About Chocolate Parfaits

Bushi no Kondate

Here begins my Singapore days which, film-wise, of course start with films on airplanes. My first instinct was to choose a movie I’ve been really wanting to see. In fact, I typically find at least 6-7 films on a given flight which I would want to see, but various reasons keep me up from watching the films. For example, on one flight I wanted to see “North by Northwest” but then realized that I had trouble understanding a single word due to the bad audio quality and lack of subtitles. This time, I started watching the first few seconds of “La grande bellezza” but quickly got frustrated with the terrible visuals. I could tell that this was a film to enjoyed in HD and I decided to keep it for later. In fact, the best strategy to tackle flight movies is probably to choose films that are enjoyable but not too important or meaningful. So here we are with “Bushi no Kondate”, a Japanese food comedy. It was one of those food films presented at the Berlinale this year where you could get a dinner and a movie for something like 70 euros? It was ridiculous.

Well, the film does justice to the food. Its presentation always makes it look and sound incredibly delicious, and strongly made me crave traditional Japanese food. If I was given unlimited funds to go to a single restaurant, I would want to go to a kaiseki restaurant. The food we see in this film is pretty much just that (from what I can tell), so it was easy to get into.
Story-wise, “Bushi no Kondate” was pretty forgettable. Demure, cute woman becomes wife of some a kitchen samurai who must learn to cook – yawn. This movie is a typical example of the usual terribly scripted, terribly acted, bland Japanese film that makes you wonder how anyone in the country manages to produce gems like “Departures” and “Like father, like son”.

It felt good to cross one movie off the list of Berlinale films I wanted to see, but if I had known beforehand I would probably have skipped on this film despite my enjoyment of the food porn.

Carnage

There were many reasons for me to watch this film. 314 mentioned it as a solid film, Loris had watched it and, most importantly, it’s based on a play with few characters (though the typical chamber play has two characters, so maybe “Carnage” could already be perceived as having a lot of characters). As you probably all know, I love chamber plays to pieces and “Carnage” ended up no different.

While the story in the film is set in New York, I knew that the original version was Yasmina Reza’s “Le Dieu du Carnage”. As a result, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly French the film was. According to statistics, gender disparities are much higher in France than they are in the US. The film reminded me a lot about the book “Bringing up bébé” (perhaps the only non-fiction book I have read in forever), in which Druckman postulates that French women work much more in the household and take care more often of the children while at the same time being happier with their lives than American women. She claims they just happily settle into their low expectations in their husbands, uh… OK. “Carnage” lays these tendencies bare. Nowadays, why would anyone want to have children with a man who hates them as much as the men in the film? Other than these shockingly exaggerated male characters, I was especially in love with how the women were depicted. Every single time Jodie Foster’s character started crying, I wanted to laugh. “I know everything about the suffering in Africa!” was the best line in the whole film. (The second best line was said by Jodie Foster too: “My Kokoschka!” Hahaha.)

Other than that, I was in love with the character dynamics and how it switched from couple vs. couple to men vs. women to everybody against everybody really. It feels so realistic how screwed up relationships can be, how much people can hate each other and most importantly, how incredibly funny that is. I think I have read criticisms on how the film was dry, over the top and not particularly realistic. Well, I appreciated it that way and totally got into their heated arguments.

Finally, I thought it was a nice gesture that the hamster was alive and that the children made up. The more important question now is: Will Ethan and Zachary turn into their parents one day? Polanski managed to get four of the most talented character actors on screen, and together they did a fantastic job. I am so tempted to see the film again.

Caché

Shii, there are 11 film reviews I have to write and a wonderful e-mail of yours which I want to respond to. What to do first? I tend to want to get over with the less pleasant things first, and ironically, “Caché” is one of your films. You recommended it to me so many years ago (and hey, I still have not seen the last few films on your 30 movies list!) and I finally saw it. Now I’m listening to “I Follow Rivers” while writing a review. Isn’t that perfect?

The main reason why I put off watching “Caché” is because the internet is having super long discussions about it. It kept me away from “Inland Empire” and I just generally have an aversion against overly confusing movies. Surprisingly, “Caché” was absolutely not confusing at all! Even though I missed the end and had to look up what it was all about, I had my suspicions which were only confirmed by the detail at the end. With this fairly simple interpretation, the film’s core ideas are actually very clear. It’s unfortunate that it had to be an Austrian (as opposed to a French director) who made the most impressive movie on French colonialism in Algeria, even though it approaches its subject from the most indirect way possible, by depicting and criticizing how contemporary France deals with its past.

It seems like “Caché” is a film that people either love or hate, how typical for Haneke. Either you like the background and the message this film brings forth, or you find everything utterly boring. Even though the film itself does a great job at portraying the horror of the main characters when their life is turned upside down by the simple fact that someone is taking videos of them all the time, the colonial theme is a powerful backdrop and you have to either love or hate that, I suppose. Personally, I think the naysayers don’t realize what a taboo “Caché” is tapping into in France which only now is slowly starting to recognize its past. This is an important topic and, most importantly, “Caché” is a film which has artistical merits besides its political message. It also has another dimension: How do you deal with the wrongdoings of your early childhood? Japanese media is full of examples of children who committed some of the most atrocious crimes yet are innocent from a legal standpoint. “Caché” is similar, it’s about conscience rather than culpability, a difference which I find fascinating.

I suspect that “Caché” may be Haneke’s best film, though personally I preferred “Das weiße Band” and I am very curious about “Amour”. In any case, “Caché” is a must-see and I can’t believe it took me so long.

Her

Whenever Pip and I don’t know what film to watch, we end up with some film that got a bunch of Oscar nominations. This year, he has already seen “American Hustle”, we all have seen “Gravity” in a 3D movie theater and nobody truly wants to see “12 Years a Slave”. So we ended up with “Her” this time. I remember that Gorp really liked it, so I was quite optimistic.

In the end, I thought it was a fun little movie and so so so self-reflective. Unlike in “Where the wild things are”, Spike Jonze managed to keep the self-obsessiveness to a healthy level, resulting in a film that was pleasantly self-indulgent in the way only Woody Allen is sometimes. I thought it was refreshing to see a movie in which people essentially spend the entire two hours talking about their feelings where somehow, these feelings actually made sense. Pip said he liked it and I was like: “But you never talk about your feelings!” Seriously, though, these characters do nothing but live in their own world of feelings and interpersonal relationships, as if their jobs, anything like other hobbies and other things that make any person’s life livable don’t matter. Even though that is not the case for me (and, thinking about it, it has never been), I can strongly relate to the purity of these relationships, how they exist in this little vacuum of interpersonal tenderness completely untouched by societal pressure (hey this is the relationship between a human and an AI after all!) or even something like family. I really enjoyed it, it made me feel like I was young again when I too cared little about those environmental aspects.

There was also something very fascinating in how the main character and Samantha made love just by speaking to each other, and it also totally reminded me of my youth hehehe. That particular scene could carry the whole movie single-handedly and made it almost as memorable to me as the make-believe dialogue in “In the Mood for Love” and the end of “Before Midnight”.

Also thank God we only had to see a little bit of Amy Adams. I can’t wait till in 10-15 years we won’t have to deal with any of these current Hollywood favorites like Carey Mulligan, Natalie Portman and, my least favorite of them all, Amy Adams.

I’m not a huge Spike Jonze fan (and I am a little suspicious of his following), but “Her” definitely redeemed him for me.

Boyhood

Oh boy. I know that I haven’t seen many movies this year, and amongst those I am not sure if any of them will make it into my list of 30 favorite films of all times. Nevertheless, I thought “this is the best movie I have seen all year” multiple times: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Painted Veil, Coming Home, Like father like son, Inland Empire – all of those would have been candidates. But honestly, so far “Boyhood” actually deserves the title best movie of 2014.

When people were pissed that “Bai ri yan huo” got the Golden Bear and “Boyhood” mostly got snubbed, I was sceptical about the film. All that Linklater love weirded me out, and I thought it was just a hype. We are always suspicious of big name Hollywood films at the Berlinale. Nevertheless, it was a Linklater so I had to watch the film. I feel so lucky to have seen it with Shii! It was at a super comfortable, old-style movie theater and the movie was so good that I did not fall asleep during it, despite having an average 1.5 hours of sleep the four nights before. It may also have been my sleeplessness that made me love the film even more. But, just a few weeks later I was able to put that to a test. Pip, Pixelmatsch, another friend and I went to see the film in my beloved International, and while Pip and I got there 10 minutes late, I spent the entire rest of the film mesmerized by it again. The film is essentially a slice of life, so I didn’t care one bit about whether it was suspenseful or not. In fact, because the film is composed of vignettes from Mason’s life, I spent most of the film looking forward to certain scenes I remembered, and there were a lot of those scenes. One of the most memorable moments was Samantha’s embarrassed face when her dad says “Force Garrett to use a condom!” Priceless.

Perhaps my favorite part of the film was Mason’s relationship with Sheena. The way it grew and then ended absolutely hit me, perhaps because they went from hugging at dawn to breakup argument in like an instant. Nevertheless, it was the mom who was my favorite character. Somehow she had even more depth than Mason and it’s just as much her film as it is his. They should have ended the film at her breakdown when Mason moved out.

When I watch a movie on vacation, like the PIFFs, a film is automatically elevated into the special feeling of being on vacation. In this case, “Boyhood” and Vienna are forever intertwined, because Shii and I decided to spend those few precious hours we had on a 3 hour long movie. But remembering how we put the legs up in the cozy Gartenbaukino, laughing together at the many funny scenes, was just so worth it. Nevertheless, rewatching the film just two weeks later didn’t make the film any worse and I was convinced that it would be that way. I think this kind of impact of a film is unprecedented. Best film of 2014 after all.

The Third Man

Loris, who had been bugging me to blog forever, asked me whether I still remember the films well. With a backlog of 3 months and over 10 films, I was surprised to see that I did indeed remember most of them fairly well. “The Third Man” is perhaps the only big exception. I read Graham Greene’s novel a long time ago, and almost completely forgot the story. (I only remembered one thing – that Harry was not dead.) Back in the day, I knew that the film was a classic and didn’t want to watch it because I thought the book ruined the story for me. This time, it’s been over 2 months since I saw the film and yet again I have forgotten most of the story. Maybe it just means that “The Third Man” has a curiously forgettable story, which allows you to enjoy it over and over again, feeling the suspense anew.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really perceive the film as particularly suspenseful. While I was really into the book back in the day, the film mostly left me cold. I acknowledged the stylish film noir elements and dark atmosphere, but that’s all there was to it. Honestly, I just wanted to see Alida Valli whom, amongst Italian actress, I now prefer over Monica Vitti, and that says something. Unfortunately she was essentially powerless in the entire story, and that ruined her role a little.

Another classic I have always wanted to see – check. Recently I have been mostly watching things I had a craving for, and it’s probably better that way.

Soshite chichi ni naru (Like father, like son)

I’ve known this film ever since it was announced, since I am (loosely) following a blog which lists every film that comes out in Japan. The overwhelming majority of it (like… 99%) is utter crap, but then I saw a poster of “Soshite chichi ni naru” and Hirokazu Koreeda’s name associated with it. I have very very mixed feelings about Koreeda, I think he is a good film maker, but up until now I loathed his stories. It certainly didn’t help that critics are irrationally in love with him, and I will never get over how hateful the characters in “Still Walking” are. But with the premise of “Like father, like son”, nothing could go wrong, right? How can you screw up a story about two babies being switched out at birth, where the story is all about cute 6 year olds finding out about their family identity?

Well, this time, Koreeda didn’t disappoint. When Gorp told me he saw it on the airplane, it was only a month after the last time I tried to procure the film. After the PIFF, I tried again and voilà, I was finally able to get it. The film did not disappoint even for a second. It was everything I expected (and I had high expectations to begin with) and then it was even more. More than just asking about family, it was also about different family ideals. Koreeda spends a lot of time showing Keita’s room and his lifestyle, as well as his seemingly sweet relationship with his parents. It reminded me of ourselves with O, and makes me wonder how I would deal with the possibility that O may not fulfill the expectations we had in him. What expectations do we have anyways? “Like father, like son” deals with these questions in a subtle, sensible way. There are no people crying or screaming at each other, and these underlying problems they have show in the smallest details, much like in real life. Koreeda’s script analyzes a child’s heart carefully and gently, then puts it on screen with the utmost respect. That is almost better than Keita’s father’s development, who finally had to come to terms with the demons of his family past.

Gorp said “Like father, like son” was one of the best movies of the year for him. Well, I have to admit that I had a lot of “oh wow, best movie of the year!” moments this year, and this film was definitely one of them. I would watch it again anytime.

The Dark Mirror

The Long Night of Museums this year included the German History Museum which showed “The Dark Mirror” in its little movie theater, the Zeughauskino. From this year’s Berlinale, we learned that the Zeughauskino is a lovely venue, and we were interested in seeing another Siodmak after we fell in love with “People on Sunday”. In fact, the Zeughauskino was showing a Siodmak retrospective, but we were too cheap to pay 9 euros for the films and most of all, we were too lazy to get our butts out to see a movie. But we decided to go to the Long Night of Museums, and the showing of “The Dark Mirror” was included in the ticket. Of course we could not pass up that opportunity.

I had wished they showed “The Killers” but then again there is a nice Criterion version of it, which I may or may not get my hands on one day. I imagine the “The Dark Mirror” is similar in tone and style, and in fact it’s a fairly classical film noir much like “Laura”. Its psychology doesn’t really make any sense (or at least I can tell that it’s utterly unrealistic) but it still makes for a great detective story, in which a splendid Olivia de Havilland can show off her acting skills. Oh boy I loved her as the evil twin. It would surprise me if Siodmak was very in love with the script, but he managed to make the best out of it, with dramatic bedroom scenes with the sisters and masterful play with light and dark heightening the suspense. I was absolutely in love with the visuals of the film, perhaps influenced by the fact that we saw it in a dark movie theater.

However, the clothing style in the film is so 40s. Oh God those ugly shoulder pads. If there is any vintage style I am not into, it’s the 30s and 40s and I guess I am totally with the mainstream opinion on that one. The 40s were not exactly a great time for the world, and neither it was for the arts really. I am also not a big fan of “The Philadelphia Story” in which a fantastic Katharine Hepburn wears those shoulder pads. She is fantastic in men’s clothing, but even on her the wide-shouldered, thin-hips 40s silhouette looks terrible.

Apparently Siodmak made many film noirs, and “The Dark Mirror” made me want to see more of them. If I had the choice between a film noir and a screwball comedy, I would always choose the latter (more “Trouble in Paradise” please!), but sometimes I can get into stylish visuals coupled with a suspenseful crime story. “The Dark Mirror” is a perfect example for that.

Night and Day

It’s daunting. Hong Sang-soo loves to make movies about authors who are at an impasse, and “Night and Day” is another one of those. Random guy is in some life crisis, goes to Paris, meets a bunch of women who all somehow want to get into his pants but can’t find what he’s looking for, so he goes home to his wife.

Honestly, that’s about it. I have always liked Hong Sang-soo’s style, the intertwining of layers of time, characters and space. I like his repetition of scenes (which often come off as a running joke), the seemingly pointless talk between some characters and the love-centricity of others. I even like how childishly jealous most of his characters are because, really, we are all childish when it comes to that. “Night and Day” is a little different. There is a little less intertwining, the main character’s journey through Paris is a rather linear adventure, and his relationships (much unlike “Nobody’s daughter Haewon”) are all rather shallow. Most of all, it makes absolutely no sense why the women would even remotely take any interest in this idiot. I suspect this is just the director’s wishful thinking, which is probably the film’s biggest weakness. Even so, the film is not a complete blasphemy to Paris and Courbet’s “Origine du Monde”. I liked the main female love interest, and I liked watching the main character’s failing in everything – social situations, finding his identity as a painter and, ultimately, finding love. I was happy to see Paris, though it was only a small glimpse of it.

Having seen a bunch of Hong Sang-soo films by now, I would definitely agree that “Night and Day” is the weakest (mainly because the main character’s love stories don’t make sense). Nevertheless, it’s still typical Hong Sang-soo fare so if one likes the style, this film will make a pleasant evening. HSS is a brand that never fails to taste the same, like Chicken McNuggets.

Gertrud

I have not blogged ever since “Snowpiercer” and I remember that it actually took me a month to blog about that one. The only time I broke this long pause was for “Coming Home”, which means that I didn’t even do it for “Boyhood”, perhaps my favorite film of 2014. Amazing. Movie-wise, these past summer months had been some sort of parenthesis in my life and it actually started with “Gertrud”. I wanted a dry love film, in which people muse about love and relationships in a desperately passionate but sexually cold-looking manner. With “Gertrud”, I got exactly what I wanted.

Perhaps because I read too much about him, but I have a strange fascination for Dreyer without having seen many of his films. More than anything, I am impressed by how “Day of Wrath” takes place in a single room. A minuscule set of characters (“Warai no Daigaku”), a small space (“Dogville”) – all these Kammerspiel-like limitations are awesome, and the more limited the better. “Gertrud” is less restricted, but somehow it was on Hulu and I was intrigued by the story. Indeed, Gertrud is a woman much after my tastes. Her high expectations for love are impressive, and her willingness to forsake a shiny life while delegated to being second place is plain unrealistic. I can’t believe how much it spoke to me when she eschewed a lover because he has preferred work over her in the past. That didn’t keep her up from falling for some young idiot, but that one at least had the decency to leave her.
As I mentioned before, the strangest thing about the film is how it is entirely about true, complete, fatalistic love between people, yet the characters barely even look at each other. They sit there next to each other, fully-clothed and talk into the camera with a blank face. It looks a little odd, but somehow it suits the topic. We are dealing with immense passions and very serious conversations on love, yet the most frivol thing you see on screen is a kiss between Gertrud and her good-for-nothing youngster. I was in the mood for just that, I felt heavy and yet I was trying to show the same restraint as the characters on screen. However, I suspect that any normal human being is more hot-blooded than that.

I really liked the ending. Gertrud failed gracefully at finding true love, and I liked that she did not regret it. I certainly didn’t regret seeing the film, even though I probably like it more in its idea rather than its execution.