Crime or Punishment reviewed

An alarm clock goes off. A hand stops it. The camera focuses on the daily routine of a office worker in Tokyo. On his way to work, he stops in his usual shop, to get a smile from a beautiful assistant, who gives him his usual purchases, just they are somebody else's purchases, as she mistook him. Then, this invisible man, people keeps banging, and looking down, on him, witnesses a murder, when a woman's body fell in front of him. He cannot find his mobile, so he crosses the street to a public phone, and gets run down by a fancily decorated truck. When the truck departs, a young woman is there, standing, watching, almost unbelieving what her eyes are seeing.

Meet Ayame Enjoji (Riko Narumi), a rather unknown, and shy, model who has been getting printed out upside down in a fashion/softcore magazine for men for which she models. A flashback reveals that she had come out of the magazine office, disgruntled because not only no one wanted to know about her complaints, but they laughed at her, being nicknamed as “the upside down” model. Her school friend, Momo (Sakura Andô), has become the cover girl, and laughs at her too.

Ayame steals a copy of the magazine from the shop, the same one we saw at the beginning, where a man wearing a uniform was sketching the floor layout. Of course, shy Ayame gets arrested and, as a PR stunt, her agency arranges for her to be the police chief for one day. On her first speech as such, high on a podium, in front of a bunch of press photographers, the wind lifts her skirt, and all the camera start clicking. This rather innocuous scene, I thought, is quite a key one in the film, as it points out at the flesh merchandise value attributed to young women (one of the furtive actions of the office worker we saw at the beginning was to grope young women in the underground), adding to their sense of unsecurity, a theme which has been treated a number of times in recent Japanese cinema.

As the police chief for a day, she is taken seriously by the force, and the officers wait for her commands in her rather surreal office. Commands that, at the beginning, she finds to be incapable of issuing. Ayame also meets her former boyfriend, now a detective, from whom she split five years before, a dark secret being the reason. There is a link here to the beginning of Crime or Punishment. However, near the end of her tenancy of her post, and resolving a hold up on that shop, she finds her feet, and becomes a self confident young woman, now sure in her path.

A riotous comedy, a parable on contemporary urban life in Japanese society, Crime or Punishment grew out of a scene in a play staged by Nylon 100°C, the theatrical company founded by Keralino Sandorovich, who also directed the film. In fact, this quality permeates through its scenes, many which were shot in enclosed spaces. The final scenes, in particular, had the hallmark of a theatrical comedy.

The DVD also contains excellent features, one of them being a short film of a scene from the play. Many of the actors from the play also acted in the film.

Crime or Punishment DVD is now on sale in Britain, brought to you by third window films.

Have you ever experienced a day when you are carrying on as usual just like the day before but strange things keep happening one after another on that particular day? This is a slapstick comedy, like Kafka’s novel, filled with incongruous nightmares and nonsensical laughter.

Ayame (Riko Narumi) is an unsuccessful girl celebrity, who happens to take on the PR role of a “police chief for a day”. The job of a campaign girl is to smile and act as a police chief for one day. It should have been a simple job, however, the police station staff treat her like the real police chief and look to her for instructions, which makes Ayame feel perplexed. In addition, she runs into her ex-boyfriend, Haruki (Kento Nagayama), who is now a detective at the station, which means her ex is her subordinate for the day.

Furthermore, Haruki holds a dreadful secret which was the cause for the couple’s separation. To make matters worse, a major event takes place on that particular day, and the situation takes an unexpected turn. Would Ayame be able to solve the case, and what is Haruki’s secret?

Director - Keralino Sandorovich Profile

Born in 1963 in Tokyo. In 1982 he formed a new wave band, Uchoten. In 1985 with Inuko Inuyama and Minosuke he also established a theatre company, Gekidan Kenko, where he commenced theatrical works. After the company’s dissolution in 1992, the following year, he formed Nylon 100℃. He won the 43rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award for his “Frozen Beach” in 1999. In the theatre, in addition to productions by his theatre company, he headed up and participated in other troupes as well as participating in many external productions. His recent works include an award winning “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by SIS Company Inc.(Directed), “Okasankana” by Cube（Written and Directed）, and “The Lower Depths” by Theatre Cocoon on Repertoire 2008 (Directed). In films, he directed “1980” (2003), “A Delicious Way to Kill” (2006) and “Gumi Chocolate Pine” (2007) as well as this film. As for TV dramas, he wrote the script and produced “Jikokeisatsu” (TV Asahi, eighth episode) and “Kaettekita Jiko Keisatsu” (fourth episode).

CAST & CREW

Written & Directed by Keralino Sandorovich

Riko Narumi, Kento Nagayama

Yasunori Danta, Inuko Inuyama, Hajime Yamazaki, Megumi Okina, Koji Okura, Sakura Ando

Yui Ichikawa, Yu Tokui, Eriko Sato, Seiji Rokkaku, Minosuke, Yasuto Hida, Hitomi Takahashi ,

Akira Otaka, Kumiko Aso, Takuya Ishii, Masato Irie ★ Kazuyoshi Kushida

Producers: Joohoon Lee Mato Obata Hiroyuki Kitamaki Chikako Nakabayashi

Planning: Norio Enomoto

Cinematography: Shinji Kugimiya Lighting: Hiroshi Tanabe

Recording: Satoshi Ozaki

Production Design: Kei Itutsuji

Props: Tetsuji Tatsuta

Editing: Koichi Takahashi

Costume: Atsuyuki Okada Make-up: Mariko Honda

Scripter: Kaoru Yamauchi

VFX: Norio Ishii

Production Manager: Ryuta Hashimoto

Music: Fumio Yasuda

Production Companies: Shipyard Company, Booster Project

Ending Theme: (DefSTAR RECORDS) Song by Sowelu Produced by ☆Taku Takahashi

© “Crime or Punishment !?” Production Committee

Mitsuko Delivers: a review

There is a place in Tokyo which escaped unscathed the intense American bombing during the Second World War. Yet, the urban myth is that an unexploded bomb lies underneath the floor boards, after all those years. Will it explode? Or, rather, when?

This place, a narrow working class tenement residential alley, remained locked in a time capsule whilst the rest of the city was re-developed, has become the last refuge of those fleeing the exploding time bomb of the economic crisis affecting Japan for the past couple of decades, or so.

This place is where 9 month pregnant Mitsuko (Riisa Naka) drifts into after following the cloud which has guided her since she was a child, in a taxi she could not pay, leaving an astonished driver behind, who never knew that such a place could exist in Tokyo after 20 years driving a taxi. A dejected Mitsuko who just says “Okay” and takes a nap until the wind goes her way. A rejected Mitsuko, not even her new neighbour in her last home wants to talk to her, abandoned in California by her American GI boyfriend, who finds her way back to Japan with his still unborn child.

A Mitsuko who refuses to surrender to the bad winds.

A Mitsuko who goes back to the woman she calls Granny, the elderly lady who owns and leads this alley tenement with an iron fist that masks a compassionate soul, whom she knew as a child when her parents fled their imploded parlour business to this very place. A place which is now even more run down as it was fifteen years ago, as most of the tenants have already left, with Granny the land lady now confined to her bed. Here she also meets a grown up Yoichi (Aoi Nakamura), whom, as a child, promised he would marry her when Mitsuko and her parents left the tenement back to “civilization”. Now, the restaurant his uncle and now him runs is also reflecting the bad times, the takings are poor, customers are scarce. All being so “uncool”.

What does Mitsuko do? She just says “Okay”, takes a nap, then fills the tenement with life as old and new tenants comes in, fills the restaurant with new and returning customers, gets Yoichi's uncle Jiro (Ryo Ishibashi) to declare his love for the woman who runs the café, establishing a second love axis to the film over her own with Yoichi. “Okay” and “cool” are her two favourite words. Perhaps a reflection of not only her own relationship with that American soldier who eventually abandoned her, but also the legacy left by the American occupation of Japan after the end of the war?

Meanwhile, whilst organizing the trip of the café woman to, of all places, Fukushima, to see her infirm mother, she comes face to face with her parents, who still believe she was in California. However, Mitsuko refuses to explain herself to them, as to do that is “uncool”, is not “okay”. Finally, they all manage to go in the trip to Fukushima, with Mitsuko driving, although, so close to the birth of her child, she can hardly walk, even less drive. Yet she does it because she wants to, because she does not want to stay still, because to do so is “uncool”.

When in Fukushima, her baby finally arrives, the birth being as normal as it could be in the midst of a field and the cacophony of voices, gestures, movements of her parents and friends, including Granny, who has recovered the use of her legs, as no one knew what to do; in spite of the warning by her doctor that it would be a difficult birth.

Mitsuko Delivers, a Japanese style comedy with a sting, a metaphor of contemporary life for all of us, and which I truly enjoyed. Yûya Ishii's camera caresses as much as the faces of heart throbs Riisa Naka and Aoi Nakamura as it does with the details of life in this alley, the back pack of Mitsuko as a child, the flower that Jiro brings not only to the café woman, but also to Granny, whom he and Yoichi takes turn to care for until Mitsuko appeared in the scene.

Did the unexploded bomb under the floor boards go off?

Come and see the film, and you will know.

Mitsuko Delivers will be shown on selected British cinemas from Friday 11 of May, 2012, courtesy of Third Window Films.

Mitsuko is in her ninth month of pregnancy. Her parents (serial failed entrepreneurs) think that she's in California with the baby's GI father, and she's happy to leave them in ignorance. But she's actually back in Tokyo, broke and friendless. So she has her flat cleared, gets into a taxi she can't pay for, and follows a cloud back to the little working-class alley where she grew up. The place is pretty run-down and depressed these days, but Mitsuko's can-do, bull-in-a-china-shop attitude soon shakes everyone up. There's much to be done. The little diner needs more customers, the alley's elderly woman owner needs carers, the tongue-tied man who could never propose to the widow in the coffee-shop needs a push... So much to do, so little time before Mitsuko goes into labour. Yuya Ishii follows Sawako Decides with another breathless comic drama about a girl asserting herself when all around her are floundering.

INTRODUCTION

The acclaimed filmmaker x the new muse of Japanese film

Director Yuya Ishii x Riisa Naka – two young talents join forces!

The 28-year-old film director, Yuya Ishii, has now burst on the world scene with his brilliant filmmaking. Ishii’s film ‘Mitsuko Delivers’ was featured in the 37 th Rotterdam International Film Festival and the 32 nd Hong Kong International Film Festival – an exceptional honour for a fledgling director. At the Hong Kong Asia Film Awards, Ishii was again recognized and awarded the inaugural “Edward Yang New Talent Award.”

Back home in Japan, Ishii won the Pia Film Festival Grand Prix in 2007 for “Mukidashi Nippon” (Bare-Assed Japan) and followed up with the mega-hit “Sawako Decides” (2010) for which he won the Best Director at the Blue Ribbon Awards and the Best New Director Award at the Yokohama Film Festival. His next film “A Man with Style” was again, highly acclaimed. The entire world has been enthralled with the originality of Ishii’s world that eludes categorization in any single genre.

The actress chosen to star in director Ishii’s newest venture is Riisa Naka, winner of this year’s Japan Academy Award for Best New Actress. Her film credits include “Toki wo Kakeru Shojo” (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) and “Zebraman ~ Zebra City no Gyakushuu” (Zebraman: Vengeful Zebra City) as well as a number of TV commercials. Naka meets director Ishii’s world view head on, with a boldness that belies her sweet image. Evolving as the newest muse of Japanese film, “Hara Ga Kore Nande（Mitsuko Delivers） is destined to be one of Naka’s showcase films.

Cast

Riisa Naka / Aoi Nakamura / Ryo Ishibashi

Miyoko Inagawa / Shiro Namiki / Miyako Takeuchi / Momoka Ohno / Yoshimasa Kondo / Yukijiro Hotaru / Risho Takigawa / Shigeyuki Totsugi / Ryu Morioka / Keiko Saito

Staff

Written and directed by: Yuya Ishii

Theme Song: “Ai Nante” – GOING UNDER GROUND (Pony Canyon)

Produced by: Pony Canyon Inc., PARCO Co., SHOWGATE Inc., dub Co., Toei Channel, PIA Co., Yahoo Japan Co., TOKYO FM Broadcasting Co., smoke Co., Nippon Planning Center Inc.

Planning: PARCO Co., Pony Canyon Inc.

Production: smoke Co., dub Co.

Distribution: SHOWGATE Inc.

Ⓒ2011 “MITSUKO DELIVERS” Film Partners

War of the Arrows reviewed

A Korean re-interpretation of the superhero who sacrifices his life to save that of a loved one, his sister in this case, fighting against all odds a superior force of Manchurian 17^th century equivalent of special forces.

The theme has been treated in a number of films, particularly in Hollywood studios productions. However, director Kim Han min has set this saga in 17^th century Korea, or Joseon as it was called then, when the Munchurian invaded from the North, taking a number of prisoners with them. Only a few of those managed to get back to the land of their birth.

In the War of the Arrows, Nam Yi (Hae-il Park), the son of a so-called traitor, has become an accomplished hunter, whilst his sister, Ja-in (Chae-won Moon) is set to marry the son of their protector, a military officer in a garrison in the North. Yet, when the Manchu invaders raided their compound, taking his sister to slavery together with the surviving population, Nam Yi sets to rescue her.

Some spectacular archery feasts follow to his attempt.

Entertaining story, although somewhat jaded.

War of the Arrows is already on sale in Britain on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD formats, courtesy of Cine Asia.

Orphaned as a child, Nam Yi overcame tragic loss to become the most accomplished hunter and archer of his generation. When his beloved Korea comes under attack from Chinese imperial forces, he returns from the forest to discover that his sister, and only living relative, has been taken into slavery by Manchu invaders. Now faced with the most daunting challenge of his life, he must fight to re-unite his family and prove his courage against the greatest archers history has ever known.

MADE IN ARGENTINA reviewed

Absent and Plan B

Marco Berger's two films, his debut feature Plan B (2009), followed by Absent (Ausente), are being released this week by Network Releasing as part of their excellent Made In... series.

In Absent, his most recent feature (2011), a drama depicting the complex relationship formed between Martín, a 16 year old boy in Buenos Aires (Javier de Pietro), and Sebastián (Carlos Echevarría, a well known Argentinian actor), his sport male teacher, in an out of school swimming club, Marco Berger explores the teenager's sexuality, expressed in his crush for the sport coach, and the developing and complex feelings that Sebastián has for the boy, which goes from questioning and brow raising at the beginning, as he is followed everywhere by his eyes, to anger, as he realized that the injury to the eye that Martín claimed to have suffered while being in the pool, which led to a trip to the eye clinic, was no more than a ruse to get closer to him, to test his reactions, as was the subsequent inability to get back to his home, after a series of excuses. As a result of them, Sebastián lodges the boy for one night in his apartment, as he is not prepared to leave him in the street, although he feels uneasy about it because of the impact it could have in his career, in his relationship with his girlfriend Mariana (Antonella Costa, who has been defined by Marco Berger as the “actress of her generation”), and his reputation in the neighbourhood where he lives.

During his stay at Sebastián home, and unknown to him as he sleeps, Martín sensually caresses him, expressing his own feelings by this act. On his part, Sebastián is not entirely sure how to handle the young boy, and the reactions he is getting from his neighbours and the gardener, as they both leave the apartment block in the following morning. Once in the school, in the gossips of the rest room, he learns that the police had been making enquiries, as a student did not go home the previous night, his parents being in utter despair. Sebastián, realizing that the student is Martín, feels extremely uneasy, and keeps his head down. However, when he later on finds the boy lurking around his car, confronts him and expresses his anger, accusing him of lying, and culminating in a slap to his face. We are here into Mamet's territory, as the power relationship between student and teacher switches in favour of the former.

Meanwhile, Martín, with his obsession for Sebastián, does not realize that he is, in turn, the object of affection from Analía (Rocío Pavón), a girl of his own age with whom he has been a friend since both of them were little kids. She, not being aware of the course that the development of Martín's sexuality is taking, insists in hanging on with him. We are now in the territory of complex, ambiguous and forming feelings and identities that the youngsters are developing. Marco Berger certainly has that magic touch of celebrating the complexity, and beauty, of these feelings in just a few frames.

The relationship between Sebastián and Mariana progressively gets more distant and fragile as he struggles with his own feelings towards Martín as time flows, culminating in the final scene where he finally declares his love for the boy, who, at that point, is no longer able to reciprocate.

During the shooting of Absent, Carlos Echevarría (Sebastián) found difficult to film scenes which were apparently easy, while in others, which were supposed to be more difficult, such as the final one, when he meets Martín for the last time, in his imagination, after he breaks into the swimming pool, he just sailed through. Javier De Pietro, a young performer just out of Acting School, is very convincing as Martín, while Antonella Costa (Mariana) adds that bit of glamour.

Absent is certainly a more mature, and ambiguous, work than Berger's debut feature, Plan B, a comedy of sexual manners, a ménage à trois, where the path that the two male protagonists, Bruno (Manuel Vignau) and Pablo (Lucas Ferraro) is marked from the very beginning, the question is not being when the pair are going to get together rather than if, ditching on the way the third participant of this arrangement, Laura (Mercedes Quinteros). In Absent, Berger's treatment of the subject, of the development of male sexuality, is more subtle, almost every scene ending in a cliff edge, myself not being entirely sure what was going to happen next. Plan B is much more straightforward: Laura has ditched Bruno, as she thinks he is, frankly, an idiot, in favour of a photographer, Pablo, whom she considers to be more serious. Yet, she still occasionally sleeps with Bruno.

Oh the life of this young Buenos Aires people!

Bruno, then, with the advice of his friend Victor (Damián Canduci), decides to put plan B into action, which consists in befriending Pablo, in making him fall for him, abandoning Laura, so that he can reclaim her. However, plan B fails, as most of them do anyway, as he also falls for Pablo, after being taunted in parties by a free spirit girl, Ana (Ana Lucía Antony). The result of all this is that Laura get ditched by both men, who end up as a couple. Mercedes Quinteros' performance as Laura conveys the idea of a strong and free spirited woman who can take these actions in the chin, as Mercedes says in an excellent interview contained in the extra features of the DVD, she is not the one who we can pity her with the words. Oh poor girl she is not.

The score for Absent is just brilliant, almost being a complete work by itself, embodying the complex emotions that are visually expressed in the film, being created by the young Argentinian composer Pedro Irusta, whom Berger met at University. Irusta also composed the score for one of Berger's shorts, Reloj (Clock).

Both films are well paced, particularly in Plan B Berger uses shots of buildings, or fragments of buildings, to let the comedy “breathe” between key scenes, and also conveying the background of the urban life of a metropolis such as Buenos Aires, which is essential for these stories of urbanites, and their life styles.

Both Absent and Plan B explore the theme of the development of male sexuality towards other males, they are not gay films as such, but works that convey how heterosexual men can become entangled in homosexual relationships. Because of this approach, Berger has refused to submit them to Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals, as he does not think them as Gay films. They are not, certainly, militant works.

Marco Berger represents, perhaps, a new generation of Argentinian film makers, as he writes, directs and edits his own films, the three fundamental pillars of auteur cinema. Overall, he keeps to the scripts he had written, with very few changes made during shooting, mostly minor, if at all. He is currently in the preproduction stages for his third film, the first one where he will have a female protagonist. I would not say that he is actually enjoying to be mixed up with the Argentinian arts bureaucracy, a novel experience for him, but, certainly, coping with it.

With thanks to Marco Berger for agreeing to be interviewed.

Made In Argentina: Absent and Plan B DVD set, is on sale in Britain courtesy of Network Releasing.

ABSENT (AUSENTE)

The second feature by Argentinean director Marco Berger, is a psychological thriller. A provocative twist on a familiar scenario – it explores the complex relationship between a teenage boy’s obsession for his sports teacher - played out in an atmosphere of escalating sexual tension and menace. When Martin hurts his eye during a swimming class, his instructor, Sebastian, takes him to hospital. On leaving, Sebastian offers Martin a lift home but, as Martin had arranged to spend the night at a friend’s house, there will be no-one expecting him. He insists it would be better to spend the night with Sebastian. As Sebastian takes charge of the student, he is dangerouslyunaware of the boy’s true intentions: that Martin has engineered the entire situation in order to stay at his instructor’s home…

CAST: Carlos Echevarria and Javier de Pietro

Special Features on MADE IN ARGENTINA – TWO FILMS BY MARCO BERGER:

• The making of PLAN B
• English interviews
• Una Ultima Voluntad (A Last Wish) – short film
• Deleted Scenes
• Image Gallery

This film is included in MADE IN ARGENTINA - TWO FILMS BY MARCO BERGER and available separately.

PLAN B

Bruno is dumped by his girlfriend. Behind a calm, indifferent exterior, his mind plots a cold, sweet vengeance. She, a modern girl, continues to see him once in a while, but has another boyfriend – Pablo. Bruno becomes Pablo’s friend, with the idea of eroding the couple, perhaps introducing him to another woman. But, along the way, the possibility of a Plan B arises. It may be a more effective one – and it is also one which will put his own sexuality into question, taking him into the secret, unexplored places of his own heart.

Set in Buenos Aires, this witty, beguiling feature masquerades as a familiar romantic comedy, only toconfound expectations by testing the boundaries of gender and social demarcations. PLAN B is Marco Berger’s first feature film.

CAST: Manuel Vignau and Lucas Ferraro

RESISTANCE reviewed

Amit Gupta's Resistance, based on Owen Sheer's novel, looks at the ambiguities resulting from the very thin line separating our impulse to survive and collaborating with the enemy to do so, as a German platoon takes over a desolate and distant Welsh valley, during World War 2, after the failure of the Allied invasion of Normandy in D Day.

The Germans find all the men had left the valley, so they are on edge, yet they slowly start to uneasily befriend the women, who were left behind. In particular, Albrecht (Tom Wlaschiha), the captain, falls for Sarah (Andrea Riseborough), a relationship established between them all the time on a knife edge. Sarah feels incapable to resist the overtures of Albrecht, particularly due to the help given to the women by the Germans to run the farms in the middle of a severe winter, but her devotion to her husband, who is supposed to be in the mountains with the other men from the valley fighting the Germans, and her country, led her to play a double game: on one hand, befriending the captain, on the other, planning her escape.

Soon news about the captured, tortured, and shot men from the valley start to filter to the valley, while the captain tries to keep his men alive until the nearing end of the war.

While I thought that the uneasy relationship between the invading Germans and the women is handled quite sensitively, I found the whole premise of the film unbelievable. A failure of D Day would had not led to a German invasion of Britain, it would had only delayed the end of the war for some time. Allied forces were already advancing from Italy, while the Russian were doing the same from the East, the German army was already weak in terms of men and resources, Germany, the country, was already economically ruined.

Cinematically, I found the constant use of flashbacks to the Russian campaign to be distracting, at best, and completely useless at worst, as a background of contained violence had already been established by some much more effective shots of random executions in the valley.

Resistance DVD and Blu Ray is already on sale in Britain, courtesy of Metrodome Distribution.

Starring Andrea Riseborough and Michael Sheen

D-Day has failed and Britain is under Nazi occupation. Following on from its acclaimed cinema release, RESISTANCE comes to DVD and Blu Ray in March.

Sarah Lewis (Andrea Riseborough), a 26-year-old farmer’s wife, awakes one morning to find that her husband has disappeared along with all the men in the valley. Assuming they have joined the Resistance, the women of this tiny community pull together, taking on the running of the farms, and wait, desperate for news. A German patrol arrives in the valley, the purpose of its mission a mystery. When a severe winter forces the two groups into co-operation, Sarah begins an acquaintance with the patrol’s commanding officer, Albrecht (Tom Wlaschiha). Cut off from the surrounding war, the lines between collaboration, duty, occupation and survival become blurred.

Based on the critically acclaimed novel by Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE features sensational lead performances from British rising star Andrea Riseborough (Brighton Rock, Made In Dagenham) and Tom Wlaschiha (Enemy At The Gates, Valkyrie, Brideshead Revisited), and co-stars Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, The Damned United).

Trailer © Metrodome Distribution