Yesterday I helped two women from Vietnam work the subway ticket machine and we rode the train together to Haeundae. They work for a Vietnamese film production company and were going to the Westin Hotel to help set up the Vietnam Night party, which they invited me to. I’ve only gone to one party so far this year. They used to post the party and reception information on the white board in the press center, but not this year so the only way you can know about them is through the grapevine, on which I don’t hang. Besides the free food and booze, I always meet interesting people at the BIFF parties. I skipped the Vietnam bash, though, since I had dinner and drinks with some friends and the Westin is a bit of a hike from where I’m staying.

Interesting mix of movies yesterday. I had failed to score tickets to the two screenings of the Korean film, A Girl with Closed Eyes, so I ended up watching it in the video library. It’s one of those police thrillers that Korea does so well, even when the plot is convoluted and over-complicated. This one was no different, but the psychological undercurrents were more intriguing than usual. The crime is the murder of a novelist whose bestseller is based on a kidnapping case from 15 years ago, and the suspect is the woman who had been kidnapped as a girl. Caught red-handed with the shotgun used to kill the writer, she insists on talking only to a particular female detective, who, it turns out, used to be her best friend before the kidnapping. The story drops plenty of red herrings regarding the book publisher, a shady tabloid reporter, and the detective’s own father before zeroing in on the particulars of the murder victim, who the suspect claims is the man who kidnapped and tortured her back in the day but was never caught due to her reticence in providing the police with details about the man. It’s a world premiere, and I haven’t read any outside reviews yet, but I assume it will be picked up in Japan since the two female leads are quite popular.

The other Korean film I saw was Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs, which isn’t his latest. His latest isn’t playing at the festival, which is strange because he usually has two every year. (It just played at the NY Film Festival, I think) Anyway, Traveler is the third appearance of Isabelle Huppert in Hong’s filmography, so I guess that qualifies her as a member of his repertory company. She plays a French tourist who’s slumming around Seoul and supporting herself by giving French lessons on the most casual basis. Her clients are solicited through word-of-mouth and the lessons are mainly conducted in English, which I thought was a good joke, especially given Hong’s penchant for scenes rooted in drunken conversation. In this case, the “lessons” consist of the “students” describing their “feelings” in English and then Huppert translating them into written French on cards. Hong revives his gimmick of repeating conversations several times in the course of the film, since the students invariably answer her questions with the exact same answers. It’s one of Hong’s more frivolous scripts, and Huppert is obviously enjoying herself. I can tell she was definitely getting drunk from all that Korean liquor. 

The similarly titled Traveling Alone is the kind of Japanese film whose synopsis would immediately turn me away from it, but it’s a world premiere so I thought I should see it, and while it was slight it was also better than it has a right to be given its hackneyed premise. Misaki (Rei Okamoto) is a thirtyish office worker who impulsively quits her Tokyo office job and returns to her home town in Wakayama Prefecture. She doesn’t seem to have any definite plans for the future, and it’s never clear whey she left the capital, but back home she connects with old school friends, many of whom have married and settled down. At a middle school reunion she looks for an old friend, Keiichi, who she was close with. Everybody assumed they were dating but it was chaste relationship that ended when they went to different high schools. Misaki is shocked to learn that Keiichi has died in an accident, and the movie is essentially her coming to terms with the fact, since she never realized that she was actually in love with him. The mourning, in fact, becomes a kind of obsession that the director, Yuho Ishibashi, handles with delicacy and tact. I was expecting something sentimental and purple, but Misaki’s confusion is quite credible and affecting. At the same time, you know it will pass in due time, so there’s not much at stake. I’m not sure if that’s a flaw, but there’s only so much you can do with the “unrequited first love” concept.

I managed to snag a ticket for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who happens to be heading the New Currents jury this year. As everyone knows, the Iranian government issued a warrant for his arrest while he was at Cannes, effectively making him another exiled Iranian director, and, in a way, I imagine he should have expected that reaction from the government considering the kind of movie he made. First of all, the film forthrightly addresses the recent protest movement sparked by the death of a woman in police custody for violating the law related to head coverings with actual footage of police violence. But that element is basically a subplot. The main action centers on Iman, a civil servant who has gotten a dream promotion to Judicial Investigator, which is the step right before becoming a judge. However, Iman quickly learns that he is expected to pretty much do little investigating and just rubber stamp the prosecutors’ indictments, including those for capital crimes. When the hijab protests explode, he is swamped by cases, a situation that complicates his home life, since he has two daughters who get caught up in the protests, mostly by accident, but it makes them wonder about their father’s role in the horrors. The Maguffin is a pistol that Iman has been given by the court for protection, since judges are often the targets of public enmity, for obvious reasons. One day, the gun goes missing, and Iman, who has become increasingly paranoid, believes his older daughter stole it. I think Rasoulof gets carried away with this premise, because the film works itself up to a frantic lather over the course of its nearly 3-hour runtime, and the final section, which somehow mimics the dynamics of The Shining, is needlessly extreme. Still, if anyone has a bone to pick with the authorities, it’s an Iranian citizen, and Rasoulof gets a lot of mileage out of his rage. It would have been interesting to hear more about his approach and the thinking behind the movie, but, unfortunately, the post-screening Q&A was in Persian and Korean. There wasn’t even an attempt to provide English interpreting to those of us who understood neither.