QCinema 2018: World cinema
QCinema International Film Festival has already become a much-awaited yearly event for Filipino cineastes due to its heavyweight world cinema lineup. This year, which marks the festival's 6th edition (in 2013, there were only three Filipino film entries), is no different, offering a roster of films that premiered in Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Locarno and others. Attending the festival is really a dreamland for those who take their love for cinema seriously. Here are some of the international films that I was able to watch during the festival run (Oct. 21-30).
"Malila: The Farewell Flower" (2017, Thailand) by Anucha Boonyawatana (Asian Next Wave):
Man's confrontation with his mortality hovers in this tale of a young farmer who returns to his hometown to care for his cancer-stricken former lover. As much as the latter is suffering from a physical ailment, so is the former - though his ailment is more of an emotional/spiritual kind. In that he carries the burden of guilt with regards to the death of his daughter and the abandonment of his former lover, which leads him to make the decision of entering monkhood as a form of atonement. The influence of fellow Thai filmmaker Apitchapong Weerasethakul is prevalent in the film, as shown in the pristine imagery, the meditative and unhurried pacing, the mystical and surreal overtones, and the coexistence of the living and the dead. There's an element of same-sex romance (something that Apitchapong touched upon likewise in "Tropical Malady"), but "Malila" is no more a gay film than a meditation on death and how it can be intricately related to redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation. While the film has a gloomy subject, the director has a keen eye for poetry that lends it a transcendental quality. For instance, Pitch (the ailing lover) takes great care in forming the flower ornament (bai sri) because the nature of the flower itself makes it wilt away even before the ornament is finished. This is something that indicates the transitory nature of life itself. Yet, that's not an excuse to not value each and every moment that we have it. There's also an instance where Shane (the farmer), while meditating as a monk in front of a decomposing corpse, sees it right before his eyes being brought back to life as Pitch, paving the way for forgiveness and reconciliation. This most probably tells us that death shouldn't be an end in itself, but that it could also be a means of rebirth, but not necessarily in a literal manner. The film also has a motif of being at one with nature: the forest, the fields, the river, rays of sunshine, showers of rain, even parasitic or predatory animals. This makes us fully aware that, even with the inevitability of death, life is overflowing from everywhere. If it's any indication, the final image of Shane, now a Buddhist monk, disrobing and taking a dip in the river has a baptism-like quality to it, like the Biblical story of John baptizing Christ in the river.
"Shoplifters" (2018, Japan) by Hirokazu Kore-Eda (Opening Film/Screen International):
A family living on crime and deception while having two kids in tow. Not exactly your ideal wholesome family drama, right? But that's exactly what this new film by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, the Japanese master director of touching family dramas, is about. The "father" gets their daily sustenance from shoplifting in supermarkets and stores, with the help of his pre-teen "son". The "wife" works at a factory while doing some stealing there herself. The "sister" performs at a sleazy chat/dating portal;while the "grandmother" extorts money from the former's estranged dad. Things get a bit more complicated when they start to take under their care a troubled runaway little girl and treat her like their own "daughter". As the girl still has her parents, that move may amount to kidnapping (though it's never shown that the girl's parents have bothered to look for their missing daughter). In case you're wondering, the quotation marks are willfully intended because this is indeed one unconventional "family". The film doesn't so much challenge our notion of what constitutes a family as much as it posits the question of how much can we be certain that a society is stable and progressive if there's a breakdown in its very basic unit which is the family. Winner of the Palme d'Or in this year's Cannes Film Festival, the film isn't as gentle as "Still Walking" or as wrenching as "Nobody Knows" (or even as "family-friendly" as "Like Father, Like Son"), but it’s still a sad film and, as Kore-Eda is wont to do, never slips into sappy and cringy melodrama. Japanese cinema has always been like that: a treasure trove of hushed emotions, quiet desperation and deep subtleties. "Shoplifters" is also quite unapologetic in its portrayal of poverty and the things that people are willing to do to be able to weather its rough challenges. Though we never feel for once that the film is wallowing in misery and scarcity (read: poverty porn), rather Kore-Eda shows how the "family" uplifts each other's spirits through love and care despite of a life lived on the fringes of society. In its social-realist bent, "Shoplifters" is thus closer in spirit to "Nobody Knows". And just like that abandoned-children drama (which was chronologically filmed to depict how the kids have "aged" through the entire story), "Shoplifters" isn't afraid to show how a seemingly close-knit family can be torn apart because of the adults' misdeeds. Didn't I say earlier that this isn't your ideal family drama? In fact, the government of the director's home-country isn't entirely proud of the film's triumph at Cannes (even if it took about two decades before another Japanese film took home the festival's top prize, after Shohei Imamura's "The Eel"). The final image of the young girl's face (her name is Juri by the way and she's now back to her own parents) is something that will surely linger in our minds for long.
"Climax" (2018, France) by Gaspar Noé (Screen International):
Some filmmakers are religiously consistent with their vision, theme and style, never for once straying from their avowed path. To name a few: Robert Bresson, Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, Tsai Ming-liang and - Gaspar Noé. Perhaps, no other contemporary arthouse film director has been as divisive with each and every work of his as Noé. Before "Climax", this French director of Argentinean descent has just made five feature films, but each one of them - "Carne", "I Stand Alone", "Irreversible", "Enter the Void", "Love" - has never failed to court controversy, either with regards to their ultra-nihilistic view of humanity or with regards to the graphic or offensive way certain scenes are executed. However, things seem to go differently for "Climax", Noé's sixth feature film in that there has been a positive critical consensus ever since it premiered in Cannes this year (it even bagged the top prize in the Director's Fortnight section). As the director himself jestingly remarks in an interview, he's surprised that the film only got very few walk-outs (if at all) compared to his previous works and the favorable reviews might prompt him to "re-assess" his career. Has Noé actually "mellowed down" in his latest film? Has the raging bull in the china shop turned into a gentle sheep among the flock? Is the film what the critics have been waiting for from Noé all this time? In terms of graphic sex and offensive violence, "Climax" is certainly "tame" compared to his past films. Nothing here of the kind that pushes the boundaries of what should be depicted in cinema (like the face-smashing murder and Monica Bellucci's rape in "Irreversible" or every sex scene in "Love"). Yes, there are scenes of intended abortion, immolation and self-injury, but at least they don't induce us to cover our eyes in disgust. Still, with regards to its relentlessness towards its characters and its pitch-black belief in life as a living hell, "Climax" is pretty much on the same level with the rest of the director's oeuvre. The nihilistic philosophy is certainly alive and kicking (and literally spelled out in huge capital letters). For this uncompromising provocateur, life is a downward spiral. Existence is nothingness. Time destroys everything. Death is a wonderful opportunity. It's a good narrative move on the part of Noé that he lets us in first on those eye-catching dance sequences and the friendly conversations between or among the mostly twenty-something characters, all of whom are aspiring dancers (the story was based on a 90s news article), before leading them down the pit with no turning back on that one fateful, LSD-induced night (it's never revealed who actually spiked the sangria). It's like we get to know them first before they are sentenced to damnation. And yes, this claustrophobic odyssey through hell on earth is close to being too much to bear, but thankfully all of that is somewhat counterbalanced by the infectious disco track that keeps playing in the background (courtesy of a DJ character) and the beautiful Steadicam work (courtesy of frequent collaborator Benoît Debie) that preens and whirls around, never losing sight of the ill-fated youngsters as they are made to dance in a ring of fire - and eventually be consumed by it - by their vicious circus-master that is Noé.
"An Elephant Sitting Still" (2018, China) by Hu Bo (Special Screening):
It has become rare for a film - and an introductory one at that - to fully live up to the hype that surrounds it. Rarer, is to encounter a film that despite its monumental length, never feels for once to be bound by time. Even rarer, is to find a film whose beauty and majesty envelope you in a truly profound way that you wouldn't want to see any other film for quite some time lest the wonderful experience might be affected in one way or another. Such qualities truly fit "An Elephant Sitting Still", the debut feature and, sadly, swan song of novelist-turned-filmmaker Hu Bo, who took his own life at the young age of 29 months before the film premiered in Berlin this year. One critic says thus: The film that begins on a myth ends up becoming a myth itself following the fate of its young helmer. We're not even going to start to mention the tumultuous story behind the film's production that primarily involves one of its executive producers, Wang Xiaoshuai, himself an acclaimed arthouse film director ("Beijing Bicycle", "In Love We Trust"). Yet, despite all this, the film itself has never become the fiasco that it could've been. I've already said this about a few other films, but watching "An Elephant Sitting Still" is an experience in itself. Though this time around, the description has a far deeper resonance, something that will surely last as far as I can remember.
Bearing the influence of European auteurs Krzysztof Kieslowski and Bela Tarr - though, to my mind, it can also be the spiritual cousin of "Yi yi" (whose director, Edward Yang, also had an untimely death) - the film follows through a single day the intertwining stories of four people going through different crises in their lives. We have Yu Cheng, a local thug who witnesses the suicide of his best friend after the latter learns of the former's affair with his wife. Then we have Wang Jin, an elderly whose own son has decided to put him in a nursing home due to financial hardship. We also have Huang Lin, a highschool student who carries an illicit affair with their school vice-dean in order to escape her broken relationship with her mother. Finally, we have Wei Bu, likewise a highschool student who finds himself in trouble after he accidentally pushes downstairs a school bully, as if his trouble with his less-than-affectionate parents wasn't enough. The director (working from his own screenplay) manages the tremendous feat of making each of these characters (as well as those on the periphery) fully-rounded humans, their hearts and souls vividly laid bare right before us, as their eventual connection with one another is convincingly and perceptively realized, as if everything is part of a grand design. Unlike Tarr's characters, who are really more of a cipher, the characters in Hu's film are still very much grounded in reality, with flashes of deadpan humor shining through their dialogues that make them more endearing to us. So despite the heavy themes tackled by the director (death, selfishness, apathy, self-destruction, self-loathing, hopelessness, misanthropy), it's not all doom and gloom. In fact, there may still be a sliver of hope that these sad and troubled characters are holding onto, by way of their singular purpose of going to the far town of Manzhouli, where they hope to find the titular elephant, said to be oblivious to all the troubles of the world and not even affected by the physical pain inflicted upon it. In a certain sense, Yu Cheng, Wang Jin, Huang Lin and Wei Bu are aiming for a Buddha-like enlightenment.
Isn't it the film's paradox that despite the unmistakably Schopenhauerian philosophy that it adopts (characters provide such pieces of wisdom as "The world is a wasteland" and "The world is disgusting"), it turns out to be one beautiful work of art? "An Elephant Sitting Still" is incredibly moving, spellbinding and magisterial, filled with intricate long takes in which the camera stays intimately close to the characters, from dawn until dusk, blurring out those which the director opts not to show even if it's someone who's already beside or within the reach of a given character ("The Heiresses" is another recent film that has a quite similar camera focus). It's really hard to believe that this is Hu's first feature film, as it's one tremendous achievement that only a seasoned filmmaker could most likely have. Through the course of the nearly 4-hour film, we get to encounter no less than four deaths (two suicides, one accidental and one through sickness). Perhaps, just perhaps, Hu was the only director brave enough to carry out upon himself the self-destructive final solution to the anger, loneliness and despair exacerbated by a disgusting world that his own film characters have carried out upon themselves. Still, it's quite sorrowful to think that a young filmmaker who had such an intense and vivid vision of the world would decide not to take part in it any longer.
(If I have the time, I would also try to write about the other international films that I saw at the festival.)
(Two lost souls in Hu Bo's "An Elephant Sitting Still")
"Malila: The Farewell Flower" (2017, Thailand) by Anucha Boonyawatana (Asian Next Wave):
Man's confrontation with his mortality hovers in this tale of a young farmer who returns to his hometown to care for his cancer-stricken former lover. As much as the latter is suffering from a physical ailment, so is the former - though his ailment is more of an emotional/spiritual kind. In that he carries the burden of guilt with regards to the death of his daughter and the abandonment of his former lover, which leads him to make the decision of entering monkhood as a form of atonement. The influence of fellow Thai filmmaker Apitchapong Weerasethakul is prevalent in the film, as shown in the pristine imagery, the meditative and unhurried pacing, the mystical and surreal overtones, and the coexistence of the living and the dead. There's an element of same-sex romance (something that Apitchapong touched upon likewise in "Tropical Malady"), but "Malila" is no more a gay film than a meditation on death and how it can be intricately related to redemption, forgiveness and reconciliation. While the film has a gloomy subject, the director has a keen eye for poetry that lends it a transcendental quality. For instance, Pitch (the ailing lover) takes great care in forming the flower ornament (bai sri) because the nature of the flower itself makes it wilt away even before the ornament is finished. This is something that indicates the transitory nature of life itself. Yet, that's not an excuse to not value each and every moment that we have it. There's also an instance where Shane (the farmer), while meditating as a monk in front of a decomposing corpse, sees it right before his eyes being brought back to life as Pitch, paving the way for forgiveness and reconciliation. This most probably tells us that death shouldn't be an end in itself, but that it could also be a means of rebirth, but not necessarily in a literal manner. The film also has a motif of being at one with nature: the forest, the fields, the river, rays of sunshine, showers of rain, even parasitic or predatory animals. This makes us fully aware that, even with the inevitability of death, life is overflowing from everywhere. If it's any indication, the final image of Shane, now a Buddhist monk, disrobing and taking a dip in the river has a baptism-like quality to it, like the Biblical story of John baptizing Christ in the river.
"Shoplifters" (2018, Japan) by Hirokazu Kore-Eda (Opening Film/Screen International):
A family living on crime and deception while having two kids in tow. Not exactly your ideal wholesome family drama, right? But that's exactly what this new film by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, the Japanese master director of touching family dramas, is about. The "father" gets their daily sustenance from shoplifting in supermarkets and stores, with the help of his pre-teen "son". The "wife" works at a factory while doing some stealing there herself. The "sister" performs at a sleazy chat/dating portal;while the "grandmother" extorts money from the former's estranged dad. Things get a bit more complicated when they start to take under their care a troubled runaway little girl and treat her like their own "daughter". As the girl still has her parents, that move may amount to kidnapping (though it's never shown that the girl's parents have bothered to look for their missing daughter). In case you're wondering, the quotation marks are willfully intended because this is indeed one unconventional "family". The film doesn't so much challenge our notion of what constitutes a family as much as it posits the question of how much can we be certain that a society is stable and progressive if there's a breakdown in its very basic unit which is the family. Winner of the Palme d'Or in this year's Cannes Film Festival, the film isn't as gentle as "Still Walking" or as wrenching as "Nobody Knows" (or even as "family-friendly" as "Like Father, Like Son"), but it’s still a sad film and, as Kore-Eda is wont to do, never slips into sappy and cringy melodrama. Japanese cinema has always been like that: a treasure trove of hushed emotions, quiet desperation and deep subtleties. "Shoplifters" is also quite unapologetic in its portrayal of poverty and the things that people are willing to do to be able to weather its rough challenges. Though we never feel for once that the film is wallowing in misery and scarcity (read: poverty porn), rather Kore-Eda shows how the "family" uplifts each other's spirits through love and care despite of a life lived on the fringes of society. In its social-realist bent, "Shoplifters" is thus closer in spirit to "Nobody Knows". And just like that abandoned-children drama (which was chronologically filmed to depict how the kids have "aged" through the entire story), "Shoplifters" isn't afraid to show how a seemingly close-knit family can be torn apart because of the adults' misdeeds. Didn't I say earlier that this isn't your ideal family drama? In fact, the government of the director's home-country isn't entirely proud of the film's triumph at Cannes (even if it took about two decades before another Japanese film took home the festival's top prize, after Shohei Imamura's "The Eel"). The final image of the young girl's face (her name is Juri by the way and she's now back to her own parents) is something that will surely linger in our minds for long.
"Climax" (2018, France) by Gaspar Noé (Screen International):
Some filmmakers are religiously consistent with their vision, theme and style, never for once straying from their avowed path. To name a few: Robert Bresson, Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, Tsai Ming-liang and - Gaspar Noé. Perhaps, no other contemporary arthouse film director has been as divisive with each and every work of his as Noé. Before "Climax", this French director of Argentinean descent has just made five feature films, but each one of them - "Carne", "I Stand Alone", "Irreversible", "Enter the Void", "Love" - has never failed to court controversy, either with regards to their ultra-nihilistic view of humanity or with regards to the graphic or offensive way certain scenes are executed. However, things seem to go differently for "Climax", Noé's sixth feature film in that there has been a positive critical consensus ever since it premiered in Cannes this year (it even bagged the top prize in the Director's Fortnight section). As the director himself jestingly remarks in an interview, he's surprised that the film only got very few walk-outs (if at all) compared to his previous works and the favorable reviews might prompt him to "re-assess" his career. Has Noé actually "mellowed down" in his latest film? Has the raging bull in the china shop turned into a gentle sheep among the flock? Is the film what the critics have been waiting for from Noé all this time? In terms of graphic sex and offensive violence, "Climax" is certainly "tame" compared to his past films. Nothing here of the kind that pushes the boundaries of what should be depicted in cinema (like the face-smashing murder and Monica Bellucci's rape in "Irreversible" or every sex scene in "Love"). Yes, there are scenes of intended abortion, immolation and self-injury, but at least they don't induce us to cover our eyes in disgust. Still, with regards to its relentlessness towards its characters and its pitch-black belief in life as a living hell, "Climax" is pretty much on the same level with the rest of the director's oeuvre. The nihilistic philosophy is certainly alive and kicking (and literally spelled out in huge capital letters). For this uncompromising provocateur, life is a downward spiral. Existence is nothingness. Time destroys everything. Death is a wonderful opportunity. It's a good narrative move on the part of Noé that he lets us in first on those eye-catching dance sequences and the friendly conversations between or among the mostly twenty-something characters, all of whom are aspiring dancers (the story was based on a 90s news article), before leading them down the pit with no turning back on that one fateful, LSD-induced night (it's never revealed who actually spiked the sangria). It's like we get to know them first before they are sentenced to damnation. And yes, this claustrophobic odyssey through hell on earth is close to being too much to bear, but thankfully all of that is somewhat counterbalanced by the infectious disco track that keeps playing in the background (courtesy of a DJ character) and the beautiful Steadicam work (courtesy of frequent collaborator Benoît Debie) that preens and whirls around, never losing sight of the ill-fated youngsters as they are made to dance in a ring of fire - and eventually be consumed by it - by their vicious circus-master that is Noé.
"An Elephant Sitting Still" (2018, China) by Hu Bo (Special Screening):
It has become rare for a film - and an introductory one at that - to fully live up to the hype that surrounds it. Rarer, is to encounter a film that despite its monumental length, never feels for once to be bound by time. Even rarer, is to find a film whose beauty and majesty envelope you in a truly profound way that you wouldn't want to see any other film for quite some time lest the wonderful experience might be affected in one way or another. Such qualities truly fit "An Elephant Sitting Still", the debut feature and, sadly, swan song of novelist-turned-filmmaker Hu Bo, who took his own life at the young age of 29 months before the film premiered in Berlin this year. One critic says thus: The film that begins on a myth ends up becoming a myth itself following the fate of its young helmer. We're not even going to start to mention the tumultuous story behind the film's production that primarily involves one of its executive producers, Wang Xiaoshuai, himself an acclaimed arthouse film director ("Beijing Bicycle", "In Love We Trust"). Yet, despite all this, the film itself has never become the fiasco that it could've been. I've already said this about a few other films, but watching "An Elephant Sitting Still" is an experience in itself. Though this time around, the description has a far deeper resonance, something that will surely last as far as I can remember.
Bearing the influence of European auteurs Krzysztof Kieslowski and Bela Tarr - though, to my mind, it can also be the spiritual cousin of "Yi yi" (whose director, Edward Yang, also had an untimely death) - the film follows through a single day the intertwining stories of four people going through different crises in their lives. We have Yu Cheng, a local thug who witnesses the suicide of his best friend after the latter learns of the former's affair with his wife. Then we have Wang Jin, an elderly whose own son has decided to put him in a nursing home due to financial hardship. We also have Huang Lin, a highschool student who carries an illicit affair with their school vice-dean in order to escape her broken relationship with her mother. Finally, we have Wei Bu, likewise a highschool student who finds himself in trouble after he accidentally pushes downstairs a school bully, as if his trouble with his less-than-affectionate parents wasn't enough. The director (working from his own screenplay) manages the tremendous feat of making each of these characters (as well as those on the periphery) fully-rounded humans, their hearts and souls vividly laid bare right before us, as their eventual connection with one another is convincingly and perceptively realized, as if everything is part of a grand design. Unlike Tarr's characters, who are really more of a cipher, the characters in Hu's film are still very much grounded in reality, with flashes of deadpan humor shining through their dialogues that make them more endearing to us. So despite the heavy themes tackled by the director (death, selfishness, apathy, self-destruction, self-loathing, hopelessness, misanthropy), it's not all doom and gloom. In fact, there may still be a sliver of hope that these sad and troubled characters are holding onto, by way of their singular purpose of going to the far town of Manzhouli, where they hope to find the titular elephant, said to be oblivious to all the troubles of the world and not even affected by the physical pain inflicted upon it. In a certain sense, Yu Cheng, Wang Jin, Huang Lin and Wei Bu are aiming for a Buddha-like enlightenment.
Isn't it the film's paradox that despite the unmistakably Schopenhauerian philosophy that it adopts (characters provide such pieces of wisdom as "The world is a wasteland" and "The world is disgusting"), it turns out to be one beautiful work of art? "An Elephant Sitting Still" is incredibly moving, spellbinding and magisterial, filled with intricate long takes in which the camera stays intimately close to the characters, from dawn until dusk, blurring out those which the director opts not to show even if it's someone who's already beside or within the reach of a given character ("The Heiresses" is another recent film that has a quite similar camera focus). It's really hard to believe that this is Hu's first feature film, as it's one tremendous achievement that only a seasoned filmmaker could most likely have. Through the course of the nearly 4-hour film, we get to encounter no less than four deaths (two suicides, one accidental and one through sickness). Perhaps, just perhaps, Hu was the only director brave enough to carry out upon himself the self-destructive final solution to the anger, loneliness and despair exacerbated by a disgusting world that his own film characters have carried out upon themselves. Still, it's quite sorrowful to think that a young filmmaker who had such an intense and vivid vision of the world would decide not to take part in it any longer.
(If I have the time, I would also try to write about the other international films that I saw at the festival.)
(Two lost souls in Hu Bo's "An Elephant Sitting Still")
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