About Chocolate Parfaits

The Housemaid (2010)

In theory, “The Housemaid” deserves a lot of attention and things I could say about it. There are the main characters who were all extremely interesting considering that it was one of those films that are very much like plays: They mostly take place in one house, have a very limited set of characters and the story is mostly focused on their interaction. In comparison to the great plays I am thinking of, Molière’s comedies or Shakespeare’s plays or Horváth’s dramas or even most operas, “The Housemaid” cannot compare, and it probably doesn’t try to. This is a story with a lot of melodrama, funny and tragic at the same time. I wished somebody had pointed out beforehand how incredibly much black humour is subtly integrated in this film, finding its pinnacle in the very last scene. At first, I must admit that I disliked the child – she does feel incredibly unnatural and bored, doesn’t she? But later on, it becomes obvious that she is the secretly rebellious outsider in her environment, the only person who truly sees through the evils of the main character. In that respect, she saves the film!

Compared to the 1960’s film, there is virtually no similarity except for the title. In the one film, it’s the evil woman who seduces, in the other film, she is the betrayed victim; one film is full of atmospheric horror, the other one is virtually a black comedy mixed with k-(melo)drama elements. Film-wise, I thought the 2010 version absolutely cannot compare to the haunting atmosphere of the older film, but as a stand-alone it was at least interesting. I am mildly amused that Roger Ebert liked the movie – how random is that?

On a side note, MUBI is still a horrible website and Imdb just looks too horrible. No matter whether it’s movies or anime or anything else, there seems to be no such thing as a website that is as convenient as, uh, say, Facebook. What to do? As for myself, I am still most happy with my own painfully maintained blog index. XD

Waltz with Bashir

A few years ago, I saw this film on display at the Fantasy Filmfest, back then when I didn’t want to spend 8 euros on those movies I expected to be able to see later anyways. In the end, I only saw some of the short films which I expected to be rather difficult to get later.

About a year later, after “Waltz with Bashir” got a theatrical release in Germany, I heard about the film a second time. Somebody at university mentioned to me how much he was impressed by the end of the film, and that its brutality was totally shocking to him. Despite having heard relatively much about the film including somebody’s recommendation, I am surprised at how unexpected the movie turned out to be. I had no idea that it was a documentation, and a relatively plotless one at that. In fact, even 30 minutes into the film, I thought that this would rather be something like a crime mystery in which the main character’s memories are going to be revealed piece by piece.

The end itself – the change from animation towards real news footage – was even more surprising. It is definitely not the end I imagined, but nevertheless these are gripping pictures, even more so after an hour of bad animation.

Speaking of bad animation… it really was that bad. In the end, I think they could have done a better job if they shot the film with real people and then used the same technology as for “A Scanner Darkly” to animate the film. But approaching it in the conventional way makes the animation look horrible compared to what you are used to see elsewhere. I find it remarkable that the small team has managed to do this (normally you’d see significantly more names involved in the animation process), and it’s a pity that this had such a bad impact on the animation quality.

Finally, I am sure that a film like this has many problems in terms of its political meaning, and the politics are surely one of the reasons why the movie was such a hit with the critics. (The other one being the innovation of making an animated feature-length documentary, but really who cares about that?) As for myself, I would probably say I liked parts of the film, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. It is ultimately a documentary after all.

PS. I almost wrote “Waltz witz bashir” – Freudian slip?

Black Swan

Lately I got this urge to see the films so prominent at this year’s Oscar. How the heck did they manage to overtake the brilliance of “Inception” and “The Social Network”, I wonder?

In the case of “Black Swan”, it is fairly easy: Certainly there is no better female performance when most of the movies are predominantly male. You can’t really count that weird girl who played Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend or little Ellen Page in Inception after all. When it comes to the other nominated movies, I have barely seen any of them so I don’t know. But at any rate, Natalie Portman was sure to get this Oscar, and even though I really like her acting, I found it to be mostly boring in “Black Swan”. It’s almost like she is doing nothing new – she seems to have done all of this before already, and her acting genius ever since “Leon” did not actually improve all that much. On the bright side it means that she was quite great to begin with, on the other side she probably spent too much time being glamorous and worrying about Israel.

Enough ranting onto the film itself: It was indeed as ‘female’ as I have expected it. The most interesting character was actually Lily who you never knew if you should consider her an actual threat or if she was just the naughty girl from next door.

One thing I noticed was that I didn’t find the main character to be all that crazy after all. She kept having hallucinations but she never became ‘evil’ until very shortly before the end, when she was finally able to do her black swan right. In that respect, all the promotion with the black make-up is rather misleading – she remains quite true to herself, she remains the tight-assed, nervous, overly serious girl right up to the end. She just became crazy, but then again, who would not become crazy in such a situation?

My personal biggest irk with the film is probably my own perception of “Swan Lake”. Over the years, I have seen it in many productions; in fact, this ballet, along with “Sleeping Beauty”, is perhaps the only product of theatre/ballet/opera that I have seen this often (i.e. more than twice and throughout my entire life). Just like certain movies which I have rewatched several times over the years, such as “Amelie” or “The Dreamers”, my impression of “Swan Lake” has evolved over the years and I am looking back at fond memories associated with it. As a little girl, I believed that the white swan was absolutely good and the black swan was absolutely evil, later on I even tended to interpret the black swan as this character who uses her sexuality to “steal away” the guy, making her a rather generic chick flick character. Even though this might be generic, I think that hits the core of Swan Lake and so I don’t quite believe in this “your black swan has to seduce the audience”. Ballet is charming but not that overtly sexual (truth to be told, the most dignified and beautiful ballet dancers look like they have not eaten for 20 years – is that really sexy?) and unless a production has a very modern, screwed up choreography it will not seduce an audience, nor will it try to. It’s much more subtle than that, and I felt like there was a misunderstanding of ballet altogether here.

Speaking of sex appeal, I was very amused at how quickly hands move towards the main character’s vagina without ever having any sex. It reminded me very much of smutty manga for older girls.

All in all, I am changing my impression on Aronofsky from “absolutely unwatchable” to “interesting”, and “Black Swan” was at least interesting and very, very entertaining. I guess now I have to watch “The Wrestler”.

There Will Be Blood

For some reason, I feel like this movie could be a Coen brothers film, which I recently read an interesting (German) article on. Maybe it’s because the title sounds like “No Country for Old Men”, maybe it’s because the title sounds like one of those Coen brother films full of black humor, or maybe it’s also because the famous Pokemon parody actually looks like it could just as well be based on a Coen film. I have no idea.

What I do know, however, is that the film totally deserves its fame. It kicks ass, so to say. It is indeed a long, very long film, and more than anything else, I am absolutely fascinated by how incredibly long the Wikipedia article to the film is. How is it even possible that one single movie is getting so much analytical depth from Wikipedia writers? Most of all, of course that means that these damn Wikipedia writers are doing a bad job on other films, and it would be great if such an article could become the standard for films that deserve it. “There will be blood” surely has an incredible depth to it, and its main character is, if you ask me, significantly more interesting than Kane who doesn’t really have all that much character besides being rich and lonely. Plainview truly hates the world, uses schemes and ruses, is an alcoholic and doesn’t feel any remorse about using people to the point of killing them, yet acts affectionate towards his son. His antagonism against Eli Sunday especially is so much more fascinating than any human interaction with Kane. I guess I am being too harsh on Orson Welles here.

Basically, “There will be blood” is a movie without any weakness. If it had one, I’d say it is mostly that there is practically no likable character in the whole film, and it draws a world that is almost as black as the one of the Coen brothers. But then again, that is where its strength lies as well, and as such, Plainview is certainly one of the greatest characters of the decade.

Welcome to the Uchuu Show

Ever since the amazing greatness of “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”, I think it would be appropriate to include any types of animated movies in here as well. Sometimes you can’t really make a difference (what is “A Scanner Darkly”?) and sometimes animated movies are the best out there (“Spirited Away”, “Paprika”) which I hold in higher esteem than almost everything else I have watched. So, although “Princess Arete” was such a disappointment that I don’t even want to blog about it, I think that I should keep up the anime movie blogging with this film. It deserves it.

With the earthquake going on, it feels incredibly wrong to watch movies, let alone anime. But that would be hypocrisy – it’s not like any day is better or worse to be entertained and thereby ignoring the disasters going on in the world. But… Uchuu Show is so lovely? Made by the team of Kamichu, a lot of it is reminiscent. The amazingly cute flock of little aliens presented here have a very similar design to the Shinto gods in Kamichu, and that is where its charm lies: The characters and how they cutely interact. A lot of the anime reminds me of “My Neighbor Totoro” – and this is also why I don’t understand the criticism towards the movie. Both films have cute fictional creatures, a little girl who goes missing and needs to be found/saved, and rather generic main characters. Even the tomboyish-older-sister-little-girl-pair is the same. Even the so-called slow half of the film, in which the characters are just randomly playing around, is similar (note how the actual totoros only appear very late!) The benefit of “My Neighbor Totoro” is that it’s older and, well, higher acclaimed. As for myself, I enjoyed the first part of the film very much – it was a feast of lovely alien characters, especially Ink! She is the cutest of all! Almost as cute as Itezora Konayuki… and she looks like an enhanced version of Miimu XD (Note to self: Take a screenshot.)

I think the main reason why I could potentially fail as a movie critic is the fact that I don’t tend to criticize things unless I feel like I have a really good reason. (I also go into rage mode when that happens.) I see some sort of merit in almost everything I do see or do, and sometimes I don’t like harsh criticism on a good movie which is perhaps not revolutionary but still… good. “Welcome to the Uchuu Show” is a good film. Totally underrated.

The Ramen Girl

…to warn people, or so. This one is an absolutely impressive prime example of a bad movie, and I don’t even know where to start: Her slutty (yet somewhat pretty) dress? The fact that almost everybody in the movie smokes? The portrayal of her unnecessary excessive suffering prior to becoming a, uh, ramen chef? It’s difficult to say.

The movie had a few good points though: The Japanese characters. While I found her love interest a little bit awkward, everybody else was mostly pure comedian gold. I also can’t believe they got Goro Tsutomu Yamazaki to play the old ramen master – how brilliant is that? I feel sorry for such a cult actor to have to play in this kind of movie though…

At any rate, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy the movie. It had a cute premise and there was some odd joy I derived from watching it, very much unlike for Princess Arete which I thought was shitty and boring. I am looking forward to… better films. Did you notice how, after seeing too many crime thrillers, I am totally in the mood for comedies now? :D (Any recommendations?)

Humpday

I was sad at the end of the film, but hey, I should not have expected anything else – we are talking about two straight guys attempting to, err, have sex. How can that not become a funny disaster?

Amazon is full of reviews of normal people (seems like “Humpday” tends to be watched by people who tend to be “normal” instead of film buffs who seem to be used to even more shocking crap than opera-goers) who are either bored or appalled at the film. The one I found the most interesting was this gay man whose feelings were hurt because he had to sit through two men literally talking about how disgusting they find each other. lol If the same story was played with a gay man and a lesbian woman, it might have required a little more of a brain twisting, but ultimately would have worked just as well. I don’t think I am hurt by the concept that some guy might find my body repulsive if it is because he’s gay.

Enough ranting though, because the film does not deserve it: It was really great. I laughed out loud quite a few times and thought that the actors (who seemed to be more or less playing themselves or at least not be professionals to me) were doing a wonderful job at looking awkward. The guy who played Andrew was the best – how is it even possible to improvise these lines that make me laugh so spontaneously? “Humpday” could have been the perfect PIFF movie, but it’s alright, we’ll find something else thanks to Gorp’s brilliant recommendations. Unsurprisingly, this one was one of his recommendations too.

For unknown reasons, this film also prompted me to finally get my hands on “Les amours imaginaires”, another one of those triangle stories. (Though this one isn’t really.) In the past it seems like I have either loved or hated them, but in general I should probably say that I like the tension that arises from relationship stories involving more than one person – Humpday is no different, and funny movie is almost always better than one which is not.

By the way, I stumbled upon the term “mumblecore”. Now that is spot-on in the best sense of the term! (If that is even possible.)

This time she still has short hair, but it’s blonde, reminiscent rather rather of Monica Vitti than Anna Karina. It seems women in are either exactly like Anna Karina or the exact opposite. This one is exact opposite even though her acting style is strangely similar; at the end of the day, these Nouvelle Vague girls didn’t really have to do anything else but look pretty and dance around a little.

“Cléo de 5 à 7” is a little more sophisticated than that though. The character talks a lot and with the backdrop of Godard’s Paris, this film looks like just one of the other Nouvelle Vagues, with the difference that Agnès Varda’s story is way more realistic. Even though she leads a life that is almost completely detached from ours, she behaves exactly like a shallow pop singer would, and through this experience of her life, slowly develops more mature feelings and thoughts. This evolution in just 2 hours is quite impressive, especially since it seems to come very naturally.

When the “Beaches of Agnès” came out, I decided that I wanted to see one of her films and know about her more before seeing it, and among all her movies, “Cleo” was the one that fascinated me the most. I like to see first movies of directors I like – whereas some are absolutely brilliant, such as “Les 400 Coups”, others are good beginning, like “Following”. Considering how amazingly great “À Bout de souffle” is, it is perhaps customary for Nouvelle Vague directors to start off very strong – Cleo follows a simple premise, but the execution surpasses anything I have expected. It is a lot like a “Vivre sa Vie” in how it portrays one single character, but does not show any of Godard’s symbolism; the most piquant similarity, both main characters watch a film at some point in the film, shows the difference very strongly: Whereas Godard’s version is a very symbol-laden, meaningful scene with many layers, Varda’s is an homage to comedic silent films, showing the love of life of Cleo’s comparably happy friends. Finally, the best part in the film is most definitely her encounter with the soldier (beautifully set in the Parc Montsouris) when she found in a stranger all these things she could not find within her friends.

Speaking of that soldier, Antoine Bourseriller looks like Joe E. Brown (Osgood) and the last shot of “Cleo” is strangely reminiscent of the last scene of “Some Like it Hot” – what irony. Ahaha.

I enjoyed the film, mostly because it incorporates almost every Nouvelle Vague element that I love so much. Before this film, I have never actually touched anything else besides Godard and Truffaut, and now I understand what I have missed out. After months of lack of French films, it is time to resume these efforts.

Departures

I think I have been dreaming about this film, but now I am speechless. (Okay, technically this is not true. What I actually dreamed was that my whole family was taken hostage on a ship and the dream ended with how we sabotaged the crew on the ship and got away. I woke up in the moment when we all jumped into water.)

I noticed recently how Japan has not won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for quite a long time, despite many interesting entries over the years. While there were Japanese films nominated all the time, there is a huge jump from the 50s until the year of 2008, when “Departures” finally made it. Is this film really the best Japanese film in the last 50 years? Hardly. Neither is “Nowhere in Africa” compared to other German films, which I have not seen but imagine to be dreadful. In terms of Oscar, “Departures” can perhaps be compared to “The Live of Others” – I liked both!

This is the type of movie that has something new for you in storage even when you know what the premise is (failed cellist becomes encoffiner). A story like this has not been told before, and certainly not this way – yet at the same time it feels realistic and close to our own lives. Everybody dies and everybody has some kind of job (even your lack of job can be a job description, in some sense at least), and this film brings these two important aspects of life together.

With a lovely portrayal of Japanese countryside, I thought that it was the perfect environment for the main character to find his true roots. The end came off a little bit cheesy, but so did “The Live of Others”, I suppose. Aside from the fact that the wife’s character annoyed me heavily during most of the film (she is just too cheerful!), the film was a lovely display of humanity, especially in those short scenes at the end, when Daigo has finally become comfortable with his job. Personally I think being an encoffiner is a wonderfully dignified line of work, but I believe it is hard to put a topic like death onto screen, and by that I mean in a serious way, without going the tearjerking Hollywood route.

On an emotional level, I don’t think “Departures” hit me as hard as some other films I have seen recently, but in general, I found it to be a wonderful film, which strangely prompted this urge of wanting to peacefully live in Japan’s countryside. I have this imagination that these old-style wooden houses, simple bath houses and hilly roads would be a lovely existence.

When I stumbled upon the Korean Blogathon, my first reaction touched upon the existential “to be or not to be” question of this whole blog: What am I supposed to write about at all? While I was able to bring out a list with rankings such as in the preparatory posting a few days ago in just a few minutes, I am having a hard time both at writing reviews or blog postings in general. If I blog about a film I like, how can I do justice to it with the little time I spend on blogging about it, including research on the film, its director, actors and historical background? If I wouldn’t like films, why would I even bother with blogging them at all?

All these considerations make me afraid of tackling a topic such as this one, but sometimes I just really, really want to. The question why I particularly like Korean films is relatively important, because it does not go well with my general regard on film: I typically tend to watch films that are critically acclaimed. Those which are not critically acclaimed tend to be either very random choices, or generally popular in wherever country I am at currently, or I have a certain bond and knowledge of what is surrounding these films: I was born in China, have lived in France, I grew up in Germany with Hollywood films and I know extensively about these countries’ history as well as a few other European countries. With these countries, adding in the UK (Kubrick!), Italy (Antonioni!) and Spain (Almodovar!!), I know very well why I would have a particular interest for films from these countries. For Japan, the only country among all these I have never been to, a lot of my interest is derived from anime and manga culture which, carefully observed, can give you a connection to a particular culture and thus make you appreciate films like Departures even without having been there.

What to say about Korean cinema? Since I noticed how I really am not doing a good job at giving an overview on actual films and names, I think that gaguri has done an amazing introduction to Korean films, though I am a little less of a fan of Kim Ki-duk and mourn the omission of JSA and Take Care of My Cat. But he knocks down the most important categories: Fluffy love stories, black comedies, artsy yet recognized films, dramatic thrillers and ware epos.

Bin-Jip’s (3-Iron’s) masterpiece shot, beautifully honored at the Centre Pompidou Paris

Korean films are entirely different and there is no apparent reason why I would find them great. Unlike anime, I wholeheartedly dislike Korean dramas and find most of them utterly cheesy, stupid and pointless. While there certainly are similarities to Japan and China, my impression is that Korea differs from them just as much as the two rivaling countries are different from each other. I find this to be most apparent in film history. Just by browsing the Wikipedia articles on Chinese and Japanese cinema in comparison to relatively poorly written one on Korean cinema, we can see the biggest difference: Whereas China is beyond its so-called 6th generation of film-makers and Japan’s golden era was merely 20 years behind Hollywood’s, Korea’s cinema was virtually non-existing until the new millennium. (I am not counting in the 50’s during which Korea seems to have tried to become a second Japan. Those movies are unknown and not particularly influential.)

On a side note, I am personally quite attracted to this aspect. Just like it is comparably easy to understand the field of systems biology very, very well because it is a new, emerging field, it is relatively easy to get a good picture of what we would call Korean cinema. Unlike critics who can spend a large portion of their life actually watching films, I will not be able to see more than perhaps 100 films per year, attempting to cover over 100 years of film history over the whole world. Catching up with 10 years of films is much less hard, especially if it’s the 10 years paralleling my own youth.

Take Care of My Cat, so overlooked!

What makes the fact that pre-2000 Korean cinema did not produce many masterpieces besides exceptional titles such as The Housemaid even more intriguing is the extent to which the number of interesting Korean films have exploded ever since. Last year, when I looked into the library shelf (there was only one!) with Korean films, I did not only find a whole ton of crappy love comedies, but virtually every good Korean film I have seen along with secondary literature. Starting the 2000’s, the government of South Korea seems to have promoted the cultural export of their films, and it was during that time that South Korean films became the new fad, after Iranian films and leaving their place to Romanian films, now that the international audience has become more used to the likes of Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. As for myself, I find it impressive that this fad existed at all, considering that it sprouted out of nowhere.

That brings me to two most interesting aspects of Korean cinema: First of all, Korean films are really popular in Korea. Sure, they love their Hollywood blockbusters just as much as we do and try to mirror their concepts with lower quality (with Tidal Wave or D-War for example), but this only shows that this country likes their own films. There is a strong interplay between what the Korean film industry and the audience. Not everybody in Korean films is a crazy murderer as in Oldboy; typically these are films which please a mass audience and where humor is almost always an well-inserted element. In that respect, these films are not just stories well-told but reflect the country’s state, customs and problems in a similar way as German silent films during the Weimar Republic. They are a country’s dreams projected onto celluloid – or an iPhone, for that matter.

JSA, just seeing this picture makes me want to cry.

Because older Korean films have such little influence, this effect seem to become even stronger. In Korea, what a film mostly has to do is to speak to its audience, not to reflect upon itself, which happens all too often especially with Japanese films. It seems to me that Japanese films feel compelled to be a response to its old masters. Just by looking at Satoshi Kon’s 100 films list strengthens this impression. Japanese cinema can never turn their eyes away from Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Ozu; they are strongly influenced by the omnipresence of mass media, which includes their animation culture which gave rise to Miyazaki’s universal acclaim and influenced not only Quentin Tarantino, but mostly their own film makers. Aside from the Big 3 of the 50’s, throughout of Japan’s film history, there have been impressive film makers of the likes of Imamura, Teshigahara, Oshima, Kitano. On a less artistic level, Japanese cinema has also been very rich in films that are “just good”, Itami’s Tampopo being its prime example in my opinion. All these aspects are not relevant for Korean cinema, whose directors have the refreshing freedom to practically do whatever they want – as long as the audience and/or the critics likes it, and perhaps ignoring even that. In Korea, the freshness of a democratic yet rather weak political system with relative wealth (making it possible for you to deal with more complex topics than the question why we have less food than others) coupled with young, energetic and sheer creative genius are perhaps the strongest reason why.

Apart from that, maybe I was just immensely impressed by JSA, the first one I have ever seen. Maybe. And I know this is very personal and almost irrational, because Shii does not particularly like it.