I’m sitting in Gimhae Airport now waiting for my flight, which is very early, meaning I’ll get home before lunch. As I think I mentioned last year (the year before?), several years ago the festival stopped providing transportation between the airport and the Haeundae resort area, where they put people up, and it’s been a blessing in disguise, because although I have to pay my own way now, I take the subway, which is much more relaxing and reliable than the limousine bus they put me on. Invariably the bus always gets stuck in Busan’s nearly 24-hour traffic, thus adding an extra layer of stress that I don’t need. I know exactly how long it takes for the train to get to where I need to go. 

Another blessing in disguise was the fact that Wang Bing’s Youth (Homecoming) is screening after I leave the festival. I surely would have felt obliged to see it, since I think he’s one of the best documentary filmmakers working today, but this year he has two at BIFF and, as you probably know, they’re invariably marathons. Today I sat through the second part of his supposed trilogy, Youth (Hard Times), which is 3 hours and 45 minutes, and while I enjoyed it, I don’t know if I could sit through another one like it, though Homecoming is considerably shorter. I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of the trilogy, Youth (Spring), when I saw it at BIFF, mainly because it was so action-packed. Hard Times deals with the same textile factories in Zhili, China, but has more of a focus on the difficulties the workers encounter with their employers, and as such is less interested in only young people. Though the majority of these migrant workers are under 25, there are still quite a few people as old as 41 (Wang introduces each worker as he goes along with the person’s name, home province, and age), so it isn’t chiefly occupied with “youth” the way the first movie was. He also has a tighter hold on “stories” he picks up since they have built-in drama: a somewhat irresponsible kid loses his paybook, which gives his boss an excuse to withhold pay, an action that leads to some offscreen violence and the kid landing in the local jail; an employer who, faced with his own police inquiry after beating up an unpaid supplier who’s demanding his money, skips town without paying his workers, prompting said workers to commandeer the rented factory space and selling off all the equipment to make up for their lost wages; and a protracted negotiation between management and a bunch of workers who think the per-piece rate their getting is a ripoff. I only dozed off once, which is saying something.

From my perch, the buzz movie of the festival this year (outside of the streaming series previews, which were the biggest attraction among press people) has been The Height of the Coconut Trees, a Japanese film directed by the busy Chinese cinematographer Du Jie. Various reports explain that Du and his family settled in Yokohama in 2020 when they couldn’t return to China because of the pandemic. Looking to make the kind of personal film he probably wouldn’t have been able to make in China, he adapted his writing to Japanese characters, settings, and situations. The overall movie isn’t that coherent (a friend informed me that in its earlier incarnations it was even more incoherent) but it does make sense as a film, and is beautifully shot and scored. It’s mostly about two young couples whose relationships founder for entirely different reasons, and contemplates suicide in a very sedate manner. There’s some gorgeous imagery and intriguing use of nonlinear plot development, though in one crucial scene Du relies too much on monologues to explain things that don’t need that much explanation. His vagueness is actually his strength.

The Korean crime thriller, Revolver, which I believe will be released in Japan before the end of the year, is not as original or hermetically plotted as A Girl with Eyes Closed, which I wrote about yesterday, but it’s still a trip to sit through, mainly because it’s unserious about its intentions and charms. The great Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine) plays veteran police detective Ha Son-yeong, who serves two years in prison for bribery, taking the fall for her boyfriend, Lim Seok-yong (Lee Jung-jae, obviously doing someone a favor), and a few other cops who have been shaking down a nightclub operation that deals in drugs and prostitution. In return, she’s been promised a lot of money, as well as the key to a luxury Seoul condo, by Lim, but when she’s released she finds out Lim has been killed and goes searching for the perpetrators, not so much to get revenge (Lim, she soon discovers, has been cheating on her big time) but to get paid. Jeon does the tired, glum, long-suffering protagonist to a T, which adds a layer of absurdity to the usual gangster-versus-cop shenanigans. More interestingly, it uses violence much more sparingly than other Korean films of its ilk, relying mainly on carefully delivered sarcasm as the weapon of most effectiveness. If you’re at all a fan of Korean movies and TV shows, it’s got a whole slew of big name cameos in addition to Lee’s. 

The capper this year was How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, which is the biggest box office draw not only in its native Thailand, but throughout all of Southeast Asia. Predictable and earnest, it’s about how a young slacker nicknamed M (Putthipong “Billion” Assaratanakul) who hatches a plan to get his grandmother’s inheritance after she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. No one will win any prizes guessing that the movie starts out as a cynical comedy that turns sentimental and heartwarming by the end, but such movies are a dime a dozen, and Millions is a bit slyer and more thoughtfully developed. For one thing, it addresses grandma’s inferior social status as a woman in Thai society in a bold and different way, by showing how whatever assets she’s accumulated were made despite her gender, a fact that M only starts to appreciate late in his relationship with her. I’m sure it will come to Japan in the near future. Its themes are pretty universal, at least among Asians.