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ROTTERDAM: Elaine sings the praises of Shunji Iwai's HANA & ALICE and Koreeda's NOBODY KNOWS!!
Hey folks, Harry here with Elaine in Rotterdam to fill us in on two incredibly great sounding movies as described in her usual eloquent and intelligent style. I am so happy with the coverage we've been getting out of Rotterdam - the films have sounded wonderful and hopefully we'll see some of these titles programmed at fests around the U.S. for our domestic readers to get a chance to appreciate. Outstanding job, Elaine! Here she is...
34th ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
As the festival draws to a close, more and more prizes
are being awarded. The two latest awards to have been
handed out are the Amnesty International Award for
best film dealing with a human-rights subject and the
Moviezone Youth Award. The former went to Hassan
Yektapanah's "Story Undone", a documentary-like
feature on a group of people trying to flee Iran; the
latter was awarded to Gregg Araki's "Mysterious Skin",
a brave, powerful, and brilliantly written and acted
drama about two sexually abused boys who grow up to be
pretty fucked-up young men. I haven't seen the former,
but the latter is excellent - very much worth seeking
out.
Still to be announced: the winners of the Tiger Awards
(Rotterdam's recgonition of first- or second-time
directors) and the Audience Award. A day before the
end of the festival, Susanne Bier's "Brothers" is
still the favourite for the latter distinction,
followed by Bahman Ghobadi's "Turtles Can Fly" (an
Iranian film I will review later) and "The Edukators".
So what have I got for you today? Well, er, reviews of
two Japanese flicks by festival favourites Hirokazu
Koreeda and Shunji Iwai. Neither will score very
highly on Harry's Cult-O-Meter, but don't let that
keep you from giving them a chance - they're brilliant
films, wonderfully atmospheric, poignant and well
acted, which will please real film fans more than
anything Japan's cult directors could churn out.
Film number one, "Hana and Alice" is the latest by
Shunji Iwai, Japan's grand master of lyricism.
Ostensibly about a silly teenage friendship, but
really about so much more than that, it's the kind of
film which has you smiling for minutes on end because
it's so charmingly silly, and occasionally causes you
either to laugh out loud or to get a lump in your
throat because it's simply so... beautiful. There
aren't too many films which achieve that effect, so
savour it.
The second film is Hirokazu Koreeda's "Nobody Knows",
a melancholy adaptation of a true story in which an
irresponsible mother walks out on her four kids aged
5-12, who are then left to fend for themselves. It's a
far cry from Takashi Miike and his wild, violent
brethren, but it's moving as hell, and shocking in a
superb, understated manner.
Enjoy. I'll be back later with reviews of films both
cool and utterly uncool.HANA AND ALICE (Hana to Aris)
(Written and directed by Shunji Iwai)
In his previous film, the stunningly beautiful "All
About Lily Chou-Chou" (2001), Shunji Iwai explored the
dark excesses of Japanese high-school life: bullying,
extortion, rape and prostitution. In his latest, "Hana
and Alice", he returns to the subject of troubled
schoolgirls, but with an entirely different result.
Where "All About Lily Chou-Chou" was a dark and
haunting mood piece, "Hana and Alice" is a quirky
comedy full of brilliant little touches and a lot of
very infectious charm. It veers from silliness to
genuine poignancy, and comes highly recommended to
those who like their films with a bit of heart and
poetry.
"Hana and Alice" is the story of two silly teenage
girls called, um, Hana and Alice. Well, actually
they're called Hana and Tetsuko, but that doesn't
matter. What does matter is that one day, the girls,
who have been best friends for as long as they can
remember, spot a couple of guys on the train whom they
rather fancy. One of them is a tall Eurasian; the
other is a quiet, geeky boy who is always seen
reading. Hana (a great, bossy Anne Suzuki) quickly
develops a crush on the quiet boy, and starts
following him around, even going so far as to take his
pictures on the sly. One day, the boy has an accident.
Not paying any attention to where he's going, he walks
into a garage door and knocks himself out. When he
comes to, he is so confused that Hana smells her
chance. She asks the boy (who is called Masashi) if he
remembers her, and when he says no, she tells him she
is his girlfriend. She is so convincing that Masashi
believes her, and blames his not remembering her on
amnesia caused by the blow to his head.
So far, so "While You Were Sleeping", but that's
pretty much where the comparison ends. Unlike Sandra
Bullock, Hana doesn't have to deal with sceptical
relatives of the boy; Masashi (a loner whose family
never even enters the story) seems convinced that she
is telling the truth, and duly tries to pierce
together the past he can't remember. In order keep up
her charade, Hana enlists Alice's help; she is to play
Masashi's ex-girlfriend, whom he dumped in order to be
with Hana. There are a few problems, though. For one
thing, Alice (superbly played by Yu Aoi, who also
excelled in "All About Lily Chou-Chou") is a
spectacularly bad actress; for another, Masashi
actually seems to prefer her to Hana, to the point
where he wonders why he ever traded her in for Hana.
Thus the stage is set for a complicated love triangle,
an increasingly elaborate deception and considerable
tension between Hana and Alice, who gradually forget
they're supposed to be best friends and throw
themselves into their favourite hobbies: dancing and
acting.
"Hana and Alice" evolved from a few short films Iwai
shot for KitKat. This is a fact which can be detected
in the final product; the film occasionally has a
disjointed feeling, as if Iwai wasn't sure where to
put his popular set-pieces. It could also be argued
that he changes his focus too much. Rather than
concentrating on the love triangle and its effects on
the girls' friendship, Iwai switches back and forth
between his protagonists and throws in several
subplots centring on family life and dreams of
becoming famous. Yet it's hard to blame him for making
a few detours every now and then, for not only do the
subplots provide a wealth of background information on
both girls, but they also feature some of the funniest
and most moving scenes in the film. One of these is
obviously one of the original KitKat scenes; I'd like
to know whether the other ones were, as well.
To me, the standout storyline (one of the funniest
things I've seen in the whole festival) is the one in
which shy Alice decides to become an actress. What
follows is a series of unbelievably bad auditions
which baffles casting directors all over Tokyo and
makes the viewer like kind, dreamy Alice even more. Yu
Aoi is superb here; I've seldom seen a good actress
play a bad one with more conviction. She is also very
good in the subplot concerning her absentee father,
which not only features the funniest (and truest)
exposition on fountain pens in the history of cinema,
but some of the best writing and direction of which
Iwai is capable - which is to say, very good indeed.
In the end, "Hana and Alice" is a poignant meditation
on friendship, loneliness, unrequited love, honesty
and teenage dreams and obsessions, which wears its
lyricism on its sleeve and is all the better for it.
Like many Iwai films, it features great, atmospheric
visuals (beautifully poetic images of flowers, dreamy
landscapes and dancing girls) as well as very funny,
unexpected absurd touches. Needless to say, it also
features Japanese characters speaking Chinese, a
butterfly motif and lots of romantic music (composed
by Iwai himself), because no Iwai film would be
complete without those.
.....................................................NOBODY KNOWS (Daremo shiranai)
(Written and directed by Hiokazu Koreeda)
A childish-looking single mother moves into a new flat
and introduces her 12-year-old son Akira to her new
landlord. After a polite chat, mother and son go back
to their own flat, where they open up two big
suitcases. Out come two children: a boy and a girl,
Akira's younger siblings, who are told to be very,
very quiet, because if anyone finds out they're in the
apartment, the family will be kicked out, like they
have before. A few hours later, a fourth child shows
up: 11-year-old Kyoko, who has waited in the street
until it was dark before making her way to the new
flat. She is informed that this is the last time she's
been out; from now on, she has to stay inside to keep
the little ones quiet while her mother is out working,
so as not to alert the neighbours to the presence of
the kids. Only Akira is allowed to go out; after all,
someone has to do the family shopping.
The above would make plenty of material for a good
film, but in "Nobody Knows", there's more to it. You
see, it turns out that the mother has a habit of
disappearing. Leaving the children some money, she
vanishes for weeks on end, and when she comes back,
she offers neither an apology nor an explanation for
her absence. She just gives her kids some presents,
explains patiently why they can't go to school like
normal children, and tells them to bear their fate as
well as they can. And then she disappears for good,
never to return, leaving the kids to fend for
themselves on a supply of money which is bound to run
out very soon.
Loosely based on a true story which rocked Japan in
the late 1980s, "Nobody Knows" is a tale of adult
selfishness and children's resilience. It's the story
of Akira, a boy forced to become a father of three at
an age when most kids only think of playing games and
skiving off school. Akira makes a brilliant surrogate
father to his siblings. He finds them food, buys them
chocolates when they're feeling low and keeps up
morale by telling them their mother will soon return,
even if he is by no means sure of this himself. He
even gives them presents ostensibly sent by their
mother, so that they won't hate her for abandoning
them for such a long time. But he's only twelve years
old, and like most 12-year-olds, he has more on his
mind than just being a sweet older brother.
More than a just a harrowing family drama, "Nobody
Knows" is a coming-of-age drama, which in Akira gets
an appealing hero: a 12-year-old who knows the
well-being of his younger siblings depends on him, but
also wants to be a normal teenager who hangs out with
friends, plays video games, tries to be cool and
dreams of becoming a baseball star. The problem is
that Akira doesn't actually have any friends, because
he doesn't go to school and is too busy scoring food
for his siblings to hang out and do the things kids
his age do. But he really wants to be a normal
teenager, he really does, and in the discrepancy
between his dreams and his actual circumstances lies
half of the drama.
"Nobody Knows" is a marvellously directed film. It was
shot chronologically over the course of a year, and it
shows. Not only do the children get dirtier and more
obviously neglected as the film progresses, but they
actually visibly grow older. It is obvious Koreeda
established an atmosphere of great trust with his
young cast, because the scenes shot in the tiny Tokyo
apartment where seventy per cent of the action takes
place ooze naturalness. Even the smaller children, one
of whom was apparently quite hard to instruct, come
across as completely natural. In doing so, they infuse
the incredible story with some recognisability. We all
know children like the ones depicted in the film; they
may lead extraordinary lives, but at the end of the
day they're ordinary kids, who react to their bizarre
circumstances the way every child would. In showing us
these children in a fly-on-the-wall manner, Koreeda
not only tells an amazing story of juvenile
resilience, but effectively presents us with a
chronicle of childhood in general. It never gets
sentimental or truly shocking, but with its quiet,
documentary-like approach, it packs an emotional punch
rarely seen in Western cinema.
There is some superb acting in the film. Yuya Yagira
was awarded the top acting prize at Cannes for his
incredibly realistic depiction of Akira, and rightly
so; he does a brilliant job capturing the boy trapped
between childhood and adulthood, between
responsibility and escapism. Ayu Kitaura is equally
good as his frustrated 11-year-old sister Kyoko, who
dreams of becoming a pianist but only has a toy piano
to practise on. Hiei Kimura and Momoko Shimizu are
cute as hell as the younger children, and TV
personality You (who actually functioned as a kind of
second director on the set) is so cringe-inducingly
irresponsible and selfish as the mother that you
regularly want to smack her to beat some sense into
her. It's actually a relief when she buggers off for
good, because as hard as life may be for the children
without a loving parent, you get the feeling they're
better off without her, because she is such an
unwholesome presence in their lives.
"Nobody Knows" is a near-perfect drama. If it has any
flaws, they're in its length (at 141 minutes, it feels
a tad long; the second act could have done with some
judicious editing) and in the fact that the kids are
just a little too cute and well-behaved to be
completely realistic. Don't get me wrong, they're
perfectly natural, and often completely adorable, but
even so, you sometimes wish for an equally natural
tantrum or crying fit to get the whole spectrum of
children's behaviour. These are minor flaws, though;
what remains is a powerful, masterful film that stays
with you for a long time.
Elaine
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am i?
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Is it really necessary to report on every stupid little movie nobody will see or ever care about at every stupid so called 'independent' film festival? Seriously........
And did you read about the goodie bags containing 1000s of dollars of gifts people were handing out at the Sundance film festival? Gee wiz, I thought Sundance was all about breaking away from Hollywood mold and being independent rebel filmakers and all that jazz, instead it's turned into just another corporately controlled excuse for rich celebrities to party. -
Well, I'm proud to be a "nobody", moron! Go to a multiplex, buy some fuckin' pop corn and Coke, and just enjoy your usual fuckin' Hollywood garbage, but please, stop trashing people who are sometimes not interested in the same movies as you are!
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fucking great movie. Definitely not for people like swarmy
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but most would probably have to wait for the dvd to peep it. man, region coding STILL sucks.
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Thanks for the reviews, Elaine. I watched the trailer for "Nobody Knows" a few days ago on apple.com/trailers, and I was intrigued. I'm glad to hear you and a few other talkbackers dug it, as a film like that could get tedious fairly quickly if it wasn't handled right. I'll keep my eye out for the DVD.
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Two more films held out as lures, while the reality is that they may never be shown anywhere near me. If by some chance they do (I believe Nobody Knows will end up at the Detroit Institute of Art's Film Theatre) I'll definitely be on the lookout, if not, I may be able to see them some time later via DVD or some other, slightly less legal means of viewing movies. That's what is important about these reports, that our attention is drawn to smaller, unknown (and possibly undistributed) nuggets which can hold more personal meaning than empty, bloated, Hollywood nonsense. But then again, if that's what you're going for, and all you're able to enjoy, more power to you. Those of us that are looking for something more in film treasure these articles. And those that write them.
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It's kind of frustrating reading these reports of interesting sounding films that I'll likely never see, but still, congrats on two more great reviews Elaine. :^)
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most of those made by hollywood and consumed by stupid people...
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His films are very popular, "Love Letter" was big in both Korea and Japan
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... ain't you never heart-O-the worlwydeweb? Iwll grant youl may be never seeit these here picters in a parper cinema. But I pirntowt that if youre realy interestit you can trak and fyn em on the net eyther on divida or down loaditable. Eventually. *** Namarie, Trubba Not...
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Dear sir or madam: I would like to thank you for making me feel better about myself. Every time I read an obviously idiotic remark about no one caring about foreign movies, music, TV, etc. I feel a mite smarter, sophisticated, and better looking-- because I am, truly. Cuter than you, at least. Iwai is a popular filmmaker across Asia (Swarmy--you probably know it as that big place on the other side of the world where people have smaller eyes and talk funny), and "Dare mo Shirenai" is a film I'm personally looking forward to seeing because I am aware of the real-life situation the film is based on, and I remember well how it deeply affected and captured the attention of the Japanese public. I love it everytime AICN posts reviews from these little-known (although mainstream overseas) films. I think it's going to be a pretty fucking sad day when the people on these boards overlook mainstream foreign films in favor of a lot of the shit people like Miike put out. In Japan, most people think Miike is a joke, and think of his movies the same way we Americans think of teens-in-the-woods horror movies-- fun, but ultimately pretty retarded. Give some foreign mainstream film a chance, I think you'll be surprised.
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Those Yoshitomo Nara drawings? Oh yeah: ELAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
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