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In my daily reports on this blog I reviewed movies I had seen in screenings at the festival, but I also saw other films online and in the Video Library. Here are observations of those movies. Festival section names in parentheses. 

A Wing and a Prayer (Jiseok): This is the first feature I’ve seen by former Hong Sang-soo assistant Lee Kwang-kuk, and while it follows the general Hong template of seemingly aimless conversations that only add up in hindsight, it also has more of a conventional structure. Two female BFFs in their 20s make an impromptu night bus trip to the coastal town of Donghae to watch the sun rise over the sea, only to fall asleep on the beach and miss it. Predictably, the pair bicker and go their separate ways, each making a new friend in the process. Lee trusts his instincts insofar as the resulting action doesn’t go where you might expect it to go, but although I liked the characters and found everything plausible, it didn’t offer enough dramatic substance to make a deep impression, except, that is, for one scene of bullying that really got my blood pressure up. Contrast, or just that Lee really know how to depict cruelty?

Universe Department Store (Wide Angle: Documentary Showcase): Not so much a documentary as a personal exploration of memory, Wong Tae-woong’s expressionistic film was sparked by the news that a teahouse he’d once frequented had closed because the department store that contained it was being demolished for a redevelopment project. The news revived memories of the Universe Department Story, which stood on the same spot for only three years in the 1980s before the department store with the teahouse was built, but Wong’s recollection of the store (he was in elementary school) are fuzzy to the point where he wondered if it even existed. Soliciting others with memories of the place he finds that most of what he remembered was true, but everyone favors different details—for instance, the “space ship ride” that stood in front of the building seemed to have different functions for different witnesses. Wong also patronizes a hypnotist to better plumb his own brain reserves. In the end, what emerges is a capsule summary of the Korean middle class of that era, but the mystery of the place remains a mystery, if for no other reason than that it’s difficult to believe that there are no records about the store, but Wong does a good job of describing his own feelings about it.

Little Blue (A Window on Asian Cinema): This Taiwanese movie is yet another look at how social media has affected—or, in this case, twisted—young people who seem to have no other outlet for self-expression. Director Lee Yifang conveys it completely through a teenage girl’s awkward and desperate sexual awakening, a risky move that only partially pays off. Xiao Lan is introduced as a model student with a streak of cynicism, especially with regard to friends and acquaintances who are already sexually active. Part of the reason for her attitude is her single mother, a realtor who readily sleeps around, even with clients, though it isn’t apparent in the beginning how much Xiao Lan knows about this. When a popular, somewhat disreputable boy in her class hits on her she eventually gives in and, of course, falls in love, which is not something he’s willing to reciprocate, and as a result she goes off the deep end by sleeping with everyone who swipes her on Tinder (or whatever the dating app they use in Taiwan). Lee depends way too much on coincidence and plot short cuts to make a case. The movie is well made but it seems to describe a situation that could only happen on screen. 

It rained yesterday off and on but never heavily, so while I carried around my umbrella, I never used it. Last night I had drinks with the director Shin Suwon and her producer. Though none of her films are being shown on the official program this year, some are being screened at side events. I was surprised to learn that she released a movie several years ago about whether or not to have children. I didn’t even know about it, probably because it was never shown in Japan and, I guess, was not featured at BIFF. She also told me that one of her older films, Light of the Youth, was based on the same true story that July Jang’s Next Sohee was based on, but, in deference to the family of the person who committed suicide, she changed a lot of the particulars. Jang didn’t. And, apparently, another director is planning to make their own movie about this incident, so that will make 3 films about the same subject. 

She also asked for recommendations and I said she would probably like A Table for Two, which I saw yesterday. It’s a Korean documentary about a young woman who suffered from anorexia and bulimia as a teen and her mother. It’s the first movie I’ve ever seen about eating disorders that probed the psychological mindsets of people who have the disease—and the movie makes it clear that it is a disease, even if its triggers are mostly psychological. The young woman apparently felt neglected as a child after her parent divorced. Her mother admits as much. She was a student activist in the 80s during the dictatorship, and after democratization in the 90s she married and had a child but couldn’t find much purpose to her life. She eventually found a job in education that she loved but ignored her daughter’s spiritual needs. Most of the movie involves pointed discussions between mother and daughter, and they are quite enlightening. 

I also saw Thousand and One Nights, the Japanese submission to New Currents, the only section of the festival where awards are given out by the festival. I wasn’t expecting much but it was quite good. Yuko Tanaka plays a woman on Sado Island whose husband disappeared 30 years previously. She becomes a kind of advisor to a younger woman whose own husband disappeared two years ago. There’s some talk about possible abductions (though the words “North Korea” are never uttered) but the feeling you get is that these men disappeared because that’s what some men do. In a sense, it’s a woman’s film but it doesn’t make either of the two protagonists into crusaders. I found the subplot about the fisherman who is trying to get Tanaka to let go of her husband’s memory and marry him a bit annoying, because he himself is annoying. Maybe that was the point, but his nagging insistence, as well as their acquaintances, that she should marry him when she obviously just didn’t want to became too much in the end. 

I saw my second Iranian film of the festival in the afternoon. Scent of Wind was the opening movie for the festival. Like the other Iranian film I saw it’s mostly about how inconvenient life in rural Iran is. Both movies, for instance, contain a scene where a vehicle gets stuck due to the poor quality of roads. Scent also brings in two disabled characters, one of whom drives the plot, if you want to call it that. When the character’s power goes out an engineer from the power company has to go to all sorts of lengths to fix a broken transformer, and even pays for it out of his own pocket, because he sees that this character is taking care of a boy who is in a vegetative state. There’s very little dialogue and the acting is strictly movement-oriented. The real star of the film is the landscape, which is filmed in such a way as to highlight the massiveness of the mountain ranges that surround this part of Iran. 

Then I watched my first Indian movie of the festival. Mariam is about a Muslim family barely getting by in Mumbai. The title character is pregnant with her fourth child, and at first the viewer is drawn to believe that the husband is irresponsible for having more children when they can hardly feed the other three, but things are not what they seem. Mariam is one of those movies about the poor that goes from bad to worse to even worse. It’s a classic film tragedy in that regard, though it addresses a very modern phenomenon. And while I didn’t expect a happy ending, I also didn’t expect no ending at all. The movie just sort of cuts out, as if the filmmakers were exhausted by all the misery. 

The big news at this year’s BIFF is that, after 2 years of limited activities due to the pandemic, the festival is back to normal. I arrived Thursday evening, the day after the official opening, and had to make my way into town on my own. It wasn’t a big deal, but since the mid-2000s I’ve been a guest of the festival and they had paid for my accommodations and given me a ride from the airport. None of that this year—I’m paying for a tiny room in a little hotel off the main drag in Haeundae that doesn’t even have a closet or a desk—and though I greatly appreciate the hospitality in the past, I don’t automatically expect it. I’m just a reporter. Still, I’ve heard that public funding for the festival is still down quite a bit, so they are obviously cutting back on things. I see very few foreign press here, and even those who are present mainly work for the trades and live in Asia. I haven’t seen any journalists from Europe or North America. They’ve completely done away with English interpreting for the Q&A sessions (though they still announce after the screening, in English, for the audience to “stay in your seats” for the after-screening talks). A lot of the amenities that were normal features of the festival around the Busan Film Center are gone. So obviously things are not completely back to normal; or maybe the festival is just downsizing to be rational.

But they are definitely back to speed in terms of the program—more films than ever, and quite a few premieres. The main missing ingredient is China. I would say the number of films from China and Hong Kong is about a third the usual offering. China can be selective about what it sends to film festivals, and I know they are cracking down on Hong Kong’s movie industry, but I assume the paucity of works is due to COVID. The zero-virus policy must have had a serious effect on output. That’s also why BIFF gave their Asian Filmmaker of the Year award to Tony Leung. It gives them an excuse to set up a whole section with Leung’s classics, thus adding half a dozen old Hong Kong films to the roster. But with China slightly out of the picture, other national cinemas get a relative boost, and the buzz this year is that Iran’s offerings are very strong, which is a lucky coincidence because of the turmoil that’s in the news every day. I haven’t seen any Iranian movies yet, but there are several that I’ve heard are quite controversial. 

Yesterday, I saw four movies, all Korean. I always try to catch Hong Sang-soo’s latest when I’m in Busan and, as usual, he has two this year. It’s better to see his work with a Korean audience, who tend to laugh a lot at his situations and dialogue. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Walk Up, which I watched online in my hotel room Thursday night, more than The Novelist’s Film, which I saw at a public screening yesterday morning. Walk Up is one of this Hong films whose structure is deceptive in that time doesn’t necessarily proceed linearly, but it’s story about how a particular artist abandons his art out of sheer neglect and distraction was quite potent and even a bit sad, an adjective I rarely use for Hong’s movies. The Novelist’s Film, on the other hand, is the usual Hong fare in that it’s almost all conversation over drinks that reveals more than its participants probably realize. It was definitely funnier than Walk Up, but seemed tossed off. Not surprisingly, the cast for both movies was identical, as if he had made both movies simultaneously. He probably did. I think, in fact, that’s part of his methodology.

Jang Kunjae’s Junee from 5 to 7 shows Hong’s influence in terms of style: monochrome with mostly static shots and very little in the way of plot development. It’s much more somber, though, befitting its theme. The title character, played by Kim Jooryung of Squid Game fame, is a middle aged drama professor who, during the titular time period, awaits a possible breast cancer diagnosis and tries to go about her business as best she can. It’s an actor’s film in more ways than one, since Kim has to convey what’s happening inside while she puts on a normal front for colleagues, friends, and family. But half the movie is also about a small theater company who is doing a play by her husband, which is about a husband and wife. Though the movie is almost too modest, it has a cumulative power that really does show how performance is the foundation of civilized life.

In contrast, Next Sohee, the latest film by July Jang, a former assistant to Lee Chang-dong and whose earlier film, Girl at My Door, is one of my favorite Korean movies of recent memory, is conventional in all the best ways, and yet it kept surprising me—at one point it even made my jaw drop. Like Lee’s earlier films, Sohee takes an acute social problem and studies how it affects individuals. The title character is a high school senior whose vocational school gets her a position in a telecom company as a customer service rep. Pugnacious to a fault but understanding her place in the scheme of things, Sohee quickly realizes that this setup is a kind of scam. The work is punishingly awful, and I wondered if customers for internet services are really this horrible, but in any case pay is dependent on performance and many new recruits quit. For Sohee that isn’t an option because the job is tied to her credits—if she quits, she might not graduate. The second half of the film centers on a police detective played with sullen assurance by Bae Doona, who investigates the goings-on at both the company and the high school and finds that the problem is systemic in the worst way. Next Sohee is simply a great, engrossing film, made with skill and a keen appreciation for what makes a viewer shake their head in disgust. 

The last film of the day was 20th Century Girl, which has received a bit of pre-fest buzz, though I misunderstood the nature of that buzz. I think what people were talking about was that this movie will be hugely popular, and I can see why. It’s produced by Netflix, which Korea is slowly conquering series by series. 20th Century Girl looks like a Netflix production and has the same sparkly vibe as the biggest Korean drama series. It’s a romantic comedy set in 1999 at a high school. One girl is slated to go to the U.S. to receive heart surgery, and just before she leaves she meets a new kid at school and falls for him hard. She asks her best friend to keep an eye on him while she’s gone and tell her everything about him over the new internet. The best friend does too good a job of this assignment. At first, I found the bubbly humor obnoxious, but the script is clever and has some interesting twists. Mostly, though, it’s a nostalgia gorge for Korean viewers who were about the same age as the protagonists in 1999, so, yeah, it will likely be hugely popular. In Korea, anyway.