About Chocolate Parfaits

We watched “Mulan” today and I was so so excited, I acted like I saw some idol group I was into (except I would probably never get this excited about an idol group). I remembered most of the scenes, but there were so many details I re-discovered that made me fall in love with the film all over again. This is my personal “Crazy Rich Asians”, OK? Mulan is the best Disney character to date, and I still cannot get over that Disney made a film with Chinese characters and a strong female lead – heck it’s actually the first one to actively challenge gender stereotypes. It spoke to me on a level unimaginable today, and I actively dislike war and fighting and “honor” and all of that jazz. I love Mulan so much that words could not express it, but I would display a Q Posket figurine of her in my cabinet for sure.

“Mulan” was the start of Disney’s move towards more female progressive films, but it was also the masterpiece of the genre (and “Alice in Wonderland” the biggest dud). Afterwards, we got “Brave”, “Tangled” and, of course, “Frozen”. I am glad that we only saw “Frozen” years after its release. The Frozen hype may not have died down (and is actually rising with the impending release of “Frozen 2”), but with time passed it has become significantly less annoying to me. People are not listening to “Let it go” all the time anymore, or talking about it, and my friend is no longer complaining that her 6 year old daughter requests every single item in her possession to be Frozen-themed. It helps taking the film for exactly what it is, another lightly feminist masterpiece.

Frozen

In some sense, Frozen is absolutely perfect. It has everything a Disney film – heck any film! – could want (besides impressive marketability): Likable yet interesting and flawed characters, dense storytelling and pacing, passing the Bechdel test with flying colors, interesting surprise villains, a cute (yet mostly strange-looking) mascot, beautiful design and animation… Does Frozen have any weakness at all? I had always known that the film was great, but of course I had no way of knowing just how great it was.

To me, there were actually two big moments in the film which could have disturbed a child (not like all those 3 year olds in Frozen costumes ever saw the film or understood it). One was the obvious plot twist where the good prince turned out to be evil, the other the moment where Anna almost sacrifices herself for her sister (a beautiful moment if you ask me!) At the time, O was completely unbothered by the first point (whereas it probably would have disturbed me a lot as a child). But he was shocked to the core when he thought Anna was dying. It was obvious to the rest of us that she wouldn’t, yet that one second during which he thought so seemed like an eternity. He screamed out “She diiiiiieeeeeed!” and you could literally see his heart racing. It was an educational moment in which I learned how much a little one can feel while watching a movie.

Besides completely nailing the superficial aspects with absolutely stunning outfits and character design, I think my favorite part was how the main characters’ relationship evolved from light bickering to this “I want to go back to save her life so I guess I’m in love with her” moment (oh yeah, in my book Anna is the main character, I am not sure why anyone would think otherwise), it’s almost like Disney wrote a screwball comedy for Anna and Kristoff. Needless to say I am also a convert of Olaf. As the only character without great character design, Olaf looks strangely dumb and when you are used to extremely cutely designed Japanese mascots, Olaf is just an eyesore. But he’s a little bit like an idol who may not be the most pleasing to the eyes but has great personality – that’s exactly Olaf. He has the best songs (despite “Let it go”) and so many perfect humorous moments that I am now completely subscribing to the cult of Olaf. Olaf for president please.

Recently the trailers for “Frozen 2” came out and a part of me really wants to see the film in theaters.

I recently read a manga (namely “7 Seeds”) that was advocating that dogs are special because no other animal could ever be as close to humans as dogs. It actually makes a compelling argument for them (even though I personally am still a cat person), it’s absolutely impressive what dogs do for their owners. Sometimes I wonder if pigs could be like that too though, except that they are much rarer pets of course. A sees dogs a lot these days both in the city and from our window, but he rarely sees any cats. As a result, he has been a fervent dog person so far. O however prefers cats because he remembers that we used to have one, and not even his (temporary) love for Paw Patrol made him switch his preferences. Oh kids.

Films like Okja make me want to no longer eat any meat (in that aspect it’s been really efficient!) If I think about, I have already been mostly reducing my own meat consumption. Usually I make vegetables dishes with just a little bit of meat in it, so I hate that you cannot buy meat in small quantities, because honestly, all I want is to conveniently add a little flavor to a dish with like 30-40g of ground beef. Today I made a ratatouille (time for another themed movie night!) and I was pleased to see that there is a quick vegetable dish I can produce without resorting to adding meat. On a moral level though, I am personally much more bothered by eggs and dairy. Killing an animal is one thing, but imagining the life-long pain animals go through in order to produce eggs and milk just make me shudder. Unfortunately, forgoing meat is relatively easy (except for bone marrow and ribs, those are tough) but eggs and milk are part of the greatest pleasures in life!

Okja

I was so disappointed in “Snowpiercer” and its clichéd storyline that I was relatively cautious about “Okja”. Considering how much the film was snubbed in Cannes and all, I was also very willing to like it. But all of these would not have been necessary. “Okja” is Bong Joon-ho’s most lovable film because of its cute main characters and it really hit my heartstrings. As mentioned in the intro to the film, the animal rights aspects of the film made me re-think my own stance to eating or using animals.

Even apart from that, “Okja” is something like the perfect Bong Joon-ho film. We loved “Okja” ever since the first scene where we thought that they absolutely nailed capitalism with just one PowerPoint presentation. Going on, the film has some horrible scenes (especially the one when Okja is captured) and marvelous comedy (especially where Tilda Swinton is involved). Heck even the film’s biggest conflict (evil people are trying to kill Okja) was resolved with an almost absurd comedic scene, and yet it makes so much sense in the universe of the film that Okja’s last minute save didn’t even seem like a deus ex machina at all. Just a funny surprise.

Without a doubt, “Mother”, “Memories of Murder” and even “Host” are better films in terms of artistry, but personally “Okja” beats them all because it’s a wonderful heartwarming story (and also very clever, and also very well-made, and it made me think about our relationships with animals). Bottom line – I think “Okja” totally got snubbed because it’s a Netflix production, the film industry truly is a shameful thing and yet capable of producing so many gems.

Ever since A was born, I have not really seen any films besides on special occasions or on the airplane. The special occasion means a literal trip to a movie theater so the choice of theater and film is a very important one. I never just watch films “on the side” (in front of the laptop while munching my lunch or something) anymore.

The trailer to “A Ghost Story” ran in the subway while Pip and I were contemplating which film to see, and we loved it. It’s the exactly the kind of calm and quirky and unusual premise that we’d been looking for, but surprisingly I ended up liking the film while Pip didn’t. It is notable that we saw it in this super small indie film theater cum bar/hanging out space for hip people, and the atmosphere in the room was perfect for the film. It definitely put me into the right mood for it (this is not a film that would have worked while munching my lunch for sure).

A Ghost Story

The tricky thing with films that ask big questions is that the enjoyment of these films largely hinges on how satisfied you are with their answers to these big questions (or at least with the way they are being asked). For me, I thought “A Ghost Story” did a fine job expressing the various feelings its protagonists go through – M with her horrible pie scene and C with his inability to leave the place that he has lived in last. I thought the atmosphere of the film was cleverly captured by the slowness of many shots (and not just meandering like it does for most wannabe meaningful films), and the young love between the two main characters is perfectly illustrated by how cozily they are laying together in their sleep.

On the other hand, there is a strange emptiness in what the film is trying to say (I don’t know how else to describe it). In the end, the film doesn’t have a very cohesive universe; it’s one of these cases where everything is cryptic and you can read stuff into it if you want – and I doubt the film will ever garner the type of following like Donnie Darko such that fans would retro-actively give it analyses that make sense. Unsurprisingly the film ends with a big question mark and feels completely unresolved. I was less bothered by it than I did at the end of “Broken Flowers” because I completely expected it. How could you ever resolve this? It’s virtually impossible to come up with a clever solution that somehow makes everything make sense, or not feel sappy or silly (all of which the film has successfully avoided at least).

Personally I enjoyed the film because I was taken in by its atmosphere, the immense chemistry between the protagonists and how it makes you feel the vastness of time so palpably, but somehow it seems to me that the film could have been so much more – as it is the film feels more like a side project and could probably have worked better as a (longer) short. Then again, the slowness of the film is strikingly effective in contributing to the atmosphere I liked so much.

For the longest time, we struggled finding a film that O wouldn’t be afraid of (and which is on Netflix, probably our biggest mistake). We ended up settling for “Madagascar” which we thought would be less scary since it’s all about animals, and ever since I saw a trailer of it many years ago, I was low-key interested in this film that promised to be a fun comedy.

Madagascar

It was a fun comedy indeed, but somehow the jokes were not nearly fun enough for me to want to see any more of it (the films must have been popular since there were so many sequels after all). I remember that apparently children really like the Cars movies while parents tend to hate it, and that this leads to a kind of conflict when kids are into a show that parents would find mind-numbing. We always tried to find things we like too (“Octonauts” and “Winnie the Pooh”!) but to me “Madagascar” is the perfect example of an easily digestible film with a fairly clichéd story that we watched just so we can see a film with O. It serves as a good.

The film is not all bad though – it’s nicely animated, the characters are likable and the storyline is suspenseful and speedy enough for the audience to not be bored watching it. Personally I prefer kids’ films that are a little more thoughtful, and nowadays there are so many of them (Up, Zootopia, Inside Out, even Finding Dory and so many more that don’t immediately come to mind) that there is this expectation that a good children’s film must offer more than just a fast-paced silly adventure.

This one has a little bit of a funny past. So I am really bad at understanding movies (except in German and Chinese, funnily enough). I am completely incapable of understanding French unless it’s the super standard bourgeois version of it (luckily most movies actually use it, unlike “Dernier étage gauche gauche” which I still haven’t seen because I don’t understand them in it), and I am terrible when it comes to English accents too (“The Guard” was hard!). Until today I prefer watching English films with subtitles when they are available. So now imagine me in 8th grade or 9th grade or something, after having studied French for a few years and literally everyone of my classmates is better than me at listening comprehension. There was a screening of this little film for the entire school and throughout the entirety of the film I had no idea what was going on. I vividly remember paying close attention especially at the opening scenes to figure out what was happening before I gave up and just watching the other kids laugh at seemingly random times. When I saw that this film was available on our Air France flight (seems like the movie has some sort of cult status with the French!), I strongly had the desire to revisit it to see what it was all about.

Le diner de con

I thought it was funny, in a French way. The haute bourgeoisie, the silly love affairs, the looking down upon the less fortunate – it’s so French! It’s like the whole movie is populated by little Macrons, but in an amusing way. One of the key comedic aspects of the film is how the main character is trying to avoid a tax auditor after all. Of course he got what he deserved in the end but we are definitely designed to root for him despite all his (from today’s standpoint not so lovely) faults. Then again, France is the only country where relatively powerful women were publicly rallying against #metoo so maybe this should not be too surprising. Frenchness aside, the film works. For a “simple” comedy, the plot is clever, the actors are great and the delivery of the one-liner jokes is impeccable. I am not surprised that this film was originally a play (the whole story takes place in one apartment, the characters are amazingly fleshed out, and the dialogue is very theater-like), which definitely helps in my book when it comes to making the film funny in a simple but effective way. It even has a good amount of amusing wordplay in it which I thought was fairly amusing. German or even English films would never do this, as somehow puns are considered some kind of lower level comedy, so just for the puns alone I liked the film.

Nevertheless, if you are able to overlook the smug rich French setting, “Le diner de con” has a lot of fun to offer. I am absolutely not surprised that this is a classic (at least in France it appears), and if I’m in the mood for it I’d totally watch it again.

Watching less films (in my case very few!) has a few side effects. The first one is I get picky and I’d only see films that are very high on my “to watch” list, which in turns usually means that I find these films good but not overwhelmingly so. The second effect is that most of the films you see linger in your mind much more (which was the case both for “Amour” and “45 Years”, my silent airplane films). That makes sense – if you only see like 10 movies per year, you’d remember them more (and potentially more fondly) than if you see 200. Case in point, I still vividly remember “Match Point” and how much I loved the film back in the day, even though it is not likely something I’d enjoy today.

This film is a little special. I saw it on an airplane too (and again I decided to watch something not so important because airplanes are just not the right environment). I also had to pick something with subtitles so I didn’t have to pay too much attention to listening. I don’t even remember what made me decide on this one – it was probably Sam haha. In this case I am glad that I am currently experiencing a drought in films, because “Mad World” was the greatest surprise coming out of this drought, and it’s wonderful that my mind hasn’t all forgotten about it (which it probably would have at my almost 200 films per year rate).

Mad World

This film is so so obscure that back when I researched the film shortly after I saw it, it took me awhile to even find it online (but now I see that googling “mad world film” actually gives you the right title). It must have gotten some recognition at least, having been chosen as Hongkong’s submission for the foreign Oscar that year, but personally I am not even sure if it was popular at festivals. (There is no gay person involved.) Personally, this is my Hongkong version of “Ship Bun”.

Maybe because it was so obscure I have a special place in my heart for this little film. Eric Tsang (aka aformentioned Sam) is the reason why I picked the film, and he is an amazing actor as always. The kid who plays the main character does a really good job opposing him, and raising the taboo subject of mental illness is something I always want to see in an Asian film. It’s long overdue. It’s a sweet, mostly depressing film about two characters whose real tragedy consists of holding onto and staying true to their most loved family members, even as all of society (and their other worthless family member) is rejecting them. This kind of loyalty strikes a real chord with me and made me feel so strongly for these characters. (The good acting also helped.)

In the meantime I learned that the film ran at the TIFF which gave it a few lovely reviews like this one, heck even ImDB only has well-written reviews of it. I hope to actually be able to see a few more jewels like this at my own first TIFF this year!

…though to be honest, I spelled it out and then went back to see if my statement was actually true. I am insecure after all. I made Pip watch “Manifesto” the film because I had seen the exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof before Pip came to Berlin and loved it more than possibly any video installation I have ever seen in my life. I remember having spent a good amount of time in there to listen to what was said, and now I am so glad that I can revisit the scenes over and over again because of the existence of the film.

Manifesto

A manifesto is something very fascinating to me. I am inexplicably drawn to them even though they are (almost by definition) not particularly well written from a language point of view. The lack of beauty in their language makes them clear and concise, and the lack of self-doubt (and relative dumbness that follows from it) makes them strangely convincing. They are also very 20th century, as it seems to me that their time is over by now. (Why is that?) All of this makes them fascinating to me, I suppose, even though I almost feel like I shouldn’t be so fascinated. I actually tried to find many of these manifestos and read them as I was watching the film, and of course I didn’t know many of them (but I knew most of the authors at least).

Cate Blanchett is a goddess. I knew that she likes to slip into different roles from her “Coffee & Cigarettes” skit, one of my favorite ones, but it’s wonderful to see how versatile she is in even more roles. She pulls off any of these characters convincingly, but I think my favorite one is still Blanchett as a blonde and successful lady, because she puts on this wonderfully smug smile that is a little bit of a trademark of hers. The film is worthwhile just for seeing her alone, and I am not sure any other actress could do it.

With the existence of this film version, I would love for this film to somehow become more popular and canon within Berlin films. Everyone knows “Berlin Sinfonie einer Großstadt” or “Lola rennt”, but less people probably know “Menschen am Sonntag” or this one. The latter two feel much more Berlin to me though, and give me a much stronger feeling of nostalgic recognition for my hometown.

If I had to recommend one film from the last few years, it would be “Manifesto”. It’s probably so obscure that anyone who would be interested in my recommendations hasn’t seen it yet.

I have a love hate relationship with the Babylon Berlin Mitte, and yet I keep going back because they have a darn nice program sometimes, and because they have silent films and this marvelous organ. They hired this person to accompany silent films full time, but boy oh boy she is the worst. It learned that I have never heard a single bad pianist so far, and that the music absolutely matters (OK I have always known the latter, but I hadn’t realized to what extent). This lady played like she was in a 19th century fair or something, and it made this horrible film even more horrible.

It’s been a long time since I read “Nana”, or rather I read it until the middle, but when Nana’s fame started declining I strangely lost interest in her and the whole book. I was rooting for her and her horrible ways (because my teenage self thought that femme fatales were enticing), and found it unnecessary to see her eventual comeuppance. The same happened to me with “Les liaisons dangereuses”, by the way. The letter in which the Marquise de Merteuil explains her feminist motivations is the true highlight of the book. I was so captivated by her that I didn’t feel the desire to read the rest of the book anymore. Nevertheless the adaptation of a book I have read is always a motivation for me to see the film, but more often than not, I am disappointed, just like here.

Nana

What can I say? The music was crappy, the film was crappy, there is a reason why the film is absolutely unknown, the reason being that the film is shoddily shot, terribly acted out and that there is absolutely no pleasure to be gained from seeing the titular heroine abuse everybody around her. I am sure that Renoir is perfectly capable of making great films (“La Règle du Jeu” was meh but “La Grande Illusion” is great and I hear that “The River” is wonderful too), but giving his wife the title role is something only Godard and Bergman can pull off it seems. I have very little appreciation for the extravagant set (unless it’s a Stroheim) when both the story and the execution otherwise are so off-putting. In short, I still love seeing silent films with live accompaniment, but I will almost certainly limit myself to musicians I know from now on. Also, sorry Loris for dragging you into seeing this mess. I wish I could have been able to show how a great musician can elevate any film (no matter how crappy) into a pleasant viewing experience, but it was not happening this time.

Here’s the other one I have been dreading, basically for the exact opposite reason: I am very fond of this film, and I think it’s a very fine example of my current favorite film genre “marriage dramas” (which have replaced “threesome comedies” by now for almost obvious personal reasons, although it’s hard to beat “Trouble in Paradise” with a marriage drama film, even Bergman can’t). I liked the film so much but was also unable to sort through my thoughts about it, even though the film itself is far from complicated. What is complicated is definitely how people read the film. The question “Are they actually a good match?” lingers over the whole film and critics seem extremely divided upon this question, some even seem to have a lot of vitriol against this kind of dormant relationship as a whole.

There is another slightly special circumstance to be mentioned, which is that I saw this film on silent on the airplane much like I did with “Amour” back then (another example of a great marriage drama). I chose the film casually because at the back of my mind I always want to see all the Berlinale films I kind of planned to see but didn’t. This one wasn’t even an originally planned film (because it ran in the Competition), but after I saw the large media buzz about it my interest in the film grew with time. Usually I want to see something that doesn’t mean too much to me on an airplane, but more often than not, I am pleasantly surprised. Maybe next time I should actually see a blockbuster after all.

45 Years

So I missed out on the spoken words and the film music, but even then the film managed to absolutely captivate me. I was devastated upon Kate’s discovery in the attic, and I thought that “plot twist” was more shocking than anything I saw in “The skin I live in”, even if the twist may be a little bit of a cliché. I strongly felt for her (I did so throughout the whole film actually), and the titular 45 years weighed really heavily on me. Kate and Geoff kind of live exactly the kind of life I want to live someday, except that even in this kind of cushy life a seemingly small thing could open up such a can.

I think the biggest draw of the film comes from how the simple storyline is deceptive because there is no good solution to these questions about their relationship. Is it really a betrayal (considering everything that’s bothered her was from so long ago)? Is he or is she being unreasonable about their situation? What is more like “true love” – a wild romantic mountain trip or 45 years of marriage? Over the course of time I thought about this film a lot (which usually doesn’t happen at all – case in point, I rarely think about “The Lobster” despite having loved the film more and considering that it also poses a lot of interesting questions about relationships). This is probably because I find it uncannily true to life, more than many others I have seen. Maybe this is the airplane effect (supposedly you are more emotional on airplanes), but I think it’s amazing that a relationship film about two old people made such an impact on me.

Welcome to the new and improved version of this blog. It sounds like this is part of some new year’s resolution, but actually it’s not. What finally gave me the push to come back to this blog is because I think we are finally able to watch films with O and now I am more than eager to express my thoughts about the children’s films we see. As a result this blog will likely start going through lists like this one or this one. I forsake watching films and blogging about them for the sake of parenting for so long, but now I may actually be able to combine them, yay!
So for completion’s sake of course I want to tackle my backlog too, and now that my life has completely changed again in the last 1 1/2 years since my last posting and I am trying my best to fulfill the notion of “good enough mother”, I will try to speed through these reviews to efficiently reach my goal by half-assing them – what a wonderful contradiction. We shall start with the two films I dreaded writing about the most.

The Skin I Live In

Long story short, I was not a big fan of the film. Since Shii loves it and I don’t, I spent a lot of thought on why I didn’t to justify myself, but ultimately I come to the conclusion that you don’t really have to love any film just because someone else likes it, no matter how important this person is (or how much you value this person’s taste in general). I didn’t feel very shocked at the plot twists, and while the film’s concept and storyline was absolutely surprising, interesting and original (much unlike “Los abrazos rotos”), I didn’t feel the tension and suspense and I didn’t get into its characters nearly as much as I usually do in Almodovár’s films. Now that this is out of the way, I absolutely recognize that I could change my mind on a second viewing, and that it’s been far, far too long since I saw the film to give a decent review, but sadly another viewing will almost certainly not happen in a long, long time.