Mind Game

I first came across the work of Masaaki Yuasa with 2010’s “Tatami Galaxy”. With the ever-quick dialogue and the constant changing of visual styles, it was clear his style is to assault your senses rather than allow you to relax into an anime. With repetitive narrative, but stylistic variation, you can just about get through a twenty minute chunk episode, one at a time. A feature film, therefore, may feel a step too far for this style of working. But with a title such as “Mind Game” and my aforementioned experience, I knew I was in for a slight fudging of the head.

Adapting Robin Nishi’s manga of the same name, the aptly named Nishi bumps into old friend – and less-than-secret-crush – Myon on the train one night in Osaka. Myon invites him back to her family restaurant, where they sit and eat with her sister, Yan, and no-good father. It is here where two yakuza enter the fray looking for her father and after a butt-clenching near-death experience, Nishi and the two females make haste to escape the wrath of the yakuza.

It is here where things start to get a little peculiar. The yakuza forming a road block over a bridge, the trio, in a car stolen from the yakuza, are launched into the water below and into the mouth of a whale. Here they find a quiet place to rest in the makeshift living quarters of Jii: a man trapped in the whale for some thirty years. Getting comfortable, the film slows a little in pace, losing its frantic edge, though is equally creative in the scenes of play the quartet enjoy.

This cannot last forever, however, and the trio get the urge to escape the whale and again see blue skies. Hatching a plan, a frantic chase ensues to escape the whale’s mouth, with memories and dreams flashing before each as they run to freedom. Before we start all over again.

But I’ve missed out some bits here…quite a few bits. The film’s introduction is an endless stream of visual imagery that is seemingly unconnected. This fast and frantic style brings a lot to take in initially, though is enjoyable to watch as the colourful variety in the images flashes before your eyes, in a similar way to Satoshi Kon’s subsequent “Paprika”, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. As the film progresses, however, with the opening repeated to come full circle, this is more than a simple stream of consciousness to look pretty.

At key points for each character, nostalgic memories and possible hopes for the future flash before their eyes, forming this montage when combined at rapid speed. These stay with the character’s throughout serving as points of motivation to escape, and giving the film a well-rounded completeness on conclusion.

There are many apparent “mind games” at work here: flashing mind’s eye visions throughout the narrative; and the literal “Sliding Doors”-esque twist of fate at the end showing how it could all have been avoided and life would have been different in an alternate reality – repeating the initial scenario once more in a “story that has never ended.”

There are a large number of ideas to take in, but Yuasa handles this well enough to avoid unwanted overload for a feature length. The dialogue is sparser than in “Tatami Galaxy”, something of a relief to a non-native Japanese speaker, and so the film can be enjoyed, as oppose to endured, with moments of relaxing animation to provide respite.

Jasper Sharp’s introduction as part of the London East Asian Film Festival notes how its 2004 release coincided with a pivotal year for anime: the release of Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle” and Otomo’s “Steamboy” as well as Oshii’s “Innocence” screening at Cannes. With “Mind Game”, Yuasa’s name can fit alongside this company comfortably for originality and style that lives long in the mind.

BFI 61st London Film Festival: The White Girl

Twenty years on since the hand-over of Hong Kong from British rule to China with a fifty year period of autonomy until 2047 and a number of films have been made regarding the anxieties faced by the natives, notably Wong Kar-wai's Cannes-winning "Happy Together". Recent times have seen a growing number of films along these lines - some subversive, others looking more at the practicalities - alongside periods of protest at the impending loss of a way of life.

Jenny Suen's debut feature is along the subversive lines, teaming-up with Wong's cinematographer on "Happy Together", Christopher Doyle. Set around the last fishing village in Hong Kong, to summarise the plot for "The White Girl" is difficult. The characters largely nameless, the titular "The White Girl" (Angela Yuen) is a student in a class of various ages. Living with her father, a fisherman, she is treated as his servant and told she is allergic to sunlight, like her estranged mother, whose whereabouts are unknown. A singer who made some recordings, she listens to her mother's songs, asking her father as to her story; something he's unwilling to discuss.

Wandering at night when she feels safer to go out, she spends her time at a bay in her underwear, where she meets an equally enigmatic Japanese man (Joe Odagiri), who is living in a watch tower above the village where he is able to project images from the village on to a wall. The Japanese himself befriends a local boy (Jeff Yiu) who helps him set-up his new home.

While these three loaners meet, the local "Village Chief" is making secret plans with a trio from mainland China to bulldoze and concrete the tiny fishing port and build new luxury apartments and entertainment complexes. However, only a limited amount of time is dedicated to the development of this story. Instead, the main focus is on the chance encounters between the three leads and their slow meanders around the village.

There are a number of problems with this film, but let's start with the positives. As you'd expect with cinematography from co-director Christopher Doyle, there are some very interesting shots of blurred focus against dilapidated backdrops. But herein lies a problem. Audiences will no doubt be attracted to Doyle as cinematographer, but working with a complex narrative with a novice director, these shots simply become a pretty visual to overall confusion.

Working with more established directors, Doyle's camerawork is an enhancement of well-constructed filmmaking and storytelling. But having less experience, Suen is unable to construct these shots into a cohesive narrative. Doyle himself a relative novice as a director - limited to documentary, segments and the challenging watches of "Away with Words" and "Warsaw Dark" - is unable to provide mentoring for cohesion either.

The emphasis seems to be on the cinematography over the storytelling: the two leads moving at a slow pace whenever on screen together; their communicating in broken English slow and awkward, with a script that offers few explanations either. As such, much of the film has the surface-level enigma of a fragrance commercial, with meaning left open and little in the way of depth within the characters, with only hints ever provided as to "The White Girl's" story.

Perhaps there are too many ideas working at once here, creating confusion, leaving the audience to wonder if this symbolises that, and that symbolises this. While open ends are always welcome, as there are many ideas, each not fully explored, there are simply too many things to consider, leaving little satisfaction by the film's conclusion. The "Village Chief" and his companions accompanied by music harking back to comedy from the Seventies and Eighties feels out-of-place alongside the slow nature of the rest of the film, and further this sense.

You can see some of the ideas at play here, but over-indulgence has hindered their impact. Perhaps working alongside other young directors, fully developing one of the concepts as a short, à la "Ten Years" would have been a better way to tell the story. As such, "The White Girl" will have limited appeal; something of a pretty mess.

BFI 61st London Film Festival: King of Peking

Even in their own words, it is strange for a Chinese film to have an Australian writer-director and Canadian producer; one they even state is very much of a certain era in Beijing life. But as both were raised in China in the Eighties and Nineties, the informed outsiders may be able to take a more objective look of an era now most-likely lost.

Maybe not so much nowadays, but we've all been offered a pirate DVD in a pub. And that's the basic premise of "King of Peking": a father-son duo of Big Wong and Little Wong who create pirate copies of cinema classics to sell on street corners. Cinephile Big Wong lives with his son after the breakdown off his marriage. Showing films of improvised cinema screens on the street, Big Wong has his son working in every role in film, other than the role left or Big Wong: that of projectionist.  

But soon with their equipment damaged, refunds offered and complaints about wasting money on watching old films they can see on video, the pair lose their market. Big Wong, wanting to still pursue his dream takes a role as a live-in janitor of a local cinema, Little Wong following him there. But without his ex-wife's blessing, she demands custody of the child or huge maintenance payments. Not wanting to lose his business partner, he opts for the latter, but needs to find a way of raising such a large amount of money. Working at a cinema, and fuelled by the seed of home entertainment planted by a disgruntled punter, Big Wong turns to video piracy.

Finding a test model of a DVD recorder in a second-hand shop, he enquires as to where it came from. An abandoned Japanese factory is the answer, which he soon locates, finding a mother-load of the same test model. Setting up a video camera in the cinema where he works, he makes multiple copies of each film shown there, his business partner making covers for the finished product and helping out with dubbing new soundtracks.

Making enough to keep his son and pay his ex-wife, all seems rosy, but his son is unhappy at the constant work and abuse from his father, using him for his own interests. Running away to his mother, he soon loses his business and son's respect, as well as his job, having been found-out.

Making a film you hope to make money out of about piracy is always going to be interesting as to the moral standpoint. And similar to Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind" we a treated to a light-hearted look at film piracy, showing those making the copies are earnest film fans doing it for the love of cinema...and a little bit of money on the side to help them solve a problem. As such, we are forced to root for the pirates: supposedly the killers of the film industry (not multi-millionaire Hollywood producers). The comedy in making the pirate copies is inventive and charming, supposedly done for the right reasons.

And much like the pirate copies they make, Sam Voutas' film has its charms and entertains. Though more perhaps could be done here. While the shot of Big Wong wrapping an entire film reel around his body is clever, being a comedy, this feels rather light, when it could be made more cinematic and demonstrate the reasons why people love film in the first place. Little detail and back story is given to the break-up of Big Wong's marriage and to how things were before the camera starts rolling, and so his place as a good or bad father and man is left ambiguous.

Though despite lacking in more depth, the script has enough humour within it to maintain the film as a well-worked piece, helped by good cinematography and good performances from the two leads. But with a limited filmography as a director himself, Voutas' film comes across more as the work of someone who likes cinema very much, but perhaps lacks the depth of the true love of the cinephile.

BFI 61st London Film Festival: Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno

We start with two Korean youths walking around the leftover detritus of an abandoned building; to be demolished tomorrow. They search through the debris not looking for things to salvage, but things to destroy...on stage. The two men in question are Jang and Kwon, a two-piece Korean punk band of pseudo-political lyrics, self-depreciative humour and a penchant for smashing old junk on stage - not having the means to smash their own instruments.

Jung Yoon-suk's documentary is a portrait of a band as a reflection of the state of South Korean youth ideologically: confused, perhaps a little naive, but fearful of what potentially can come from the relationship with their neighbours in the North. As ever, documentaries about individuals are always stronger when the subjects are lesser-known: the audience having few preconceptions; the band able to serve as an example for wider society.

With this the case, the documentary is a progression not so much of the band themselves, but the challenges of the political ideology presented by them. The opening is very much about the band, however: Two young, perennial students have a live stage show of drum and bass, grindcore (is that a thing?!) in a punk-stylee (I don't take the NME). With Jang on bass and vocals and Kwon on drums and sometimes vocals, the pair create short songs based on interesting ideas from the minds of students looking at some of the contradictions of the polemic politics of the two Koreas. They do this with a humorous stage-show or self-depreciative banter with the audiences, full-blooded performances of their short pieces, followed by the smashing of inanimate objects. They are more than a band; more a work of performance art.

Shunning the spotlight, they are simply two kids who state they make "shitty" music. Randomly coming up with an idea; constructing a twelve seconds ditty, recorded on their phone; and agreed that "that'll do" - their album "Seoul Inferno" consists of forty-two (count them) short tracks. One thing that is ironically clear, however, is that despite the political rhetoric of their lyrics, their own political stance is left firmly ambiguous.

Beyond humour and clever wordplay (which is highly reliant on the translation of - I hope - of a diligent and earnest translator), what are the Bamseom Pirates getting at? The film moves into a phase of interviews where the pair are pressed on their political standpoints. This provokes thoughtful expressions, but perhaps shows that the duo are not fully sure what their lyrics mean beyond some clever jokes and wry smiles. Though neither ever dispute their position: they are young men from middle class backgrounds, graduating from decent universities, but are at a loss as to what is happening in the country politically: drummer Kwon even stating early in the film that he knows little about North Korea.

  

And this is the truth: a generation that no longer has any ties to the North other than the constant fear that they will attack. Both have served their military service, as is standard for young South Koreans that aren't Tottenham Hotspur midfielders, so are aware of the sense of conflict, though are ignorant as to why it exists. This lack of knowledge results in humorous responses: part politically engaged, part apathetic, though at odds with each other as to which is the stronger standpoint. Both academic and musical commentators are brought in to critique both their music, but also Kwon's poetry. While acknowledging there is definite energy and interesting ideas, there is always a questioning of what they are truly trying to say.

But seriousness soon prevails: their producer and photographer, Park, is arrested and tried for ("ironically") retweeting pro-North Korean tweets. His original standpoint is that of the band's: of mocking the whole rhetoric of the politics, but in doing so is considered a threat to South Korean National Security Law; an unfortunate example.  

Asked to give a testimony in defence of Park, Kwon is put in a position where he has to justify the band's lyrics beyond simple journalism; even threatened that this could lead to him too being tried for crimes against National Security Law himself. Something which he is able to do eloquently when pressed. But Park's closing defence, however, is in vain, resulting in a short prison sentence.

But while the pair are confused about what their lyrics may really mean, they are borne out in reality. Lines state how "Grandma, the roof is leaking; Don't worry, Twitter will save us" and "The Bible is truth because it is in the Bible. The Democratic Republic of Korea is democratic because it is in the title," (I really hope that translator is good!) highlight the inconsistencies in South Korean politics themselves. Both Kwon and Park believe they live in a democracy, yet are tried for making simple jokes: supposedly what is feared in the regime in the North. As a result, they are between a rock and a hard place.

But does that stop them?! The situation simply fuels more politically-focused banter with audiences on street corner performances as to how there are "Communists at this protest in front of parked police cars." (Along those lines at least.)

Eventually, the band do break, but the reasons are not explained. Ambiguity is the theme running throughout the film, but not without reason. The tongue-in-cheek introduction states how the band's performances are miss-timed and off-kilter (giving delicious doubt as to whether this is intentionally artistic or due to lack of talent). But this is the ultimate statement in itself: in a world where politics is increasingly encouraged to be "yes" or "no" with black and white polarity, two young men angrily expressing themselves, but not fully sure as to why, speak more volumes than any politician...and not just because their amps are up to eleven...it is one louder...

Raindance Film Festival 2017: Noise

I first went to Japan, namely Tokyo, in September 2008, a little under three months after the Akihabara Massacre - see how I'm using the social media technique of making it all about me! It made me think that in going to Japan, I had little to fear in terms of everyday crime, but had more chance of a random attack from an everyday man whom had snapped. With his debut film, Yusaku Matsumoto examines the sort of motivations that lead individuals to such attacks, the pressures people are put under and how they cope in these scenarios.

Eight years on from the massacre, the lives of seemingly unconnected individuals are the focus: Misa (Kokoro Shinozaki), a teenage part-time masseuse and low level idol performing to small groups of middle-aged men, while avoiding her abusive father at home; the contrasting Rie (Urara Anjo), a disaffected youth, ignoring her father and his attempts at forming a connection; and Ken (Kohsuke Suzuki), a quiet part-time delivery worker, partaking in online studies, while most of his income goes towards his mother's debts.

Based around the Tokyo district of Akihabara, the three main characters gradually find their lives pressured into situations that they can no longer face. Misa's well-meaning manager is under pressure for higher takings; pressure that is put onto Misa. Begrudgingly, he is forced to "hand her over" to his superior to manage, namely what's in her knickers. Losing her mother to the Akihabara Massacre eight years previous, she has suffered at the hands of her abusive father since.

Despite his renewed attempts, Misa is without a father-figure; both her father and manager having let her down. As such, she finds some connection to Rie's father - drawn by her resemblance to his daughter with whom he can't connect - when they meet at her gigs. Rie lacks a mother in her life, and on discovering her father's attendance at idol performances runs away to the same scout who has his designs on Misa; no doubt soon to find herself in a similar situation.

All the while, Ken goes about his daily work, connecting little with those to whom he delivers packages, as well as his work colleagues. His home life is no better; his mother running away, leaving debt collectors knocking at his door and face and about to be kicked-out of his home. Regularly making pre-recorded threatening calls to companies and the police, his new-found homelessness will force him to turn them into action.

The "noise" in question is the non-stop world that continues to force pressure on the lives of the young protagonists, with little opportunity for relief from their elders. And it is generational differences that run as a connecting theme throughout the three main story arcs. With her mother now dead, Misa's father's abuse continued after the massacre, with no communication left between the pair who live under the same roof. The same goes for Rie and her father, with the latter having worked long hours and having to care for his sick father, perhaps leaving Rie the figure of neglect. Ken's mother sees him has a source of additional income for debts, demanding that he makes more money than he does, discouraging him from his studies.

A traditionally hierarchical society in Japan, generational differences and chains of command build on those at the lower ends to the point of breaking, leaving Misa, Rie and Ken wandering, coiled springs, able to go off at any moment. Matsumoto builds this tension well throughout towards the film's finale, which is somewhat sudden and abrupt, but reflects the continuous nature of these pressures.

But some novice learning aside, such as slips into melodrama, this is an interesting social comment on the causes of violence: one-way, aggressive communication, with those at the bottom's voices lost through all the noise.

Raindance Film Festival 2017: Perfect Revolution

Something of a late bloomer in the acting world, Lily Frankie has become a Japanese indie staple, regularly appearing in the works of perhaps Japan's most internationally-renowned director, Koreeda Hirokazu. While largely in supporting roles, he always brings a charm to the screen with his presence and a welcome addition as he strolls in front of the camera. Now in the lead role, playing a disabled author, "Perfect Revolution" is a film that relies heavily on this onscreen charm.

Kuma (Frankie) is an author with cerebral palsy, a sex-obsessed author with cerebral palsy; a fact that leads to various humorous incidents, such as up-skirt viewing of young shop assistants from his vantage point of his wheelchair as they reach for some "top shelf material" and extensive product-placement for Japanese male masturbation aid manufacturer Tenga.

While at a book launch, the young Ryoko (Nana Seino), after an unexpected outburst, forcibly demands his attention. After several meetings together, they start an unusual relationship, with both the age difference and Ryoko's ability to handle his disability questioned by Kuma's family and his carer, Eri (Eiko Koike). And gradually their concerns are realised, with Ryoko's erratic behaviour resulting from her "personality disorder."

Ryoko subsequently threatens Eri before turning on Kuma himself, attempting a joint suicide. Forced apart, the two are allowed a brief reunion a year later, resulting in a somewhat farcical and cheesy ending.

A relative novice, there is a lot of challenging subject matter for writer-director Jumpei Matsumoto to take on, alongside cerebral palsy sufferer Yukihiko Kumano. Japanese stigma towards disability has always been a touchy subject, particularly when it comes to mental health. The is exemplified by Kuma's family's reactions to the couple's relationship, as well as their harsh words towards Kuma as the family curse and burden. This perhaps impacts of Matsumoto's writing, with disability and difference a key focus throughout, rather than looking at the pair as a simply an unorthodox couple.

What starts off as a comedy, soon descends into rom-com territory, before over sentimentality and emotional responses start to spoil the film. The film's conclusion drifts into silliness before quite a cheesy finale.

Ryoko's idea that their relationship will be their "revolution" is countered by the fact that neither are perhaps emotionally stable enough for a relationship. Kuma has given up on truly finding love due to his condition, turning his attention to sexual gratification; while Ryoko is a danger to those she sees as in her way, including Kuma. This tricky subject matter makes for tricky responses. Perhaps Matsumoto wanted to challenge audiences, though the cheesy reunion towards the end perhaps undermines this.

As the star, Frankie delivers a solid performance as the likeable rogue, Kuma; his charm the film's strength. Though those around him are less agreeable, whether employed to voice society's views or display a range of overstated and directed emotions; Frankie is the measured voice holding it all together. As often can be the case with films tackling controversial subjects, the conflict between the characters creates conflict within the film itself - with sudden changes in character motivations - leaving it a little confused as to what story it is trying to tell.

Though whether good or bad, "Perfect Revolution" raises topics that it important to ask.