Hey folks, Harry here... Elaine, the wonderful soul from those fantastic reports from the Rotterdam International Film Festival have returned, but only in a different location... This time at the Bruges Festival in Belgium she's giving us the low-down on everything showing there... this time a pair of wonderful film from Japan. Here ya go...
BRUGES CINEMA NOVO FESTIVAL, PART I
Living in a place like Holland has certain advantages for a cinephile. Although one generally doesn't get to see Hollywood blockbusters until months (sometimes years) after their American release, one does get plenty of European and Asian fare to make up for the dearth of up-to-date American releases. And as if all that weren't enough, an amazing number of festivals takes place within an eighty-mile radius of the centre of the country each year. Between the fabulous Rotterdam International Film Festival held in January and the equally brilliant Amsterdam International Documentary Festival held each November, Holland hosts no fewer than four festivals worth attending. And if that isn't enough to quench one's thirst, there's always Flanders, which hosts a few festivals of its own.
I recently spent three days in Flanders to attend a part of the annual Bruges Cinema Novo Festival, held March 14-24. Bruges, for those of you not familiar with these parts, is a lovely medieval town full of old squares, picturesque canals and British tourists. It is also one of Europe's current Cultural Capitals, which means that for the duration of the year 2002, it boasts even more festivals, exhibitions and concerts than it normally does. Amongst the more heavily publicised festivals this spring was the Cinema Novo Festival, which specialises in East Asian films. And since I love East Asian cinema, I decided to make the trek down South.
I'm glad I did. For although Cinema Novo is undoubtedly a small affair (four screens, up from three last year; no screenings before 3 p.m.; no directors in attendance), it somehow attracts a terrific line-up. This year's edition not only featured most of my Rotterdam favourites of the past two years, but several films I intended to see in Rotterdam but didn't have time for, as well as a few films that never made it to Rotterdam in the first place. Amongst the latter was Shunji Iwai's "All About Lily Chou-Chou," which was supposed to get its European premiere in Rotterdam last January but somehow went to Berlin instead. Bruges granted me the opportunity finally to see it, which I naturally grabbed with both hands. And boy, was I rewarded handsomely for doing so.
In all, I saw twelve from six countries, nine of which
I will review here. To create a coherent whole, I will
lump the films together country by country. Part I
(below) will deal with Japan; parts II, III and IV
will concern Korea, China/Japan and Iran,
respectively.
JAPAN
I actually watched three Japanese films in Bruges, but
given that one of them ("Chloe") was from 2000 and
featured the kind of heroine who will annoy western
viewers to death (although the film itself definitely
has its merits), I think I can be forgiven for not
reviewing it. I'll stick to the two new films in the
mix: "All About Lily Chou-Chou" and "Hush."
ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU (Shunji Iwai, 2001)
A year and a half ago I wrote a review of "Audition" in which I said some unkind things about the perversion of Japanese men, the silliness of Japanese women and the cruelty of the Japanese in general. In the talkback frenzy that followed, I not only got accused of racism, but also of the infinitely worse crime of judging a society by its pop culture. I learned my lesson from that, so I'm not going to infer anything from the fact that the last four Japanese high school films I have seen all featured heinous acts of bullying and violence, nor from the fact that the schools depicted in these films appeared to be a fairly accurate microcosm of Japanese society at large. I'm merely going to say that I'm glad that I didn't attend a Japanese school, and that of all the high school dramas I have seen, "All About Lily Chou-Chou" is by far the most powerful.
"All About Lily Chou-Chou" is a film about loneliness and alienation. About teenagers who, for reasons best known to themselves, cannot connect with the people around them, and so take their frustrations to the one place where they can reach out for like-minded souls: the Internet. Sat in the privacy of their bedrooms, they meet on a site called Lilyphilia, whose goal, ostensibly, is to provide fans of Lily Chou-Chou (singer and High Priestess of a metaphysical spiritual medium called the Ether) with a place where they can worship their idol and discuss her songs, which carry titles such as "Abyss of Loneliness" and "Wings That Can't Fly." The site is run by a boy named Yuichi Hasumi (Hayato Ichihara), who attains some kind of authority by projecting his own spiritual insights onto Lily's songs. One day, Yuichi suddenly stops posting messages on the site; the film then goes back in time to trace the events of his life and the role Lilyphilia played in them.
What makes Iwai's latest the extraordinary experience that it is is the way it contrasts the peace and innocence of the Lilyphilia chatroom with the brutality of reality. Life in Hasumi's town isn't easy for adolescents; students like him, sensitive and unable to assert themselves, are continually bullied by classmates, who not only beat them up and humiliate them, but rape them and occasionally force them to prostitute themselves. The terror of the kids' lives is recreated on screen in agonising detail, as is their inability to share it with others. Just as tangible, however, is the strength they derive from Lily's music, which is a catalyst for emotion and a source of tremendous mental willpower. When the kids tap into the Ether, they shed their real-life identities and are transported to a place where they can get in touch with themselves, each other and the Ether, which, as one of them says, "is the only proof I'm alive." Their transformation from traumatised teenagers to scratch-free innocents is marked by some breath-taking images - images which, seen on their own, might strike one as tacky, but which, placed in their context of agony and despair, assume an almost otherworldly beauty. Images of characters who, having left the phenomenal world and entered into the sublime, look out at life from a dark expanse of water or run through fields of gently swaying grass, flying kites (symbols of hope) and basking in the impossibly romantic late-afternoon sunlight. The lyricism of these images (sad and uplifting at once) is matched by the ethereal soundtrack, which, in addition to snippets of Lily's songs (new-agey fluff written by Takeshi Kobayashi), features some achingly beautiful piano music by Debussy. Talk about transporting one's audience to another realm.
But it isn't all about atmosphere. Technically, too, "All About Lily Chou-Chou" is a tour de force. Eschewing linear story-telling in favour of a more impressionistic back-and-forth structure, it features chatroom entries in which certain situations or events are alluded to, followed by action sequences which elaborate (but do not necessarily shed light) on the chatroom entries. Initially, one gets the impression the story is being told backwards; then the chronology leaps forward again, and backward, until one loses track of the sequence of events and has nothing to go on but the events themselves and the feelings they evoke. It's an alienating experience - rather like having chunks of a jigsaw puzzle which look like they should form a whole together but don't, because somewhere along the road, pieces of the puzzle have gone missing, although you can't for the life of you tell what these pieces might be, nor where they fit into the picture.
Try making a list of films that have that effect on you.
"All About Lily Chou-Chou" is a remarkable film. It
seems somewhat cold and aloof at the outset, but once
Iwai gets into his stride, it achieves a rare
intensity - sad, lyrical and powerful at the same
time, and proof that the phrase "terrible beauty"
isn't an oxymoron. See it at a festival near you, or
risk missing out on one of the most compelling film
experiences of the year.
HUSH! (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2001)
Six years ago, director Ryosuke Hashiguchi won a Rotterdam Tiger Award for "Like Grains of Sand," a fascinating look at a triangular relationship between a homosexual boy, his heterosexual friend and one of their female classmates. Now he's back with a comedy about another triangle, this time set amongst none-too-successful twenty-something rebels seeking to fill the void in their lives.
"Hush!" deals with the relationship between Katsuhiro (Seiichi Tanabe) and Naoya (Kazuya Takahashi), two sympathetic but naive homosexuals who, each in their own way, try to come to terms with the hardship of being gay in Japan. Naoya enjoys hanging out in gay bars; Katsuhiro, on the other hand, would like to settle down and have children just like straight couples, even though he has no intention of getting it on with a woman. As luck would have it, one of their conversations about children is overheard by Asako (Reiko Kataoka), a tough but unstable young woman who has reached the crossroads in her life where she has to decide whether to continue walking on the wild side or to settle down and try to find some mental peace. Taking a spontaneous liking to Katsuhiro, Asako offers to carry his baby, to be raised by the two of them in a "friendly" relationship. Naturally, the plan meets with opposition - not just from Naoya, who fears his female "rival" for Katsuhiro's affection more than any potential male rival, but also from one of Katsuhiro's colleagues, a doll-like girl who is convinced that Katsuhiro loves her and goes to great lengths to draw him into a relationship. And as if all that weren't bad enough, there are the men's dreaded relatives - Katsuhiro's family, who have no idea that he is gay and wish to see him happily married to a nice girl, and Naoya's mother, who has embraced her son's homosexuality so passionately that she regards any woman who might come between Naoya and Katsuhiro as The Enemy. Welcome to modern family life!
"Hush!" successfully addresses the issue of novel types of commitment in a society which is still largely intolerant of such relationships. Like the magnificent "Eureka," it posits the idea that it is acceptable to form a "family of friends" if the family into which one is born is unsatisfactory, which is a fairly controversial notion in family-oriented Japan. Notwithstanding its serious premise, though, "Hush!" is a light-hearted, gentle melodrama with flashes of hilarious brilliance. The interaction between the three leads is great, the supporting cast is superb, and if the film drags a bit towards the end, it does have the sort of ending which makes one leave the theatre with a grin on one's face, not to mention wondering what kind of triangle Hashiguchi will come up with next. He is pretty good at them, as his last two films demonstrate with flair.
Elaine
