After more than half a century, this American's longest
running film festival continues to be a grand showcase of
current international cinema. This year's
exciting program
consists 61 narrative features, 30 documentary features, and
7 shorts programs, represents works from 51 countries and regions.
Although I am excited about plenty films in this year's
program, I will mainly cover Asian films here, with a
few exceptions for films I have seen.
Note: There is a possibility that more titles to be added
to this list in the next few days.
- Frances Ha (USA 2012 | 86 min.)
Always looked innocent and sincere,
Greta
Gerwig possesses an uncanny appealing that
simply irresistible. When she plays the eccentric
and adorable titular character in
director Noah
Baumbach's hilarious and endearing
comedy "Frances
Ha,"
she becomes even more charming and
outrageously funny.
Indie darling Noah
Baumbach shots this quirky comedy in stylish
black-and-white and equips with a playful
soundtrack, based on a script co-written with his
real life partner Greta
Gerwig. This beautiful film follows a
27-year-old not-so-successful New York City dancer
Frances's day to day struggle in relationship,
job, career, and, growing up in general.
It's impossible not to be enchanted by the film's
colorful characters, witty one-liners, and the
fantastic Greta
Gerwig.
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list of titles
- Our Homeland
(かぞくのくに
| Japan 2012 | in Japanese/Korean | 100
min.)
In director Yang
Yong-hi's (양영희)
fascinating documentary "Dear
Pyongyang" (Japan 2005), she tells her
personal story as a second-generation
Korean-Japanese (Zainichi
Korean) with a charismatic pro-North Korean
father. Her father indeed sent her three teenager
brothers back to North Korea under
a "repatriation
program" in the 1970s.
Selected as Japan's Oscar
entry for the Best Foreign Language film,
Yang
Yong-hi's terrific narrative feature
directorial debut "Our
Homeland" is more heartbreaking to
watch if you know the facts in her previous
documentary. Clearly, the film's characters root
deeply in director Yang's personal life
experiences.
In "Our
Homeland," Rie (Sakura
Andô 安藤
サクラ) and her pro-North Korean
parents operate a family coffee shop in
Tokyo. Rie's brother Sungho (Arata
井浦新) was sent to North Korea
in the 70s when Sungho was 16 years old. Twenty
five years later, Sungho finally gets a chance to
come back to Japan to visit his family temporally
for medical treatment, accompanied by a North
Korean "supervisor" (Yang
Ik-June 양익준). The visit
turns out to be anything but a happy family
reunion.
Yang's heart-wrenching tale is too real to be
regarded as a fiction. She superbly unfolds her
story and depicts a family separated by both
physical distance and ideology. Quite often, even
there is no word spoken by the actors, profound
emotions are pouring out from these characters.
No matter whom I resonate with, Rie or Sungho, I
am devastated by the dilemma, because I see no
hope in sight, only tears and broken hearts.
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list of titles
- Stories
We Tell (Canada 2012 | 108
min. | Documentary)
We all love a good story. We love a good story
even more if it's told by eloquent
storytellers. Oscar nominated
director Sarah
Polley and her family members are no doubt
such terrific storytellers when they tell a deeply
personal story in her brilliant
documentary "Stories
We Tell." And, what a touching,
engrossing, fascinating, intriguing, and amusing
family story they tell in this film!
Director Sarah
Polley skillfully crafts this genre-bending
documentary into a true gem. You should experience
her storytelling yourself without knowing what the
story is about. One thing is certain that you will
appreciate that she and her family share their
story in this film, intimately and candidly.
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list of titles
- What
Maisie Knew (USA
2012 | 93 min.)
The opening
night film is the fifth collaboration of
directors Scott
McGehee and David
Siegel "What
Maisie Knew." A loose contemporary
adaption of Henry
James's 1897 novel,
this terrific drama tells a heartfelt story
dealing with her neglect parents from the
perspective of a six-year-old girl Maisie
(Onata
Aprile).
Throughout the film, the camera almost never
leaves Maisie's innocent presence. Although she
doesn't complain much, and only cries once
(quietly and alone), she knows all too well how
her rock star mom (Julianne
Moore) and art dealer dad (Steve
Coogan) are not there for her and use her as a
weapon against each other. Luckily, she finds love
and a safe haven from her ex-nanny Margo
(Joanna
Vanderham) and a her mom's bartender friend
Lincoln (Alexander
Skarsgård).
It's definitely a better choice to open the
festival compared to past few years.
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list of titles
- Before Midnight (USA 2013 | 108 min.)
In "Before
Sunrise" (1995),
director Richard
Linklater introduces us to two fascinating
characters, Jesse
(Ethan
Hawke) and Celine
(Julie
Delpy), a young couple meet on a train in
Europe then spend the night walking and talking on
streets in Vienna before sunrise. Nine years
later, Jesse and Julie get a second chance and
continue their conversation in
director Richard
Linklater's "Before
Sunset" (2004).
Another nine years past. Jesse and Julie show up
in Greece in director Richard
Linklater's latest "Before
Midnight" (2013). They continue on
their walking, talking, laughing, arguing, and
challenging to each other's philosophy. Eighteen
years later, these two arresting characters become
more mature physically, but they are also more
charming, charismatic, intellectual, cultured, and
illuminating.
Even the year is still early, I am quite certain
this closing
night film will be on my top-ten-list for
films in 2013.
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list of titles
- Key
of Life
(鍵泥棒のメソッド
| Japan 2012 | in Japanese | 128 min.)
In this lighthearted and cleverly crafted
comedy "Key of
Life," director Kenji
Uchida
(内田けんじ) shows
that he can entertain the audience with a decent
story without high tech effects-laden or bloody
violence.
Kondo (Teruyuki
Kagawa 香川 照之) is a
professional assassin; Sakurai (Masato
Sakai 堺雅人) is a
struggling actor; and Kanae (Ryôko
Hirosue 広末 涼子) is
a publishing company CEO who is determined to get
married within a month. They have nothing in
common, but an accident in a public bath pulls
them together, and forever changes their lives.
What's remarkable about the storytelling is that
even the plot sounds far-fetched, yet every detail
seems reasonable and convincing, and the perfect
execution makes the film a delightful
entertainment.
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list of titles
- A River Changes Course
(ក្បង់ទឹកទនេ្ល | Cambodia/USA 2012 | in Khmer | 83min.)
The winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the
documentary category at the Sundance
Film Festival, Bay Area
filmmaker Kalyanee
Mam's brilliant feature directorial
debut "A
River Changes Course" brings us to
places that seem to be forgotten and fast
disappearing.
The globalization is like a forceful tsunami, it
first passes through China, now it reaches
Cambodia, and mercilessly destroys the culture
and the environment along the way.
The film reflects the destruction through three
families. Sav Samourn's family depends on the
forest for their livelihood, but logging
companies are clearing out the forest day by
day. Sari Math's family can no longer survive
solely on fishing along the Tonle Sap River,
Sari has to leave the water and be a ditch
digger at the age of 15. Khieu Mok's family
cannot pay back the debt by farming, Khieu has
to find a garment factory job in Phnom Penh.
Contrasting to the soon vanishing natural beauty
captured in the movie, the human stories in
these often forgotten places are devastating and
despairing. The movie shines a light to the
price people have to pay in the name of economic
development and globalization.
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list of titles
- Memories Look at Me
(记忆望着我
| China 2012 | in Chinese | 87 min.)
Mentored by the acclaimed
filmmaker Jia
Zhangke (贾樟柯) who is also
credited as a producer of the film,
Song
Fang's (宋方) feature
debut "Memories
Look at Me" tells a story about her
visit to her aging parents. The film has been
traveling the festival circle, and generating
plenty positive buzz. This is one of the films I
have not seen but looking forward to at the
festival.
If Song
Fang looks familiar to you, that's probably
you remember her in Hou
Hsiao-Hsian's (侯孝贤)
poetic
"Flight
of the Red Balloon" (Le voyage du ballon
rouge 2007).
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list of titles
- Juvenile Offender
(범죄소년 |
South Korea 2012 | in Korean | 107 min.)
Director Kang
Yi-kwan's (강이관) affecting
"Juvenile
Offender" maintains the characteristic
of a typical Korean melodrama, without being overly
sentimental.
Ji-gu (Seo
Young-joo 서영주) is a
troubled teenager. When he is about to be released
from detention, the police finds his mother
Hyo-seung (Lee
Jung-Hyun 이정현) who is
completely unknown to him. Although Hyo-seung
appears to be happy-go-lucky and tries to rebuild
the relationship with Ji-gu, the reality is often
hash and difficult to control.
Although the film doesn't quite present the
top-notch Korean cinema, its engrossing
characters and a fine performance can keep you
captivated.
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list of titles
- Inori
(祈 | Japan 2012 | in Japanese | 72 min. |
Documentary)
After winning numerous awards with his
docudrama "Alamar"
(SFIFF53),
Mexican director Pedro
González-Rubio turns his lenses from the
sea in Caribbean to the mountains in Japan. His
new docudrama "Inori"
intimately observes the daily lives
in an aging town in Nara
Prefecture. It effortlessly blends in his
characters into a scenery surrounding.
Even this tidy town quietly sits in the middle of
beautiful mountains, there are almost none of the
younger people left. Yet, the aging population
carry on their daily lives as it used to. One old
lady in the film continues to let her faucet run
non-stop, perhaps because water never dries up
from the mountains. Life is slow, simple, and quiet,
almost in a meditating stage.
This life-affirming docudrama elegantly transcends
the beauty of nature into the rhythm of life, and
it makes you pause and wonder why people ever want
to leave a place like this.
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list of titles
- Nameless
Gangster: Rules of the Time
(범죄와의
전쟁 | South Korea 2012 | in
Korean | 133 min.)
There are plenty excellent gangster films being
made around the globe, even in South Korea. Yet,
this genre shows no sign of slowing down any time
soon. In his third
feature "Nameless
Gangster: Rules of the Time," South
Korean director Yoon
Jong-bin (윤종빈) brings us
another gangster who doesn't look or even talk
like a gangster.
The film chronicles the rise and fall of a corrupt
customs officer Ik-hyun (Choi
Min-sik 최민식) from the
early 80s to the 90s in Busan. After he teams up
with a gangster Hyung-bae (Ha
Jung-woo 하정우), Ik-hyun
regards himself as the brain of the gang. That
attitude dooms him in this dog-eat-dog world,
especially when he doesn't have his own "boys" to
push around in town.
While the performance is solid and the
storytelling is easy to follow, the film lacks the
thrill and energy a great gangster movie
demands. But no worries, now at the age of 28,
director Yoon
Jong-bin has a long career ahead of him, and
he has plenty time to catch on works by masters
like Martin
Scorsese.
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list of titles
- Penance
(贖罪 | Japan 2012 | in
Japanese | 300 min.)
No, that 300 minute running time is not a
typo. That's indeed the actual running time of
director Kiyoshi
Kurosawa's (黒沢 清) latest
work "Penance."
It's a five-episode made-for-TV
series but to be shown as a feature film in its
entity at one screening, with a 10-minute
intermission.
The story begins with the murder of a 9-year-old
school girl Emili when she is playing with her
four classmate friends. Instead of turning the
outrage to the murderer, Emili's mother Asako
(Kyōko
Koizumi 小泉
今日子) feels that the four
little girls bear some responsibility for the
failure of catching Emili's killer, she asks the
four girls to promise her to penance
themselves. I am not kidding.
Fast forward fifteen years later, the four girls
are grown into young woman. Each of the first four
episodes focuses on each of these girl's
"penance," titled "French Doll," "The PTA
Meeting," "Brother and Sister Bear," and "Ten
Months Ten Days" respectively. Then finally in the
last episode, titled "Atonement," the story
reaches its climax and reveals everything,
perhaps more than you want to believe.
Director Kiyoshi
Kurosawa's fans might feel disappointed if
they are expecting something similar to
Kurosawa's "Tokyo
Sonata" (2008). Especially that may be the
case when you sit through the first three hours,
when the story ranges from strange to bizarre. As
if to compensating the agony in the first three
episodes, you feel that penance is finally
redeemed in the last two hours, when the story
picks up speed, and when twists begin to tangle,
and when the plot goes wild. Wouldn't that be
better just wrapping the last two episodes into a
two-hour-long feature film?
And, you may start to wonder if staring
by Teruyuki
Kagawa (香川 照之) is
a necessary requirement for a Japanese film to be
selected by the SFIFF
(see "Key of
Life"). It that were the case, it would be
perfectly fine by me.
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list of titles
- The Patience Stone
(سنگ
صبور |
Afghanistan/Germany/England/France 2012 | in Persian |
102 min.)
Selected as Afghan's Oscar
entry for the Best Foreign
Language film, based on his own novel,
France based Afghanistan director
Atiq
Rahimi's absorbing
"The
Patience Stone" serves as a voice for
Afghani women who are often muted behind their
burkah
and closed doors.
Set in Kabul, the film's protagonist is a young
woman (Golshifteh
Farahani) who attends her unconscious husband
due to a gunshot wound. She also needs to raise
her two young daughters in this war zone. Since
her husband is unresponsive, she begins to pour
out her suffering, desire, anger, hope, and pretty
much her every possible human emotion. She treats
her vegetation-state husband as her patience
stone, which means a magic stone that shields her
from unhappiness, suffering, pains and miseries
according to Persian mythology.
While the movie can be easily viewed as a calling
for the humanization and liberation of repressed
Afghan women, I feel it's more of a story told
from a Western culture point of view rather than
from an Afghani woman's perspective. Perhaps
that's exactly the point of this film—to
change our perception about Afghani women and
unveil from their burkah.
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list of titles
- Fill the Void
(למלא
את
החלל | Israel
2012 | in Hebrew | 90 min.)
Selected as Israel's Oscar
entry for the Best Foreign
Language film, director Rama
Burshtein impressive feature directorial debut
"Fill the Void"
tells a sympathetic story about a
teenager girl's sacrifice of her own wish to
religious law and traditional culture.
Set in Tel Aviv, the protagonist is the
18-year-old Shira (Hadas
Yaron) who is very excited after she first
time sees the man she is about to marry. But a
tragedy in this Orthodox Hasidic family shatters
her dream, she has to make a tough decision
between either follow her own wish or fulfill her
obligation to what her family expects and what the
powerful rabbi advises.
The film gives us a close look inside the
close-knit and strikingly insular
Orthodox Hasidic community. It's certainly an
eye opening opportunity to experience a unique
culture and community while to resonate a theme
that is remarkably universal.
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list of titles
- Cold War
(寒戰 | Hong Kong 2012 | in Cantonese | 102 min.)
A big
winer (Best Film, Best Director, Best
Screenplay, and Best Actor) at the
32nd Hong Kong Film
Awards earlier this month and the opening
night film at the 17th Busan
International Film
Festival, "Cold
War" is a sleek directorial
debut from
Lok-man Leung (梁樂民)
and Sunny
Luk Kim Ching (陸劍青).
The film tells a story about a police internal
investigation to uncover a mole after a hostage
and bombing incident. Two rival Vice Deputy
Commissioner (Aaron
Kwok 郭富城) and
(Tony
Leung Ka-fai 梁家輝) clashes
over the rescue operation code named "Cold War."
The film appears to be another Hong Kong cop movie
following the footsteps of the
excellent "Infernal
Affairs" (無間道 2002) and
its prequel
(2003). With a rapid pace (same thing can be said
about notes and subtitles appearing on the
screen), the somewhat confusing plot can be
challenging to be followed (unless you understand
Cantonese). But the film's energy and a strong
performance by the most recognized Hong Kong
super-stars keep the film afloat.
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list of titles
- Rent
a Family Inc. (Lej en Familie
A/S | Denmark 2012 | in Japanese | 77
min. | Documentary)
It's a well-established fact that a society's
technology and financial advance is negatively
correlated to human connection and family
tradition. That fact can be once again validated
in Danish director Kaspar
Astrup Schröder's engrossing and
surprisingly touching
documentary "Rent
a Family Inc." The documentary takes
a closer-look at a booming "stand-in"
business in Japan, especially its operator,
Ryuichi Ichinokawa, a 44-year-old husband and the
father of two teenage sons.
It's appalling that the filmmaker seems to know
more about Ryuichi and his "stand-in" business
than Ryuichi's family. Even Ryuichi's family have
dinner together every day, they hardly talk to
each other. Yet, strangely, they may pay attention
to a program on TV that discusses human
relationship and communication.
Ryuichi provides the bacon to his family, as well
as "professional stand-in" human beings to his
clients regardless the role. A requested stand-in
could be a fake husband, a father, a friend, a
relative, or an entire troop attending a
wedding.
Working on his kitchen table, as if his wife
doesn't exist in the room, Ryuichi builds a web
site for his clients called "I Want To Cheer
You Up." He regards himself as "a handyman
fixing people's social relationships." Indeed he
can be a good actor and can carry out a gig like a
conductor leading a skilled orchestra. But
ironically, he is the loneliest person without any
friend, and his family members are invisible in
front of his eyes. Occasionally, he expresses more
affection to his dog than any other human being.
It seems the society has more to be fixed than
Ryuichi and his business are capable of. Ryuichi
also needs an urgent fix himself.
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