Media watch: Koike again refuses to acknowledge Korean massacre

Posted on August 28, 2024 by philipbrasor
Police preparing for Korean memorial ceremony at Yokoamicho Park (Mainichi Shimbun)

Sept. 1 marks the 101st anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake, and for the eighth year in a row, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike will not send a message of condolence to a group that holds a memorial ceremony for the Korean residents of Japan who were murdered by Japanese soldiers and vigilante groups in the wake of the disaster. All Tokyo governors in the past, including that famous xenophobe Shintaro Ishihara, have sent a message to the group on Sept. 1, and Koike sent one the first year she was governor, but not since. Officially, the massacre is considered a historical fact, though, as with most matters related to Japan’s mistreatment of non-Japanese people at home and abroad, the numbers tend to vary. Korean groups who have researched the killings—Japanese authorities have never carried out a thorough study and rely on incidental data, such as reports in vernacular newspapers—estimate that 6,000 resident Koreans were killed. The official Japanese estimate is about 250. 

The announcement that Koike would not send a message was delivered Aug. 16 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. When Tokyo Shimbun contacted the relevant office for a further comment, it was told that Koike plans to attend a ceremony and memorial service for “all victims” of the disaster, thus implying that she does not distinguish between Koreans killed deliberately by people who thought they were poisoning wells and starting fires, as rumor had it at the time, and members of the general public who perished as a result of the destruction wrought by the massive quake. The head of the committee that carries out the memorial to Korean victims at Yokoamicho Park in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, told Tokyo Shimbun that Koike obviously thinks that “sending an additional message of condolence for Korean victims is just too much trouble.” In essence, Koike means to ignore these Korean victims. (note: Some Japanese media have said that the memorial committee is part of Chongryon, the representative association for North Korean citizens living in Japan, but Chongryon is only one of several groups that have supported the ceremony in the past.)

As we’ve already written, the main reason for Koike’s neglect is pressure from an anti-Korean organization that denies the massacre ever happened. This group, called Japanese Women’s Association Soyokaze, send people to Yokoamicho Park every Sept. 1 to carry out its own memorial ceremony, but all they do is heckle the Korean ceremony in a bid to disrupt it, yelling phrases such as “Koreans go home.” This group has been responsible for various incidents of public hate speech directed at Korean residents of Japan, as well as general anti-Korean political activism, including the recent removal of a memorial to forced Korean laborers that had been installed in a park in Gunma Prefecture. The Tokyo government’s human rights division has condemned the group’s speech without condemning the group itself. Soyokaze has said they received permission from a local neighborhood association to hold their ceremony in Yokoamicho Park, though this association has told media that they have nothing to do with Soyokaze and granted no such permission. 

On Aug. 5, Asahi Shimbun reported on a petition sent to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and signed by 83 Univ. of Tokyo faculty and staff urging Koike to send a letter of condolence to the Korean group holding the Sept. 1 ceremony. According to one of the signatories, Prof. Masahiro Tonomura, who has written a book about Korean forced labor, Koike’s vague response to these entreaties can be construed as denial of the accepted massacre record. Thus, Tonomura asserts, Koike—who makes a big deal of her academic background—undermines trust in scholarly research, which has concluded that the massacre actually happened. In addition, it is incumbent on the governor to acknowledge the massacre due to ongoing bigotry and discrimination against Koreans and other minority groups in Tokyo. Ignoring such issues means she is not upholding her duty as Tokyo governor to foster a “diverse society.”

Asahi asked Soyokaze for a comment and received no reply. However, the group’s home page said it was planning to show up again at Yokoamicho Park on Sept. 1. 

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Media watch: NHK critiques atomic bombing through dramatic proxy

Posted on August 25, 2024 by philipbrasor

Last week I interviewed a Japanese journalist for an industry publication about Japanese content sales overseas, in particular Japanese TV dramas. I brought up the current NHK morning drama series, or “asadora,” which is aired every weekday for 15 minutes and always centers on a female protagonist. The one NHK is presenting now, and which started in the spring, is called Tora ni Tsubasa (English title: The Tiger and Her Wings). It’s a fictionalized biography of Yoshiko Mibuchi, who was one of the first female lawyers in Japan and the first female judge. The journalist said she has watched every episode and admired the way the series frankly covered the sexual politics of Japan during the Showa Era, when it takes place, especially its sympathetic treatment of one LGBTQ+ character. 

I had only seen a handful of episodes, but the significance of the series for me was something different. Mibuchi was the judge in charge of the first lawsuit brought against the Japanese government by victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a subject that, as far as I am aware, has never been touched by Japanese television in dramatic form. And while NHK often covers the atomic bombings in documentaries, especially during August when the anniversaries come around, it tends to approach the issue in historical terms in a neutral manner. The journalist acknowledged this point, but since the case didn’t come up until the 98th episode, which was broadcast on August 14, she didn’t think it was the primary theme of the series. She saw it as simply a fictionalized bio-drama of a prominent historical figure with whom many Japanese were probably unfamiliar.

In that regard, I thought the show would be more valuable for opening viewers’ eyes to aspects of the bombings that aren’t discussed in Japan openly. In the series, Mibuchi has been renamed Tomoko Inotsume (Tora-chan is her nickname), and she will presumably preside over a case that greatly affected the legal standing of hibakusha (victims of the atomic bombings). According to a Tokyo Shimbun article about the trial, the genesis of the court case came about around 1955, when two separate suits brought by hibakusha against the government, one filed in Tokyo, the other in Osaka, were combined into one. In addition, the irradiation of a Japanese fishing boat and its crew by the U.S. atomic testing at the Bikini atoll in 1954 was allowed as material evidence. The plaintiffs insisted that the atomic bombings violated international law, but since the Japanese government had abandoned any war-related demands from the U.S. in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the victims could not sue the U.S. and so aimed their wrath at the Japanese government, demanding compensation based on property rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The Japanese government insisted that the suit had no standing because matters between separate sovereign nations do not hinge on the domestic laws of either country, which Tokyo Shimbun agreed was a flimsy argument. In any case, individual victims do not have the right to demand compensation in terms of international law. To add even more irony to the case, in its defense, the government took the American justification for the bombing at face value, saying that it sped up the end of the war and thus prevented many more deaths on both sides of the conflict, a theory that is still being debated. 

Mibuchi presided over all 9 trial sessions except the last one, when she was replaced by another judge and transferred to family court. She was not present when the verdict was read on Dec. 7, 1963, though Tokyo Shimbun agrees that her sensibility was all over the court’s statement. Though the court rejected the suit owing to procedural matters, in its 131-page ruling it stated that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were indeed illegal acts of war in terms of international law, since they caused the indiscriminate killing of civilian non-combatants in a location with no strategic value. It mentioned that the use of poison gas after World War I was deemed a war crime, and the court saw no difference in terms of pain and suffering inflicted by the atomic bombs. It was the first time a legal entity had addressed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the statement would reverberate in the subsequent international movement to abolish nuclear weapons and figure more locally in the treatment of hibakusha over the years by the Japanese government. 

Tokyo Shimbun points out that it took a certain measure of courage to write an opinion that overtly criticized the U.S. at the time, since Japan was very careful not to offend the country that defeated it. Tora ni Tsubasa could clarify this important historical moment for a wider audience. 

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Review: Monkey Man and Polite Society

Posted on August 23, 2024 by philipbrasor

Though they have little in common except the setting and Dev Patel as the lead, it’s easy to recognize the stylistic and thematic centrality of Slumdog Millionaire in Patel’s directorial debut. The latter is a classic tale of retribution, while the former was more or less a rags-to-riches story, but both take place in the underworld of Mumbai, with its unsavory characters and grimy attributes, and Patel obviously observed a lot from Danny Boyle’s direction. However, Monkey Man is ostensibly a bloody action flick in the mold of John Wick, with which it shares some technical staff (as well as a scene that references Wick by name) and any number of John Woo movies. It’s also rather long, which means Patel and his co-screenwriters, Paul Angunawala and John Collee, have to sustain the viewer’s curiosity through a lot of extended mayhem, which, regardless how inventively it’s pulled off, needs to be supported by motive and some kind of rationale. In this case, Patel’s character, Bobby, is seeking revenge for the death of his mother when he was a child at the hands of a group of corrupt police who were evicting poor folk from a tract of land a developer, at the behest of an evil religious cult leader, wanted for itself. The trick is to keep the methods Bobby utilizes to reach his goal comprehensible while also justifying the often byzantine fight scenes that are the product of these methods. 

So while the road to satisfaction is paved with ridiculousness, it follows a certain narrative rigor that keeps things lively and interesting, if not totally derivative. Bobby, for instance, earns cash to finance his revenge plot by taking dives in underground bare-knuckle fights for a venal promoter (Sharlto Copley, probably the only actor they considered for the role), and then enlists some street hustler kids to steal a purse from the manager of a ritzy night club where the targeted cops hang out in order to gain the manager’s favor when he returns it and hits her up for a job. I would say that Patel didn’t need to spend as much time on these details as he does, but the fight scenes, at least, provide some background as to why he’s such a deadly combatant when he has to take on multiple attackers kung-fu-style. The gun action, in contrast, feels gratuitous, especially since Patel, who’s become one of the most versatile young actors in movies, went to the trouble of working out to get his body lean and buff, the better to seem like a raw-boned, maniacal fighting machine. 

The sociopolitical subtext is trite and not as affecting as that in Slumdog Millionaire, but it’s obvious Monkey Man was conceived as frivolous—albeit seriously executed—entertainment, so the social ills it highlights are just a vehicle. Still, one wonders if Patel, who is British, could have financed it completely with Indian money given that subtext. It definitely would have required more dedicated music sequences.

The sub-continent-associated characters in Nida Manzoor’s action comedy Polite Society actually live in Britain, but, as in Manzoor’s very funny TV series, We Are Lady Parts, they carry with them the customs and religious sensibilities of their ancestral homeland, a context that Manzoor skewers with gleeful abandon. Though this particular subset of immigrants and their UK-raised children are Muslim, the specificity of faith has no real purchase on the plot. It’s all about tradition that can’t be easily shaken off, and thus the conventional parents of our two protagonists, sisters Ria (Priya Kansara) and Lena (Ritu Arya), would prefer they do the right thing and find nice Muslim boys with which to start families. Ria, however, has dreams of becoming a stunt woman, and enlists Lena to make demo videos of her busting moves that she can post online to sell her brand. Lena herself had enrolled in art school to study painting but suffers a serious failure of self-confidence in her abilities and has gone on hiatus, so she’s susceptible to her mother’s machinations to set her up with a handsome doctor, Salim (Akshay Khanna), whose own mother seems a little too enthusiastic about the match in Ria’s estimation. So as Lena falls more in love with Salim, Ria concocts a plan to extract her from the clutches of matrimony, which she’s convinced Lena wasn’t meant for.

Nothing particularly original there, but Manzoor develops this familar plot line in action movie terms, complete with elaborate fight scenes and far-fetched tumbles down sci-fi adjacent rabbit holes that reminded me of the movies of Jordan Peele, who, as it happens, produced Monkey Man and reportedly had a hand in its direction. In fact, the two movies have more in common than their creators probably imagine, if they even think of each other at all.

Monkey Man, in English and Hindi, now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Polite Society now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Monkey Man home page in Japanese

Polite Society home page in Japanese

Monkey Man photo (c) Universal Studios

Polite Society photo (c) 2022 Focus Features LLC

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Review: Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros

Posted on August 22, 2024 by philipbrasor

It’s safe to say that the overarching interest of the 93-year-old master documentarian Frederick Wiseman is how people work. He plants his camera in a work environment and just records people fulfilling their tasks. In many cases, the environment is publicly operated and open—a city hall, a court, a library—but occasionally he inserts himself into a private enterprise whose history and culture is circumscribed. His latest epic focuses on La Maison Troisgros, a 3-star restaurant, located in the countryside of Roanne, France, that has been run by the same family for three generations. In fact, the provenance of the establishment may go back further, but Wiseman is somewhat stingy with the particulars of its biography, saving them for the very end of his four-hour film, at which point the viewer may have gotten past any desire for background, having been so totally submerged in the business’s rarefied ethic. It’s an odd way of structuring a portrait of what amounts to an idiosyncratic operation based on artistic and culinary whim rather than on economic prerogatives. 

And that’s not the only aspect of the production that distinguishes it from previous Wiseman works. Because the place where the hotel-restaurant complex is located is so gorgeous, Wiseman luxuriates in connecting shots of quite stunning beauty, thus making the overall film as aesthetically purposeful as the elaborate dishes whose preparation he so lovingly chronicles. I would estimate that a good half to two-thirds of the running time is devoted either to discussions of how meals should be constructed, or the actual construction itself. Because of the high prices the customers pay at the restaurant, the owner-chef, Michel Troisgros, feels it is beholden on him to open the process of the food preparation up to his patrons, and so there are long scenes of him standing at tables in front of rapt epicures explaining how this dish came about, along with a spicy anecdote that explains something of its centrality in his own life. When he and his heir, César, sit down and go over how to improve a certain dish, Wiseman doesn’t give us the gist of their discussion, he gives us the whole thing, including those bits about “reductions” and “umami” that the layman will not comprehend without additional voiceover, which, of course, Wiseman never indulges in. Being the true democratic completist he is, Wiseman doesn’t ignore the rest of the crew—the sous chefs, the wait staff, the accountants, the housekeepers, the suppliers (almost all ingredients are locally produced), the dishwashers. Everyone gets their due, as well as the opportunity to prove once again that there is no such thing as an insignificant job, especially in a restaurant.

The issue some may take is that the fareon offer is out of their league financially and otherwise, and there is something occasionally off-putting about the satisfied expressions on the faces of the privileged who can afford to dine at La Maison Troisgros. Personally, I am enormously happy whenever someone endeavors to feed me, whatever it is and however it is compensated for, and thus could never be a food critic because I could never criticize food, so while the dishes will likely send some viewers into fits of rapture, others may simply wonder what the big deal is. But I do like The Bear, and Wiseman’s presentation of the mechanics of a big kitchen has the same appeal, only without the high drama. These people seem to get along unusually well, even when they mess something up big time.

In French and English. Opens Aug. 23 in Tokyo at Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280), Cine Switch Ginza (03-3561-0707).

Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 3 Star LLC

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Review: 12.12: The Day

Posted on August 21, 2024 by philipbrasor

The portentous English title of Kim Sung-soo’s box office hit about the 1979 coup that replaced one South Korean dictatorship with an even worse one could have been convincingly changed to Amateurs, a more accurate description of the action that ensues in this very action-packed movie. Since there still isn’t a definitive history of what actually happened on that day, and this is the first cinematic treatment of the affair, the filmmakers take certain dramatic liberties that play up the venality of the instigators of the coup under the megalomaniac General Chun Doo-hwan (Hwang Jung-min) while inflating the heroism of the commander of the Seoul garrison, General Lee Tae-shin (Jung Woo-sung), who endeavored to stop Chun. And while Hwang has great fun portraying that cartoony, outsized venality, the movie as a whole isn’t as entertaining or even as provocative as Im Sang-soo’s The President’s Last Bang, which frames the assassination of President Park Chung-hee that precipitated the coup as basically a war between rival yakuza organizations. Many have taken issue with that facetious interpretation, but since even the assassination is open to debate, I have always liked to think that Im’s movie provided more thematic verisimilitude than did, say, The Man Who Stood Next, which was more conventional in its approach to the killing. 

Despite the fact that Kim has changed the names of many of the principals because of Korea’s strict libel laws, anyone with any elementary knowledge of Korean history knows who these people are, but the way they’re presented has more to do with Korean movie entertainment than historical edification. To his credit, Kim and his writers keep the action comprehensible, expertly juggling multiple plotlines to show how Chun’s make-or-break scheme to usurp government control for his secret military society, the Hanahoe, could defeat anyone who opposed him following proper military protocols because Chun would do anything to achieve his goals, including the killing of fellow soldiers. Kim makes no plausible political case for Chun’s ambitions. The general gives lip service to warding off North Korean infiltrations, but for the most part it’s clear that his ego is running the show. Because no one on either side of the conflict is emotionally or psychologically prepared to stand up to such a person, they can’t handle it in the long run, but Kim sets up plenty of scenarios that pull the advantage back-and-forth between the two factions until full-out combat ensues in the middle of the night, while the citizenry sleeps unaware that they will wake up to a government they didn’t expect or want. 

The Korean and Japanese title of the film is Seoul Spring, because following the death of Park, people expected a real democracy to bloom, and it would have been interesting to watch 12.12 with a Korean audience to witness their reaction to a film that depicts, however fantastically, one of the most infamous days in their annals. Even I felt a creeping sense of existential despair throughout the exposition, knowing what the final outcome would be, so while I think that Im’s somewhat mischievous treatment of this kind of material has more cinematic potential, in the end it probably would have put off those whose lives were actually affected by these events. But one thing’s for sure, Hwang’s borderline comic portrayal of a military maniac operating on pure grievance and self-interest is one for the ages. 

In Korean and English. Opens Aug. 23 in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

12.12: The Day home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Plus M Entertainment & Hive Media Corp.

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Review: The Fall Guy and The Garfield Movie

Posted on August 16, 2024 by philipbrasor

The stated goal of this action comedy, based loosely on a 1980s TV series, is to get the Motion Picture Academy to inaugurate an Oscar for stunt people, and given that the Academy recently announced it will do such a thing (though not for a while), the movie is clearly a success. As to its success as an entertainment product, it works hard for the viewer’s good favor, but I’ve felt for a while now that Ryan Gosling, the titular character, has been over-exending himself as a movie star ever since La La Land. Directed by David Leitch, a former stunt coordinator who’s seen success on his own with high-concept actioners (John Wick, Bullet Train), The Fall Guy positions Gosling as the kind of stone professional who may be too good at his job, which sort of describes Gosling as film icon. He’s not as insufferable as Tom Cruise, but you can tell his approach to leading man-ism is mostly about how well he sells a film’s overall gestalt, and not just his own performance.

Gosling’s character, Colt Seavers, is a highly touted stuntman whose own self-regard is severely tested by a horrific on-set accident that puts him in the hospital and then out of action for months, though the long recovery period seems to have more to do with his hurt pride than his physical well-being. Meanwhile, the stunt coordinator in charge of that shoot, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), has, like Leitch, graduated to the director’s chair and is now making a sci-fi epic called MetalStorm. The producer (Hannah Waddingham) tricks Colt into visiting the set so that he can be recruited to stunt double for the conceited star, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), for whom Colt has doubled before, but mainly it’s to force Colt and Jody to make nice again since Colt obviously blames her for his almost getting killed. For the most part, the give-and-take between director and stuntman, which glides on an unsubtle romantic undercurrent, is the best part of the movie because Gosling and Blunt excel at this kind of comedy, but then the screenwriter throws the whole thing out the window by revving up the plot with Ryder’s sudden disappearance and Colt’s search for him, which forces him into a whole new universe of action-packed intrigue that gets out of hand. Where did all these cartoon villains come from, and why?

It’s a question that the movie answers in time, but not necessarily in a satisfactory way. It should be said that the reason you go to see a movie like The Fall Guy is to find out exactly how they pull off some of those stunts, and Leitch delivers in that department. The screwball love stuff is just gravy, but the bada-bing action set pieces that line up like dominoes in the second half never cohere into anything more than pointless, deafening mayhem. 

The mayhem in The Garfield Movie is not as loud, but even more pointless when you consider the IP. I don’t know how many movies have been made so far about the lasagna-scarfing orange tabby—and that’s not to mention the TV show—but this is clearly one too many since it doesn’t even tap into the character’s most well-established traits. It’s really just a lame caper film that happens to trade on Garfield’s cynical sense of humor. 

First of all, Garfield (voiced with a bit too much enthusiasm by Chris Pratt) is not as annoying as he is in the comic strip, and his constantly pulling the rug out from under his “owner” Jon and persecuting the intellectually challenged dog Odie are toned down as if dictated by some kind of PC killjoy. In fact, the whole emotional atmosphere is stacked against that kind of cruel humor by positioning Garfield as a poster cat for neglected felines. We learn that Garfield was abandoned by his father as a kitten at an Italian restaurant, where he was adopted by Jon after eating his entire pizza. Years later, after becoming the cat we love to roll our eyes at, Garfield’s father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), reenters his life and then quickly pulls Garfield and Odie into a criminal scheme to help a sad bull (Ving Rhames) rescue the love of his life. 

None of this plays to Garfield the cat’s strengths as a character and so the movie has nothing particularly distinctive to offer as entertainment. It’s simply another mediocre heist flick with a couple of colorful characters. Even the main through line of Garfield’s resentment toward his father’s betrayal isn’t sustained for anything more than a few beats, and the big bad business subtheme is gratuitous at best. It’s hard to figure out just why this movie was made.

The Fall Guy is now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Garfield Movie, in subtitled and dubbed versions, is now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Fall Guy home page in Japanese

The Garfield Movie home page in Japanese

The Fall Guy photo (c) 2024 Universal Studios

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Review: New Normal

Posted on August 15, 2024 by philipbrasor

The framing story of Jung Bum-shik’s omnibus slasher flick is difficult to parse at first. The various stories spool out in Seoul over a four-day period in May after it snows unseasonally, and for some reason an element of “chaos” is injected into the populace, but since Jung sticks to the specific, meaning isolated characters, some of whom appear in more than one story, the impression isn’t so much arbitrary madness as it is unfortunate confluences of character that lead to murder and mayhem. Fortunately, Jung has a sense of humor, and while it may not be to everyone’s taste the ironies are sharp enough to make the horrors more interesting, if not necessarily more unsettling. And like any good fiction filmmaker who works better in shorter formats, he knows how to plant a twist where it’s most effective. 

The order of the stories is non-linear, and as in Pulp Fiction, a movie that New Normal resembles structurally, characters who die in one episode may pop up in a later one. The opening tale, “M” (the titles are all taken from existing movies), is the simplest and least original. A single woman (soap opera queen Choi Ji-woo, working decidedly against type) is visited by a fire alarm inspector whose rapid fire double entendres and overly intrusive manner raises red flags in the mind of the viewer because the TV keeps mentioning a serial killer at large. Choi shows up later in another story, “Dressed to Kill,” about several young people trading profiles on a dating app in a dangerously reckless manner. The protagonists of the stories are hardly sympathetic, except for the put-upon female convenience store clerk (Ha Da-in) in “My Life as a Dog,” whose dreams of musical glory are dashed by the demands of capitalism, thus driving her to websites where feral people trade tips on how to kill those they hate. Jung gets a lot of mileage out of digital media, but it would be overly reductive to say that he’s targeting modern technology as the root of all the evil he depicts. In the best segment, “Be With You,” a lovelorn young man follows a very analog series of valentines stuck in vending machines to a possible date with a fetching young woman, whose plans for him turn out to be anything but romantic. 

Jung doesn’t connect the evils on display to some kind of overarching social malignancy. They seem organic and pegged to the usual deviant personalities, though I suppose you can infer that such deviancies have been exacerbated by the social fabric becoming less tightly woven. As such, New Normal comes across as yet another film about the horrors of everyday life in post-millennial South Korea. It’s a thrilling place to visit cinematically, but you wouldn’t want to live anywhere near there.

In Korean. Opens Aug. 16 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011). 

New Normal home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Unpa Studios

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Review: Sages-femmes (Midwives)

Posted on August 14, 2024 by philipbrasor

“Labor” in all meanings of the word is the subject of this medical movie. Ostensibly centered on the horrifically hectic first weeks of two new midwives at a public hospital in the French city of Toulouse, Léa Fehner’s film, which splices in footage of actual births to provide realistic counterpoint, is really about the exploitation of these staff by a system that is sorely under-funded. Sofia (Khadija Kouyaté) and Louise (Héloïse Janjaud) are roommates and friends as well as novice midwives, and when they start their first day together they’re separated in a cruelly arbitrary way: Though Sofia at first blush seems like the more capable of the two, she’s assigned to birthing-class duty, while Louise, who has just broken up with her boyfriend in a rather loud way right there in the hospital, is plugged directly into service assisting deliveries that she can’t quite handle. “We get the worse cases,” says her senior, Bénédicte (Myriem Akheddiou), “so level up.” We soon understand that the midwives normally handle two or three or even four patients at the same time, and it’s imperative that the lower ranking medical personnel know what they need and when they need it. 

Sages-femmes takes the notion that childbirth is an inherently dangerous process at face value, but goes a bit further in framing it as the kind of emotional event that can break a person’s will, and not just that of the parent. For every woman who welcomes her baby with tears of joy, there’s one who resents the pain and loss of privacy so much that she can’t be bothered even looking at the child. And then, of course, there are the medical emergencies that, in this movie, at least, seem to happen more often than not. Fehner does an excellent job of juxtaposing the technical aspects with the dramatic elements, even if the dialogue is often a bit theatrical (“it requires more than adrenalin”). She also manages to touch every socioeconomic base in making her point about understaffing and general apathy on the part of the authorities toward upholding minimum standards. The most effective subplot focuses on an undocumented woman who gives birth under dire circumstances and then abandons the baby—only to show up later to claim it, professing that she already has too many mouths to feed. Louise naively lets the woman stay in her and Sofia’s flat, which is also hosting the even more naive intern Valentin (Quentin Vernede) on a temporary basis. Though the subplot strains with all these shifts in dramatic direction, it neatly shows the vagaries of a medical condition—pregnancy—that is subject to so much more than just therapeutic attention. All women do not have babies for the same reasons or with the same outlooks and approaches. 

And while much of the action is strong meat—a particularly upsetting medical abortion is depicted—it’s nothing compared to the humiliations imposed by the hospital heirarchy, which only makes the job that much more intolerable. Fehner shows how these pressures get to everyone, forcing them to push through their feelings of rage and incompetence in order to fulfill their assigned tasks. Some quit in a huff, but most have come to the job with a sense of mission that the actors convey convincingly. It helps that all the principal players are women. Men in this world are almost a deadly distraction, and I don’t mean romantically. 

In French. Opens Aug. 16 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho. 

Sages-femmes home page in Japanese

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Review: Tótem

Posted on August 9, 2024 by philipbrasor

Though the Mexican director Lila Avilés has a way of withholding information that gives her domestic drama a touch of mystery, she reveals her thematic hand very early on. The protagonist of Tótem, seven-year-old Sol (Naíma Sentíes), is driving with her mother, Lucia (Lazua Larios), in a car filled with party balloons. The mood is buoyant and mother and daughter are playing a game that hinges on a secret wish. Sol reveals hers, which is that her father wouldn’t die. As the movie quickly informs us, the party to which the pair (or, actually, just Sol, since Lucia then disappears with no explanation for a good portion of the film) are traveling is for Sol’s father, a painter named Tona (Mareo García Elizondo), who is dying of cancer. His family, meaning his brothers and sisters, are throwing a birthday party for him at the home of their father, Roberto (Alberto Amador), a somewhat intimidating psychiatrist who consults with patients while his children prepare the festivities. Sol observes it all, sometimes as a participant, other times as a fly on the wall, and receives a crash course in adult deflection. Why are they celebrating her father’s oncoming demise? More incisively, why can’t she be with her father when she demands to be with him, a question that even Avilés seems reluctant to answer. 

While the POV is mostly that of the girl, the scenes of her relatives and their friends trying to make the best out of a desperately sad situation is presented unfiltered, so if Sol often seems confused by the behavior of the grownups, the viewer knows what’s going on but shares in Sol’s frustration. Along the way, Tona’s sister, Nuria (Montserrat Marañon), struggles to bake a birthday cake while taking care of her precocious toddler daughter, who nevertheless isn’t old enough to appreciate the gravity/ridiculousness of the situation. An exorcist, invited by another sibling against their father’s wishes, walks about the house as if she owned the place, ridding it of bad spirits. Tona’s nurse, Cruz (Teresita Sánchez), mostly stays with her charge, cleaning him up when he shits himself just before making his very reluctant entrance (he clearly doesn’t want a birthday party) and reminding the siblings that she hasn’t been paid yet. Eventually, Lucia returns and the small nuclear family is reunited for a short interlude that overflows with love and stinging regret, only to be interrupted by the consequence of the party that was planned and cannot be denied, and which Tona pretends to enjoy.

Sol’s outlook becomes ours: Why can’t we have more joy, as when she, Nuria, and Tona are alone together within the carapace of their affection? Why do family and friends insist on perpetutating the pain by reminding everyone, not least of all Tona, of his impending mortality with a celebration that is mostly carried out to make them feel better? Avilés’ particular genius is elucidating these points through the eyes of a child who barely comprehends them but is still wise enough to understand that she is losing something more precious than anything she will ever know—not just her father, but time itself.  

In Spanish. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670).

Tótem home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Limerenciafilms S.A.P.I. de C.V. Laterna Film, Paloma Productions, Alphaviolet Production

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Review: Exterior Night

Posted on August 8, 2024 by philipbrasor

Though Marco Bellocchio’s second film about the kidnap/murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro by radical leftists in 1978 was obviously intended as a six-part TV series, it premiered at Cannes and was featured at other international film festivals before it was aired or streamed in Europe. Japan has also decided to release it in theaters (I have no idea if there are plans to broadcast it here as a series), and while six hours is a lot to sit through and the structure is definitely that of a multi-part work, the film builds a relentless momentum that carries the viewer without much drag time, even if the outcome is known to anyone familiar with its famous story. Bellocchio, often cited as the last great Marxist filmmaker, already addressed this material in his standard-length 2003 film, Good Morning, Night, but obviously wasn’t through with it; or maybe he wasn’t satisfied with what he had made. (I haven’t seen it.) The mini-series format allows him to delve deeper into the various personalities involved in the tragedy to show how and why events turned out the way they did, suggesting that they could have turned out differently if only certain political sensibilities weren’t so entrenched. Each episode of the series focuses on one person—Moro (Fabrizio Gifuni); the newly installed minister of the interior, Francisco Cossiga (Fausto Russo Alesi); Pope Paul VI (Toni Servillo); a female “terrorist” who starts to have second thoughts (Daniela Marra); Moro’s wife, Eleonoro (Margherita Buy)—except for the last, which sums up the story in the bleakest way possible. As a portrait of European volatility in the 70s, it rivals Olivier Assayas’s Carlos (2010) as the most informative and gripping study of how perceived political and personal necessity inevitably conquers social ideals. 

The one established concept that holds throughout the series is that Moro was a decent man. Though he was president of the conservative Christian Democratic Party at the time of his abduction, his values were more ecumenical. In fact, he was causing great consternation not only within his party but in Washington for his willingness to work with Italy’s Communist Party in forming a government. It should be emphasized that the communists were not any kind of ally of the Red Brigades, who carried out the kidnapping (or, at least, one faction of it did). If anything the radicals held the Communists in even more contempt than they held the CDP or even the avowedly fascist Italian military. And it seems also clear from the beginning that while the kidnapping was ostensibly carried out to force the CDP’s hand, there was never any intention on the part of the Brigade to release Moro. As one member admits, no one within the group really believes that those in power would ever “negotiate” with them, so the only thing they can do is “make life miserable for those with authority,” thus perpetuating the Red Brigade’s image as a bunch of “heroic losers.” Similarly, the CDP’s leadership, especially Prime Minister Giulio Adreotti (Fabrizio Contri), fear what kind of sentimental reaction Moro’s release would trigger in the citizenry and, while they don’t wish for his death, use every excuse at their disposal to put off talking with the Red Brigade. Meanwhile, the pope, sensing his powerlessness as a force for “good,” flails about trying to make the terrorists, as well as the world, see him as doing something. 

Bellocchio orchestrates these various lines by adding fugue notes on the news media, American pressure, Catholic dogma, radical chic, and, perhaps most cleverly, the creeping influence of psychological newspeak, especially in the treatment of Cossiga’s approach to the investigation, which is hampered by his nascent bipolar condition. Bellocchio even teases an alternate happy ending to the story as a means of showing what the CDP would have been up against if Moro survived his ordeal. In the end, of course, Italian society was upended—but only for a short period. The players who had to leave the stage in disgrace eventually made their way back onto it, and the people punished for the crime weren’t necessarily those who actually carried it out. Of course, the biggest tragedy is that Italy was deprived of Moro’s intelligence and moral certitude at a time when it needed him the most. I’ve never been a big fan of Bellocchio’s work—though a master craftsman, his themes are too operatic for my taste—but Exterior Night is compelling as a historical document, regardless of how much “license” its makers took with the actual facts. 

In Italian and English. Opens Aug. 9 in Tokyo at Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280).

Exterior Night home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 The Apartment-Kavac Film-Arte France

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