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Due to computer troubles I didn’t post my usual diary while I attended the Busan International Film Festival, which ends today. It was a fairly low-key year, and as usual there were a number of movies I wanted to see but couldn’t due to scheduling conflicts and ticket availability. But I did attend the Opening Ceremony. Usually I don’t because the flight I normally take arrives in the late afternoon, but Air Busan changed its schedule this year so I was in Haeundae by mid-afternoon. The ceremony was appropriately flashy but unstimulating, even with Song Kang-ho acting as the official “host” of the festival, a job that usually goes to the festival director. However, because of the scandal that resulted in the previous director resigning, there is only an interim festival director, Nam Dong-chul, also the head programmer, who implied to me when I interviewed him last week that he doesn’t want the job. Song covers up for the break in protocol with star power.

He did what he was supposed to do, but since he’s also the most famous Korean actor in the world, it was easy to believe that his enthusiasm was forced. Certainly when he greeted Asian Filmmaker of the Year Chow Yun Fat on the red carpet, acting as if they were old pals, it felt phony, but appearances are everything in such matters. I was mostly hanging around to see the Opening Film, Because I Hate Korea, and felt like the only person who cared, since about 3/4 of the audience left after the Opening Ceremony was over. Maybe they knew something I didn’t. The film was earnest and well-made, but rather unoriginal in its portrait of a young woman who, already disillusioned with her job and what it pointed to for her future, decamps to New Zealand, hoping the change of scene will give her some kind of reason to appreciate life. Of course, it doesn’t, but the humor was colorless and the story never seemed to go anywhere. It’s based on a novel and felt like it.

Next Thursday The Japan Times will publish my formal coverage of the festival, which will discuss the scandal, the financial crises that impacted the festival, the changes that have been implemented since the end of the pandemic, and whether the festival still best represents the hopes and dreams of Asian cinema.

In the meantime, here’s a rundown of all the movies I saw in the order I saw them.

It was wise of directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman to hire mostly unknown actors for their mockumentary about a summer camp for “theater brats” in the Adirondacks. Except for Amy Sedaris, who plays the founder of the camp but is only in the movie briefly, and Ayo Edebiri, who probably wasn’t famous yet for The Bear when she did this, the performers don’t carry with them any extraneous identifications for the audience, and thus their playacting of people who are smitten with the performance bug seems more natural than it would be otherwise, even if the broad comedy indicates that they are very much acting. Reportedly, much of the movie was improvised, and while the hit-and-miss nature of such a gambit results in a lot of uneven humor, it also keeps the viewer off balance. Maybe these people really are into Broadway that ridiculously.

The framing situation is that the camp, called AdirondACTS, is on the verge of bankruptcy, and when its CEO, Joan Rubinsky (Sedaris) suffers a seizure due to an errant strobe light, she is hospitalized and her business school-educated son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro), takes over, charged with learning the whole theater camp culture from scratch. Being a rational businessman, he lays off some of the instructors to balance the books and puts in their place one clearly unqualified instructor (Edebiri) who is quickly overwhelmed. This framework of desperation allows Gordon and Lieberman to study a rainbow of student types as they maneuver for choice parts in the big musical that the camp will present for their summer project. There are would-be divas and drama queens and macho pretenders and singers who can’t tell when they’re off-key, but for the most part the enthusiasm you would expect from theater brats—adolescents who already knew what Sondheim was about when they were in elementary school—is tempered with a sweetness that keeps any extreme snark at bay. On top of this cohort you have the camp’s staff—professionals who could not actually make it big in New York, and while the associated resentments linger just below the surface, they aren’t portrayed as being anything less than capable in their chosen field. 

There are so many examples of cliches that none of the characters except maybe Troy has a chance to develop into anything beyond their cliche. Tension is injected into the story when the owners of a neighboring camp for rich kids decides it wants to buy AdirondACTS for an expansion scheme, so the production—an original musical based on Joan’s life—has to be better than ever in order to fight off this threat from the evils of commerce, which Troy realizes he represents to many of his new employees. And if the ending is predictable, it makes up for the gentility of its early humor with a sufficiently squirm-inducing performance of the play-within-the-movie, which feels more realistic than most of what preceded it. You don’t need to be a theater brat to appreciate Theater Camp, but if you are one (or were one in the past) you’re likely to see yourself in someone up there on the stage. 

Opens Oct. 6 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905).

Theater Camp home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 20th Century Studios

Fake spoiler alert: At the beginning of this documentary, a title card informs us that the narration is taken from actual recordings of Alfred Hitchcock, but at the end of the movie we learn it was a comedian (Alistair McGowan) impersonating the great director all along. Though other critics have said this imposture is director Mark Cousins’ best joke—it’s clear from the first lines that Hitchcock is supposed to be speaking from the afterlife, since he derides his viewers’ dependence on 5G technology—funnier is the way Cousins attributes to Hitchcock cinematic theories about his work that are obviously Cousins’ own, a conceit that may offend purists, but Cousins pulls it off through sheer arrogance, not to mention an intimate understanding of the master’s ouevre and a wicked wit. 

Divided into six sections based on themes that run through all of Hitchcock’s films, the movie has no chronological logic despite some early references to Hitchcock’s beginnings as a filmmaker, but the almost stream-of-consciousness way Cousins develops his thesis has a lulling, personal quality that conveys genuine character. Only someone who really knew him could tell whether the opinions presented are close to Hitchcock’s own thinking, but even if it’s a construct, it’s an extremely effective one for putting across Cousins’ ideas, which are so granular as to be borderline neurotic. He can get away with it because he knows the material so well. Each comment and hypothesis—presented as self-reflection by Hitchcock himself—is illustrated with a perfect scene from his films. More incisively, the comments play up the notion that Hitchcock was supremely self-aware, even if Cousins’ voice-from-the-grave device makes it all sound like hindsight. Hitchcock talks about his desire to “escape from tradition” and his strong aversion toward “photographing people talking,” thus naturally opening up a discussion about his technique, which he boastfully points out was “unconventional” for its time. He also addresses the accusation that he was too controlling as a director, but in a dismissive way, averring that such criticism is a “21st century projection.” Most essentially, he dives deep into those devices that he undeniably made his own, especially “time and fear,” which, of course, are the ingredients of suspense. 

The sheer volume of examples supplied by Cousins attests to Hitchcock’s dogged work ethic—9 movies made during World War II alone—and even stone fans will likely discover things they never thought or even knew about. Personally, I found the silent-era and early British films, few of which I’ve seen, more artfully conceived than his later, more famous work. At one point, Cousins/Hitchcock says that the purpose of film is “fulfillment”—for Hitchcock, fulfillment of his imagination; for the audience, fulfillment of their “desires.” Cousins’ movie takes this mission to heart, because, like a great Hitchcock movie, it’s not just enlightening. It’s fun to watch. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock home page in Japanese

photo (c) Hitchcock Ltd. 2022

Relying on an almost postmodern meathead premise, Cocaine Bear is mainly notable for how doggedly it tries to pass off patently ridiculous plot points as having enough credibility to survive 90 minutes of complicated exposition. We have cocaine, and we have a bear, the combination of which leads to the kind of bloody carnage that’s meant to tickle the funny bone as opposed to stimulating fright responses. The premise itself is reportedly based on a true story from 1985 about a bag of cocaine dropped from a plane into a Georgia forest that was eaten by what is believed to have been a bear. No one knows what happened to the bear, but rumors were inevitable (most likely it died from toxic shock), and now someone has decided to extrapolate on those rumors to their most ludicrous ends. In a nutshell, our ursine protagonist—a female, which itself becomes a vital plot point—goes ballistic and just has to have more, meaning: instant junkie. Anything between her and more blow gets mowed down with savage efficiency.

So the whole point is to provide human fodder for the bear, and screenwriter Jimmy Warden and director Elizabeth Banks do a respectable job of devising subplots that can be intertwined to that end. After introducing the bear by means of an unlucky couple hiking through the woods, we see, in flashback, the obviously stoned drug courier dumping the coke-filled duffel bags from the door of his small plane and inadvertently knocking himself unconscious. Then we’re presented with the most entertaining of the various subplots: two adolescents (Brooklyn Prince, Christian Convery) who skip school to visit some waterfalls in the woods where the cocaine has landed. On their journey, they happen upon one of the bags and make some pretty good jokes about either selling it or snorting it. Meanwhile, the girl’s single mother (Keri Russell) starts to get worried when she finds out her daughter’s playing hookie and goes looking for her. There’s also a park ranger (Margo Martindale) accompanying a wildlife expert (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) she has the hots for as the latter does some research. Of course, there’s the drug honcho (Ray Liotta, in his last movie appearance) who owns the product sending his dimwitted son (Alden Ehrenreich) and the son’s more sensible friend (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to retrieve the drugs. Finally, there’s the inevitable police officer (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who has been tasked with finding out about the plane crash. 

All these vectors eventually come together but not before crossing paths with the bear, who deserves to be called the protagonist even if she’s the creation of motion capture technology. There is a measure of desperation to the bear’s behavior that really does convey inebriated rage. The gore and severed limbs are served up al dente without a lot of sympathy—you actually end up rooting for the bear not because the humans are evil, but because they’re dumb—and on balance the gross stuff doesn’t make an impression either way, probably because Banks doesn’t provide much in the way of suspense. It works better as a comedy than as a horror movie, but one-joke features are really difficult to pull off. 

Opens Sept. 29 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).

Cocaine Bear home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Universal Studios

As do many new directors nowadays, Carlota Pereda expands on a previously made short subject for her feature debut. That short was also titled Piggy, and was about a teen living in a provincial Spanish town who is relentlessly teased and bullied by her peers because of her weight. The short focuses on an isolated incident. The girl goes to the public swimming pool during an hour when few people are using it. The only person there is a male stranger (Richard Holmes), who mostly ignores her. However, while she’s in the pool, some classmates sneak in and steal her clothes, forcing her to walk home only in her swimsuit. While escaping some male tormentors she comes across a white van on a side road. Her classmates are locked inside, screaming, the man from the pool at the wheel. He looks at her and gives her her clothes before driving away.

The feature makes a thriller out of this premise—the man in the van turns out to be a serial killer, but only our protagonist, Sara (Laura Galán), knows about this once bodies start turning up and the girls in the van are reported missing. There’s a kind of secret sharer quality to Sara’s behavior that’s a mixture of curiosity and gratitude, which only intensifies when other people in town suspect she knows something about the killings and disappearances but won’t say anything. As it turns out, Sara’s home life is no more tolerable than her so-called social life. Though her equally overweight father dotes on her to a certain extent, her mother is critical to a fault, thus providing a more accessible target for Sara’s incipient rage at the hand life has dealt her. Pereda teases the slasher possibilities of the story by making the family business a butcher shop (Sara always seems to have a bit of blood on her) and hinting that Sara is skilled with a hunting rifle. She also plays up the sexual angle by showing Sara indulging in porn, which seems more a reaction to loneliness than horniness. In the end, she can’t articulate her attraction to the deadly stranger because she’s so caught up in her own resentments, and as a result more people may die.

The local distributor is promoting Piggy as a kind of transgressive horror film, and I went into it thinking that Sara would turn out to be some kind of avenging psychopath, but it’s not that at all. On the other hand, it isn’t the off-beat psychological drama that Pereda obviously intended, and while I appreciated the occasional comic relief (Sara’s attempts to steal her father’s cell phone while he’s drinking beer and watching TV is pretty hilarious), the juxtaposition of the various set pieces is handled clumsily, and as a result the violent payoff, while clever, doesn’t provide much satisfaction. It’s an impressive first feature without being a very suspenseful thriller.

In Spanish. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670). 

Piggy home page in Japanese

photo (c) Morena Films-Backup Studio-Francesca