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Regardless of the moral or religious arguments wielded by pro-life activists, there is one truth they cannot deny: Even if abortion is outlawed, pregnant women who don’t want to give birth will try to find ways to rid themselves of their fetuses. Eliza Hittman’s film takes that truth as its guiding premise and everything about it, from its clinical exploration of the abortion seeking process to the way the story makes the sexual dynamic for adolescents specific, focuses the viewer’s attention on the unwavering will behind the protagonist’s quest. In fact, the choice of setting the opening scene at a high school talent show with a 1950s theme might feel like a bad joke in any other movie, but in this one it immediately conveys the idea that matters haven’t really changed for American teenagers in fifty years. Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) stands alone on stage with a guitar singing the 1963 hit “He Got the Power” while one boy in the audience yells “slut!” She sulks off the stage to desultory applause.

Things are not better at home. Autumn’s step-father (Ryan Eggold) complains about her depressive attitude, which her mother (Sharon Van Etten) picks up on but cannot fathom. Autumn eventually summons the wherewithal to go to the Planned Parenthood clinic in her small working class Pennsylvania town, where she discovers that she is, in fact, pregnant. Her decision to terminate the pregnancy is not discussed with anyone, nor does Hittman give any indication that Autumn mulls it over. It is a foregone conclusion, and after a disturbing instance of attempted self-harm she starts looking for ways to get an abortion. In Pennsylvania, however, a minor must have the permission of a parent or guardian, and Autumn is loath to tell anyone of her predicament. The only person she can confide in is her cousin, Skylar (Talia Ryder), with whom she works part-time at a supermarket where the manager makes sexually suggestive comments as a matter of course. Because of Autumn’s singular determination, Skylar offers to go with her to New York, where it is assumed an abortion is easy to obtain, and after the pair raid the cash register they hop a bus.

Though some will label Never Rarely Sometimes Always (the title refers to the multiple choice questionnaire that abortion patients must fill out regarding their sexual histories) a road movie, it also has that surreal quality of a memory of an overwhelming experience that happened so long ago. To say that neither Autumn nor Skylar is prepared for not only New York but the tribulations involved in getting a difficult medical procedure with insufficient funds and knowledge is a vast understatement. Hittman’s presentation of Autumn’s doggedness in pursuit of her goal is so single-minded as to be scary in and of itself, despite the fact that the people they meet are, for the most part, good. Even the college kid (Theodore Pellerin) who hits on Skylar on the bus and whom they later hit up in turn for help to survive their night in the city and get back home is sincere in his sympathy, even if he demands some kind of sexual gratification in return. Never Rarely Sometimes Always has an extremely simple premise, but its complications in terms of social themes and emotional resonance are too numerous to catalogue. By laying out that incontrovertible truth about the abortion question, the movie actually transcends it. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Cine Quinto Shibuya (03-3477-5905).

Never Rarely Sometimes Always home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2020 Focus Features LLC

Now that China has effectively exercised its mandate over Hong Kong and all that entails in terms of freedoms for the former British territory, it remains to be seen how independent of party influence the city’s famously independent film industry will remain. Derek Tsang’s Better Days is being touted as a kind of test case. Though a typical Asian youth drama, it was pulled from the schedule of the Berlin Film Festival in 2019 by Chinese authorities, which later cancelled its theatrical release, though the movie finally opened in theaters at the end of the year. These factors probably had something to do with its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film; that and the notion that, a year after Parasite won big, the Academy probably thinks it has to recognize at least one Asian film a year from now on (Minari didn’t really count). Generally speaking, the movie’s buzz is more intriguing that the movie itself.

Apparently, what pissed off the Chinese censors was Tsang’s portrayal of school bullying, which is pretty brutal, as well as the national university entrance text process, which comes off as slightly less distressing than a season in hell. These are hardly original subjects, especially in Asian coming-of-age films, but now that China has its hooks in Hong Kong the authorities probably think it’s best to get people prepared for lowered ambitions. In any case, the story is based on a novel set in 2011 and focused on a student named Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu), who, like everybody else, is cramming miserably for the exam. When her study mate commits suicide, the police center their investigation on Chen, who knows that her friend was being bullied by a clique of girls. These girls now redirect their malevolence toward her in order to keep her quiet. 

One night while trying to evade her tormentors, Chen happens upon small-time hood Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee), who is himself being beaten up by his betters. When she tries to intervene the thugs humiliate her, but the incident gives her common cause with Xiao. At school, the bullying escalates to physical violence and threats against Chen’s family owing to the fact that, in order to corner the “queen bee” bully, the police lie and tell her that Chen has already fingered her as the dead girl’s tormentor. The bullies are suspended and, naturally, come after Chen one night with box cutters and a cage full of rats. She seeks sanctuary with Xiao and asks him to be her protector until she takes the exam, and from then on he shadows her wherever she goes. They become close, and one night while being questioned by police, Chen is attacked by the bullies who beat her mercilessly and cut off her hair.

Tsang’s command of tone is impressive, and he juggles the various story lines adeptly until the thriller plot points that drive the second half shove the film into a mire of implausibility whose excuse is that it is meant to be heartbreaking. As with most youth movies of its ilk, the romance is chaste and the sins of the fathers (and mothers) explain everything about the mess that these young people now have to navigate, though Tsang doesn’t hold anything back in his condemnation of societal rot. It’s not clear what kind of future he has in such an environment, but he’s already mastered the art of stylish youthful melodrama.

In Cantonese. Opens July 16 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya (03-3477-9264).

Better Days home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2019 Shooting Pictures Ltd., China (Shenzhen) Wit Media Co., Ltd., Tianjin XIRON Entertainment Co., Ltd., We Pictures Ltd., Kashi J.Q. Culture and Media Company Limited, The Alliance of Gods Pictures (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., Shanghai Alibaba Pictures Co., Ltd., Tianjin Maoyan Weying Media Co., Ltd., Lianray Pictures, Local Entertainment, Yunyan Pictures, Beijing Jin Yi Jia Yi Film Distribution Co., Ltd., Dadi Century (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Hengdian Films Co., Ltd., Fat Kids Production, Goodfellas Pictures Limited

It feels like cheating to label the Chilean movie The Mole Agent a documentary. Though we are informed right at the start of the premise of the investigation being recorded, there’s such an overriding sense of calculated setup that the viewer is constantly checking their own capacity for suspension of disbelief. Everything, from the camera work to the development of the narrative, is perfectly calibrated to what we expect from a good detective story, and the peculiar genius of Maite Alberdi’s direction is the way it masks its cleverness: Was it designed to be like this, or did everything just fall into place of its own accord?

Granted, there isn’t a lot of danger involved in the enterprise. A private detective named Romulo Aitken is hired by a woman who thinks her elderly mother is being abused by the staff of the nursing home where she lives. Unable to get anywhere by directly confronting the nursing home, Aitken advertises for a mole, an old man who will be surreptiously enrolled in the nursing home to work undercover to reveal abuse. He auditions candidates and chooses Sergio, a pretty genki 83-year-old without a cynical bone in his body, which makes him, at first, an unlikely sleuth. He’s securely ensconced in the home thanks to his own daughter, who’s in on the scheme and makes the necessary request for care. Aitken equips Sergio with a smartphone and even special spy glasses linked to a camera app. However, the old man doesn’t seem to have much use for these tricks of the trade, and takes a more journalistic approach to the assignment, asking staff directly about their treatment of the residents as well as residents about their experiences. 

All of this is meticulously recorded by Alberdi’s crew, who tell the home that they are making a documentary about old age in general and seem to have all the freedom in the world to hang around Sergio while he does his job. That no one found this aspect of the project suspicious automatically tips the viewer off to one very likely truth: That nothing particularly untoward is going on at the nursing home. People who are suspicious, after all, are those who themselve have something to hide. As far as the movie’s own sense of mystery goes, Sergio at first has trouble locating the supposed victim of abuse, Sonia, because most of the residents are elderly women, and a good portion of them don’t socialize. But those who do automatically attach themselves to Sergio, who becomes the star of the place for obvious reasons: He’s a man, he possesses all his faculties, and he’s more charming than Cary Grant. This aspect complicates his job, since he’s always being pursued by one or more widow who would like nothing better than to spend her remaining days in this place with Sergio.

Alberdi enhances the espionage component of the movie by playing up the communications between Sergio and Aitken, which actually read more like literary dispatches than coded messages, as well as the secret videos he takes with his spy glasses. The fact that these portions of the film inadvertently show up what a pleasant place the nursing home is and how happy most of the residents are conveys, way ahead of time, that there may not be much to the client’s charge that terrible things are going on within, but as they say, it’s the trip, not the destination. 

In Spanish. Now playing in Tokyo at Cine Switch Ginza (03-3561-0707), Cinema Qualite Shinjuku (03-3352-5645).

The Mole Agent home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Dogwoof Ltd.

As the Korean Wave has brought greater attention to South Korean movies and TV dramas, differences must surely have become obvious. Korean cinema maintains fairly high production values across the board while varying greatly in tone and style, depending on the genre depicted. TV dramas are, for the most part, fairly uniform in tone and style, and even adhere to uniform structural templates, such as previews and ending theme songs. The idea is to appeal to as large a cross-section of the public as possible. In that regard, Samjin Company English Class feels more like a TV drama in that it gets very broad in terms of acting and melodramatic plot points. Where it succeeds as a movie is the way it focuses on its story for maximum efficiency.

Essentially a social comedy, the film is set in 1995 when the Korean economy was at its headiest. This situation is characterized by a boom in English language classes at Korean companies, which would often peg promotions to good results on the TOEIC test. For women employees, it was a particularly important means of getting ahead, since relatively few had graduated from university. The three protagonists of Samjin are high school graduates whose main tasks are custodial or secretarial, even though they betray native intelligence that often save their male superiors a lot of grief. The uniformed trio—Ja-young (Go Ah-sung), who works in product management; Yuna (Esom), assigned to marketing; and Bo-ram (Park Hye-soo), a champion math whiz who practically runs the accounting department, which relies mainly on doctoring expense receipts—sign up for in-company English classes thinking it’s the only way they will ever rise above their present positions. 

Director Lee Jong-pil addresses this aspect with both nostalgia and humor, but he understands that in 2021 he must focus on the inherent unfairness of it all and makes sure the misogyny on display is pointed and clear. Consequently, when the mystery aspect of the movie takes over, it may feel like gilding the lily, an attempt to add relevance to a film whose critical tone is best handled through jokes. But, as it often turns out in Korean movies, the mystery is pretty good, and, as a result, the social criticism makes more of an impression.

Ja-young, the most enterprising of our three heroes, discovers that one of Samjin’s electronics factories is dumping deadly chemicals into a river that passes through farmland. Through subterfuge she brings the matter to the attention of both the local village head and the responsible people in her own company, and what seems like a tidy settlement is distributed to the affected farmers with a promise that Samjim will stop polluting. (The implication is that it was a one-off mistake.) But eventually Ja-young realizes that the pollution problem goes much deeper and recruits her two mates to help her find out the truth, which turns out to be much more complicated than anyone could imagine, involving an M&A buyout from an American fund and dire consequences for everyone in the company, even management.

As with Korean TV dramas, many of the characters here are caricatures, the most egregious being foreigners whose stereotyped portrayals are exacerbated by amateurish performances. Perhaps more off-putting is the overall theme that, while corporate life is invariably soul-crushing, people constitutionally want to be part of a group that works together for the betterment of the group, and so rather than be discouraged by their lot in life as females in a male-dominated society and trying to make society better (or bailing completely–another use, according to Yuna, for English is to get out of Korea and find a rich foreign husband), our three protagonists would prefer to make Samjin better, or, at least, more productive, because it’s what they know right now. And while I acknowledge that that’s a laudable take on the matter, it’s also a slightly dispiriting one given the current state of Korean corporatism. I’m not too sure how much things have progressed since 1995.

In Korean and English. Opens today in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831).

Samjin Company English Class home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Lotte Entertainment & The Lamp

Quality-wise, cross-border co-productions are rarely as good as their intentions. This Japanese-South Korean film is a case in point, a true hybrid in that it combines Japanese writing-directing styles with Korean production values while presenting a mixed cast that mostly acts on instinct. The writer-director is Yuya Ishii, who’s earned an enviable reputation outside of Japan with idiosyncratic but low-stakes indie films like The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue and The Vancouver Asahi. Here he’s working on location in Korea with a local crew, and his script often evokes the kind of sentimental road movies that are common Korean indie fare, especially for novice filmmakers. 

The plot, however, constantly strains for relevance, if not credibility. Takeshi (Sosuke Ikematsu) travels to Seoul with his young son (Ryo Sato) not long after his wife has died of cancer. He has accepted the invitation of his expat brother, Toru (Joe Odagiri), a ne’er-do-well gladhander who has some sort of get-rich-quick scheme he wants Takeshi to help him with. Predictably, the job, or whatever, falls apart almost as soon as Takeshi shows up, and the three light out for the south in order to try their hand at seaweed exports. On the train, however, they accidentally meet up with Seol (Moon Choi), a pop singer whose career has stalled in second gear and whom Takeshi met in Seoul. She is traveling with her siblings in the same direction to visit their parents’ graves. 

Ishii drapes the usual cross-cultural misunderstandings—both comical and wince-inducing—on this barest of plot structures, and when it works it’s because the Korean actors understand how to effectively interact with both the setting and the dramatic protocols that Ishii provides. The Japanese actors, especially Odigiri, have less success owing to the sketchiness of their character development. Moreover, so much is implied about the underlying political tensions between Japan and South Korea that the sentimental resolutions, which are designed to dispel those tensions, feel contrived. In a sense, The Asian Angel actually highlights the differences between current Japanese cinema and Korean cinema. Technically, it’s an impressive work, but Ishii’s writing and conceptualization lacks the baseline rigor that makes even low-key Korean movies so compelling these days. 

In Japanese, Korean and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Theatre Shinjuku (03-3352-1846), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

The Asian Angel home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 The Asian Angel Film Partners