Review: INVISIBLE WAVES (2006; available on Netflix Streaming)

Have you seen LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE? Or 69 (A FUNNY STORY ABOUT 6 AND 9)? Why not? There is a lot more to Thai Cinema than ONG-BAK, people. Director Pen-ek Ratanaruang has a devastating visual style, even on his lower budget productions. Star Tadanobu Asano has a long history of choosing crazy art-house directors to work with (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hideaki Sato and Sogo Ishii, for example; and yes, I would even include Kenneth Branagh, despite the film being THOR). He also makes an effort to work with filmmakers outside of Japan -- appearing in Korean, Kazakh, Thai, and English language productions (yes, like BATTLESHIP).

Asano plays Kyoji, a Japanese expat living in Macau. He's having an affair with his gangland boss' wife -- or at least that's what it seems, before he poisons her and disposes of the body (the macabre composting equipment outside his apartment should have been a hint that this wasn't going to be a rom-com). The boss owns a restaurant in Hong Kong and Kyoji is a chef, though upon returning to work he is informed that he must leave via cruise ship from Hong Kong to Phuket Thailand for an unspecified length vacation. A suspiciously unholy “monk” gives him forged travel documents and a contact number for a person named “Lizard.” Much of the story takes place on the ship, a surreal environment that seems to have been created just to make Kyoji uncomfortable. A sort of floating purgatory. Nothing works, few of the people he encounters seem to understand him. His stateroom has a vent that fills with exhaust from the engine, his only “window” is a serene painting of a ship's deck that resembles nothing he's likely to encounter, the bathroom has a mind of its own, and a frivolous Korean woman named Noi (Hye-jeong Kang, OLDBOY) repeatedly saddles him with her infant daughter. He also appears to have a tail -- a man in a panama hat who is clearly not on the ship for leisure. On top of everything else, he's not coping with his new identity as a murderer well -- suddenly vomiting when triggered by seemingly random events. Even off ship he is perpetually lost, but the quiet is shattered as Kyoji's bad fortune closes in. 

Christopher Doyle's cinematography is exquisite, as always. No one photographs haunting, atmospheric stories the way he does. He shot LAST LIFE, too. And if INVISIBLE WAVES feels familiar beyond the look, it was written by the LAST LIFE's Prabda Yoon too. Much of INVISIBLE WAVES feel almost Lynch-ian, and so much more than a fish-out-of-water scenario. Asano has a sort of bemused yet dangerous demeanor that suits these types of characters well -- something of a Japanese Jean Reno. He swings from beaten-down teddy bear to black-hearted killer with barely a beat between, leaving the viewer feeling both sympathetic and uneasy. The supporting casts includes Eric Tsang of the INFERNAL AFFAIRS films (Gangster Monk); local-Macau celebrity Maria Cordero (Kyoji's maternal neighbor); Ken Mitsuishi, who appeared in Peter Greenaway's THE PILLOW BOOK (Lizard); and Thai celebrity Toon Hiranyasap (Restaurant Owner and Gangster Wiwat). The soundtrack features delicate ambient music that adds a hypnotic quality to the story without ever allowing one to get comfortable. There may well be Japanese hit men, murder and dismemberment in INVISIBLE WAVES, but make no mistake -- this is an art film -- a slow burn plot with a vague philosophical bend and a wrap-around frame that is hardly stereotypical.

NEW REVIEWS

Every so often, I run out of space in an issue of SHOCK CINEMA and wind up with a leftover film review. I just added a few of these stragglers to the SC website.

THE FAILING OF RAYMOND (1971): TV-movie starring Dean Stockwell as a nutjob with a grudge. 

NO MORE EXCUSES (1968): Director Robert Downey Sr.'s loopy underground oddity. 

FLAREUP (1969): Exotic dancer Raquel Welch is stalked by murderous Luke Askew. 

KONA COAST (1968): Grizzled Richard Boone searches for a psycho in Hawaii.

CYBORG 2087 (1966): Michael Rennie stars in a cut-rate time-travel adventure.

Review: DUTCHMAN (1967).

The racial allegory runs deep when a seductive white woman targets a black man in this edgy adaptation of the groundbreaking Obie-winning play by Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones] -- a two-character confrontation which provides an acting tour de force for Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr., and was also the first film by director Anthony Harvey (THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, THE LION IN WINTER). Only 55-minutes long, this often eschews reality in favor of two-ton metaphor, but that doesn't blunt its provocative (and often downright fucking angry) agenda.

It's a steamy evening in the New York City subway, and a suit-'n'-tie-attired black man named Clay locks eyes with a tempting young woman -- blonde, white, wearing a striped mini-skirt -- on the platform. She enters the same empty car, introduces herself as Lula, sits beside him, and begins to flirt so aggressively that it's a little creepy. No surprise, Clay is turned on by this unpredictable beauty, who keeps chowing down on apples that she pulls from her purse, but he's also confounded by her abrupt mood shifts. One moment she's sensually draping her bare legs over his lap, the next this Manic Pixie Nightmare is shouting, crying and eventually even calling him an "escaped nigger" and "Uncle Tom." For the film's first 25 minutes, it's just the two in the car alone -- though it eventually fills up with background commuters who pay little attention to them -- and despite all of her eccentric behavior antics, Lula keeps Clay's from simply bolting from this nutjob with promises of them doing "the nasty."

Steeped in Baraka's almost poetic dialogue, Knight has a field day with this batshit-crazy role -- flinging fruit about, climbing all over Clay, dancing around the car, berating the other passengers, until (like the legendary Flying Dutchman that its title evokes) Lula shifts her attention to fresh prey on this perpetually-moving subway car -- and it's like nothing the two-time Oscar nominee had done before. But while Knight has the showier role, it's only when Freeman's initially passive character finally unleashes his own personal rage that this long-simmering film comes to a full boil. Freeman is so incredible during his blistering diatribe that you wonder how he never became a bigger name in the biz. Meanwhile, its black-and-white cinematography by Gerry Turpin (THE WRONG BOX, OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR) blends authentic, eerily empty shots of NYC subway platforms with its train car set. 

Sure, DUTCHMAN seems a bit heavyhanded nowadays -- what with Lula as a metaphor for America's treatment of the black man -- but when the play premiered in 1964, it was controversial stuff, with its shocking conclusion gaining additional potency following the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and its interracial tensions still resonating 50 years after it was written.
 

Review: FOUR ASSASSINS (2012; available on Netflix Streaming)

The first person I ever met who extolled the joys of Asian filmmaking -- wayyyy back in the late-1970's -- was my college friend Stanley J. Orzel. He was a senior member of the University Union Cinema Board, worked as a projectionist (often running foreign films for various campus groups), and adored Hong Kong cinema, long before anyone in the US paid attention to anything more than imported chopsocky. Well, after years of racking up creative consulting gigs on films such as HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and FEARLESS, Stanley J. Orzel makes his writing-directing feature debut with FOUR ASSASSINS, a deceptively simple Hong Kong chamber piece, primarily set in one spacious hotel room and centered around a quartet of professional assassins.

It's late evening in Hong Kong, with top hitman Marcus (Will Yun Lee) in an hotel suite -- alone, but not for long -- with three more killers soon making it a foursome. Ex-girlfriend Cordelia (Mercedes Renard) unexpectedly shows up, accompanied by jittery British prettyboy Chase (Oliver Williams), as well as their superior Eli (Miguel Ferrer), a mentor to both Marcus and Cordelia since they were teens. Eli is pissed at Marcus is in seriously hot water over a Singapore job snafu where one of his targets went missing, and the top bosses want this problem "resolved" (i.e. Marcus' death); but first, they all share a sumptuous room service meal, recall old times (complete with flashbacks to past assignments -- an attack on Eli and his ultimate revenge, an absurd attempt to run over a target with a compact car), as well as Cordelia and Marcus thrashing out old issues. As Marcus' time runs out. the characters' still-raw personal losses are exposed, games are played, and the truth behind Marcus' potentially-deadly plight is divulged. Meanwhile, Chase simply acts like a dick. 

Originally entitled FAR AWAY EYES, that was probably a better fit for this type of introspective piece, instead of saddling it with a generic moniker (not to mention, a poster with handguns pointing in every direction) that promises balls-out B-movie action. Orzel instead delivers a stylishly-shot, slow-burn character study, punctuated with bursts of gunplay and bloodshed. Lee (currently co-starring in THE WOLVERINE) gives the story a beautifully melancholy foundation, while Ferrer plays a more nuanced version of the authoritative shitheads that's become his specialty -- but also has an opportunity to do some of his best acting in years. The rest of the cast is regrettably hit-and-miss though. Renard is pretty yet generic, and supposedly-ruthless Williams ends up unrelentingly hammy (quick, someone get him a Steven Seagal movie, stat!). By focusing on these damaged, destructive characters and their past ties, Orzel manages to build suspense and intrigue even when his leads merely sit around this palatial suite, gabbing to each other, with moments of unexpected humor also weaved throughout, as well as savvy use of the 1940's tune "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)." It's a gorgeously lensed, uniquely structured debut. Meanwhile, Orzel has already completed his second feature -- the romantic drama LOST FOR WORDS, starring Grace Huang, Sean Faris and Will Yun Lee -- which is now playing the film festival circuit.

In which I return, with reviews:

THE RABBI'S CAT [Le Chat du Rabbin] (2011; Gkids)

I admit that I've followed this film ever since it went into production, so I was quite excited to land a nice Blu-ray, double-disc copy recently. As I've stated before (see GAINSBOURG, VIE HEROIC), I'm a huge fan of Joann Sfar going back to his Burton-esque early works (Vampire Loves, Donjon), through his more recent historical comics (Rabbi's Cat,Klezmer) and now his films.

It would be easy to dismiss THE RABBI'S CAT as a religious themed parable with funny, talking animals -- and sure, there is a fair amount of Jewish culture as the base of the story. But it is exactly this set up which Sfar uses as a springboard to tell an entertaining tale about Algeria in the 1920's.

The protagonist, a cat with no name, lives with a Rabbi who “...says prayers in Hebrew for people who speak Arabic.” He has an almost-adult daughter, Zlabya, who is strong minded and independent, personality traits that give him concern as well as pride. 

The Cat eats a talking parrot and suddenly finds it is able to speak. While at first this is a novelty, it quickly becomes part of the film's larger debate about faith, culture, life, and what makes people different (or not) from each other. In an early scene, the Rabbi attempts to explain the Jewish Faith to The Cat who has expressed an interest in being Bar Mitzvah-ed (despite being told that he can't actually be Jewish because he is a cat). As the Rabbi makes his way through the early chapters of the bible -- Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark -- The Cat happily points out that because of carbon dating it's clear that it is all nonsense. This sort of irreverent humor pervades even the most serious passages and sets up a rather amusing finale as the themes come back around full circle. It is also rife with in-jokes, some aimed firmly at the French-Belgian comics scene (for example the characters make a journey across Africa and meet an obnoxious young “reporter” and his “stupid dog”).

The animation is elegant, 2D, hand-drawn style with some CGI. While it never completely captures the organic art of Joann Sfar's books (not an easy task for a music video, much less a feature film) it is beautiful and maintains his aesthetics. Excellent voice acting is provided by the French-language cast: Daniel Cohen as the Rabbi, Karina Testa as Zlabya, Eric Elmosnino (GAINSBOURG) as Professor Sulliman, Francois Morel as The Cat, and even Joann Sfar himself as the Man in the Box. THE RABBI'S CAT is by far one of the best animated films I've seen in some time and well worth the wait. 

There are two extras on the double-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo set. The 'Making Of' short film is interesting -- starting with models for the various characters, right through the voice actors and their take on the roles to the score -- all micro-managed by Sfar, who becomes charmingly excited whenever anyone gets something right. The hour-long JOANN SFAR DRAWS FROM MEMORY, screened at film festivals, is also included as a featurette. It works as a primer of sorts for people who may be unfamiliar with Sfar's work (he's been a household name in France for years and has changed the face of French comics indelibly). We watch him at work in cafes, discuss his process and the changes his career has been through. Also he reflects on his obsession with the past and the stories of his ancestors, even as he admits a desire to see his own children unburdened of that same history. It's an enjoyable mini-history for those who have followed his art for years (myself) and for those who have just stumbled onto this Bande Dessinée mega-star. 

Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)

GAINSBOURG: A Heroic Life (2010).
Directed by Joann Sfar.

I admit to a small bias going into this film -- I like the music of Monsieur Gainsbourg and I'm a huge fan of artist-turned-filmmaker Joann Sfar. I did my best to put both of these predispositions away, but no doubt they color my opinion.

As one would expect from a film made by a first-time director best known for striking comic book storytelling, GAINSBOURG is carefully composed, lighted and photographed and has an emphasis on the visual. The first part of the film is set in World War II occupied Paris, where the child who will someday call himself Serge Gainsbourg is still just smart-alecky Lucien, who claims to hate playing piano when forced by his father to practice, but excels at it when it benefits him. Lucien's father is, himself, a professional pianist -- or at least makes his living playing in bars. The family is Jewish, and already feeling the pressure of an unwelcoming society that is about to turn toxic. Lucien, however, used this to his advantage, and takes pleasure in defying authority and charming adults in turns. That he has left school for the art academy at Montamorte allows Sfar to make grand use of his own art besides the surreal three-dimensional grotesqueries drummed up by Lucien's imagination. Sfar dwells on Lucien's obsession with the specter of his Jewishness as well as his obsession with his own physical inadequacy -- a girl tells him he's ugly in the first scene, and he carries it for the rest of the film. Even as a child, Lucien wears black, smokes constantly and treats women as objects of sex to idolize, obsess over and reject, which flows seamlessly into his adulthood and an endless stream of wives and lovers. Sfar haunts his subject with literal demons, forcing Lucian/Serge -- played by Eric Elmosnino with quiet nuance -- to interact with a literal manifestation of his id, a puppet dubbed La Gueule, performed by Doug Jones (HELLBOY). After his first success, Gainsbourg visits home and his father gives him faint praise for his career while encouraging him to indulge in infidelities. Instead of showing surprise that his strict father would be so bohemian, he takes it in stride, and also takes the advice. He makes a conscious decision to write songs loaded with double entendre, “poison apples” for corruption of youth, or possibly just to entertain his inflated, fragile ego. The later part of the film features fewer Sfar-isms (talking cats, puppets) as Serge and his ego become one -- punctuated by the arrival of Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta). From here on out, it's more specifically the Gainsbourg people either love or hate; a French stereotype of a weathered genius who spends more time seducing women half his age than he does writing songs for them to sing, though more than a few seem less wilting violets than venus flytraps. The heart of the storyline is his ill-fated romance with Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon, who committed suicide two months after the film's completion), which starts with him insulting her and passing out drunk in her lap and ends with her leaving him. There are tender moments -- he plays with her daughter from a previous marriage, she gives him a dog, all tainted by the irony of her having a hit with the love song he wrote for Bardot...

But the real story here is less of a biography than an homage to the life of an artist, whether a painter, a jazz musician or a songwriter of pop hits... or a cartoonist. And I suspect there is more than a little of Sfar's own biography mixed in. The closest thing I can compare it to is SEX DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL, the Ian Dury bio-drama, which much like this one, works best the less you know about the subject.

We're Back! With Reviews!

DETROIT METAL CITY [Detoroito Metaru Shiti] (2008).
Directed by Toshio Lee.

You thought western Death Metal was absurd? Nothing beats the Japanese, and to illustrate just how weird it can get, cult favorite manga DMC is embraced by headbangers and non alike. While it is certainly a comic view of the hard rock world, it's also clearly a love letter to the world of popular music, good and bad (mainly bad), overall.

Toshio Lee's film adaptation of the manga is true to the source material, and because of that it is hammy, overblown and colorful -- in a good way. Kennichi Matsuyama (BRIGHT FUTURE, DEATH NOTE) stars as Negishi, a shy young man who longs to be a “trendy,” fashionable, Shibuya pop singer, but instead has found fame as his alter ego Johannes Krauser II, a KISS-style, clown-makeup heavy metal frontman of the band Detroit Metal City (DMC for short). Most of the story is caught up in his identity crisis. The girl he loves (but is too shy to ask out) detests Hard Rock and DMC in particular. As Negishi attempts to juggle both lives, he inadvertently humiliates love interest Yuri and nearly looses her to a jerky fashion designer. In the meantime, Negishi contemplates the incompatibility of his bandmates' personalities and is generally abused by the band's manager, a blond haired woman who puts cigarettes out on her own tongue and terrorizes everyone.

Broken by the realization that he will never achieve his dreams, Negishi gives up the Tokyo music scene and DMC to return to his family farm, only to find that Krauser has followed him. His mother more or less puts him on the right track and he returns for a satisfying wrap up.