapru (star actor Raj Zutshi) who is probably the only person there encouraging the students to open their eyes. However, the young lovers’ happiness is under threat since the masked entity of Dashananan appears from another world to haunt and take Tarini.

The concept of reincarnation or the collision of the mythological and the “real” world could be used here to highlight the universal meaning of love, destiny and overcoming the challenges it poses. The way Mahajan directs his film, with an emphasis on the visual cues how the tradition and modernity mix, and the articular mechanics of the both worlds, is more than fitting for that kind of story. The way he steers his young actors in the desired direction is simply stellar and the attention to details (especially in the “realm” of the boarding school) is quite harrowing, while the fantasy world he imagines also leaves quite a strong impression.

In that regard, it is worth noting that Mahajan also serves as the film’s co-editor (with Beena Paul), the sole production designer and the co-cinematographer (with Anil Pingua), which allows him to control the impact of the film as a whole. Other collaborators should also be commended for their work. The mix between the traditional percussion and the modern, more gentle music on an array of instruments in the score written by Nikhel Kumar Mahajan fits perfectly, and the same can be told for the Kapila Venu’s choreography.

However, there is a bit of a problem in the department of dramaturgy, since the prologue could be regarded as a spoiler of sorts, making the film’s second act a sort of an expectation of things that are bound to happen. Ultimately, it makes sense in the third act when the realms collide, but the runtime of two and a half hours is going to be felt.

In the end, “The Cloud Messenger” is a fairly accessible film that is both rooted in the Indian tradition and open to the modern cinematic language. It is a competent, meaty debut, but perfect it is not.

A Film a Week - A Perfect Love Story Where Nothing Goes Wrong or Does It...?

 previously published on Cineuropa

The lengthy title of Emina Kujundžić’s directorial debut, A Perfect Love Story Where Nothing Goes Wrong or Does It..?, pretty much sums up the whole film. It seems like the director wanted to give her own personal insights on the topic of love outside of the romantic preconceptions prevalent in the modern, interconnected world. The movie premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival earlier this year and is currently playing as a special screening in the Festivals in the Spotlight section of the Zagreb Film Festival.

Kujundžić, however, opens her film on a slightly “meta” level: a female filmmaker played by Sadžida Tulić is at a meeting with an important producer (Srđan Vuletić), and she films him giving her feedback on her script. In a slightly misogynistic manner, he calls it too short and caught up in typical “feminine details”, like the colours of clothes, furniture and props, while lacking any real substance or information on who and what the characters in the film really are. Bearing in mind that Kujundžić’s previous credits included production design and costume design activities, this character might as well be a stand-in for her. In the following scene, she complains about it to her “partner in crime” (Luka Marjanović), who takes the producer’s side somewhat, since he does not know much about the film project.

The rest of Kujundžić’s movie is pretty much the film that the director tries to make. A nameless Sarajevo urbanite (Enisa Njemčević) lives with her French boyfriend (Victor Bessière) in a seemingly harmonious relationship. In the middle of the night, they wake up, load up their car and embark on a road trip through Herzegovina, towards the sea. There is a lot of chatter on the radio station that they are listening to, about an audacious bank heist that they may or may not have anything to do with. One thing is certain: they have a huge stash of money. But this is not a ride into the sunset, because our two leads grow further and further apart owing to the differences in their characters and attitudes: while his wishes are simple, hers are ambitious and sometimes radical.

Halfway through, Kujundžić goes back to the meta level by introducing two foreign, diva-like female producers (Lana Ball and Emma Jaay), who are more interested in their thoughts on the topic of who is watching whom in the film world than in the actual filmmaking process. This is clearly a comment, as are the manic jump cuts in the scenes that the directress shares with her partner and the fact that, as the “plot” of the film unfolds, both lead and supporting characters start speaking their own languages, and everybody understands each other. Eventually, A Perfect Love Story Where Nothing Goes Wrong or Does It..? is not so much about love as it is about sincere filmmaking and the impossibilities of both in a world that is cynical to its core.

However, that world is not completely devoid of beauty, at least superficially, as shown in the cinematography by Almir Đikoli, which highlights the small wonders of life in a natural way, and in the inspired, eclectic soundtrack by Sloven Anzulović. The cast of lesser-known actors, mostly non-professionals, also fits the bill perfectly, making this a sincere filmmaking experiment, rather than a story (love or otherwise) actually being told.

A Perfect Love Story Where Nothing Goes Wrong or Does It..? is a completely crowd-funded, micro-budget film financed through an Indiegogo campaign, with donations from private sources in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. There was no production company involved, and the cast and crew worked on it for free.