Thursday was either the last day of movies at the Walter Reade
Theater or the first day of movies at Japan Society (ringing in the beginning
of Japan Cuts…I was determined to experience it as both, catching two excellent
South Korean features at the former before jetting over to the latter for a
screening of a film by a director whose work continues to entice and expand my
mind, along with a q & a with him afterwards and a wee bit of burlesque.
If there were only 3 films on the agenda for today, why do I
feel like there is so much to write about? Ah yes, on this day the NYAFF crew
came up with the impressive idea of preceding two of its features with short
films, by the most major of players in the South Korean film scene, making
these second screenings of the films stand out as unique from the first time
they were shown.
So we begin with a short film ONE PERFECT DAY falling
somewhere in the romantic comedy department, by renowned Kim Jee-Woon, in need
of something of a rebound (at least from my point of view) after the clunk and
thud of his stab at a “late period” Schwarzenegger vehicle, The Last Stand. This
was an at times highly amusing and overall oddly interesting piece, paced and
lighted with the intensity of a brooding psychological thriller despite its
seemingly light subject matter. The
protagonist is a hapless clod in the most extreme sense (resembling the
counter-intuitive anti-sexuality of the make lead in Alien Bikini, if you’ve
seen it). We see snippets of dates gone wrong, but keep returning to one in
particular that is an agonizing. Before feelings of sympathy can take hold, the
guy is shown clearly to be self-centered, belligerent, and entirely
insensitive. Kim Jee-Woon, within a mere 20 odd minutes, shifts the mood from
hilarious to depressing and then even hopeful. We are made to feel sorry for
the leading man, seeing that the most antisocial traits are often the product
of upbringing, and the final romantic showdown…is intense. The game of paper,
scissor, rock is taken to unprecedented levels of suspense and philosophy,
making this a brief bit of onscreen alchemy to seek out.
This was shown, fittingly, before the very offbeat take on
the same genre, HOW TO USE GUYS WITH SECRET TIPS by new though already quite
assured director Lee Won-Seok. Right off
the bat it is way out there in the best sort of way. The story is built around
a series of self-help VHS tapes that will show women who are ‘tired of trying
to succeed in a man’s world’ to do just what the movie’s title suggests. They are
narrated by something of a Willy Wonka figure. In fact, several moments of the
film has a vibrant retro 60s vibe to it, the video’s funky tones seep right
through into the story. The video is found by a woman in her early 30s who is
confident in her abilities as an assistant director Choi Bona of an ad agency,
and there are lots of short bursts of visual anarchy suggesting the director is
well versed in the language of advertising – but fed up with being passed over
because of her unwillingness to be giddy and kotow to her male colleagues.
I loved the bursts of bizarre that are very much related to
the videos, and there are some very humorous predicaments. But somewhere midway
through, I felt I kind of lost the thread of the main character. Yes her change
is necessary to show how far the video has taken her from her true self, but I
still feel like her centrality to the story suffers. I think I may have also
been disappointed by how there is such a left field aesthetic, yet midway
through SECRET TIPS basically gets back to following the path of a typical
romantic comedy. Her suitor is funny, but I kinda felt like his receiving equal
status in the story is thrust upon us, and distracted from Choi‘s
transformation.
I also felt like it’s hard to divorce this movie from the
experience of watching fellow South Korean RC VERY ORDINARY COUPLE (to be fair,
it may very well be my favorite film of the festival so far). They share a lot
of elements that are probably cultural…or then again maybe they are universal
to RC movies everywhere. I admit I am not a fan of the genre and terribly
versed in it. But VERY ORDINARY blew me away by actually messing with the
genre, reflecting on it even, and I’d wished SECRET TIPS had remained in the
unique territory it had started out in.
The next short film was a collaboration between Chan Wook
Park and his brother Park Chan-Kyong. It shows the director’s interest in
exploring ritual and culture outside of the mainstream, as is the case in some
of his previous short films (Night Fishing, . It is a sparse and minimalist
production following a young girl and elderly man…perhaps her grandfather, or a
teacher… as they enter a secluded patch of wooded mountainside and engage in
traditional drumming and singing. Briefly stunning in the raw power of the
girl’s singing, channeling forces far older than hers, the film fades out as
unassumingly it arrived.
The feature that would follow, JUVENILE OFFENDER, is a hard
hitting drama focused on youth culture and poverty dealt with to different
degrees by South Korean films such as Bleak Night, Breathless Poetry, yet
handles things with a delicate touch. It shares with Kim Ki-Duk’s recent
stunner Pieta the theme of mother and son becoming reunited after long
abandonment, although that film is far more fantastical while JUVENILE OFFENDER is extremely
realistic. The situations detailed throughout are painful to behold, but the
film never becomes melodramatic. The difficult situations the characters go
through are balanced with a determination to hold onto hope and embrace the
company they keep with one another. But don’t let that make it seem like it’s
an easy film to watch. The cyclical nature of abandonment, lapses into
violence, and insurmountable debt are not presented matter-of-factly.
This is easily one of the best films of those I’ve managed
to see at the festival thus far. I feel a strong need to see it again when not
rushed, but indeed my eye was often on the clock as I was to race across town
for the screening at Japan Society to follow. Rushing to the lobby as soon as
the credits started rolling, I paused to give a cheery wave to Db before
setting off.
Will report on the events at Japan Society in Part 2.
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