Archive for 2015

Set in director Alvin B. Yapan’s hometown of Baao, The House by the Bamboo Grove resembles an abstract painting of nature and human in a single canvas, seemingly idyllic yet deeply perplexing.

Michelle is a recluse who devotes most of her time to traditional embroidery, living in her beloved bamboo house even as her parents move away and the entire world moves on. The film endeavours to portray the house – and the items in it – as objects that stand by a life of their own. When a pair of scissors disappears, Michelle thinks it is telling her to stay; as bamboo rafts float along the river, we get a sense that it is beckoning us somewhere.

The connection that Michelle feels towards her surroundings is somewhat incomprehensible to the ordinary man. Just like how she loves the bamboo house, the house makes love to her – literally, in a bizarre masturbation scene where ferns envelope (embrace) her body. It is a connection that is intimate, but also bordering on obsessive and insane. Conceivably, this mystical duality is where the film attempts to summon its dramatic tension; the graceful motion of pulling thread is juxtaposed against the decisive slaughter of a chicken, the chatter of children interspersed with the sinister hammering of wood. Even Michelle’s thoughts echo with a split personality.

This latent tension intensifies when other humans “invade” her space, evidently so when Larry, a documentary filmmaker pays a visit. More of Michelle’s peculiar dreams play out in vignettes, a particularly traumatizing one of being violated by Larry. Interestingly, this resembles an insidious critique on documentary filmmaking and its dangers of exploitation.

The House by the Bamboo Grove is an ambitious film, in that it challenges its audience to closely observe the interactions between humans and objects (and not merely watch the actors). That particular stone in focus, the mechanical movement of an ant, the spinning beetle tied on a string. As the universes of random items, insects and vegetation interweave, the film suggests an alternate way of living. It does not attempt to always make sense; it simply presents (wo)man and his attachment to our environment as it is.

The film is a courageous venture by Yapan to explore the concept of vitality of life around us, but unfortunately, its lack of narrative clarity and haphazard pacing makes the film a tad laborious to watch.

Review by Amelia Tan

This review is part of the Asian Feature Film Competition at the Singapore International Film Festival 2015. Read more about the film here.

Written by SINdie

With a runtime of 5 hours 17 minutes, the title Happy Hour may be a misleading one. Admittedly, this reviewer approached the screening with reluctance: I seriously contemplated if it was possible to spin a review viewing only half the film. As I walked into a near full theater, I’m sure the rest of the audience was thinking the same thing. How many, I wondered, would be able to endure the next five hours?

As time puttered by, such thoughts vanished.

Happy Hour focuses on the friendship between 4 middle-aged Japanese women and how it is strained when one friend’s divorce compels each to re-evaluate their own lives, and their relationship with each other. It is an outwardly Japanese, but centrally universal movie that captures modern-mid life, with all its struggles and revelations.

Brevity is key to cinema, and while Happy Hour is slow, it is certainly not dilute. The film has an eye for detail and sensitivity to the understandings behind our everyday lives which allows it to pack its scenes with meaning, such that even with its length, it never seems strained. The film draws insight from the ordinary, using a conversation on a bus, a book event, or a dinner with friends as material to develop its characters and plot, and each scene is just right: it makes its point, and moves on before it becomes a burden. This is not to say the film is perfect in this regard: there are scattered pieces that seem to extend well beyond requirement, sometimes to the point of repetition or awkwardness, but they are few enough to dull the richness of this work.

Rather, Happy Hour is long because it has so much to say, and because it embraces rather than simplifies complexity. On first sight, the 4 central characters fall neatly into stereotypes, but as the plot develops, new perspectives continually challenge our impressions, and each character matures such that we are left with 4 very different individuals, with a very different dynamic at the end. Even the supporting casts are well-developed as characters: none feel like plot devices or placeholders. The film is apparently about divorce, but is merely a catalyst; it really is about the unfolding drama of each of the 4 characters and their constellations of relationships. Happy Hour’s length isn’t its weakness; it is its strength. With the patience and breadth afforded by time, the plot is allowed to develop organically and take detours, growing out of each individual’s motivations, and changing courses as each character comes to their own realizations.

Its richness and patience lend an air of realism that makes this film about mid-life crises emotionally resonant and profound, and utterly relatable. With each character and their circumstances, both main and supporting, fleshed out in full, the audience is allowed to engage with these characters like real people. The dialogue never seems scripted: the writer has an incredibly precise understanding of what people are like and how they speak. And the cast, particularly the 4 female leads Tanaka Sachie, Kikuchi Hazuki, Mihara Maiko and Kawamura Rira play their roles with such emotional honesty that they melt into their roles. That, I believe, is an actor’s finest distinction.

Happy Hour is a mature and compassionate film, and as we sit through the ebb and flow of the character’s lives on screen, it is not difficult to see ourselves in them. It is about pain and joy, about expectations and disappointment, about belonging and alienation. And as each character fumbles through the entanglement of circumstance towards their personal truths and happiness, it reminds us that we aren’t alone in our urbane struggles, and we grow stronger and wiser with life.

It was almost 1am when the film ended. And yet, as I looked back, I could not help but smile.

Everyone was still there.

Written by SINdie

The President begins with the line: “Set in an unknown country”. Our imagination is not starved of examples: the president could be Gaddafi, Assad, or Putin; the country could be Egypt, Tunisia, or Russia. Aptly released in the wake of the Arab Spring, The President is both poignant moral allegory and political satire; although it sometimes comes across as overly didactic, simplistic and underwhelming.

The film opens with a whimsical show of power. A dictator, dressed in military regalia, demonstrates absolute power to his grandson. Whimsically, he orders the city’s lights to be turned on and off. And yet, in the blackout, gunshots fire and shells explode: the revolution has begun. He is eventually deposed, and we follow his attempt to escape through the wreckage of his regime and the revolution.

Mohsen’s satirical knife cuts gleefully through the inflated titles and uniforms to the small men behind them. As angry mobs swarm his Cadillac, the dictator cowers in the backseat. Eventually abandoned by his entourage, he is forced on the streets, living on scraps and in hiding. Stripped down, he shows that “strongmen” are even less than us: paranoid survivalists whose insecurity drives them to cruelty.

The coup sets the stage for the morality play that is the heart of the film. The dictator experiences firsthand what it is like to live under his own yoke, as the military that once served him becomes the new tyrant. Old friends turn down pleas for help; he did them no favors when he was in power, so why should they help him now? Irony and retribution serve as a cautionary tales: what you reap is what you sow, and those you step over on the way up are also the ones you meet on the way down. His journey through the desolate landscape of his nation is also a spiritual trial, as he faces his crimes in person, encountering the victims of his regime. His shame and fear is palpable as he overhears the curses they lay on his name, and yet he must repent in silence, for if discovered, he would be lynched in a heartbeat.

But as if holding back, the director seems unwilling to reveal the true horrors of autocratic rule. Most of the scenes of suffering seem watered down and far between, and most crimes are related verbally, not seen. We see little of the extreme violence and destruction of real autocracy and its aftermath. Thus, the gravity of the dictator’s crimes, and his repentance, never feel heavy enough. Also, there is no true catharsis or realization: there are flashes of guilt, but the dictator at the end has mellowed only slightly. While this could be deliberate on the director’s part, there isn’t much in the way of revelation, and the character ultimately falls into a dictator stereotype.

Moral overtones aside, the film strives to comment on the cyclic nature of violence. The rebels and defected military are hardly better than the regime. Rape, robbery, and violence are rife. The dictatorship of fear continues. And brutalized, the people become brutes themselves. There is no talk of trial, or proper platforms for conflict resolution, but only hate.

This message is the more eloquently conveyed in the film. There are a few scenes of startling cruelty. However, the film’s timing is partly its curse. In the wake of the Arab spring, the film still seems like a sanitized version of real life. Furthermore, the complexity and chaos of a post revolution country isn’t captured. The narrative oversimplifies the conflict into the military against the people, and fails to capture the splintering of post-revolution societies, where rebel groups tussle over the carcass of the old country.

The President is still a good movie. But its mild repetitive narrative, which feels like a series of lessons on human nature and morality, and the paling of its conflict next to gruesome reality, waters down its message and impact. Ultimately, The President functions more like a fable than a true image of totalitarianism. Quite sufficient for the most of us, but to the disillusioned masses of the Arab Spring, fact is far bleaker than fiction.

Written by SINdie

As lullaby music purrs, gentle rays light birthday decorations in what seems like a children’s room. Unsuspectingly, the camera floats to reveal Mi Joong’s reflection in the mirror; she is writhing, twitching, uttering unintelligible words from a crooked mouth. The uninitiated might be caught off guard by this uneasy transition, but for those who have seen Lee Sang-woo’s films – yes, it is another dark slice of life brimming on the margins of Korean society.

Other than the occasional trip to the market (in which her brother, Chul-joong, pushes her around in a trolley), Mi-joong spends all her time in the room. Practically confined to her mattress by physical and mental disabilities, she relies on her brother for constant care. But as loving a brother as Chul-joong is, the burdens of providing for his sister, coping with his studies, and struggling to pay their rent soon takes a toll on his being.

He seeks out an old friend, Chang-ji, and forces him to have sex with his sister, as both payment for an outstanding debt and Mi-joong’s “birthday treat.” Whether it is out of desperation to fulfil his sister’s desires, or as punishment for his friend’s philandering ways, this immense egocentrism of brotherly love teeters on perverse. As Mi-joong squeals “Chang-ji oppa” in delight, and Chang-ji summons up all manhood to get an erection (after barfing and several attempts at chickening out), we are confronted with a sex scene that is at once comical but pathetic, hilarious yet deeply saddening.

Meanwhile, Chang-ji is wrought with his own family drama – a dementia stricken mother and a brother recently released from prison for rape. Unveiling one tragic character after another, in a web of entangled relationships, Lee refuses to let us grow accustomed with either family’s miserable situation. He valiantly – almost stubbornly – pushes the boundaries of one’s tolerance for the abject, probing deep into the abyss of the human soul.

Complementing the wonderfully intense performances is the fluid movement of the camera; it follows the characters and tracks them down dark alleyways, in an atmosphere laced with tension. Through long lenses, we are forced to feel like voyeurs; often seeing Mi-joong from behind the veil that covers her futon, Chul-joong’s reflection from the windows of the jajangmyeon restaurant, and Chang-ji as peeks at his mother from behind the gates. Perhaps, this is Lee’s way of urging us to peer into the lives that society refuses to acknowledge, by bringing to light the plight of the mentally challenged in the most non-condescending manner.

Alas, there is Deok-ho, a mentally disabled boy infatuated with Mi-joong. The pair form an unexpectedly poignant romance, their unworldly love a warm thread of narrative in this harsh, cold film. Further than the sexual depictions, Dirty Romance questions the very notion of what it means to love – Is Mi-joong’s one-sided love for Chang-ji valid? Does passionate love only belong to the mentally able? What extremes would one go to for love? Its answers are heart-wrenching, and fiercely sobering.

Review by Amelia Tan

This review is part of the Asian Feature Film Competition series at the Singapore International Film Festival 2015. Read more about the film here.

Written by SINdie

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