Hey folks, Harry here... I must see TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKROH! I've read about it before, but I must see this film. That is the greatest title in the history of planet Earth. That should be displayed proudly upon the marquee of every mall theater in the midwest and Utah. I want to see this movie. Somebody, somewhere, help... HELP.... H-E-L-P!!!!
Howdy, boys! Harold Hellman here, your correspondent from last year's Seattle International Film Festival, back with more capsule writeups of what I'm seeing this year. I hope you find them interesting and useful; I've got a pretty good slate of films lined up. Below is Day One: Enjoy!
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SOFT FOR DIGGING
-- written and directed by J.T. Petty
As a rigorously formal exercise in atmospheric horror, "Soft for Digging" will reward patient viewers while alienating those with a more mainstream sensibility. Although I wouldn't characterize the film as entirely successful, it's also not wholly without something to offer.
The plot, such as it is, centers on an elderly hermit (Edmond Mercier) who witnesses a disturbing event and is haunted by it. No conventional summary, however, will capture the near-experimental tone of the film, as it isn't so much about what happens but what it feel like when it does. Writer-director J.T. Petty, clearly aiming for a stark minimalism, presents the story with virtually no spoken dialogue and long stretches of archly repetitive action. In addition, the film is broken into chapters, each introduced with a subtly wry title card (e.g., "Chapter II: A chance encounter with a strange couple; the occurrence of a horrible thing").
In this way, Petty evokes a strong sense of mood, effortlessly bringing out the oppressive chill that hangs over the wintry landscape. He suggests that less is more in this type of film, that one doesn't need a marching sequence of plot points in order to be creeped out, and makes a pretty good case. Unfortunately, towards the end of the film, he feels the unnecessary compulsion to begin explaining things and answering questions, and to give us a conventional climax, which is quite a bit less interesting than what has gone before. And he punctuates the film with a rather distasteful and shallow punchline, undermining what he's accomplished up to that point.
It's a promising beginning, to be sure, and his confident, uncluttered camerawork recalls the austerity of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films. It's too bad, though, that he's unable to maintain his discipline through to the end and deliver a powerful climax, or I might be more willing to recommend "Soft for Digging" to adventurous fans of the genre.
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TEKNOLUST
-- written and directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson
"Teknolust" is kind of a mess, but at least it's a reasonably entertaining mess. There's a lot going on idea-wise, but the ideas don't all connect consistently, and the result is a film that's engaging and pretty funny, if occasionally inadvertently so.
The magnificent Tilda Swinton plays Dr. Rosetta Stone (nudge-nudge), a scientist (the specific type is vague) who has apparently figured out a way to combine her DNA with computer software and has thus created a trio of intelligent avatars. These three are also played by Swinton, and are named after their colors: Ruby, Olive, and Marinne -- in other words, red, green, and blue, or RGB, get it? Their behavior begins to exceed her expectations and intent, and before long Ruby's seductive excursions into the real world (the "jungle") have accidentally precipitated a new viral infection in her randomly chosen partners.
It's a fairly ridiculous premise, and is usually played for tongue-in-cheek laughs, a la the films of John Paisz. (The casting of Karen Black as a maverick investigator underlines the film's satirical intent.) But there's a more serious, sensitive subplot involving Ruby's growing emotional connection to a delicately odd copy-shop staffer played by Jeremy Davies, and whenever the film tries to draw us into this story, it stops being good-silly and begins faltering toward bad-silly, i.e. awkward and unconvincing. Swinton gives her best in the multiple roles, which of course is quite good indeed, and succeeds in creating four entirely distinct personalities, but her presence in what frequently comes off as absurdist sketch comedy sometimes feels like a jarring mismatch.
The uneven script doesn't help her much, either. The film's more thoughtful ideas -- the way the three avatars seem to manifest as variously hidden aspects of Stone's character, for example -- are undermined by an indulgence in overly cute gags and schtick. When one of the computer-generated women learns that Stone had intended them to assist in menial labor, she says, "I don't do windows." As in Windows, get it? Ditto the conversation between two scientists: "Do you think it's possible for a computer virus to cross into people?" Pause, shrug: "Sure." There are lots of these self-aware nudges, and while they're usually pretty funny, they make it impossible to take the rest of the film seriously.
Some of the technical elements are a little distracting, also. The film is shot in high-def digital video, which is crisp and colorful when the characters are still, but which introduces muddy indistinctness whenever anyone is in motion. The three-color scheme of the three avatars is emphasized a bit too strongly, also (e.g., when Ruby visits a pastry shop, the counter tray features green, blue, and pink donuts), which contributes to the overly cutesy tone of the production.
And as if that weren't enough, the underlying thematic ideas seem hazy and ill-defined. Although there's a pretty strong neofeminist undercurrent in the film (at one point, Black hears about all the infected men being locked into quarantine, and wonders why it's a problem), it's juxtaposed with a plot point about semen being required to keep the avatars healthy. And while Dr. Stone herself seems somewhat uptight throughout the story, it turns out that all she really needs is to get laid. Again, this confusion makes it hard to take the movie's legitimate ideas seriously. With a prominent feminist critic like Ruby Rich named in the thank-yous at the end of the credits, you'd think this aspect of the film would have been more carefully considered, but no.
Still, the audience, seemed to like it, and it's certainly worth seeing for Swinton's unique performance, which elevates the material considerably. As a coherent artistic statement, though, "Teknolust" falls short.
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TEENAGE HOOKER BECAME KILLING MACHINE IN DAEHAKROH
written and directed by Nam Gee-Woong
"The title alone," said the woman behind me as she pondered her best-of-fest ballot before the movie, "gets an extra point." And indeed, "Teenage Hooker" is exploitation trash of the first order, a Korean shot-on-video cheapie that exists solely to deliver Joe Bob's three B's: blood, bullets, and breasts.
It is, however, elevated (if that's the right word) by its sheer random perversity, a damn-the-rules sensibility that has the titular hero (Lee So-Yun) disco-bopping in an alley with a villainous puffy-headed john (Kim Dae-Tong) mere moments before a couple of thugs throw her onto a glowing bed and saw her legs off mid-thigh. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a movie that featured Mozart, Massive Attack, AND the Gypsy Kings on the soundtrack?
It should be made clear that this is by no means what you would call a good movie. The storytelling is crude, the budget runs into the tens of dollars, and at barely an hour long the movie still feels padded out and draggy at times. Further, like the Hong Kong flicks that clearly inspired the director, the plot cheerfully rips stuff off right and left; note the five-minute sequence unapologetically swiped from "La Femme Nikita," complete with gift gun and bricked-up bathroom exit.
None of this mattered to the midnight audience, though. Whether howling at the bizarrely overlong sewing scene, groaning at the grotesque shot of the fetus hanging by its umbilical cord from a woman's ruptured abdomen, or cheering as the newly cyborged hooker deploys her secret weapon from below her skirt, this was exactly what the late-night crowd was lookng for.
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Harold Hellman
