Fixed Gaze

Asako I & II (2018) - Hamaguchi










Asako (Karata Erika), a passive young girl eyes a tall, good-looking boy, Baku (Higashide Masahiro) at a gallery. With the sound and smell of firecrackers set by rowdy school boys still ringering in the air, they kiss and hook up, just like that. They become a young couple very much in love. Asako's dependency on Baku is total. But always aloof, he disappears for days on end without explanation. Her friends warn her that he will break her heart one day. And one day, Baku goes out for errand and never comes back. At this point, I am expecting some existential, poetic drama along the lines of Maborosi or Before We Vanish. But I'm wrong.

It's been five years. Asako relocated from Osaka to Tokyo, has an stage actress roomate and works at a coffee shop. While delivering coffee at a coporate conference at the building across, she is shocked by a presence of Baku. But it's not him. His name is Ryohei (Higashide again in a double role) who works for a sake sales company. In turn, Ryohei is extremely intrigued by Asako who seem to have an extreme aversion to his presence. It's her shy but clear, direct stares that draws him in. After multiple attempts with the help of his Chekov quoting, English speaking colleague as a wingman, they hook up. It takes a long time for Asako to finally get over her first love and fall in love again to another man, a very different man who is down to earth and real.

Then Baku shows up in Asako's life again. Now a famous model, he turns Asako's life upside down.

Based on Shibasaki Tomoka's novel Netemo sametemo - Waking and Dreaming, the film tackles on letting go of the first love from a woman's point of view in a very unique way. Hamaguchi has a great sensitivity dealing with delicate subject and make his actors shine. Young Karata embodies depth and mystery of a young woman coming out of her shell without compromising her core self, while Higashide shines in dual roles with great empathy and maturity. All the supporting roles are also great and well drawn out. It is refreshing to see a Japanese film that is modern and direct and not trying to be overtly Ozu-y or arthouse poetic or genre-y, yet very Japanese. I very much appreciate Hamaguchi Rusuke's work.

Football + Puppies = Political Satire

Diamantino (2018) - Abrantes, Schmidt

Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, a duo behind satirical shorts A History of Mutual Respect and Palace of Pity, comes up with another absurdist political satire Diamantino. It's one of those one joke comedies that you usually wouldn't think is sustainable as a feature in the beginning. But it succeeds in providing enough enjoyment whole throughout with the duo's usual lush film cinematography and visual effects and by following through with the silliness of the premise until the end.

Diamantino (Carloto Cotta, seen in Miguel Gomes' Tabu), is one of those impossibly good looking football superstar, a Portuguese national hero. But he turns out to be a sexless, brainless imbecile who lives in an opulent bubble and thinks of fluffy puppies when he is on the field. One day on his yacht with his beloved manager father and his two scheming evil twin sisters, he encounters a boat full of refugees from Africa. Our good hearted Diamantino has an epiphany: he will adopt an African boy and love him forever.

In the meantime, zealous government agents surveilling Diamantino for possible money laundering, sends agent Aisha (Cleo Tavares) to go undercover as the African boy to be adopted into Diamantino's estate despite objections from her fellow agent/lesbian lover Lucia. Diamantino spoils his newly adapted son (Aisha in cornrows and wrapped up boobies) with nutella desserts, sweet fruit soda called Bongo and all the toys any boys would want in an ornately decorated room in his castle. After killing their old father, the evil sisters who's been embezzling all his money to offshore accounts, makes a deal with Dr. Lamborgini and the nationalists to put Diamantino through gene experiments where the mad doctor wants to clone him and make the best football team in the world that will ultimately rile up enough Portuguese national pride in people to exit European Union. Still follow?

As one can expect, things go wrong. Diamantino grows pair of boobs, Aisha falls in love with him, the sisters finds out Aisha's identity...

Visually intoxicating and politically sharp, Diamantino is a fun movie to watch.

'Tis a Pity, No Elephant

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) - Hu




Its a day in a grey and cold border town in China. With always moving camera with long takes, the film closely trails the lives 4 of its citizen's ultra depressing lives. There is a bullied high school boy (Peng Yuchang) with unsympathetic parents, a local gang leader (Zhang Yu) who is out to get the boy after his younger bully brother gets pushed down the stairs and dies, a classmate/love interest (Wang Uvin) of the boy, whose afraid of her affair with vice principal ever being discovered and an old man whose family is passive=aggressively pushing him to go to a retirement home. Suicide of a jilted lover, death of a pet dog, uploaded scandalous video and social media stigma, betrayed friendship, their lives never lets up.

Director/writer Hu Bo portrays these down in luck, relentlessly bleak lives with much empathy and tenderness. Honestly I didn't think I would like An Elephant Sitting Still. But after an hour and a half in, I was drawn to their flight, their impossible, inescapable situations. With very intimate, highly subjective camera and lens work, An Elephant achieves a rare familiarization with the audiences. Its one day in the life of... premise really works to the benefit of its 4 hour running time. There is even Nolan style (but not used as a stupid plot device) time bending with character story lines crossing, overlapping timelines.

It's a substantial human drama with deeply felt characters with their crushed, burdened souls. The idea of using an immobile circus elephant (which never materializes on screen) as a wised out Buddha who silently observes human follies play out around him as some sort of metaphor for happiness/salvation has a direct lineage from that of a whale in Werkmeister Harmonies. It's better off that we don't get to see it. Only hear its roar during its end credit, just like that that donkey's cry in the beginning of Au Hasard Balthazar. The beast of hopes and dreams. The beast of burden. An Elephant Sitting Still is beautifully tragic. And it a major film that came out in recent years that I can recall.

Art of Seeing

Im Lauf der Zeit/Kings of the Road (1976) - Wenders










A man drives his volkswagon bug into a lake while another man, preparing his morning shave in his van, looks on. The man in the volkswagon emergies from the water with a dripping suitcase, strikes up the conversation with the man with a van who happens to be a traveling film reel deliveryman/projectionist. They take off together in the van. So starts Wenders' ultimate road movie KIngs of the Road.

Clocking at 2 hours 48 minutes, this leisurely paced, sort of midlife crises movie encompasses a lot of Wenders' preoccupation in his long illustrious filmography - desire to love, Germany's war past, rootlessness, American rock'n'roll, aversion to sex and violence in films, etc.

It would be a hard sell in this day and age to pitch the idea of where two complete strangers going on a long journey together without revealing their backgrounds or their innermost thoughts. But that's exactly what this film is - short on backstories, mutual unspoken understanding of heterosexual male anxiety in the material world Germany in the mid 70s.

It is revealed in the middle that Robert the Kamikaze (because he rammed his car directly into water, played by Hanns Zischler) who has left his wife and is afraid to call her, has also some unfinished business with his type-setter father, whom he visits. Then there is Bruno Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) the traveling projectionist and recurring character in many of Wenders' films. However rootless, traveling from small town to small town, floating through life, Winter has no worries in the world. He is also a walking contradiction - He wants to connect and love but he also wants to be left alone. He visits where he grew up, a dilapidated house on the river Rhine, and while kamikaze sleeps, he cries on the edge of the river.

Kings of the Road is a snapshot of Germany's post-war generation from a male perspective. They are silent, emasculated types who has trouble expressing their feelings. There is no conviction in Robert exclaiming "Yanks have colonized our subconscious!" while listening to rock'n'roll, either. It's that mutual silence and understanding that bond them together.

Oddly, for a film about projectionist, Kings isn't about cinema. It's more to do with changing times. Typesetter, projectionist, these dying professions are regarded fondly with much melancholy. It ends with Winter visiting a shuttered theater. The owner laments that her late father would not allow to show 'whatever passes as film nowadays'. 'Film used to mean art of seeing.' A lot of pregnant silences in Kings of the Road. Things left unspoken. Art of seeing it is. We see a lot of mundane stuff - casual male nudity, shitting, jerking off, vomiting, making coffee, driving, sleeping, etc. And it's us who needs to find meaning in everyday life.

A Journey Not a Destination

Notes from a Journey (2019) - Fawcett, Pais










Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais, a pair of experimental filmmakers who describe themselves as two halves of a one artist, present their latest work, Notes from a Journey: a travelogue of sorts filled with startling visual and aural landscapes. And it's a thing of beauty - an examination of internal psyche through nature and vice versa. It's a great companion piece to their Studio Diaries, a series of 100 visual essays documenting their creative processes for a period of time.

Notes from a Journey starts out like a typical travelogue. We see the horizon from the train window. It's various English pastoral of greens and yellows. It's comforting to follow the outlines of the gentle hills. The uninterrupted outline of the hills and lulls of the locomotive give the sense of calm and continuation. Then the thin red line appears, going across the frame. The background color slowly changes from sky blue to black then back to blue. The line's angle changes and it moves up and down. It tricks your vision as if the line is not straight. There are hues, there are textures, there are natural and artificial soundscapes.

There is a shift in the middle of the film. The double exposure of a thorny trees with scathing noise changes the perspective of the film from our passive pair observing to them on the forefront. We see them searching and listening with modern equipment in their tent at night. What are they looking for? Merely recording the sound of nature at night, a paranormal activity, a reenactment of what field zoologist do...? We are still at the infancy of the great visual & aural medium. Daniel & Clara makes a point that they are always searching.

It's not the destination but it's the journey. Daniel & Clara flip through the pictures of countless standing rocks of Avebury, lay them down on the bed. It's as if they are searching for something solid, something permanent, something that will ground them. Silbury Hill in Avebury, a landmark prominently featured many times in the film, shot in different methods and formats is a man-made monument from ancient times. It's physicality and presence is tremendous, yet it is artificial. Whatever we see and feel solid and permanent, they are not. We see the silhouette of Daniel & Clara's sharp features in the dark room, then there is smoldering smoke hanging above the bed. Notes from a Journey reminds you that the illusive el dorado of cinema is not the destination but the journey itself.

Preview: Panorama Europe 2019

Museum of Moving Image (MoMI) hosts the 11th edition of Panorama Europe, showcasing current crop of best European films- both narrative and documentary works. The series presents a portrait of contemporary Europe during a period of tremendous flux. Also, though some of the films are by established directors many are by first-time and emerging artists, and 9 of the 17 films presented here are directed by women.

This year's lineup includes Mademoiselle Paradis, involving blind pianist protege and Dr. Mesmer, Fugue, a new film by Agnieszka Smoczyńska (The Lure) and Several Conversations about a Very Tall Girl, an intimate Romanian lesbian romance in the age of social media.

Panorama Europe runs May 3rd through 19th.

A Festival Pass (good for all MoMI screenings) is available for $50. All films will be shown in their original languages with English subtitles.

Here are four outstanding films I had a chance to see:

Madmeoiselle Paradis - Barbara Albert **Opening Night Film

Maria Dragus (Graduation, The White Ribbon) gives a virtuosic performance as Therese Paradis, a blind pianist protege in 1777 Vienna in Barbara Albert's period piece.

Therese, a young woman who became blind at young age, is administered to the care of Dr. Franz Mesmer (Devid Striesow), a controversial figure, whose idea of animal magnetism that there is natural energy transference among all living creatures, still met with skepticism in Viennese social circle. But thanks to his unusual method, Therese slowly regains her sight, albeit fragile and weak still. All the new stimuli interferes her playing piano and her parents who are more worried about losing her disability pensions bestowed by the queen, scolds her that she is better off being blind.

Young and naive, Therese needs not only to contend with her newfound sense but also social, sexual and class dynamics. Also she is pushed to question her purpose in life for the first time. Albert expertly demonstrates the disparity in treatment and struggles of those who are disabled in the 18th century.

3 Days in Quiberon - Emily Atef

Romy Schneider, a luminous movie star of the 60s and 70s, died at age 43. In her private life, unlike her coquettish on-screen persona, she struggled with fraught relationships, family tragedies and alcoholism and hounded by tabloids. Filmmaker Emily Atef and actress Marie Bäumer tackle the brief days of her life a year before her death, when she was being treated at a spa in Brittany. Based on the interview and a photoshoot she gave to a German magazine crew in Quiberon, Atef builds an intimate, humanistic and respectful portrayal of a tortured artist.

Bäumer's uncanny resemblance to the late actress only enhances her soulful performance. Her Frau Schneider is a guilt stricken workaholic mom, fragile lover, victim of her own fame, broken soul by tragedies and who yearned to be left alone. The film also stars Charly Hübner as the photographer/former lover, Robert Gwisdek as a sharky reporter, Briggitt Minichmayr (Everything Else) as Schneider's best friend and Denis Lavant shows up as a superfan who ends up drinking and playing accordion together.

Several Conversations about a Very Tall Girl - Bogdan Theodor Olteanu

Bogdan Theodor Olteanu's simple lesbian romance in the social media age hits all the right notes. Mainly dependent on two leading actresses Silvana Mihai and Florentina Nastase, Olteanu sketches out the beginning and end of a new short relationship as intimate and real as one can be. The two nameless women - Mihai as an older, urbane film student who is more experienced of the two and Nastase as a fresh faced web content writer from the countryside, bond over Facetime with their former shared fling - a very tall girl. They meet irl and start seeing each other. In the beginning, it's tender and sweet. But soon the shier, passive younger woman, after aggressive advances from the older one, withdraws herself, telling the other to be patient. Their budding relationship seems all too real and spontaneous.

The film student's video documents of her friends - a lesbian couple seen in the above picture gives the performance aspect of human relations, as a film within a film. But unlike other meta themed movies, that aspect of the film doesn't overshadow the relationship of its characters which feels genuine and real.

Olteanu and co.'s portrayal of homosexual relationship is an astute reflection of a country still very much steeped in traditions in modern age and a tender, intimate take on a slice of life.


Extinction - Salomé Lamas

Falling somewhere between Chris Marker and Ben Russell's work, Portuguese director Salomé Lamas' 'parafiction' Extinction charts the complicated history of Transnistria which fell victim to be an unrecognized state after the dissolution of USSR. With a young man named Kolya, the unseen crew travels travels through borders, accompanied by monologues and unseen conversations at various checkpoints that give some background about ominous influences Russia holds in the region.

Shot in grainy black and white with old Russian architecture, Extinction gives that distinctive cold war era dystopian Sci-fi vibe even though it concerns the present and real life situation. Lamas examines the concept of borders in people who belongs to a country that is semi-permanently in limbo. But instead of being didactic, she raises more questions and asks audience's active participation in answering those questions.