Himizu reviewed

An intense and claustrophobic drama, ultimately cathartic, played against the desolate and hellish landscape of Fukushima, post tsunami, where the violence of human relationships resonate in the violence inflicted upon the landscape, and its people, by nature.

Yet, that intense focus is constantly relieved through the film by the often hilarious antics of a group of survivors camped in tents on the land where Yuichi Sumida's family runs a boat hire business, imparting a kind of normality to the destructive lashes of the tsunami, and the seismic nature of the relationships between Sumida (Shôta Sometani) with his family, and then with a young girl, a classmate, Keiko (Fumi Nikaidô), also fifteen.

When I said Sumida's family, that was an overstatement, when you consider that his mother comes every night with a different man, and his father, who is usually drunk, keeps beating him up, and telling that he wants him dead, as he then can claim for the insurance money he thinks he has. On the opening scene, we see the boy walking on this grey and utterly devastated landscape, the photography becoming darker, we then see one of the survivors, an older man who usually behaves like the proverbial buffoon with a heart of gold, still wearing a white shirt, his business having been wiped out. A rather muddy lake near the boat house, with an incongruently and precariously located shed in the middle, acts as a visual leitmotiv which constantly reminds us of the closed and muddy prospects awaiting all of them, a metaphor which I have seen in many recent Japanese films, although more in the context of the brutal economic conditions. In this sense, the boundaries between dreams and reality are eroded, a dream scene opening Himizu resolves the development of the story on a different direction at the end, that initial dream scene having thrown us off the story line, somehow.

Sumida wants only one thing in life, not to have a dream as his teacher keeps indoctrinating the kids at school, but just to be ordinary, like a himizu, a mole. Not a strange request, considering his dysfunctional family. Keiko, a classmate, falls in love with him, much to his embarrassment at the beginning of their relationship. But she persists, particularly when we see her mother lovingly building a gallows for the girl to kill herself, as life would be so much better if Keiko was not around. A gallows painted red.

Keiko does not only falls in love with Sumida, although he is constantly feel annoyed by her, but she sees in him a project to develop, too. A project where she can also develop herself. When the boy's mother finally leaves him for not to come back, Keiko, and the group of survivors, try to help Sumida to run the boat hire business, his only way of being able to subsist, in spite of his rejections. Yet, any attempt by him to try to run just an ordinary life, his dream, gets constantly scuppered by the constant apparitions of his drunken father, demanding money and psychologically torturing him. One night, after suffering another brutal beating by him, one beating too many, something breaks inside Sumida, and in a moment of absolute rage and impotence, he attacks and murders him, to be almost instantly horrified by his action. In despair, he stalks the streets of the nearby town, attempting to get rid of all those violent people, like his father, who also roam those streets.

A tale of two brutalized teenagers not only by the devastating power of nature, but also by their selfish and destructive families, a tale of a journey through hell and, ultimately, redemption, against the backdrop of the hellish landscape of Fukushima (this is the second Japanese film which has been filmed there that I have reviewed), and the darkness offered by their future: emptiness, and the gallows.

I found particularly attractive the manner that director Sono Sion has structured Himizu as a counterpoint between the central tale of Sumida and Keiko searching for their morrow, and a chorus, like those of a Greek tragedy, formed by that group of survivors, who finally leave with the coming of the redemption of the two teenagers, the closing luminous scene alluding to the dark dream like opening scene.

Sono Sion's Himizu is out on selected British cinemas from today, June 1^st, 2012, courtesy of Third Window Films.

Dir: 

Sion Sono

Writer: 

Minoru Furuya (manga), Sion Sono (screenplay)

Cast: 

Shota Sometani, Fumi Nikaido, Tetsu Watanabe, Mitsuru Fukikoshihi, Megumi Kagurazaka, DenDen

Set after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, all 14-year-old Yuichi Sumida (Shota Sometani) wants to become is a regular boy and live a decent life. His environment though repeatedly drags him into the mud. He runs his parent's rental boat business, which is located next to a nondescript lake. His mother frequently comes home with different men and soon she leaves him entirely. His father only comes around looking for money. Whenever Yuichi's father is drunk he tells Yuichi "I wish you were dead."
Keiko Chazawa (Fumi Nikaido) is a classmate of Yuichi Sumida. She harbors a severe crush on Yuichi. Keiko's home life isn't much better than Yuichi's. Her mother builds a gallows with a noose in place for Keiko to take her own life. Her mother believes her life would be better off without Keiko.
Under these circumstances, Keiko pays a visit to Yuichi's home. A group of people are lingering nearyby who live in make shift tents on the property. Keiko tries to befriend Yuichi, but she is berated and even physically assaulted. She doesn't get deterred though and sticks around.
One day, the yakuza come by Yuichi's home. They look for Yuichi's father who is nowhere to be found. The men then tell Yuichi that he has to come up with 6 million Yen by tomorrow to pay off his father's debt. Yuichi already heartbroken by his mother's abandonment and abuse from his father nears a tipping point. A string of incidents then occurs that brings Yuichi's world to a screeching halt. Is there light at the end of the tunnel for Yuichi?

Date of Domestic Cinema Release: 

June 1st, 2012

Events: 

'Himizu' at the ICA Cinema in London

'Himizu' at the Prince Charles Cinema in London

'Himizu' at the Renoir Cinema in London

'Himizu' at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre

'Himizu' at the Irish Film Institute

'Himizu' at the Duke of Yorks in Brighton

'Himizu' at the Riverside Studios in London

'Himizu' at the Glasgow Film Theatre

'Himizu' at the Eden Court Cinema in Inverness

Awards: 

68th Venice Film Festival - Marcello Mastroianni Award, 14th Deauville Asian Film Festival - Critics Prize, 4th Terracotta Film Festival - Audience Award, 30th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival - Orbit Prize

Festivals: 

68th Venice Film Festival, 36th Toronto International Film Festival, 16th Busan International Film Festival, 44th SITGES International Film Festival, 14th Deauville Asian Film Festival, 8th Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, 21st Oslo International Film Festival, 26th Mar Del Plata International Film Festival, 30th Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival 

Avé reviewed

Avé depicts a journey through the roads of Bulgaria as Kamen (Ovanes Torosian), a rather taciturn art student, hitch-hikes from Sofia to a village, Ruse. To begin with, we do not know why, we only know something extraordinary may have happened, as the previous scene showed a member of staff at the art school wanting to talk to him. However, we soon learn that he is going to a funeral of a close friend, another art student, Victor, who has killed himself. The reasons for this act are never explicitly said, although we may infer those, as the story develops. Kamen is obviously disturbed, and brooding, by the death of his friend. However, what is interesting is that we learn about this fact through Avé (a wonderful Angela Nedialkova), a runaway 17 year old girl who kind of joins him on his journey on a road going out of Sofia.

She has a penchant to fabricate, and tell, stories, herself, and Kamen soon becomes part of this spider web coming out of her imagination, these stories she constructs from the flimsiest treads she finds in every situation that she, and now, Kamen, find themselves embroiled, sometimes potentially violent, with some of those drivers who have picked them up, including a pedophile lorry driver ( Martin Brambach), although I thought that the depiction of this particular character was a bit clichéd. She, having probably spent a longer time hitch-hiking , has become much more street-wise than Kamen, her stories are, in part, a construction of a imaginary character for her to have some street credibility, and protection.

However, I have to stress the words in part, as the narrative progresses, a much darker story emerges. Whilst the film is, apparently, a story about this uneasy couple, Kamen being very hostile to her to begin with, and told, mostly, from his point of view, as the camera is more often than not focussed on him, the girl is, in reality, its centre. Avé is a exploration into her psyche, as one of the stories she tells Kamen, in private, turns to be true, a tread which links her past, her recent journey, and her morrow, a scene that ends the film not with an answer, a closure, but leaves the door open for the mind to further delve into what is to come.

This is the beauty of Avé, the fact that behind what seems to be, on first sight, a simple road movie set in Bulgaria rather than on the wide plains of North America, there are glimpses of a complex and troubled psyche, and the transformation of both characters, his initial hostility to her becoming love. There is a significative scene, near the end of the film, where we see Kamen, now on his own on board of a train, repeating to a stranger those stories he first heard from her lips, a device he not only uses to give him a cover for his actions without exposing his inner feelings to the outside world, but as a way to remember her, to live her own story within himself.

Bruno S., whom we know from Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and Stroszek, plays a part as the grandfather of the dead boy, Victor. An interesting casting, as I consider both films to be road movies, literally in the case of Stroszek, and figuratively in the case of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

Konstantin Bojanov's film is an assured and striking debut feature, exploring not only the complexities and development of both main characters, but also a kind of survey of contemporary Bulgarian society as we see, through their eyes, those people who have picked them up, the places where they have stayed, all those highways, those road side cafés, those bus and railway stations.

Network is pleased to announce the DVD release of this road trip with a twist- AVE (15) is available to buy on DVD on 28th May 2012.

KONSTANTIN BOJANOV DIRECTS THE STARTLING TALE OF TWO TEENAGERS ON A ROADTRIP ACROSS BULGARIA. ONE IS A COMPULSIVE LIAR, THE OTHER IS HAUNTED BY THE TRUTH.

Recalling classic road movies such as The Passenger, Five Easy Pieces and La Vie Revée des Anges, and inspired by haunting real-life events and encounters, Konstantin Bojanov’s debut feature is as spontaneous and freewheeling as the characters’ adventures. Portraying the unfolding of two personal dramas with levity and humour, this remarkable, triple-award winning film explores exceptional moments when time feels suspended, and one’s responsibility is only to the beat of one’s own heart.

While hitchhiking from Sofia to Ruse, Kamen, an alienated art student, meets Avé, a 17-year-old runaway. With each ride they hitch, Avé invents new identities for both of them, her compulsive lies dragging Kamen deeper and deeper into trouble, drawing him into a confusing adventure and ultimately forcing them to confront both death and love in a cathartic and life-changing experience.

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

Leon The Pig Farmer reviewed

I suspect that to fully enjoy, and appreciate, this comedy, an understanding and knowledge of London Jewish culture and traditions would help, something I am lacking. However, this does not mean that I was incapable of laughing, or, more often, quietly smiling, at the irreverent humour.

However, I did think that much of the humour, and the central story line of the film, is constructed onto a series of stereotypes, those of the Jewish family, the Yorkshire pig farmer, the supposedly liberal artist (Maryam D'Abo), the adventuress, the arriving Jewish boy in a flashy car, the male attitudes towards fatherhood, the artificial insemination establishment, just to name a few. As a result of this structure, I thought that the inherent humanity of the central character, Leon Geller, is somewhat washed away.

The story is quite simple: Leon (Mark Frankel), a sensitive Jewish boy, after resigning as a state agent for ethical reasons, finds that his real biological father is a Yorkshire based pig farmer (Brian Glover), due to a human error in the artificial insemination clinic, to the horror of his “adoptive” father (David de Keyser), an Orthodox Jew. This hiatus between the cultural traditions of the two families, and the transgressive nature of their relationship, is the engine driving the laughs.

Leon The Pig Farmer The Kosher Edition DVD is directed by Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor, and is already in sale in Britain, courtesy of Network Releasing.

Mark Frankel, Janet Suzman, Brian Glover, Maryam d’Abo, Connie Booth and Gina Bellman star in Jean Vadim and Gary Sinyor’s hilarious, acclaimed debut feature film Leon the Pig Farmer. Winner of 5 awards, including the Venice FIPRESCI Prize and Edinburgh International Film Festival’s Best First Feature in 1992, this 2-disc set titled LEON THE PIG FARMER – THE KOSHER EDITION contains high definition and standard versions of the film and is available to own on 26th March 2012, RRP £19.99. 

Leon Geller is a sensitive, angst-ridden Jewish boy at breaking point. Disgusted by his job at a London estate agent, he quits to work in the catering business. Equally frustrated by a thwarted romance, he then throws himself into an intense affair with Madeleine, a non-Jewish, slightly unhinged artist whom he befriends after a near-fatal collision. These developments do not please Leon’s family…

Then, he learns an unimaginable truth: he owes his existence to artificial insemination, and thanks to a mix-up at the sperm bank the donor was Brian Chadwick, a pig farmerfrom Lower Dinthorpe, Yorkshire. In deepening turmoil, Leon decides he must now get to know his biological father – making yet more extraordinary discoveries in theprocess!

SPECIAL FEATURES: 

 “The Unkindest Cut of All” short film  

 Audio commentary 

 Theatrical trailer.     

Jackie Chan 1911 Revolution reviewed

A nationalistic biopic of Sun Yat-sen (Winston Chao), who has been said to be the founder of modern China, after overthrowing the corrupt Qing dynasty and setting up the republic in 1911, and his top military commander, Huang Xing (Jackie Chan).

1911 Revolution is a conventional propagandistic film reminiscent of the wide eyed Soviet era films exalting the “achievements” and the “virtues” of the Revolution, or the North Korean propaganda machine, where everybody speak, or rather, declaims like in the history books, wide eyed, standing stiff, looking at a bright future, usually symbolized by the rising sun over the horizon, or a similar visual cliché, the camera filming them from below.  A bad history lesson, without the usual Jackie Chan humour or his antics, the last scene clearly indicating the attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to cast itself as the true heirs of Sun Yat-sen's legacy.

Some of its themes were brilliantly treated by Bertolucci's The Last Emperor of China. None of the subtlety and depth of analysis and characterization of Bertolucci's film is found in Jackie Chan 1911 Revolution, being no more than a Stalinist cult to a a significant historical figure portrayed as a one dimensional cartoon-like hero.

Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution deserve a serious cinematic treatment, this one is not.

Jackie Chan 1911 Revolution is on sale now in Britain in DVD and Blu-ray formats, distributed by Cine-Asia.

Action legend, Jackie Chan, commands the screen as Huang Xing: the fearless resistance leader and military genius, who opposed a 20,000-strong Imperial Army during the 1908 Guang Xi Uprising with only 200 men! Now, as military commander to legendary revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen, he will lead an impoverished and vastly outnumbered rebel army against the Emperor’s elite Royal Forces in a battle that will change the course of history!

The Front Line reviewed

During the last days of the Korean war, the armies of both North and South Korea battle for an isolated mountain, as which side possesses it is essential for the final demarcation of the armistice border between the North and the South during the ceasefire talks between both sides. May I mention that both countries are still, technically, at war, as no peace treated has ever been signed.

It is quite interesting that The Front Line has been filmed now, as the tension between the North and the South has again arisen, with accusations and counter-accusations being thrown across the Armistice line between the heavily armed but economically weak North, and the South, one of the strongest economies in South East Asia. It is also significative that the opening scene shows a military jeep wading its way in the streets of Seoul through a demonstration held by students who oppose the war and claim for the reunification of Korea. As it is when one of the protagonists of the film, Lieutenant Kim Soo-Hyeok, exclaims that “the enemy is the war itself, not the commies”.

This is a film about people who have died long before they actually die, because of the brutality of the war, because of the many who they had to kill, because killing becomes like breathing... Or, as Cha Tae-kyeong (Ok-bin Kim), a deadly sniper in the North's army nicknamed Two Seconds (because the bullet hits its target two seconds before the shot is heard), says, after she has killed yet another soldier from the South: “What that the boy who sang?” Or the commander in the North's army, who used to know why he was fighting, but he had long forgotten it in the mud, the rot and the blood spilled on both sides.

The way I read it, director Hun Jang did not make an anticommunist North propaganda film per se, but rather cast his eye on the battle fatigued people who were actually fighting each other rather than the rather paranoid leaders and high brass from both Seoul and Pyongyang, as we see Lieutenant Kang Eun-Pyo, the officer who was in that jeep, being later reprimanded as he criticised his superiors for labelling commies peasants who were given a gun and a kind of uniform by the North just because they wanted something to eat. The climate and the geography are unforgiving, have no illusions about that. The depiction of this brutal war is also unforgiving, no illusions about that either, so if you, readers, cannot stand scenes of extreme violence, then this film is not for you.

Security Command Lieutenant Kang Eun-Pyo (Ha-kyun Shin) has been sent to investigate a possible communist infiltration in the so-called Alligator Company, based in the Eastern front line, and the suspicious death of its commander, who was found to have been killed by a pistol used by the officers of the South Korean army. Once in the Aero-k Hills, Kang Eun-Pyo finds his old friend Kim Soo-Hyeok (Soo Goo) as a Lieutenant, also commanding the troops, a man he thought was missing in action in an early episode of the war that we see in a flashback. What he finds in those tough hills was not a communist plot or infiltration, but extremely weary and fatigued soldiers from both sides who just had enough of the war and who, in between the fighting, had managed to establish some kind of human contact. The kind of situation that is seen as intolerable in both Seoul, as we see in the film, and we suppose in Pyongyang too, but we do not see that as The Front Line is narrated from a South Korean point of view.

The themes in The Front Line are not new per se, the blood (of the soldiers) and the glory (of the leaders), the two comrades in war who face each other, but they fight together against all odds, the liaisons established between enemy soldiers on the battle ground, the hill which has changed hands more than thirty times just for the leaders and the generals to draw a line on a map. However, director Hun Jang has put them brilliantly together here, resulting in a film which is both visceral in its realism yet intelligent in the way it deals with its subject. This is not a war epic, but a film about war. However, I thought that the flashbacks, while vital in many occasions to understand the unfolding story, were also overdone.

The discs also contain the following enlightening features:

• Making of
• Aero-k Hill – Action and SFX making of
• A daily record of battle – Making of production
• Ceasefire Agreement – Production design

The Front Line is released in Britain by Cine-Asia on DVD and Bluy-ray on Monday 27 February 2012.

In the final decisive battles of The Korean War, the battle-worn armies of North and South Korea face a brutal deadlock on the rugged Aerok Hills. Fears of treachery and collusion with enemy forces trigger an investigation into the men of the South Korean Alligator Company.

A veteran intelligence officer accepts the assignment and discovers mysterious and tragic occurrences surrounding a former comrade he had long thought dead.

In the epic battle for survival that follows, the two men become locked in a deadly battle of wills. One will sacrifice his humanity for the sake of his ‘brothers’; the other will discover compassion in the agonies of war. Ultimately, both will be forced to fight side-by-side, so their loved ones can enjoy freedom for just one more day…