As with Guo’s earlier feature How is Your Fish Today? (2006), which blended three forms of narrative, UFO in Her Eyes utilises multiple perspectives and aesthetic sensibilities while never losing track of its central conceit. The investigator interviews the inhabitants of the village to establish what happened on the day of the extra-terrestrial visitation, prompting various flashbacks that serve to elaborate on the opening sequence, and subsequently remains to observe the social-political flux that follows. His face is never seen as the investigator’s contact with the villagers is shot from his point-of-view in stark black-and-white, making him the literally faceless representative of the state who sees China’s population in simple terms, such as ‘farmer’, ‘local’ or ‘migrant’. The rest of the film bursts with kaleidoscopic colour as Guo vividly conveys a region in a state of sudden transformation due to capitalist impulses, with the natural wonder of the area being replaced by tacky commercial enterprise. Kwon Yun’s burgeoning celebrity status promises to free her from a life of hard labour in the local mine, while the headmaster decides to divorce his domineering wife in order to marry his illiterate lover, but the corporate culture that encroaches on the village proves to be a further trap. Declared to be the ‘model peasant’ of the year by the opportunistic Chang, she seeks escape from a society which is inherently contradictory in that it is wary of outsiders yet willing to ‘open up’ in order to reap the economic benefits of such attention.

Chang still believes in Maoist collectivism and proudly informs the investigator that the former Chairman was born in the region, yet is happy to host a motivational speaker who delivers ‘re-education’ lectures on how to get rich quick on the basis that you should, ‘only invest other people’s money’. The business guru cheerfully explains that, ‘the packaging is more important than the product’, while the villagers repeat his words in unison. The stability of the village is threatened by this ill-suited fusion of ideologies as farmers lose their land to make way for construction, prompting the threat of a peasant revolt. Others relish their newfound wealth, such as the village secretary who becomes the boss of the new five-star hotel and offers the investigator a fifty per-cent discount on a room for the night, with the option of having one of the ‘delightful hostesses’ stop by for ‘full service’. Idiosyncrasies abound, with Kier eventually reappearing, his character identified as an American named Simon Frost, although the actor maintains his German accent, while the acknowledged references to the exaggerated contrasts of Mikhail Kalatozov’s legendary I am Cuba (1964) by cinematographer Michal Tywoniuk lend the film a surreal visual palette. UFO in Her Eyes is an abstract yet accessible critique of modern China which hits its satirical targets while remaining entirely sympathetic to the plight of its heroine who, in a beautifully realised coda, finds the will to take control of her destiny and embark on an individual journey towards ‘the future’.

Guo Xialou will be a Jury Member at the 2013 Chinese Visual Culture Festival, which runs from May 9-June 2 at King’s College London. Tickets can be ordered from the event website:

http://chinesevisualfestival.org/films-2013/

At PIFF (now BIFF), the Busan shopping/restaurant districts I witnessed were accessible by subway and were filled with people of all walking walks of life, young and old, male and female.  These streets were for pedestrians.  You could be a part of the scene of being seen without making any purchase at all, or through a small purchase of food or drink.  Trucks and emergency vehicles were occasionally present, but for the most part, private cars had limited access to the spaces people wanted to be merely because they were obstructed by the tight, circuitous design of the streets/alleys.  This obstruction of private car use, along with what I would discover in visiting Japan, where there isn’t much side street parking allowed, is a simple measure that can create a vibrant public culture.  If you want to create a booming district that lasts, design it for pedestrians, not cars.

In later trips to Seoul, and then Tokyo and Hiroshima, Japan, I would find the same vibrant public street culture I found in Busan.  These trips helped me realize I had a desire for such a public culture, a desire dormant inside me for so long, thanks to the soul-crushing isolation encouraged by the suburban standard of my youth.  I live in San Francisco now.  It’s better than the average U.S. city in having vibrant neighborhoods that are fairly accessible without a car.  Plus, pedestrians have a right of way here that regularly calms the entitlement private car users impose on other places.  By rethinking parking policies and transit, San Francisco and other cities are slowly considering factors that promote private car use and, by extension, prohibit the creation of vibrant public spaces.  But cities like Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, or Hiroshima already have in place what it takes to enable bustling public spaces.

I was reminded of how much I missed such vibrant public culture when Yak Films uploaded its Seoul series on YouTube.  Yak Films is a hip hop collective of film-makers documenting hip hop dancers throughout the globe.  From the YouTube sensation American known as Nonstop (Marquese Scott) to French dancers Les Twins (identical twin brothers Laurent and Larry Bourgeois) and Dey Dey (Delphine Nguyen), Yak Films documents dancers in organized battles along with placing the dancers in public spaces to dazzle us with their ‘kinesthetic capital’, the physical resources afforded by their dedication to their craft as dancers.

Locking Khan

The dancers Yak Films features in their Seoul series are Funky Lia, Locking Khan, and Poppin’ J.*  Locking Khan’s video has him play a character who is in the middle of his work day and finds himself drawn to the music he hears.  He eventually discards his task and walks through the alleys to perform further for the YubTube audience. The phrase ‘lock-step’ might need to be re-worked to define its opposite as experienced through Locking Khan’s choreography.  As if to hand matters off to Poppin’ J, Poppin’ J appears at the end of Locking Khan’s video.  Poppin’ J’s video begins at an apex of where two narrow alleys meet outside one of the preponderance of al fresco eating establishments available in South Korea.  Poppin’ J will later take his craft to an alley outlined by various beauty product establishments.  As for Funky Lia, she dances in the rain, eventually heading underground to dance in an underground mall and a subway train.  Each of these videos have the presence of unsuspecting bystanders witnessing an impromptu dance session.  (There’s a non-Yak Film where Funky Lia is in an abandoned subway pedestrian passageway all alone until an ajumma walks by paying no attention to Funky Lia’s popping.  It’s a wonderful demonstration of the public power of the ajumma who doesn’t give a crap if you’re filming a video.  It’s her public space too, dammit!  Ajumma hwa-i-t’ing!)  Each video shows the dancers from behind walking through the alleys from one spot to the next, adding a linear narrative to the spectacle, plus showing the strut/stroll is just as much a part of the performance of hip hop culture.

One of the other aspects of Yak Film’s Seoul series that I appreciate is how Yak Films challenges the U.S. mainstream media’s penchant to shorthand Hip Hop as some monolithic entity, particularly around issues of sexism/misogyny.  Funky Lia’s performances, along with the French dancer Dey Dey, highlight an aspect of hip hop where women performers are not sexualized.  None of Funky Lia’s movements are meant to mimic sexual congress.  They are all performed to demonstrate the expert control she has of her body to perform illusions of fluidity, floating, and flux.  The dance forms of popping and locking and robot-ing and tut-ing work better when ones clothing is loose.  It just doesn’t work when your clothes are tight or when you are dressed in the scantily ways demanded of most KPop girl groups.  There’s another video of Funky Lia (not Yak Films) where she totally rocks a jacket with excellent effect.  Back to Yak, there are moments in the performance where Funky Lia’s eyes focus away from the viewer into the distance, often when mimicking robot moves.  Such refusal to return the viewer’s gaze is a form of control while still choosing to be on display as a dancer.  It’s a female dancer’s way of maintaining agency, maintaining ownership of her body by deflecting the male objectifying gaze.  If hip hop truly won’t stop, it’s dance genres like this that enable women more control of  their own representation that will propel hip hop further forward.

Funky Lia

Funky Lia’s performance in public spaces also highlights changes in South Korean public culture since the late 1990′s.  I have had a few Korean-American female friends tell me about being accosted on the streets of Seoul when smoking in the early 90′s.  This was one sign of the patriarchal control of women in South Korean publics.  Rachael Miyung Joo argues that the major breakthrough for Korean women in public spaces was the 2002 World Cup, where the waves of crimson red throughout South Korean public squares was dominated and heavily organized by young women.  As Kang Okhae, a university administrator interviewed as part of Joo’s wonderful book Transnational Sport: Gender, Media, and Global Korea (Duke University Press, 2012), said at the time of the 2002 World Cup,

“Our country’s women are finally breaking out of the Confucian tradition and screaming freely.  I see it as a liberating experience for women.  We were always told to be very quiet and to stay inside when we were young, and now have the opportunity to move our bodies and to be loud in public” (p 191).

Although Joo details the complex progressive/not-so-progressive aspects of this shift in South Korean public culture, Funky Lia’s survival in this public space, (in the making-of video, she herself mentions feeling ‘ambivalent’ about the anger she might experience from passersby in the subway segment), tells a great deal of how things have changed in South Korea since the 1990′s.  Funky Lia’s non-sexual bodily display is being ‘loud in public’.  And perhaps this is partly why one of the female clothing store associates steps out and applauds her Seoul sister’s performance.

Funky Lia elaborates in the making-of video, “I really hope my dancing is strong enough to represent my country.”  Along with resonating with Joo’s commentary on the nationalism of sport in South Korea**, Funky Lia, along with her compatriots Locking Khan and Poppin J, definitely have the skills to represent.  But these Yak Films, by putting their participants in public spaces, represent a respected South Korea as well.

FOOTNOTES

* I have been unable to find the non-stage names of each of these South Korean dancers.  If anyone knows their names so I can properly credit them as I did Scott, the Bourgeois brothers, and Nguyen, please let me know.

** I consider dance a ‘sport’, which,  to truly explain, requires its own essay.  Let me just say here that I look at sport partly as displays of kinesthetic capital.  Each sport enables certain displays of physical performance – speed, gymnastics, acrobatics, dexterity, endurance, etc.  American grid iron football has the interception and the kick-off return; Australian Rules Football has the mark and the occasional contorted shots for goal; various dance genres highlight difference aspects of physical control; and so on and so forth with other sports.  As a result, I include dance and certain circus performances under the wider rubric of sport.  I am not alone in this, for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California included dance documentaries in its second ‘Sports Films’ series a few years back.

**********************

Here are links to the videos discussed

Funky Lia Yak Films video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXegvzmVfCw

Funky Lia Yak Films making-of video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH164ii8EMI

Funky Lia non-Yak Ajumma reference – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-3LXSHw2zg

Funky Lia jacket – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROq2XbAsW2U

Poppin’ J’s Yak Film – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqZA1Y2kmtE

Locking Khan  Yak Film – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmza40YiUKI

In the interim, you can go to the official website for The Defector - http://www.thedefectormovie.com/index.php – where there is an interactive documentary about the life of one of the defectors featured in the wider documentary – http://experience.thedefectormovie.com/

Also, for those who like to read topical literature before/after seeing certain films, Words Without Borders just posted a series of North Korean Defector literature that can be found here – http://wordswithoutborders.org/current-issue/

Finally, for more information on the Sausalito Film Festival running from May 17-19 – http://www.sausalitofilmfestival.com

The opening twenty minutes provide a beautifully sustained set-up as Simon drives to a deserted wasteland to pick-up a suicidal young woman (Keisha Castle-Hughes) he has connected with through a chat room. She goes by the handle of Jellyfish and their encounter is initially awkward, showing how people can share their deepest thoughts when shrouded by online anonymity yet struggle to strike a rapport when they meet in the real world. Simon’s insistence on not being seen together at a roadside diner implies that he is not be trusted, although Jellyfish is too despondent about her last day not being ‘perfect’ to notice the signs and, after some coercing, he drains her blood in an abandoned warehouse. Later efforts to acquire blood do not go as smoothly: Simon ends up on a late-night joyride with the perverted Renfield (Trevor Morgan), who he meets at a vampire fan club, becoming an unwitting accomplice to rape and murder, while he narrowly escapes death by toxic chemicals when an invitation for double suicide actually turns out to be a group activity. This latter incident does, however, bring him into contact with Ladybird (Adelaide Clemens), whose tragic tale of losing her son to an abusive boyfriend provides Simon with an intervention of sorts. These supporting characters drift in and out, with the persistence – or emotional neediness – of the besotted Laura threatening to expose Simon’s secret life as she tries to get closer to the seemingly mild-mannered teaching by visiting his apartment to prepare dinners.

In terms of Iwai’s previous work, Vampire is closest in tone to All About Lily Chou Chou due to its underlying coldness and emphasis on the cruel lengths that people will go to in order to achieve some degree of human connection. The internet bulletin boards that became a crucial part of the earlier film’s aesthetic and point of entry to the inner world of its lonely characters is here referred to, rather than illustrated. However, the director again positions cyberspace as a refuge for tortured souls, while noting the potentially destructive consequences of building ‘relationships’ with strangers. It’s tastefully scored by Iwai himself and shot on crisp digital video, with this particular modification of vampire myth in Western culture placed in the context of everyday anxiety, although some of the severely tilted camera angles are a little distracting. Shooting in remote spaces, the confines of Simon’s home and the sterile environment of his classroom, Iwai achieves a sense of mood while avoiding genre trappings. The main problem with Vampire is that the behaviour of its title character is never properly explained, while Zegers is a rather stiff lead whose attempts to suggest moral conflict with regards to his manipulative actions are less compelling than the shattered emotional states projected by the more capable actresses with whom he episodically shares the screen. Vampire is often strangely hypnotic in its study of a suicide enabler, but the lack of insight ultimately makes it a hollow experience regardless of Iwai’s skilful compositions.

Pedro González-Rubio casts a few of the few remaining residents of a village in Nara prefecture in a ‘documentary’ called Inori  (2012). Produced by NARAtive, a production company associated with the Nara International Film Festival established to encourage cinematic works in the prefecture, Inori is an example of cinema as meditation. From the opening and closing scenes of the mountain village, to the lovely moment of dissipating fog San Franciscans will know so well, Inori  is as much about contemplation of the now as it is a snapshot of the voids in a town from which young folk have flocked away for better economic and social opportunities. I anticipate that Inori is a perfect film companion to compliment Anne Allison’s upcoming book Precarious Japan (Duke University Press, 2013) where Allison “chronicles the loss of home affecting many Japanese, not only in the literal sense but also in the figurative sense of not belonging”. The loneliness of one resident in this sparsely populated village commenting on how much he misses the presence of others in his town hits a truly sad note, so much I found myself wanting to stop watching. But I held that tone and continued through the film like these residents continue through their quiet days. In spite of that sadness, those who find sustenance in nature will find much to appreciate in the images González-Rubio pauses upon. Inori, which means ‘prayer’, is a film to contemplate, not to ruminate. It is a film to sit with for the ambiance and mood, rather than to push you out of your seat from the adrenaline rush.

That adrenaline rush comes with the South Korean film Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (Yoon Jong-bin, 2012). Filled with spontaneous and premeditated pummeling, Nameless Gangster is a film that refuses to romanticize its characters, for the violence and immoral choices here have dire consequences and the main character presents himself as a fool who stumbles upon power, rather than a man with much dignity. That man is played by Choi Min-shik. For San Franciscans who didn’t get enough of Choi in New World (Park Hoon-jung, 2013) while it played at the Daly City Century Cinema and San Francisco’s 4 Star, Nameless Gangster brings us 2 hours of Choi in Busan dialect, a pathetic player playing with pathos in the gangster world. Besides Choi’s usual brilliance, the other standout for me was Kwak Do-hwan who plays the prosecutor with expert control. I haven’t been paying attention to Kwak’s career, but this role has him on my radar now. [Editor's note - also check out Colleen's New York International Film Festival review of Nameless Gangster here]

A career that has been on my radar for some time is that of British documentarian Kim Longinotto. During one of my trips to the International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul, her film Sisters in Law: Stories from a Camaroonian Court (2005) was featured. After returning to the U.S., I caught a retrospective of her work at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley, where I was able to provide her with a copy of the Seoul film festival’s program. It was at the PFA that I saw two of her handful of films on Japan – Eat the Kimono (1989), which follows the feminist performer Hanayashi Genshu, and Dream Girls (1994), which documents the popular Takarazuka Revue where women play both male and female roles in stage musicals outside Osaka. Her films are in depth looks at the lives of women around the world, always filmed with an unvarnished approach, refusing to look away from the difficult conditions many of these women face, yet demonstrating the perseverance and strength of each woman featured. Her subjects always have their agency fully on display.

Recently, Longinotto has been spending time in India and this year’s SFIFF brings us Salma (2013), in which Longinotto follows her eponymous subject, the most celebrated female poet in the Tamil language. Salma wrote many of these poems while imprisoned by her family and in-laws for 25 years. This family imprisonment of girls once they reach puberty is a custom within this particular village, the kind of custom that makes us pause the proverb ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, reminding us that some of the ways we collectively raise our children can do harm as well as good. The frank discussions of this practice by women and the rationalizations by the men are part of what makes Longinotto’s work so valuable, and so heart-wrenching. When Salma’s husband talks of how he expresses his ‘anger’ and we see Salma’s body language slump as far away as she can while still sitting next to him, when we watch a Hindu wedding where the young girl appears to be heaving back breaths of deep sadness, we are told so much about what is hidden underneath village life for these women, a pain imprisoned in the norms of the communal chest of this village that Salma’s poetry exhaled onto the Tamil-speaking public, and now further onward to a San Francisco audience.

So many scenes in Salma will resonate with me for some time. When Salma’s sister prays in a chair for one of the five moments Muslims are called to prayer during the day, we see a male member of the family sleeping on a bed, showing us the occasional double-standard demanded for ritualistic religious devotion. There’s another scene where Salma is positioned where we can’t see her as she speaks with a burqa-wearing woman who greatly admires Salma’s work. What’s striking about this scene is how the burqa prohibits the viewer from knowing for sure when this other woman is speaking, demonstrating in a new way how burqas can silence women. This scene, along with underscoring how many women greatly appreciate Salma’s poetry and life choices, challenges the view rationalized by some men in the documentary that the burqa ‘liberates’ women. All this provides background for a scene near the end of the film where Salma brushes her hair for the camera, for the anticipated audience she does not know, making such an everyday act a powerful gesture of resistance in this particular village.

 For more information and tickets to SFIFF screenings and events, please visit http://festival.sffs.org/

Adib Zaini’s opening story ‘The Runner’ sets the tone with vivid efficiency: a rebellious youth takes an evening job at an internet café and becomes embroiled in the heroin trade, proving to be a proficient drug dealer but too seduced by the lure of quick money to anticipate the repercussions associated with walking away. The specific workings of the narcotics network are sketched (patron requests for non-existent computer terminals are actually orders for product) while the students of the protagonist’s high school are seen to be as chemically dependent as those customers who frequent her place of part-time employment. Shaz Johar’s splendidly cynical ‘Asian Angel’ offers a celebrity culture spin on Sunset Boulevard (1950) as a self-absorbed diva meets a mysterious end in a hotel bathtub after assaulting the Indonesian actress who may be having an affair with her businessman husband. A jilted lover tries to win back his ex-girlfriend but keeps falling into bed with other women in Fadzlishah Johanabas’ ‘Kiss from a Rose’, which conveys the obsessive yearning of a self-destructive romantic whose daily routine is heading dangerously close to stalker territory. Marc de Faoite’s unsettling ‘Mamak Murder Mystery’ follows the efforts of a restaurant employee to deduce who has killed his co-worker as everyone he surveys on the nightshift becomes a possible suspect. The most graphic story in the anthology is arguably Megat Ishak’s grisly ‘Cannibal vs. Ah Long’ in which money lenders become the target of a smiling cannibal with an insatiable appetite. His devouring of debt collectors is perversely justifiable in a society that prompts cash-strapped citizens to borrow funds at rates of interest that rapidly escalate, making it impossible to keep up with repayments.

Certain spaces and industries reoccur throughout the anthology, with shopping centres becoming places of anxiety in two genuinely haunting entries. Power walking around the mall becomes an exercise in vigilance in Preeta Samarsan’s ‘Rukun Tetangga’ as a retiree becomes determined to stop a child killer from striking again, with the incessant patrolling of the city’s anonymous retail outlets ultimately resulting in the self-appointed protector’s exhaustion. Superstition comes to the fore in Eeleen Lee’s ‘The Oracle of Truth’ in which a fortune teller has a nasty run-in with a gang of thugs as traditional practises and vicious opportunism tragically collide in a pedestrian street mall. The sex industry features in Kris Williamson’s ‘Chasing Butterflies in the Night’, which deals with a serial killer who preys on prostitutes, while Dina Zaman’s stylised essay ‘After Dark, My Love’ explores the city’s increasingly blasé attitude towards red light activities as extra service is now offered in upscale establishments rather than being restricted to its back streets. As in the best anthologies, the stories in KL NOIR: RED complement one another while evidencing singular voices and varied approaches to narrative form. Some contributors utilise crime scenarios, with others skirting the edges of genre to express urban malaise through style tropes, while the references to specific areas that are scattered throughout provide a rough guide to a Kuala Lumpur which is at once tangible yet scarily unknowable. Traversing this city via noir tapestry suggests a sinister range of interconnected milieus from which curious readers are unlikely to emerge unscathed, although the intoxicating combination of Malay culture and genre trappings should ensure that most will want to recover in time for the next volume in the series.

KL NOIR: RED is published by Fixi Novo, an imprint of Buku Fixi.

Links

KL NOIR: RED @ Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/KL-NOIR-Red-Various/dp/9670374235/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366426744&sr=1-1&keywords=kl+noir

Amir Muhammad Blog:

http://amirmu.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/into-to-first-fixi-novo-anthology-kl.html

KL NOIR Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/KLNoir?fref=ts

Shimizu acknowledges the status of Reincarnation as another entry in a possibly over-crowded genre through the film-within-a-film device on which the narrative is pivoted, playing with the audience’s knowledge of the production of such features and their conceptual roots in superstition or legend. Matsumara is a director who specialises in horror and has built up a certain level of name value in the field: this means that his attempt to up the ante with his latest project by making a horror film that is more disturbing than his previous offerings, can be read as a commentary on the challenges faced by such real-life genre practitioners as Hideo Nakata, Takashi Miike, and Shimizu himself when revisiting the same scare tactics. A scene in which an actress with an interest in the occult is pulled into another dimension through the bookshelves of a library is effective despite being a horror cliché, but Shimizu finds real terror by exploring the creative process. The possibility that Matsumara is the reincarnation of the killer suggests that film-makers can become possessed by madness in pursuit of professional success, although this turns out to be a red herring, with Shimizu instead showing his fictional counterpart to be hard-working, well-organized, and responsible filmmaker, running his set in an efficient, albeit slightly-detached, manner. In terms of making comparisons between Shimizu and other purveyors of J-Horror, Reincarnation has similarities with Miike’s much-discussed Audition in that it is the sheer intensity of the final fifteen minutes that make the film particularly memorable.

However, the content of the final reel owes less to Miike’s painfully extended torture session than it does to the climax of Lucio Fulci’s cult classic The Beyond (1981), in which the beleaguered hero and heroine do battle with zombies in the corridors of a hospital before being transported to an apocalyptic wasteland. Under the strict direction of Matsumara, the increasingly distressed Nagisa portrays Chisato in a crucial scene located at the hotel. This prompts visions of past events which are filtered through the mise-en-scène of the production in which she is starring, resulting in severe psychological disintegration. Shimizu cross-cuts between Nagisa’s unravelling and two related situations, thereby operating at multiple levels of reality: Nagisa’s agent watches 8mm footage of the actual hotel murders, while psychology student Yayoi (Karina Nose) arrives at the hotel following her academic investigation of cryptomnesia (the return of memories that are forgotten and, therefore, unrecognised), an idea strongly opposed by her professor. Such structural audacity runs the risk of causing audience disorientation, but a clear sense of time and space is maintained by the editorial skills of Nobuyuki Takahashi, enabling the viewer to follow Shimizu’s twisted logic en route to the big reveal. Anyone who is somehow left unshaken by this sequence will surely be unnerved by the genuinely creepy ‘talking doll’ that turns up in the epilogue. A master-class in misdirection, Reincarnation ranks alongside Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Retribution (2006) and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Nightmare Detective (2007) as one of the best J-Horror films of the late-2000s.

Ten years quickly pass in the blink of a well placed dissolve and Battosai the Manslayer has changed his name to Himura Kenshin, the sword with a heart. Japan is in the throes of the Meiji period, earth-tone kimonos being replaced with powder white naval uniforms, and our reluctant hero has joined the ever-growing mass of wandering directionless samurai. Though having vowed 10 years ago to never take another life a series of murders that were done under his old name push the former manslayer to uncover the culprits. Along the way he befriends a series of quirky allies and fights an army of theatrically dressed villains.

If this plot sounds rote and almost cartoonish then it most likely will not surprise you to learn that Rurouni Kenshin began it’s life as a popular manga, written by Nobuhiro Watsuki, then translated onto television as a 95-episode anime before finally transplanted onto the big screen. Straddling the tropes of the jidai-geki/chambara and the superhero genre, sadly Ohtomo’s picture leans far more heavily towards the strained seriousness of commercial blockbuster cinema.

Lacking the bleak atmosphere and complicated anti-heroes that were synonymous with chambara auteurs like Kenji Misumi or Hideo Gosha, Rurouni Kenshin only reminds fans just how far the genre has fallen. Whereas previous films of the sort never shied away from exposing the violence and brutality possible in all men, be they samurai or otherwise, what we get in Rurouni Kenshin are bloodless and antiseptic duels. Blood may stain the carefully art directed sets and scenery but we never completely believe that the actors katanas make contact with one another. No longer is there the excitement that comes from watching two morally compromised characters dueling to the death. Instead, sound effects of clashing swords and carefully edited cuts are what we are left with for excitement. And replacing moral ambiguity, there is a comic book simplicity to the plot. The bad guys, for the most part, all wear black and on the side of good are the good-looking ones who have only the best intentions at heart.

Takeru Sato, famous for his recurring role as the superhero Kamen Rider, does a decent enough job playing the reformed manslayer Kenshin. His soft somewhat androgynous features make it easy for the viewer and the cast of characters in the film to let down their guard when he appears. When blades are crossed though, it is quite a chore to believe that Sato is a menacing threat for anyone who dares cross his path.  Sato plays Kenshin as too much of a blank slate. His dreamy-eyed stare may make a few girls swoon, but he’s no match for a Tatsuya Nakadai, Tomisaburo Wakayama, or Raizo Ichikawa, all of whom made their mark in chambara cinema playing wounded masculine characters.

The only actor that stood out from the relatively humdrum cast is Teruyuki Kagawa, an actor that ironically made his bones in the Japanese film industry playing subtle oftentimes repressed characters. In Rurouni Kenshin though he hams it up as Kanryu Takeda, a Snidely Whiplash-esque archenemy that has far more in common with mid-Twentieth century Bond villains than he does Meiji era business tycoons. And, taking a cue from Tony Montana, Takeda makes basking in his own self-important glory a true art.

As underlings, Takeda has a posse of pseudo-supernatural thugs dressed in middle-eastern garb. However, their role as henchmen is relegated to being punching bags for the good guys. The only character under Takeda’s employ that had a shade of depth was Megumi (Yu Aoi), who vacillates between femme fatale, tragic heroine, and girl-next-door. The entire story pivots around the relationship between Megumi and Takeda, making their love-hate co-dependent relationship far more interesting than the white bread prim and proper romance between Kenshin and Kaoru (Emi Takei) that the film trots out as its sorry excuse for a subplot.

Those with a deep love and affection for exciting chambara pictures or introspective and artistically minded jidai-geki films will find a lot wanting with Rurouni Kenshin. Ohtomo’s movie caters more to the J-Pop/animation crowd, and though I find nothing wrong with either art forms after seeing Rurouni Kenshin you might want to cleanse your cinematic palette with something far more “substantial”.

In terms of presenting a cinematic tour of an East Asian metropolis, My Dear Enemy could be considered to be the South Korean equivalent to Satoshi Miki’s equally delightful comedy Adrift in Tokyo (2007), in which a cash-strapped student debtor is taken on a voyage of self-discovery around the Japanese capital by an unusually sympathetic loan shark. Both films use their respective cities as a backdrop for timely introspection as characters find themselves at a crossroads while the sights of Tokyo and Seoul gradually achieve resonance. Byung-woon and Hee-Su travel around Seoul as he tries to scrape together the money from various friends, of which he has many, including women to whom he may offer more than just small talk. Their journey takes in a range of uptown and downtown locations: the rooftop of a major corporation, an apartment in a modern complex, an eatery with expensive décor, a neighbourhood school, a suburban biker party and a less affluent area where Byung-woon is reduced to borrowing cash from a single mother. To someone who has not visited Seoul, My Dear Enemy may appear to utilise a wide range of spaces around the city, but most of the scenes were reportedly shot in the Yongsan-gu district. Nonetheless, a varied use of locations ensures that the film appears to cover much of the modern cityscape from the commercial centre to residential areas. My Dear Enemy is beautifully shot by cinematographer Choi Sang-ho, whose crisp aesthetic captures Seoul from early morning to dusk.

If most romances hinge on chance encounters or grand gestures, My Dear Enemy revolves around shared history; Hee-Su is still charmed by Byung-woon’s playful nature, yet behaves coldly towards him for much of the day as his ability to win over anyone in his social orbit may have been the cause of their break-up. The screenplay by Lee and Park Eun-yeong, working from a story by the Japanese writer Asuko Taira, sensibly favours exchanges over exposition, allowing the audience to make assumptions based on behaviour rather than being bombarded with a series of belated recriminations. Hee-Su‘s manner varies from business-like to passive-aggressive, suggesting that subsequent relationships could have also failed, making Byung-woo seem like the ‘one that got away’ by comparison, or that pursuit of professional success (she dresses well and drives a new car) has left her perpetually single. Byung-woon is easy-going and talkative, but there is a melancholy quality to the manner in which he recalls how happy Hee-Su appeared to be when she ended their relationship that hints at thoughts of what could have been. Even the matter of monetary debt is seen from more than one angle, in that it is certainly financial burden, but can also be a means of maintaining ties to another person in an increasingly isolated modern landscape. My Dear Enemy is at once realistic and whimsical, a rare film that finds its characters at their lowest economic or emotional points, yet results in an upbeat coda without any sense of contrivance.

An earlier version of this review was posted at newkoreancinema.com

The stylistic choices and futuristic overtones of the film are apparent almost instantly when viewing The Avenging Fist. Rather than plucking from any weighty or important science fiction landmarks of the last few decades, our preliminary director, Andrew Lau, seemingly lifts the film’s aesthetic from Danny Cannon’s much-reviled 1995 adaption of Judge Dredd.  Because of this stylistic choice, we are presented with a film that’s not so much a dark vision of the future but instead a film that is grounded in a overwhelming feeling of camp, from supporting star Sammo Hung’s silver cowboy-hat (which is made even more ridiculous when, in one scene in the film, he is in a boardroom with a collection of people wearing nothing but every-day, very non-futuristic suit and ties) to the overabundance of leather and vinyl costumes even incidental characters are seen wearing.

Speaking of Sammo, the seasoned-actor/director is given a somewhat meaty role, although sadly, no space to present any form of action prowess. Along with Sammo, we have Yuen Biao cast against type as Thunder, one of the main henchman in the film who comes to play a pivotal role in the narrative, although depressingly, is depth-wise dormant and only given the opportunity to act as a brain dead brute the entire film. Wang Lee-Hom, our leading man, is pleasant, if not a force great enough to carry the picture and Kristy Yeung, our damsel in distress is far too restraint in her role, often reciting dialogue in a manner not honest to the emotion or situation of the character in that particular scene or part of the film. The attempt at raising emotion, particularly near the end of the film involving both her and co-star Stephen Fung is sappy and pitiful in both the acting on offer and haphazard narrative choice they are dealt with. Also thrown into the mix is Roy Cheung as a malicious techno-Nazi who’s constant rambling is at odds with the fast paced nature of the film and Chin Ka-Lok who sadly, close to 40 at this point in time, appearing as a supposedly youthful, rebellious scamp on a sky-scooter, part of the same group of friends 10 years his junior.

What’s left of any semblance of a live-action Tekken appears to have most probably been left on the drawing-room floor. Apart from a couple of characters somewhat resembling their video-game counterparts, the story, setting and most of the characters are a world-apart from the grounded, martial-arts tournament world of the aforementioned franchise. Tekken comparisons aside not only is the above-mentioned Combat 21, played by Roy Cheung, resemble a live-action M. Bison, the constant mention of the elusive ‘Power Glove’ will most probably leave children of the ’80s in a Wizard-induced daze. As with much of the technology in The Avenging Fist, which is uninspired, creatively speaking (the answer to communication in this future are finger phones – yes, finger phones. In this, one of the most uninspired examples of future-tech presented in the film, the fault seems to be more a factor of budget rather than imagination) so are the fight scenes.

When it comes to the action, what is on show here is, unsurprisingly for a Andrew Lau film, but surprising for a film co-directed by Corey Yuen, very stylized.  With a reliance on CGI, not to enhance, but more than often to create. Power orbs, waves of thunder, clouds of light and the actors themselves at times are formed in fairly dated CGI and engage in high-flying, almost turn-based RPG-style brawls. That’s not to say there isn’t some hand-to-hand based combat present because there is, but what minuscule amount on offer here is not worth speaking of. The vast, but vacant battles could be placed into the eye-candy category at a stretch.  Maybe back in 2001 this all seemed fairly cutting-edge, but today the special effects look strikingly average and are most definitely unengaging. For me, practical effects will nearly always age better than computer-generated ones and here, a film released just over a decade ago, now serves as a prime example of that notion. Not to say that this particular part of the film is a complete failure- the staccato, jerky way in which the film is edited around Thunder’s moves and attacks in particular definitely give the impression of speed and deadliness and is effective- but not particularly easy to follow.

The film has far too many puzzling stylistic and narrative choices (including a cameo by Ekin Cheng playing a young Sammo Hung which seems more like a gratuitous cameo of a then-immensely popular young star) and stellar performances and lightweight action scenes that make the film tough to endure. It’s somewhat commendable for the filmmakers to have produced a viable commercial product after such a major set back early on in the film’s creation.  Also praise-worthy is the fact the film is not only fluffy, but director Andrew Lau embraces the fluff, embraces the light sci-fi tone and revels and celebrates in the film’s shortcomings as a (nearly) celluloid video-game. Not only is Yuen Biao’s character, Thunder, visually comparable to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man, The Avenging Fist as a piece of film also similar to the iconic L. Frank Baum character; both are shiny, sleek and sadly, lacking a heart. Unlike the Tin Man, though, this film is more than happy to function without one.

 …

Tom Kent-Williams is an amateur writer currently residing in Birmingham, England. He has been in love with Asian cinema since seeing Akira for the first time and has a slight man-crush on Chow Yun-fat. Hong Kong cinema floats his boat big time, along with synthpop, retro gaming and cups of tea in large mugs.