Happy Cleaners (2019) closes the Asian American International Film Festival August 3

I’m not going to give a full review to Happy Cleaners. I’m doing this not because there is anything wrong with it, there isn’t. Rather I am going to keep this short and sweet because there was a point where I suddenly realized that this film was speaking to a greater truth outside of my experience. Yes, I could appreciate the story, and the acting and the technical aspects of the film, but the greater truth, about the generational divide of the immigrant experience in America was outside of my reach. I could see it and understand it but I could not connect to it the way I would have had I been the son of immigrants who struggled to make a life in a new country.

Happy Cleaners is the story of the Korean family living in Flushing Queens. Mom and Dad, immigrants from Korea, run a dry cleaning service which is faltering through no real fault of their own. The kids are trying to make their way in America, the only country they know. The clashing of old and new worlds leads to loving conflict in the family.

A sweet, at times bittersweet, family drama Happy Cleaners has been bouncing around the festival schedules for a couple of months and I completely understand why. A loving portrait of the struggles within a family that loves each other but whose members have differing view points. This is a film that has a glorious lived in quality. It’s a quality that comes not just from the people behind the cameras having lived the story but those in front . Everything in his film is nigh on perfect with the result is a film that will leave you moved.

Highly recommended Happy Cleaners is the Closing Night film of the Asian American International Film Festival.

When We Walk plays the Asian American International Film Festival August 3rd

Follow up to Jason DaSilva's When I Walk, the film follows DaSilva's struggle to remain in contact with his son after his ex takes the boy and moves to Austin Texas. DaSilva is suffering from MS and can not move to Texas without losing the health care he needs to remain alive.

This is heartfelt and moving portrait of what one man has to do in order to not only remain alive but also remain connected to the one person who means anything to him, his young son.

Definitely worth a look.

WHEN WE WALK plays the Asian American International Film Festival August 3

AAIFF ’19: Baliko (short)

You could see photos of the Abominable Snowman every week in the Weekly World News and there is still grainy video of him and Bigfoot on A&E and the History Channel all the time. Nevertheless, a reputable professional photographer is convinced a clear, unimpeachable shot of a mythical Himalayan monster will jump-start her stalling career. More than a thousand words, a picture is worth everything in Chris Chung’s short film Baliko, which screens during the 2019 Asian American International Film Festival.

When an editor tells Mara her photos are pretty but dull, it stings bitterly. Resolved to show him and every other obnoxious jerk differently, she becomes obsessed with the idea of photographing Baliko, a legendary beast that only shows itself at particular times during the lunar cycle. According to folklore, his coming demands a sacrifice from local villagers, to atone for their collective guilt. They do not like talking about him much, even in this day and age.

Whether he believes or not, Mara’s Bertie Wooster-ish British boyfriend James will accompany her on the trek. She knew from the start he wouldn’t be much help, but she is still surprised how much his chatter bothers her. In contrast, their weathered Sherpa guide hardly says a word. Perhaps that is why he inspires confidence.

Baliko is sort of a survival story, sort of a monster film, and definitely a close cousin to the vintage tales off irony once seen on shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. Yet, the frosty setting is not so very different from Game of Thrones, which notably featured Baliko’s star and screenwriter, Jessica Henwick. She is also a Marvel alumnus, having played Coleen Wing in Iron Fist and The Defenders, so Baliko ought to have major fanboy appeal.

Henwick is also really terrific as Mara, showing considerable range while completely upending many of our assumptions. Jonathan Howard’s James might be too much of a twit for the film’s own good, but Tom Wu (Hundred Eyes from Marco Polo) is steely as ever as their silent guide.

Some viewers might guess the film’s twist, but it still has bite because of the shrewdly clever ways Chung frames the closing scenes. Frankly, this film ought to be a hot ticket, considering its three primary cast-members have all appeared in big, moderately large, or minor roles in some of the largest film franchises going (including Marvel, James Bond, and Godzilla). More importantly, it is smart and chilling (but maybe not in the way viewers will expect). Very highly recommended, Baliko screens tomorrow (7/28), as part of the Shorts: Otherly Worlds program at this year’s AAIFF.

RITUALS OF RESISTANCE (2018) AAIFF 209

RITUALS OF RESISTANCE is a look at resistance to the Chinese occupation of Tibet from the stand point of former monk tuned resistance fighter, a woman who was raised out side of Tibet but whose siblings still live there and a young man who feels stateless and turns to suicide as a form of protest. It is tied together by the ponderings of the director.

Meditative film about a lost home is by turns fascinating, kind of dull and rather thoughtful. Covering a wide variety of positions it makes us think about the notion of  a place that is supposed to be home when in one case we haven't been there in decades and in another not really at all. It is a film that makes clear the enormity of the task of protesting a huge injustice which is not really being paid attention to since the protests are barely noticed by the Chinese government.

I love that the film tells the story of the variety of the protests that have been taking place over the last almost 70 years. Lobsing Tendar's tale of a monk becoming a warrior shines light on those who chose to fight. It is a tale most people don't know but should. I love how the the film makes real this longing for a place that very few refugees really know as an actual place. Tsekyi Dolma had been there in decades when she went back and snuck into the country to see her family, while Lhakpa Tsering only knows of it from his home in India and yet they both long to return. There is a physicality to their longing that is heartbreaking.

At the same time the films structure can be a little too meditative. The mix of sound and image, of rolling country sides had me drifting off.  While I understand the film is a kind of prayer it is a little too reflective. Its not fatal but it kept me from fully remaining engaged. I mention this more as a warning then as a flaw.

My only real complaint about the film is its final image of the director running through the desert on fire. While the image is a correct one to end on, the handling of the digital effects is jarring and I found myself breaking with the film as if awoken from a dream. it broke the spell the film had crafted in the previous hour.

Regardless if you want to know about the state of Tibetan protests of China this film is a must.

RITUALS OF RESISTANCE plays July 28th 209 at the Asia Society. For tickets go here

Bei Bei (2018) Asian American International Film Festival 2019

Unhappy and despondent at being pregnant and no longer wanted by her boyfriend Bei Bei took rat poison in the hope of killing herself. She survived while her baby did not. Prosecutors used the note she left behind to charge her with murder claiming intent.

Chilling tale about how various jurisdictions are seeking to limit a woman’s reproductive rights via laws that seek to protect the fetus at all costs. This is an very good film that should act as a warning to women about how jurisdictions are taking steps to control the reproductive rights of women.

Recommended

BEI BEI plays the Asian American International Film Festival and the Festival of Cinema NYC

Lucky Grandma Asian American International Film Festival

Told she is going to be lucky on a certain day Grandma heads to the casinos in Connecticut and wins a fortune, until she loses it. Slinking home on the bus the guy sitting next to her drops dead. Discovering that he has an even bigger fortune in his bag, and knowing he won't need it, she takes it and heads off...only to find that one of the gangs in Chinatown wants their money back.

Imagine an off kilter comedy from Hong Kong or Taiwan made and set in New York City and you'll have some idea of what's in store. A potent mix of comedy, drama and social commentary, LUCKY GRANDMA keeps us chuckling as we sit on the edge of our seats waiting to see how it all plays out. Where it goes and how it goes is often unexpected since things take a dark turn and even the "happy" outcome reveals an unhappy truth about how children see their older parents.

That the film works as well as it does is due entirely to Tsai Chin as Grandma. A seemingly tough as nails cookie who always has a cigarette dangling from her mouth, she is no one you really want to come up against. Chin also manages to break our hearts when the stern mask drops and you realized that inside she isn't as tough as she seems. Chin's ability to balance both sides should win her enough acclaim that she can get the leads deserving of an actress who has been working steadily for six decades.

One of the unexpected joys of 2019

LUCKY GRANDMA plays Sunday at AAIFF and is highly recommended. For tickets and more information go here.

Nate Hood on Demolition Girl (2019) Japan Cuts 2019

The plight of sex workers has always been a constant undercurrent in Japanese cinema, from the outrageous and lurid like Sion Sono’s deconstructionist Roman Porno Antiporno (2016) to the restrained and nuanced like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s family drama Shoplifters (2018). Genta Matsugami’s Demolition Girl is also about a sex worker, but this time it explores a specific fetish industry which has heretofore been largely unexplored in movies: crushing, the smashing of insects and small animals beneath the feet of scantily clad women.

Not that Cocoa—a high schooler trapped in a nowhere town with a widowed gambling addict father and moocher older brother—ever goes that far in her own videos: she restricts herself to flattening old cans, bottles, and plastic toys while dressed in her schoolgirl uniform. Sometimes she might get a little crazier and smush a raw sausage or a birthday cake between her naked toes. But the furthest she’s ever gone was a video where she snuck into her school after-hours and massaged a bunch of balloons with her toes until they popped. If she’s bothered by the thought of perverts getting off on her work, she doesn’t show it. With two deadbeat leeches at home to support, she needs the money. Besides, she reasons, it’s not like she’s getting naked or having sex. But such nuance will ultimately prove irrelevant in Matsugami’s quietly powerful tale of economic desperation, familial strife, and societal ostracism. Cocoa’s dull life is rocked when she’s told by a school advisor that her grades are good enough to get her into a national university where the tuition will be a mere ¥3 million (about $27,600). Realizing this might be her ticket out of her humdrum life, she scrambles to collect as much money as possible. After discovering her father gambled away the ¥1 million her mother saved for her college, she doubles down on her crushing videos to raise the funds needed for entrance fees.

Matsugami is very careful not to condemn or judge Cocoa’s decisions, presenting her as the victim of economic injustice and familial neglect. However, Matsugami overplays himself in the last act by introducing a head-scratching yakuza subplot which sees Cocoa confront a group of murderous gangsters at a junkyard with a pickaxe. Despite making sense in context, this artificial raising of stakes keeps the film from reaching greater heights as an incisive, sympathetic work of humanism.

Rating: 7/10

Demolition Girls will also be screening July 29th as part of Fantasia Fest in Montreal

Nate hood's 400 word on Song Lang (2019) NYAFF 2019

For his gorgeously realized, opulently shot feature debut Song Long, director Leon Le takes audiences to 1980s Saigon, a culture in the midst of painful transition. On the one side are the elder generations, survivors of decades of constant warfare and jealous protectors of traditional Vietnamese culture. On the other, the younger generations born into an increasingly pervasive capitalism, unconcerned with the old ways and obsessed instead with money, sex, and consumer goods. On the one side is Ling Phung (Isaac), filial son and performer of cải lương—Vietnamese folk theater. On the other is Dung (Lien Bin Phat), an emotionally deadened debt collector for a loan shark. Their lives are thrown together when Dung pays a visit to Ling’s theater to collect on his mother’s debts, sparking an odd friendship between two young men who have more in common with each other than they might imagine.

Many early critics have praised Song Long for its luscious cinematography—Chen Kaige’s Farewell Me Concubine (1993) seems a common point of reference—and loving depictions of cải lương. But the film is more than a wistful entertainment; it’s a anatomical cross section of a society on the brink of anomie. Notice how Le juxtaposes Dung’s shiftless life as a gangster with those of cải lương performers: whereas every moment of every day is strictly regimented and defined with purpose for the actors, Dung languishes most of his days away in a detached haze, drifting from empty rooftop to empty rooftop in between “collections.” The actors experience the full breadth of life preparing for and performing their art: joy, love, loss, tragedy. But Dung wanders in an anhedonic torpor, showing as much excitement when he makes love or plays video games alone in his apartment as he does when he learns one of his “clients,” the mother of two small girls, killed herself to free her family from her debts. Even Dung’s avowed atheism seems superficial when compared to the prevalent Catholicism and Buddhism surrounding him.

The film could’ve easily leaned towards the reactionary with its celebration of traditional Vietnamese culture and societal collectivism, but Le’s not interested in political proselytization—he’s telling a story first and foremost of two young men struggling to navigate life, tragedy, and heartbreak in the only ways they know how. It’s this blending of subtexts, narrative, and undeniably pictorial beauty that makes Song Lang an auspicious debut.

Rating: 7/10

Song Lang (2019) NYAFF 2019

Song Lang is a small gem. Nominally the story of a small opera company struggling to get by and the collector who witnesses a performance and becomes infatuated with the company and one performer. Taking a premise similar to many other films it spins it out in wonderful and unexpected ways.

To be honest this film was not going to be on my dance card for the New York Asian Film Festival. It didn’t quite interest me and then it started to show up at other festivals ( Asian American International) and I decided to jump in. I’m glad I did. Feeling like a big warm novel, the film pulls you in and drags you along. Yes the film with fleetingly remind you of other films but for the most part the film does in its own way so as to banish any thought of it being a copy.

What I loved about the film is the sense of place it creates. There is a lived in quality to it all, and we feel as though we are in places that we in America have probably never been before. Its tactile and we can feel the places and almost smell them as well.

Song Lang is a super film that is recommended.

Song Lang plays Sunday at NYAFF. It will run in NYC August 1st as part of the Asian American International Film Festival

42nd Asian American International Film Festival Announces Full Lineup

JUNE 27, 2019, NEW YORK – Presented by Asian CineVision, the 42nd Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF42), and taking place July 25 – August 3 in New York City, has announced its full film lineup. The first and longest running Asian interest film festival in the country, AAIFF42 will be presenting 12 narrative features, 9 documentary features, and 67 short films, from 19 countries.

OPENING NIGHT: YELLOW ROSE

Directed by Diane Paragas - USA

Rose, an undocumented Filipino girl, dreams of one day leaving her small Texas town to pursue her country music dreams. Her world is shattered when her mom suddenly gets picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rose, facing this new reality, is forced to flee the scene, leaving behind the only life she knows, and embarks on a journey of self-discovery as she searches for a new home in the honky tonk world of Austin, Texas.

YELLOW ROSE will screen on Thursday, July 25 at 7:00pm at Asia Society.

CENTERPIECE: MS. PURPLE

Directed by Justin Chon - USA

From award-winning filmmaker Justin Chon (Gook, 2017), MS. PURPLE  is a poignant drama about Asian American sister and brother, Kasie (Tiffany Chu) and Carey (Teddy Lee), who were raised and are now seemingly stuck in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Abandoned by their mother and brought up by their father, the siblings continue to struggle with deep emotional wounds from the difficulty of the parental dynamic. Now, with their father on his deathbed, the estranged Carey comes home to help Kasie care for him. As they reunite over their dying father, Kasie and Carey confront their shared past, attempting to mend their relationship.

MS. PURPLE will screen on Saturday, July 27 at 7:30pm at Asia Society.

Closing Night: HAPPY CLEANERS

Directed by Julian Kim & Peter S. Lee - USA

HAPPY CLEANERS is about the Choi Family living and surviving in Flushing, Queens. We observe the day-to-day lives of the Choi Family members as they navigate through their respective struggles, cultural clashes, inner angst, all while trying to keep the family dry cleaning business afloat.

HAPPY CLEANERS will screen on Friday, August 3 at 7:00pm at Asia Society.

RETROSPECTIVE & SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

FRESH KILL

Directed by Shu Lea Cheang - USA, Taiwan

Described by the director as “Eco-Cyber-Noia,” FRESH KILL centers around a non-nuclear family anchored by mothers Claire (Erin McMurtry,) Shareen (Sarita Choudhury) and their daughter Honey (Nelini Stamp.) A wild ride involving corporate conspiracies, pollution and community activism, Shu Lea Cheang’s debut is a must see. 

FRESH KILL will screen on Friday, July 26 at 8:30pm at Asia Society.

MERATA

Directed by Hepi Mita - New Zealand

A documentary portrait of the pioneering indigenous filmmaker and activist Merata Mita, MERATA is an intimate tribute from a son about his mother that delves into the life of the first woman from an Indigenous Nation to solely direct a film anywhere in the world. Known as the grandmother of Indigenous cinema, Merata's independent political documentaries of the 70's and 80's highlighted injustices for Maori people that often divided the country.

MERATA will screen on Wednesday, July 31 at 8:45pm at Regal Essex.

MISSISSIPPI MASALA

Directed by Mira Nair - USA, UK

Mississippi Masala is a tale of how prejudice makes victims and instigators of us all. In 1972, Indian Jay (Roshan Seth), a resident of Uganda, is forced by the bigoted Amin regime to take his family and flee the country. He vows to hate and distrust all blacks--at least until he is able to reclaim the real estate stolen from him by the Ugandan government. Flash-forward to 1990: Jay and his family have settled in Mississippi. Seth's daughter Mina (Sarit Choudhury) makes the acquaintance of African-American Demetrius (Denzel Washington), the prosperous manager of a carpet-cleaning business. 

MISSISSIPPI MASALA will screen on Wednesday, July 31 at 8:15pm at Regal Essex.

THE SLANTED SCREEN
Directed by Jeff Adachi - USA
Hollywood has a long tradition of cultural prejudice, particularly when it comes to depicting Asian peoples. For Asian actors, only limited roles are available, and they are often pigeonholed into depicting ethnic stereotypes. The struggle against these stereotypes, as well as the dilemmas facing actors forced to succumb to them, are explored through interviews with Asian actors and filmmakers and in a series of archival film clips covering a century of American film.

• Paired with the short film THE RIDE

Directed by Jeff Adachi and Jim Choi

THE RIDE takes viewers on a personal and intense ride through the underbelly of the criminal injustice system, seen through the eyes of SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who is one of the nation’s few elected public defenders.

THE SLANTED SCREEN and THE RIDE will screen on Tuesday, July 30 at 6:15pm at the Museum of Chinese in America.

NARRATIVE FEATURES

Slamdance ’19: Demolition Girl

It is good for high school kids to have jobs, because the employment experience teaches responsibility. Cocoa already happens to be plenty responsible, unlike her deadbeat father and even worse deadbeat brother. Unfortunately, her choice of employment will lead to trouble and scandal in Genta Matsugami’s Demolition Girl, which screened during the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.

It wasn’t Cocoa’s idea, but an old friend of her brother convinced her to appear in his foot-crushing fetish videos. Right, we’re talking about women’s feet stomping on things. She really doesn’t get it either, but the money is good and the work doesn’t take long. Those are both important factors, ever since she decided to take a shot at the national university entrance exams. She should be smart enough to pass, if she could study as much as her friends, but paying tuition and expenses will be another matter entirely. Of course, her lazy father and parasitical brother still expect to live off her.

Cocoa’s upbeat resiliency is quite appealing, but viewers will rightly suspect her method for earning quick money is not sustainable. When the shoes start to drop (so to speak), the film takes a decidedly dark turn. She can justly blame her brother’s friend, who unwisely started selling his videos through a gang of sleazy underworld thugs, but he really isn’t a bad guy. On the other hand, her brother is truly pond scum.

Aya Kitai was quite deservedly recognized with an Honorable Mention for the Slamdance Acting Award, because her performance will make your heart ache for Cocoa. We feel for her acutely, yet the remarkable thing about her portrayal specifically and Matsugami’s film in general is how uplifting it is, despite all the rotten things that happen. Somehow, her indomitable spirit lifts our own. She also forges believably grounded but very different kinds of rapport with her besties and the aspiring fetish filmmaker.

Matsugami’s DIY-style aptly suits the drabness of Cocoa’s depressed provincial town and the mean circumstances of her life. Everything in his film feels really real. Yet, Kitai lights up the digital screen. After watching Demolition, we sincerely hope Matsugami continues to tell Cocoa’s story, returning to her every so often, like François Truffaut did with his Antoine Doinel films. Yes, I’m dropping Truffaut’s name in a review of Demolition—honestly, Cocoa might just be even more emotionally engaging (even though Truffaut’s artistry was admittedly greater). Very highly recommended, Demolition Girl had its world premiere at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.