Like Someone in Love

Crossing cultures and language barriers is something happening more and more in cinema, with well-known directors establishing their name for making films from their homeland, looking abroad to try out their skills in a different culture. With 'Like Someone in Love', Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami heads to Japan to work with a Japanese cast and crew to look at the concept of love from various different angles and perspectives.

Akiko, a young student working as a prostitute, ignores both her grandmother and fiancé to let herself be talked into working the night before an exam. But her client, an aging academic, seems more to simply want an evening's company than full sex with a woman. Seeing her off to her exam the next morning, both Akiko and her client, Takashi, are left to deal with the consequences of her deceit.

'Like Someone in Love' is a film that is lacking in many respects, but indulgent in others. Various plot holes leave the audience having to make their own deductions as to how things developed, rather than making it clear on watching. Time that could have been spent on this is instead spent on lengthy shots with little actual action. The first two scenes consist of one half of an extended phone conversation, followed by a close up of Akiko in the back of a taxi listening to all seven of her voicemail messages. With this the case, the audience can be forgiven for thinking that the next two hours will be excruciatingly long.

The film, despite lacking in plot, is more an analysis of the different relationships Akiko has with the people in her life: her dutiful grandmother, whom she ignores; her prone-to-aggression fiancé, Noriaki, whom she deceives; and her client, the aging Takashi, whom she turns to in crisis.

The most likable of the three main characters is Takashi, whose bumbling around Akiko provide some humour and his earnest assistance to her show him to simply be a kind man that is lonely. His discussion with Noriaki is perhaps the film's most important, indicating that neither Noriaki and Akiko are ready for marriage.

But while humour and wisdom come from Takashi in parts, other flaws lead 'Like Someone in Love' to miss as much as it hits. While the question is asked as to what Akiko sees in Noriaki, the question could also be asked with the roles reversed, with the  only good relationship Akiko appearing to have one with someone she has known less than 24 hours, making her less of an appealing character than required in the lead; coming across more as a spoiled brat than abused victim. The sudden development in Noriaki's anger requires assumptions to be made rather than good storytelling.

The intentional sudden and abrupt ending shows the problems that misguided love has brought the trio to, and in that sense the film works in getting its point across. Though one could argue that Kiarostami takes too long to get there. Having made many shorts in the past, perhaps 'Like Someone in Love' would have been better made in a much shorter format, with the idea good, but the execution, like the film's characters, somewhat misguided and indulgent.     

Politic 21

Here ye, hear ye

Ready to Die - Notorious B.I.G.
Edan vs. Edan - Edan
Superstarr - MC Solaar
Monstermoviematineeonibus - Delegates of Culture
Monkey Dot - Money Mark
Nouveau Western - MC Solaar
Sights in the City - Guru and Carleen Anderson
Wrong Side of the Tracks - The Slew
hip hop - Dead Prez
Build and Destroy - Boogie Down Productions
Gimme the Loot - Notorious B.I.G.
Crossover - EPMD
That's When Ya Lost - Souls of Mischief
Just Say Stet - Stetsasonic
DBC Let the Music Play - Stetsasonic
Underneath it All - Money Mark
Never Lost Control - Nomak
Prose Combat - MC Solaar
Mr. Sandman - Method Man, RZA, Inspectah Deck and Street Life
Daydreamin' - MC Solaar
What If? - Shabaam Saadiq, L-Fudge, Mike Zoot, Talib Kweli and Skam
A.F.R.I.C.A. (Norman Cook Remix) - Stetsasonic

Young Gun in the Time

With sold-out showings and being out of the city for a key part of it, I couldn't fit in many films from this year's Terracotta Far East Film Festival, their fifth to date. With the spotlight on Indonesia still to come, I've only managed one film from the offering: 'Young Gun in the Time'.

The title makes little sense, but is to be expected coming from Korean director Oh Young-Doo, whose previous two efforts are 'The Neighbour Zombie' and 'Invasion of Alien Bikini'. With names such as these, both are films that are clearly working on low budgets and, as such, are not films I have resulted in seeing. Being the UK Premiere, this is perhaps an introductory point for Oh in the British Isles.

So, plot: Detective Young-gun (played appropriately by Hong Young-Geun) is a debt-ridden private detective being forced to market his detective agency by his creditor, Sa-Jang.  Bumbling about, he stumbles upon Song-Hyeon, an academic seeking justice over the murder of her colleague and mentor. This opens up a world of violence, mysterious characters, time travel and murder with sex toys; a far cry from his usual role of hunting missing beetles. Wondering the streets of the city in his inconspicuous outfit of hat, Hawaiian shirt and Gary Neville 'tache.

Billed as a science-fiction action comedy, despite a step up in budget from previous efforts, the money is still not enough to stretch to much science, with computer hacking of unexplained proportions. The other elements clearly deliver, with enough fighting and bouncing about to warrant the 'action' tag and consistent enough laughs for the 'comedy' tag.

Perhaps the best element on 'Young Gun...' is the editing. '24' style split screens feature throughout in the use of montage sequences, coupled with Hong's goofy character to create some, at times, slick moments, though always with an element of silliness. 

In 'Young Gun...' silliness reigns, stopped only for moments of violence, but there's nothing wrong with that, when it's done in earnest, Adam Sandler. 

Every 14 Days...(16)

Something Like an Autobiography (Akira Kurosawa)

Aww, relief….

After the long and enduring read that is ‘Mao: The Unknown Story’, I needed something light, entertaining and easy to read. Kurosawa’s sort-of-autobiography was the perfect tonic.

Like Ronseal, ‘Something Like an Autobiography’ does exactly what it says on the tin (cover). Written in 1981, Kurosawa believed that his life from 1950 onwards, when corking, copper-bottomed hit ‘Rashomon’ brought him international acclaim, was nothing more than making films, and as such a documentation of that period would be of little interest to any. Of course, this is harsh self-criticism, but the man himself believed that his films would be a better reflection of his life from that point on – he is a film director, after all.

The book, therefore, follows his childhood upbringing from a samurai family, through school and into his starting in the film industry as an assistant director under Kajiro Yamamoto and Mikio Naruse, before directing his own films. Focusing on some of his earlier and lesser-known works, ‘Rashomon’ is the cut-off point where he stops.

Written well over thirty years after the events for much of the book, it reads more like a collection of short anecdotes from an aging man as he looks back on his youth. The films are looked at, but not in any great detail, as he focuses more on the relationships he had with the cast and other crew and what he learnt from them, such as how to drink.

‘Something Like an Autobiography’ feels like a taster of what was to come later, when his career as a director really took off and he made many of the films he is known for today. But, it is an enjoyable read of an old man and his musings.

Days to read: 12

Days per book: 15.9

The Japan Journal: 1947-2004 (Donald Richie)

For years, Donald Richie was little more to me than just an American who wrote a lot about Japanese cinema. The leading foreign voice, writing celebrated books on Ozu and Kurosawa, I didn't know too much about him beyond writing about 'Seven Samurai'. His death earlier this year, prompted new light to be shed on his life, and as such I proceeded to delve further. 'The Japan Journals' is what resulted.

Started when he first moved to Japan after the Second World War, 'The Japan Journals' is a cobbled together collection of some of his diary entries over the years of his life spent living in Tokyo, looking at his life as a translator, film maker, writer. Structure is not a term appropriate for the collection, being that Richie was not meticulous in his maintaining of the journal, nor keeping it in an ordered manner. To read, it is, therefore, inconsistent, with several year leaps in places, and new life stages reached without any build-up.

At its best, 'The Japan Journals' sees Richie comment on the social, cultural and economic changes in Japan over his time there; at its most boring, it is anecdotal about the various artists that he served as interpreter and guide for while they visited the country; and at its worst, it is preoccupied with his sex life, focusing too heavily on any young boys he met and to whom took a fancy. Pointed out by close friends, while not a complete reflection of his life, the collection makes Richie out to be sex mad, often picking up men, hanging out in sex cinemas and brothels, regularly conversing with prostitutes. While this paints a picture of both his and Japanese life, it does get a bit tiresome after a while.

But, when the focus is on cultural differences and the changing face of his accidentally adopted homeland, it shows a love affair with a rapidly changing country, for better or worse.

Days to read: 26

Days per book: 16.1

The Roads to Sata (Alan Booth)

Set off from Cape Soya, Japan's northernmost point, and walk the 2,000-mile journey to Cape Sata, the southernmost  point of Japan's four principle islands, and you're probably mad. Well, I am mad and I like this idea.

Born in Leytonstone, like the much-travelled David Beckham, Alan Booth is an English writer who moved to Japan after his time at the University of Birmingham to study Noh theatre. Married, he clearly got bored and decided to wonder off for a few months in the Japanese equivalent of Land's End to John O'Groats. 'The Roads to Sata' is his account of the four month journey, documented the people he met, the places he saw and the alcohol he drank.

Done in 1977 at the age of 30, a white man from East London meandering around the Japanese countryside was probably an unusual sight, made even more unusual by his ability to speak the lingo. Booth was often met with 'full' ryokan, hostile receptions and cries of 'gaijin!' alongside friendly drinking companions, offers of lifts from drivers and calls for his head to be examined. 

'The Roads to Sata' is a witty account of his journey, with numerous drunken tales, but also shows a changing Japan, away from the bright lights and big cities. The differences in human geography as he makes his way further south are noted, as well as the various history lessons offered as he searches for the 'real' Japan.

Days to Read: 13

Days per book: 16.0

Three books, from three different perspectives, all about the Land of the Rising Sun: An elderly Japanese, not giving too much away; an American in search of his identity; and an Englishman that likes to drink beer, all entertaining and educational in their own respects.