C1 Originals 2016, part 2: A father, a son and a neighbor
Here are some more world cinema features, which premiered in international film festivals like Cannes and Berlin, that I was able to see in the recently-concluded Cinema One Originals (Nov. 14-22).
• "Graduation". Cristian Mungiu. 2016, Romania.
The titular event doesn't take place until the very end. But the journey towards it is one such roller-coaster ride, most specifically for the central character of the doctor-father named Romeo (Adrian Titieni, who's present in every scene). Just when his only daughter Eliza (Maria Victoria Dragus) is about to take an examination that will determine if she can study in a prestigious university in England, she is attacked, to the point of being nearly raped, by an unknown stranger near her school. The incident traumatizes the teenage girl to such a degree that makes her unable to take the exam in a proper state of mind. But Romeo, being the loving and caring father that he is, won't let such an incident compromise his daughter's future. And so he goes through a number of backdeals, compromises and manipulations to make sure that Eliza will be able to take the exam and eventually pass. This bureaucratic corruption involves a betrayal of the very principles that the doctor has taught his daughter. Mungiu's deliberate and minimalist approach, as always, gradually reveals a society that's rotten to the core, where moral principles just play by the ear and are readily twisted and turned upside-down for the attainment of some end, whether noble or not. What makes matters truly unsettling is how banal and normal such corrupt machinations have already become. As it were, no one is immune from such a cultural disease. It's very much ingrained in our day-to-day existence that we must live with it whether we like it or not. How defeatist can you get with that.
We may also note that "Graduation" has a kind of similarity with Michael Haneke's "Hidden" (also a winner of the Cannes Best Director award). Just like the father in the Haneke film, Romeo and his family appear that they are being harassed by an unknown assailant, as evidenced by the stone thrown at their house-window and the frequent vandals on their car. Who knows if Romeo has done something wrong to someone (a patient? a neighbor? a friend?) sometime before? Who knows if the attack on his daughter is connected with this? This is a mystery that never gets fully resolved, perhaps intentionally by the director. It's as if to say that the corruption that runs through a society's veins can never be eradicated already. There's no way of confronting it;one only has to let it pass through. We can see that Romeo (a male central protagonist different from the female-centricity of Mungiu's previous "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" and "Beyond the Hills") is little by little crushed by all the sly and dishonest dealings, not to mention by the personal problems at home. But as evinced by the all-smiles surrounding his daughter's graduation class picture at the end, it's just another day that must be lived through, warts and all. "Graduation" is one such film that has a no-holds-barred vision of a society going to the ruins.
• "It's Only the End of the World". Xavier Dolan. 2016, France/Canada.
After 12 years, Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), a young playwright, comes home to his family not so much because he feels that it's time to reunite with them, but because he's about to announce one sad news, which he feels his family has the right to know: that he's dying of AIDS. If you think that this is going to be an AIDS-awareness drama, then think again. In fact (spoiler here), Louis doesn't even get to tell his family the thing about himself that he has planned to disclose. Kind of like the pre- and post-dinner affairs in Luis Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and "The Exterminating Angel", respectively, Louis' confession, supposed to happen over his family's eat-together, gets thwarted at every turn. And why? It's because this is one hell of a dysfunctional family. The wunderkind Dolan gleefully shows how all the resentment, anger and other ill feelings that this family has kept at bay through all these times (I suppose) can simmer, boil and explode in the course of a single day. We have already seen many filmic family dinner squabbles, but Dolan, with his visual flair, still manages to make such scenes fresh and exciting. And how could it not be when you have neurotic family members played with gusto by each of the actors: a control freak of a mother (Nathalie Baye), a dopey head of a sister (Lea Seydoux), an asshole of a brother (Vincent Cassel) and a meek sheep of a sister-in-law (Marion Cotillard). One film critic describes the film as "a death-metal opera". The description couldn't be more appropriate.
This is both a dazzling and a harrowing emotional bumpy ride. If it doesn't leave you scarred, then I don't know what else could. The film was based on a 1990 play by the late playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce, who died of AIDS in 1995. And as much as its source material, the film is actually stagey in nature, being almost exclusively set in the family home and heavy in dialogue (think of Rohmer and Fassbinder). Dolan, well aware of this, utilized extreme close-ups all throughout so in this way, the emotions that the characters are conveying are provided more focus, as apt in the medium of cinema. The Bergmanian principle of the face as a mirror of an actor's soul couldn't have any better usage than this. The resulting experience is therefore both claustrophobic and immersive. At the end of one painful confrontation and as Louis is about to leave his family again, unable after all to break out the "news" to them, his mother hugs him and tells him, "Next time, we'll be better prepared". Here's hoping that Louis will still see that tomorrow come.
• "Creepy". Kiyoshi Kurosawa. 2016, Japan.
No two films of Japanese horror auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa are alike. There's always an element of newness to his strange cinematic world. That's why he's one filmmaker whose works we can always look forward to. Nevertheless, we can say that his latest film "Creepy" can be the spiritual cousin of his cult classic "Cure". Both films offer a startling probe into the criminal mind and feature a troubled, disgraced or pessimistic detective who's inevitably drawn into the psychotic serial killer's dangerous world. But beyond such similarities, "Creepy" reflects contemporary Japan's urban estrangement, in which, as Kurosawa himself notes, neighbors don't know or don't talk to each other. This is something that detective-turned-teacher Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Yasuko (Yuko Takeuchi) would've liked to subvert by way of being friendly to their neighbors (the couple are newbies in town), one of whom is Nishino (Kurosawa regular Teruyuki Kagawa). If the title would apply to something or someone in the film, then it would certainly be Nishino. He's without doubt one such mentally-unstable character who can be awkwardly amiable in one moment and genuinely menacing in another, or both. And who knows what terrible secret he could be hiding inside his house!
As always, Kurosawa's method of narrating this morbidly-fascinating tale is deliberate, calculated, precise - and fun. The film doesn't lack in genuinely unsettling imagery and scenarios. But just like Amat Escalante's "The Untamed", a mere mention of the plot developments of "Creepy" isn't enough to do it justice. It really has to be seen whereby one never knows for sure where the film's turn of events will lead him. It's one disorienting guessing game. But unlike "Cure" though, we can say that "Creepy" doesn't end on an entirely defeatist note, even after we had already given up hope beforehand. Perhaps, to borrow another title from Kurosawa's ouevre, there's still "retribution" to be found here.
(Cinema One Originals world cinema features: Cristian Mungiu's "Graduation", Xavier Dolan's "It's Only the End of the World" and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Creepy")
• "Graduation". Cristian Mungiu. 2016, Romania.
The titular event doesn't take place until the very end. But the journey towards it is one such roller-coaster ride, most specifically for the central character of the doctor-father named Romeo (Adrian Titieni, who's present in every scene). Just when his only daughter Eliza (Maria Victoria Dragus) is about to take an examination that will determine if she can study in a prestigious university in England, she is attacked, to the point of being nearly raped, by an unknown stranger near her school. The incident traumatizes the teenage girl to such a degree that makes her unable to take the exam in a proper state of mind. But Romeo, being the loving and caring father that he is, won't let such an incident compromise his daughter's future. And so he goes through a number of backdeals, compromises and manipulations to make sure that Eliza will be able to take the exam and eventually pass. This bureaucratic corruption involves a betrayal of the very principles that the doctor has taught his daughter. Mungiu's deliberate and minimalist approach, as always, gradually reveals a society that's rotten to the core, where moral principles just play by the ear and are readily twisted and turned upside-down for the attainment of some end, whether noble or not. What makes matters truly unsettling is how banal and normal such corrupt machinations have already become. As it were, no one is immune from such a cultural disease. It's very much ingrained in our day-to-day existence that we must live with it whether we like it or not. How defeatist can you get with that.
We may also note that "Graduation" has a kind of similarity with Michael Haneke's "Hidden" (also a winner of the Cannes Best Director award). Just like the father in the Haneke film, Romeo and his family appear that they are being harassed by an unknown assailant, as evidenced by the stone thrown at their house-window and the frequent vandals on their car. Who knows if Romeo has done something wrong to someone (a patient? a neighbor? a friend?) sometime before? Who knows if the attack on his daughter is connected with this? This is a mystery that never gets fully resolved, perhaps intentionally by the director. It's as if to say that the corruption that runs through a society's veins can never be eradicated already. There's no way of confronting it;one only has to let it pass through. We can see that Romeo (a male central protagonist different from the female-centricity of Mungiu's previous "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" and "Beyond the Hills") is little by little crushed by all the sly and dishonest dealings, not to mention by the personal problems at home. But as evinced by the all-smiles surrounding his daughter's graduation class picture at the end, it's just another day that must be lived through, warts and all. "Graduation" is one such film that has a no-holds-barred vision of a society going to the ruins.
• "It's Only the End of the World". Xavier Dolan. 2016, France/Canada.
After 12 years, Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), a young playwright, comes home to his family not so much because he feels that it's time to reunite with them, but because he's about to announce one sad news, which he feels his family has the right to know: that he's dying of AIDS. If you think that this is going to be an AIDS-awareness drama, then think again. In fact (spoiler here), Louis doesn't even get to tell his family the thing about himself that he has planned to disclose. Kind of like the pre- and post-dinner affairs in Luis Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and "The Exterminating Angel", respectively, Louis' confession, supposed to happen over his family's eat-together, gets thwarted at every turn. And why? It's because this is one hell of a dysfunctional family. The wunderkind Dolan gleefully shows how all the resentment, anger and other ill feelings that this family has kept at bay through all these times (I suppose) can simmer, boil and explode in the course of a single day. We have already seen many filmic family dinner squabbles, but Dolan, with his visual flair, still manages to make such scenes fresh and exciting. And how could it not be when you have neurotic family members played with gusto by each of the actors: a control freak of a mother (Nathalie Baye), a dopey head of a sister (Lea Seydoux), an asshole of a brother (Vincent Cassel) and a meek sheep of a sister-in-law (Marion Cotillard). One film critic describes the film as "a death-metal opera". The description couldn't be more appropriate.
This is both a dazzling and a harrowing emotional bumpy ride. If it doesn't leave you scarred, then I don't know what else could. The film was based on a 1990 play by the late playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce, who died of AIDS in 1995. And as much as its source material, the film is actually stagey in nature, being almost exclusively set in the family home and heavy in dialogue (think of Rohmer and Fassbinder). Dolan, well aware of this, utilized extreme close-ups all throughout so in this way, the emotions that the characters are conveying are provided more focus, as apt in the medium of cinema. The Bergmanian principle of the face as a mirror of an actor's soul couldn't have any better usage than this. The resulting experience is therefore both claustrophobic and immersive. At the end of one painful confrontation and as Louis is about to leave his family again, unable after all to break out the "news" to them, his mother hugs him and tells him, "Next time, we'll be better prepared". Here's hoping that Louis will still see that tomorrow come.
• "Creepy". Kiyoshi Kurosawa. 2016, Japan.
No two films of Japanese horror auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa are alike. There's always an element of newness to his strange cinematic world. That's why he's one filmmaker whose works we can always look forward to. Nevertheless, we can say that his latest film "Creepy" can be the spiritual cousin of his cult classic "Cure". Both films offer a startling probe into the criminal mind and feature a troubled, disgraced or pessimistic detective who's inevitably drawn into the psychotic serial killer's dangerous world. But beyond such similarities, "Creepy" reflects contemporary Japan's urban estrangement, in which, as Kurosawa himself notes, neighbors don't know or don't talk to each other. This is something that detective-turned-teacher Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Yasuko (Yuko Takeuchi) would've liked to subvert by way of being friendly to their neighbors (the couple are newbies in town), one of whom is Nishino (Kurosawa regular Teruyuki Kagawa). If the title would apply to something or someone in the film, then it would certainly be Nishino. He's without doubt one such mentally-unstable character who can be awkwardly amiable in one moment and genuinely menacing in another, or both. And who knows what terrible secret he could be hiding inside his house!
As always, Kurosawa's method of narrating this morbidly-fascinating tale is deliberate, calculated, precise - and fun. The film doesn't lack in genuinely unsettling imagery and scenarios. But just like Amat Escalante's "The Untamed", a mere mention of the plot developments of "Creepy" isn't enough to do it justice. It really has to be seen whereby one never knows for sure where the film's turn of events will lead him. It's one disorienting guessing game. But unlike "Cure" though, we can say that "Creepy" doesn't end on an entirely defeatist note, even after we had already given up hope beforehand. Perhaps, to borrow another title from Kurosawa's ouevre, there's still "retribution" to be found here.
(Cinema One Originals world cinema features: Cristian Mungiu's "Graduation", Xavier Dolan's "It's Only the End of the World" and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Creepy")
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