Jasper Sharp : 2009 : December

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16
Dec

Kore’eda’s Still Walking gets a UK release next month

Hirokazu Kore'eda's Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo)

One of my high points of Thessaloniki was Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Air Doll (Kuki ningyo), a film I’d managed to miss during its screenings at this year’s Cannes and London Film Festival. I didn’t post anything on this website about it nearer the time, as Tom Mes had already written his review for Midnight Eye, but I will add my voice to the chorus of approval and say it is one of the director’s finest, maybe his best since After Life (Wandafuru raifu, 1998). I know Tom isn’t usually the world’s biggest Kore’eda fan, but personally I’m always intrigued to see what this fascinating director comes up with next, because he’s someone who is not afraid to take risks. True, his experiments don’t always come off – I’m thinking mainly about Distance here, but at the end of the day, no Kore’eda film looks like another, nor do they really seem to bare any comparison with films by other directors, and you can’t say that about many filmmakers working at the moment.

Air Doll (Kuki ningyo)

Air Doll seems particularly fresh. Based loosely on a manga by Yoshiie Goda, this tale of a sex doll who inexplicitly comes alive bears obvious comparisons with the basic story of Pinocchio, but it’s a far deeper and darker tale than that, as Nozomi attempts to learn what is means to be human in a world populated by people who seem to have long forgotten themselves. Kore’eda directs with a breathtaking simplicity that gels perfectly with the story and characters, and that seems a far remove indeed from his more characteristic explorations of cinematic form.

Still Walking

Anyway, I’m certainly glad I caught this in Greece, as not only is it one of the finest Japanese films of the year, but I’m also wondering if I’ll get a chance to see it again. There was a time when there was space in the UK film market for films like Kore’eda’s, but now I’m not so sure. Outside of festivals, none of his works since Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) have circulated British cinemas, and I haven’t really had much of a chance to keep up with what he’s been up to. So I was overjoyed to hear that his previous film Still Walking (Aruitemo aruitemo), has been picked up for UK distribution by New Wave Films. I popped down to the press screening last week and it made me revise my opinions as to whether Air Doll was Kore’eda’s finest since After Life, because this too is an amazing piece.

Still Walking

Again, I’m not going to cover it in too much detail here, as this film too has been covered on Midnight Eye in a review by Roger Macy, but I just wanted to jot down a few thoughts here. Firstly, as I mentioned, Kore’eda’s films don’t bear much comparison with one another, so there’s no point judging it along the same lines as Air Doll. That said, while it is a very different film on the surface, it does explore similar territory, depicting a world in which people seem to have forgotten how to communicate with one another.

Still Walking

Still Walking’s has courted strong comparisons with the home dramas of Yasujiro Ozu, but while descriptions of modern Japanese films as “Ozu-esque” often come across as more than a little trite, here they seem particularly apt. Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari) is the obvious touchstone, as three generations gather for a family reunion one summer’s day at the house of a retired doctor and his wife to commemorate the death of their son, Junpei, some fifteen years before. The main difference is, that while Ozu’s bitter-sweet tale sees the older generation virtually ignored during their trip to stay with their offspring who are too wrapped up with their jobs and daily lives to spend any time together, here it is the older generation who seem completely insensitive to the feelings of the younger generation. Curmudgeonly father Kyohei spends much of the day holed up in his study, occasionally emerging to aim a provocative remark at surviving son Ryota, who is keeping his recent unemployment secret from his parents, while Kiki Kirin steals the show as the mother Toshiko, who spends the whole day cooking and plying everyone with food while tossing out barbed, hurtful asides at Ryota’s new wife, a widow with a young son. The film unfolds virtually in real time, with Toshiko’s culinary ministrations depicted with the same exhaustive detail as Saturday Morning Kitchen, her often banal babble expressing very little; what is left unsaid speaks volumes.

Still Walking

The eye for nuance and detail within the perfectly-observed mundanity of its setting, a legacy of Kore’eda’s documentary background, results in a touching, funny, and often rather tragic portrait of family life that anyone can identify with, and at times will have you squirming with recognition. Still Walking is a brilliant film that will undoubtedly get brilliant reviews. The film is playing at the British Film Institute next month on an extended run, as one of a series of films included in the season Ozu and His Influence, which will also provide a rare opportunity for viewers to see some of Ozu’s films from the 1930s. Anyway, I’m not sure to what extent it will be playing in other parts of the country, but if you can’t catch it at the BFI, then I certainly advise you look out for the DVD, because take my word for it, it’s a beautiful work that will appeal to everyone.

Posted at 17:04 on 16 December 2009

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14
Dec

On Annual ‘Best of’ Lists….

Sacha Gervasi's Anvil! The Story of Anvil

It’s that time of year again – Not only a dwindling number of shopping days till Christmas, but floods of annual “Best of…” lists sprouting up all over Facebook, specialist film websites, and the rest of the print and broadcast media, as well as a couple of solicitations for my own favourites. Anyway, the appearance last week of my top five films of 2009, published alongside numerous other international critics in the January issue of Sight & Sound (which for some reason has me based simultaneously in France and Japan – the reality of my actual existence in Southeast London is rather less exotic!), got me thinking a bit.

Henry Selick's Coraline

One thing I want to say about 2009 is that I saw a hell of a lot more films than I have for quite some time. Another thing I would add is that in general, the quality and diversity of what I managed to see was far higher than 2008, not only Japanese films but also those from other parts of the world, including mainstream Hollywood. Trying to whittle down the best into a mere five titles was quite problematic. For example, the rennaissance of the 3D format can be considered one of the most significant developments of the year, but while I was blown away by Pixar’s Up, I was only marginally less impressed by Coraline, a darker, smaller film, but also one which made great use of the aesthetic possibilities of working with an extra dimension to the screen (and I haven’t even had the chance to see James Cameron’s Avatar yet!) So, do I put both films in my top 5, or should I also recognise that there were some great works of an entirely different nature – hard-hitting documentaries such as Afghan Star or The Cove; edgy offerings from the farther flung reaches of world cinema, like Chile’s quite unforgettable Tony Manero, Russia’s Morphia or Egypt’s Heliopolis; noble arthouse titles like Michael Winterbottom’s Genova or Jane Campion’s Bright Star; genre fair like Nacho Vigalondo’s Time Crimes, Ben Wheatley’s Down Terrace or Buddy Giovinazzo’s Life is Hot in Cracktown; my top Japanese tips like Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Air Doll or Hajime Kadoi’s Vacation; punch-the-air Hollywood rollercoasters like District 9 or Drag Me to Hell; and what about the strong tide of Oscar hopefuls from earlier in the year that included Gus Van Sant’s Milk or Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire? Yes, there certainly were a lot of films out there in 2009.

Havana Marking's Afghan Star

There’s a few points I want to make about this. Firstly, as I’ve said, five films isn’t really enough to cover all the corners I’d like to have, so in my final Sight and Sound list several worthy titles got nudged aside to make room for others of a similar genre or tone. Secondly, there were a couple of titles which impressed me on an initial viewing, but I had the chance to catch a second time and were less impressed by. Thirdly, the atmosphere one catches a film in is pretty critical – if you’re surrounded by all the hubbub of a film festival, you’ll probably have a different view of a film than if you’re sitting in a near deserted press screening or watching a DVD screener for review purposes or, heaven forbid, you’ve actually paid to see it. Fourthly, I haven’t had a chance to see a lot of the more critically-lauded titles myself yet, like Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman or Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Fifthly, do I recommend films that others might have seen or will at least get a chance to see, or do I try and point people to more obscure titles? Who’s reading the list anyway? If I checklist an obscure Chinese indie like Panda Candy, will there be a distributor out there who’ll prick up their ears and look to see if it’s worth acquiring? Probably not… Will the average reader be able to track it down? Hmmm…. And finally, related to this, is the question of release dates. To take but one example, I saw Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In last year and already included it in 2008’s list, but it was only released in the UK this Spring. It was the same story with Laurent Cantet’s The Class, though I didn’t see it at a festival, but on DVD after its UK release this year, so included it in 2009’s list. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata I caught during a press screening at the end of last year, though it was released in January, so by the time it came to the end of this year, it was almost a dim and distant memory, while Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Still Walking was released in Japan last year, when it also played London Film Festival, but is only getting a release next year in the UK – ditto for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff. If I saw them last year, should I include them this year, or make room for more recent films and wait until next? For other more obscure titles, do I wait on the off-chance they get a broader release in the UK, or just include them anyway?

Hirokazu Kore'eda's Still Walking

You’ll have to buy Sight & Sound to see what I finally did plump for, or wait a few months to see my round-up of the year along with the other contributors for Midnight Eye – for the reasons I’ve given above, the lists will probably be fairly different. I’ve seen a lot of good titles since I originally submitted my Sight & Sound list in mid-November, including a whole pile at Thessaloniki, and perhaps by the end of the year I’ll have a different perspective on what was hot and what was not. All I will say is that I’m not going to confuse matters by adding a third list here on this website.

Nacho Vigalondo's Time Crimes

But the final point I would make is the same one that was made in the article accompanying the Sight & Sound list – there’s a vast amount of really good stuff out there at the moment, and individual critics can only go by what they saw, as well as being influenced by their own tastes and areas of expertise. The whole film market has changed vastly over the past ten years. There’s a lot more choice out there, and many titles come and go so quickly that by the time you’ve made up your mind to see them in the cinema, you’ve probably missed them, while converselty, within 6 months of the hype of the Oscars or Cannes, the bigger titles of the year might already be available for a fiver at HMV. It’s almost tragic.

Pablo Larrain's Tony Manero

In such an environment, the role of the professional film critic looks increasingly precarious. What should a major newspaper’s film editor choose to focus on when there’s upwards of ten films released every week and only space to cover a handful? The latest Harry Potter or Twilight film or an obscure Eastern European, Asian or South American title that probably won’t play outside of a single-screen in London? I can think of three Japanese films that got great reviews this year in the UK popular press – Tokyo Sonata, Departures and Love Exposure – but each got a very small release window, rarely more than a week and usually on only a handful of screens.

So in this context, the whole concept of an annual Top Ten has changed. Rather than representing a canon of titles that might be seen as classics in the future, they merely give a glimpse of what’s out there, and leave it to viewers to follow the advice of the critics they tend to agree with. It’s all a matter of personal taste after all. And best thing now out there is that you do have the chance to see these on imported DVDs, film festivals, Video on Demand sites etc. Critics now must serve a different role of instead of telling you what’s the best from a given week’s selection, to point you in the direction of what’s of interest in the swirling sea of images being produced all over the world.

Hajime Kadoi's Vacation

On a related note, I’m sure no one has failed to notice that we’re approaching the end of the first decade of the 21^st century. Mark Schilling has already published his fascinating survey of the Japanese industry’s fortunes in the Japan Times, which demonstrate a number of trends equally applicable to the UK market. I’ll probably be posting my own highlights of the past decade, Japanese and non-Japanese, both here and elsewhere. But, I think I’ll wait till the year’s out first, and I’ve had time to gain a bit more perspective on what the really significant trends of the noughties really were.

Posted at 10:24 on 14 December 2009

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11
Dec

Pioneering Woman Pink Director Sachi Hamano Interviewed by Electric Sheep

Sachi Hamano in London (photo by Fei Phoon)

Raindance seems like aeons ago, and I’ve still not got round to transcribing most of the interviews I conducted with our Japanese guests this year. Don’t worry, you’ll be getting a chance to read these in the not-too-distant future on Midnight Eye, but until then, you can make do with this interview with Sachi Hamano which has recently been put up on the website of Electric Sheep magazine. I covered Sachi Hamano in quite some detail in my book Behind the Pink Curtain. For those not familiar with her name, she’s not only the most prolific woman film director in Japan, but also one of the most (if not the most) prolific pink film directors, which probably makes her among the most prolific filmmakers in the world, male or female. It was a real honour to have her at Raindance this year as one of the people featured in the Japanese Woman Directors programme, where her non-pink comedy Lily Festival played to great aplomb, and I am delighted that Electric Sheep’s Virginie Sélavy recognised Sachi Hamano’s achievements in the industry and wanted to talk to her, as the interview makes for quite fascinating reading. As I’ve posted before, Electric Sheep also interviewed another Raindance guest, Momoko Ando, which went online last month. I should also point out that the photo of Hamano was taken during her stay in London by Fei Phoon, one of the whizz kids behind the design of this website.

On a sourer note, the latest print edition of Electric Sheep appears to be its last, at least in its current form, with the editors attributing the gloomy financial climate to its demise. Its very sad, because Electric Sheep plugged a valuable gap in the film media, giving intelligent coverage to films that weren’t necessarily getting covered elsewhere. The website will continue, as will the editors’ admirable attempts to broaden film culture with regular screenings in London of films that you rarely get a chance to see on the big screen nowadays. Anyway, you can pick up the Winter 2009 issue at a good magazine stockist, if you can find one – I was going to suggest Borders on Charing Cross Road, but it was just announced a couple of weeks ago that Borders UK has just filed for administration. One wonders if any of us in this country are going to get out of this recession in one piece!

Posted at 18:01 on 11 December 2009

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