Scorpio Nights (1985)

Scorpio Nights (Peque Gallaga, 1985)

Park Jae-ho's Summertime (2001) is an observation of a young man's descent into sexual adventurism. The man, an activist who is hiding from the authorities, lands in an apartment directly above that of a married couple. Through the several holes on his floor, he observes the man from downstairs having sex with his wife, who seems to be in a mechanical trance. One night, the activist proceeds downstairs, pretends to be the husband, and makes love to the wife, who is again in a mechanical trance. When the wife discovers that it is the activist and not her husband who is having sex with her, she consents, and the two engage in an extremely dangerous love affair. The erotic escapades happen amid a backdrop of Korean political unrest, blatantly in display during the non-sexual moments of the film. Sadly, Summertime is quite simply an unenticing piece of muddled erotica.

Scorpio Nights, the 1985 film that directly inspired Park's beautifully photographed but inert dud, is undoubtedly the better film. Scorpio Nights tackles one hot summer where a student (Daniel Fernando) is left alone in his dorm room, which is directly above the apartment of a security guard (Orestes Ojeda) and his wife (Anna Marie Gutierrez). The student peeks through one of the holes that separate their rooms, observes the couple having sex at night, assumes the identity of the husband to have sex with the sultry wife, gets addicted to the dangerous relationship, and finally meets a grisly end. Minus the very specific historic-political setting of Summertime, plot-wise, the two films are almost identical. However, Scorpio Nights achieved an unsurmountable atmosphere of fetishistic, fatalistic and erotic danger that Summertime can never do so with its period-piece, self-important yet soft core pornographic approximations.

What differentiates the two films is its setting. Scorpio Nights, unlike in Summertime with the antiseptic interiors of the secret lovers' love nest, gloats in excessive filth, palpable heat, and unbearable humidity. Director Peque Gallaga, who started as production designer for great Filipino directors like Eddie Romero (Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon (This Was How We Were, What Happens to You Now, 1976)) and Ishmael Bernal (Girlfriend (1980) and City After Dark (198o)), exemplifies a very keen eye for detail. Gallaga's Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death, 1982), which many local critics regard as his masterpiece, is the paramount example of a work of a production designer-turned-director. The film is sumptuous to look at; the period details are pitch perfect; there is a fathomable attention to outward aesthetics (the famous exodus scene where rows of people and their carabaos pass by a backdrop of burning houses is one spectacular feat). That aesthetic sense common in most production designer-turned-directors, once translated in a story that inhabits a world of upstairs-downstairs sexual trysts and societal repression, results in one of the most thematically intriguing, visually arresting, and sweaty-and-kinky erotic films ever made.

Scorpio Nights is almost entirely shot inside a low-income compound that houses a boy's dormitory (the interiors are essentially masculine, with calendars and posters of scantily clad women adorning the walls; also representative of that repressed attitude towards sex (or anything that was abhorrent to Ferdinand Marcos' concept of new society) that is very particular during Marcos-era politics), several single-family dwellings, a welding shop, a basketball court, and a communal bathing area. The area is in itself a masterpiece of production design (by Don Escudero). The courtyard (if you can even call it that) is the perennial meeting place, a flea market of invaluable rumors and stories of macho conquests. Separating these areas are hole-infected partitions, glass windows, and flimsy plywood doors. Certainly, privacy is a luxury here thus, the entire compound is practically the breeding ground for future rapists and sexual deviants with its daytime banter of seedy type and its nighttime invitation for voyeurism and other acts.

The grime, rust, and mud that line that quintessential Manila compound only emphasize the lowlife morality that fuels the near-ridiculous storyline. During its non-erotic moments, the film takes a neo-realist stance at least up to the point wherein the student discovers the unlikely phenomenon of having his sexual fantasies turn into his present reality. Gallaga then revels in erotic camp, of pink mosquito nettings enveloping lustful lovers at the height of their sexual activity; or transparent raincoats hiding their naked bodies from the rain. During those moments of zany visual and sexual excesses, we get a glimpse of exactly why the allure of the downstairs wife is unbearable, even to the point of fucking in the midst of the threat of death. It's that unwavering boyhood fantasy that Gallaga so excellently wants us to believe in; and if we don't necessarily believe in that fantasy overcoming reality, at least it was one hell of a ride.

Some screenshots from the film:


The student fondles a feather (erotic poster in the background)


The entrance to the compound


Residents of the compound hanging their laundry


The student and the downstairs wife in ecstatic copulation


Lovemaking while covered in rain and a plastic raincoat

******
This review is my contribution to the Production Design Blog-a-Thon at Too Many Projects Film Club.

Now Showing (2008)

Now Showing (Raya Martin, 2008)

One night while discussing the life, death, and rebirth of stars, a young Rita candidly asks her mother, "what if all the stars die at the same time?" Rita's mother, unable to provide a scientifically verifiable answer to her daughter's legitimate question, smiles and proceeds to her room to sleep. Raya Martin's fourth feature Now Showing, which is premiering at Cannes in the Director's Fortnight, deeply examines that void that possibly and probably happens when all the stars have died all at once. The film, epic-like in length with a running time of four hours and forty minutes, can be divided into two parts, an episodic account of Rita's childhood and her present experience as an adult working for her aunt's pirated DVD stall, divided by an intriguing interlude composed of clips from one of the few surviving Filipino pre-war films, Octavio Silos' Tunay na Ina (Real Mother, 1939).

There is an ominous air of sorrow that pervades the film. A palpable void in all the characters most essential of which is Rita, designates itself as the film's internal heartbeat. Right from the start, where animated alphabets playfully appear to complete a quotation by Rita Hayworth ("All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know."), the film already declares itself as a tale of outbursting longing of a myriad of needs.

It's a visually interesting film. The first half of Now Showing has the aesthetic feel of an amateur video. Artificially aged and damaged, Rita's childhood takes the appearance of a long-kept memory, an unearthed artifact of the past. Interspersed within the film are crudely stop-animated sequences. It is succeeded by similarly damaged black and white clips from Tunay na Ina, which further emphasizes the first half's role as hindsight to the pains of a near-forgotten childhood. The contrast of the first half to the latter half is apparent and striking, since the latter is visually more formally structured, shot predominantly to emphasize the social alienation and decay that intervene in the life of Rita. Like the dozens of pirated DVDs she sells that exemplify our fake culture of commodification, she dons trappings of superficial happiness and identity but in reality, is very confused and on the verge of facing the far end of the dead-ended road.

During the opening scene, we witness Rita alone in her room, singing and dancing like her namesake, in what I fathom as a private ecstatic moment. This scene is followed by Rita and her neighbors in the street, playing. She stumbles, and then assures her friends that she's alright before excusing herself from the game. She limps home and cries on her own. During her birthday party, she feigns contentment despite the fact that none of her invited friends were around; her birthday party appearing to be a family reunion rather than a celebration of the fact that she exists. A vacation to the beach concludes with her crying, probably in reflective jealousy and envy, while witnessing a family welcoming the fishermen back from the sea.

Now Showing is detailed in the way that it peeks into the private life of its main character. There's an almost voyeuristic delectation in the way we witness some personal things we tend to declare as mundane. That interest further glows as the melancholy of the character's private life becomes more apparent. That melancholy is of course tainted by the innocence and joy of childhood and growing up, but the picture swells with that incandescent burden of painful childhood memories, not necessarily traumatic in the way most coming-of-age tales are built upon but still evidently encumbering.

When Rita grows up to be a young lady, the privacy of her childhood melancholy is replaced with a pertinent social disconnect. She appears to be the typical misdirected youth, fleeting from one party to another, and wallowing in the excesses of contemporary living. She has blossomed into a tragic figure similar to her famous namesake, who died afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease, numb to the glory of her memories. Rita has succumbed to the most common of afflictions of the citizens of this contemporary world, an inability to look back, an incapacity to retrieve memories. The subtle void and emptiness that infect her life are caused by that affliction. She has forgotten the value of history.

What happens when all the stars die all at once? Rita's mother fails to provide an answer, but Martin hints at a possible outcome --- a debilitating sense of forgetfulness and a glaring inability to connect past from present. Martin furthers this theory with his brilliant intermission, a montage of flickering, deteriorating, decomposing scenes from a pre-war film made unrecognizable by time, abuse, and national neglect. Martin's metaphor of disconnect is as blatant as it is disturbing, since the nation is naively unhurdled by this cinematic void, with plenty more of its filmic treasures dying simultaneously like the heavenly bodies Rita curiously asks about. Basically, Martin mourns a nation composed of tens and millions of Ritas, unable to recall the lessons of the past simply because the memories have permanently disappeared from convenient reach.

Martin has always focused on history (or the lack of it) with his films. He laments his nation's prevailing amnesia by composing films that visualize such emptiness. In Maicling Pelicula Nañg Ysañg Indio Nacional (O Ang Mahabang Kalungkutan ng Katagalugan) (A Short Film About the Indio Nacional (or The Prolonged Sorrow of the Filipinos), 2005), Martin recreates the Filipino war for independence this time through the eyes of the common man. With the film, he seeks to visually approximate a moment in history that has forever passed. Martin follows up Maicling Pelicula with Autohystoria (2007), more visually ominous, detailing the execution of Philippine revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio and his brother, another portion of Philippine history that has been draped with rumors and history. By placing the event in the contemporary social and political scenario, Martin succeeds in brandishing his thesis that this national amnesia is not merely a problem that exists primarily within a bubble. The problem is more deeply rooted, and connects directly to how the nation exists now. Now Showing is much more personal (little details like young Rita's uncanny resemblance with Martin, among others), especially since it is the most narratively-reliant of Martin's films. Martin masterfully places his cinematic advocacy to a clearly personal project, and the result is simply magical and Martin's most resonant, most thematically beautiful film to date.

The film concludes with a lengthy yet beautifully shot and edited sequence of travel and transition, exposing a light of hope despite the film's melancholic and wistful air. The baggages and the lessons of the past she tug as she contemplates and daydreams on her way to that undisclosed location. She sleeps, and the picture fades into white, instead of the typical black. A simple melody is heard (the first time music is ever heard from the film since Martin mutes every song for some mysterious reason). It's a compassionate gesture from Martin as he ends Rita's tale with subtle optimism, a conceivable twinkle of grace despite having witnessed Rita in her most private aching moments. With Now Showing, Martin bares himself not only as an extremely talented filmmaker (at twenty-three years old, he has made four films completely different from each other, but bare a stamp of integrity in theme and aesthetics) but as an uncompromising yet generous artist.

CJ7 (2008)

CJ7 (Stephen Chow, 2008)
Cantonese Title: Cheung Gong 7 hou

There's an almost unanimous assessment among most Western viewers and critics that Stephen Chow's CJ7 is substantially inferior to his last two successes, Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004). I would tend to agree. CJ7, predominantly a reworking of the formula popularized by Steven Spielberg's tearjerking classic E. T. (1982), and regurgitated in the eighties through the early nineties with several immemorable children's fare (does anybody remember Mac and Me?), is about a boy named Dicky (Xu Jiao, who is actually a girl) who discovers the titular dog-like alien creature that eventually teaches him a thing or two about life and growing up.

Ti (Chow), Dicky's father works as a casual employee in one of the city's many construction sites. Despite his serious financial struggle, he maintains that Dicky be provided quality good education by sending him to an expensive exclusive school. Naturally, Dicky becomes the center of attention of his teachers and bullying classmates, especially with his dirty uniform and sewn-and-resewn shoes. He imagines that his newfound pet, named CJ7 following the popular robot toy dogs, would help him get better grades but as it turns out, the alien pet is actually useless in that department, causing Dicky's grades to plummet.

What essentially separates CJ7 from the numerous similar films that were made before it is the fact that it is written, directed, and produced by Chow, whose unique brand of comedy has survived through the digital age by utilizing digital effects for brashly outrageous comic effect. Chow uses the same technique here. By mixing digital effects (including the completely digitized alien pet which looks like a cross between a Pokemon and a gummy bear) and his traditional comedy, Chow was able to rise a little bit higher than his meager material, creating a film that may not be as hilarious as his last two efforts but is at least very watchable.

Chow has always made frankly sentimental films, although usually blanketed by his boisterous comic sensibilities. For example, that middling love angle between Chow's character and the psoriasis-infected lady in Shaolin Soccer was conveniently draped by the out-of-this-world soccer battles; or the melodramatic linkage between the good-for-nothing bum and the deaf ice cream vendor was made a mere sideplot in Kung Fu Hustle. Despite the consistent proliferation of what is essentially kitschy and corny in his films, Chow seems always able to balance slapstick and sentiment, creating films that are oddly effective as creative outputs and products for mass consumption. CJ7 is designed similarly, although this time, Chow's sentimentality overtook his clever humor, for better or for worse. The imbalance is at first off-putting, but after a while, it gets reasonable and rather enjoyable.

Thus, there is no surprise that Chow made this film. It is only a matter of time. It is inaccurate to say that CJ7 is a cop-out for the always-reliable Chow since there is still a bit of irreverence and wickedness underneath all of Chow's syrupy storytelling (seriously, no other filmmaker, apart from Dolphy, a revered Filipino comedian, who can portray the poor this comically (where cockroach-killing is family bonding time) and still come out as respectful and more importantly, funny). As I've said, CJ7 is definitely not as good as Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle or many of Chow's less known movies from the nineties, but it is most certainly miles better than the lifeless, tepid, and uninspired children's fare Hollywood has been producing through the years.

Ploning (2008)

Ploning (Dante Nico Garcia, 2008)

Ploning, a Cuyonon folk song, is essentially a plea from a boy to her lover for the latter to wait for him and remember him as he leaves her for a different land. The final verses of the song bare the boy's wish that the girl keep a stone wrapped with her handkerchief, as reminder that his love for her is undying. It's a lovely song, with a melody that encapsulates the emotional longing that the lack of physical intimacy emboldens. Slow, passionate, and moody, the song functions as both a narrative precursor and musical anthem of Dante Nico Garcia's film with the same title.

Ploning (Judy Ann Santos) is a Cuyonon native who is patiently waiting for the return of Tomas, her boyfriend who journeyed to Manila a few years back and hasn't returned yet. Surrounding Ploning is a variety of women who possess a similar emptiness: Celeste (Mylene Dizon), a city nurse who travels to Cuyo Island and finds there the missing aspect in her life; Alma (Meryll Soriano), a housewife whose only companion is the radio because her husband is working elsewhere; Nieves (Ces Quesada), a happily-married woman who is worried over her son's lofty ambitions for himself.

Most important in Ploning's life is Digo (Cedric Amit), a young boy who fancies Ploning as his surrogate mother since his real mother (Eugene Domingo) is permanently disabled. A few days before the town fiesta, Ploning's plan of journeying to Manila to look for Tomas becomes known to the people around her, causing everyone to examine the inherent value of love, pain, and waiting. Shielded from the normal worries and heartaches of most adults by his age, Digo is the most affected of Ploning's planned departure, forcing him to wrestle with those surging emotions using only his meager view on things.

Shot entirely in Cuyo Island, Ploning makes use of the picturesque vistas, the gorgeous beaches, and the vibrant town proper to great extent. Instead of merely showcasing the beauty of the island as a mere adjunct of the film or a come-on to possible tourists, the visual splendor actually complements the entire spectrum of emotions that the film manages to impart. Cinematographer Charlie Peralta was able to not only make gorgeous visuals, he also impregnated the beauty with melancholy, simple joys, sorrow, hope, and other feelings that the film so fluently speaks with.

The entire cast also effortlessly delivers the myriad of emotions that their characters require. Santos, who is more popular for acting in mainstream romantic comedies or weepy melodramas, was able to showcase restraint that the role requires. While Santos is tremendously effective as the titular character, a bigger amount of satisfaction is derived from the performances of those supporting her, more particularly Soriano who injected her character with a believable mix of simplicity and sincerity, Ronnie Lazaro who for less than five minutes was able to capture the extreme joy of being reunited with someone he has waited for almost hopelessly, Gina Pareño who portrays Tomas' mother Intang who in one scene literally explodes in fury and frustration for being betrayed by God, Spanky Manikan who injects pathos to the character of a Taiwanese fisherman who got attached to Digo for several years but is about to part with him, and Tessie Tomas who flawlessly captures the personality of someone who was bred in the city but has found serenity in the island.

The film basically hinges on Ploning's promise to wait, based predominantly on love. In one scene, Ploning placates Siloy (Lucas Agustin), the heartbroken son of Nieves, by lecturing to him about the intricacies of loving. She proclaims that pain accompanies real love, and the person who gets most hurt in a relationship is the one who loved the most. In a sense, the film approximates the folk song's view about love; that real love is essentially a prison that is blind to time, pain and suffering and that the feeling of love is entirely separate from desire. Ploning becomes the icon of this kind of love, a perpetually suffering and patient woman who stands by a promise of eternal love no matter how painful it becomes. The paradox of this view about love is that it partakes a semblance of womanly virtue, as expressed by Ploning's suffering friends.

Ploning is old-fashioned in its depiction of love yet despite that, it is adamantly satisfying since it not only pictures the emotion in its purest and uncompromising sense but also fathoms other aspects of rural life that rarely gets treatment this sincere and beautiful. It meditates on death with unflinching yet purposeful frankness. It lovingly touches on the reconciliation between a father and his once-disobedient daughter. It is this unwavering mix of subtlety and expressiveness that makes Ploning so endearing. It is unabashed in its sentimentality simply because it is as graceful and lyrical as a heartfelt love song.

Iron Man (2008)

Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008)

Robert Downey Jr. seems to be the most unlikely actor to play a superhero. Let's face it, he isn't the type of actor who can bring in hordes of teenagers to fall in line, and spend their money for a movie. He also isn't the type of actor you'd take seriously wearing candy-colored spandex or in this case, a full body armor made of metal. However, he seems to be that prime ingredient that made watching Jon Favreau cinematic version of Marvel Comics' Iron Man such a fun although uneven experience.

Downey absolutely knows the character he is playing, a multi-billionaire weapons maker who suddenly quits the business to invest his money, intelligence, and everything else to a noble cause, is downright silly. There's not a whiff of seriousness in his acting, and that absolute freedom from the constraining respect and reverence for the source material is what makes Downey so watchable here. Right from the beginning wherein he breaks a few militarymen from silence and tension by a political retort, Downey makes it clear that this superhero movie will not be featuring much superhero sashaying the skies throught the power of CGI, but more in-character Downey.

As the heart (although powered by an apple-sized reactor) of the film, Downey's Tony Stark is an engrossingly interesting superhero-in-waiting. Part whiz-kid, part playboy, part irresponsible capitalist, and part goof, Stark is precisely the role that Downey would've handled perfectly. Stark's high-low social skills are grounded by Gwyneth Paltrow whose turn as the unintentionally naive Pepper Potts is near perfect in an awkwardly amenable way. Jeff Bridges' overly antagonistic Obadiah Stane feels like the rightful opponent to Stark's newfound humanism. He's an apt representation of everything that's wrong with Corporate America --- burly, bearded, rotten to the core, but graceful, charming and utterly wily.

It is a comforting notion for this viewer who has ever since the eruption of the superhero movie craze becamse wary of the fakeness of Hollywood's franchise-making endeavor, that Iron Man, while still maintaining its comic book roots, is much more grounded on the reality of this world's present state than the escapist romantic notions or the megalomaniac threats for world domination of the typical superhero movie. The comic book is flexible enough to fit in any period of history (Cold War, Gulf War, War on Terrorism; which makes you think the world sadly hasn't changed much for the past few decades), and Favreau and his team of writers extract the basic storyline and concepts of the original comic to fit into the present mindset, quite effectively at that because it succeeds without being overtly or preachingly political.

Iron Man is most definitely not the best comic book movie out there (Sam Raimi's Spider-Man flicks were wildly enjoyable; Bryan Singer's X-Men 2 was engrossing and pertinent; Tim Burton's contributions to the Batman lore can be described as masterpieces of the genre), but it's inaccurate to call it disappointing since it delivered precisely what it promised (entertainment that is exactly worth the money you shelled out, nothing more). If only the rest of Hollywood's summer offerings would have the same humanistic attitude of economic fairness, then I'd be one content consumer of junk; but realistically speaking, that's wishful thinking.

La Jetée (1962)

La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
English Title: The Jetty

Memory is the thematic and aesthetic core of Chris Marker's masterpiece La Jetée (The Jetty). Set in the far future, during the aftermath of third World War, the film tells the story of a man haunted by a distinct memory from the past, a beautiful woman he has seen as a boy in the airport just before the eruption of the war. That memory makes him a unique and indispensable individual to the victors who in trying to connect with the past and the future to salvage the present from a scarcity of important resources, are experimenting on its prisoners who have concrete mnemonic images. This man's most persisting memory is represented by a still picture of a woman in a pleasantly feminine posture, her face beaming with comforting contentment, and her hair flowing peacefully with the wind. It is his last memory of peace.

It isn't highfalutin science fiction. Actually, La Jetée is simplistic in its science and entirely evasive of the details of time travel, but accurate in the atmosphere and the emotions of being confronted by a recurring image of the past. It is oddly romantic and fluently scary, especially in the way it belabors memory as a fathomable obsession and a manipulated resource. The plot's elliptical form only reinforces Marker's thematic quirk, the way the mysteries of time, of the human mind, and the human heart converge in a highly intimate tale of emotional longing.

La Jetée's aesthetic stance approximates a cinematically unconventional act of mnemonic recollection. While cinema has represented memories as elegant trips to the past through fluid flashbacks which are often granted the same clarity as the present, La Jetée takes a different course, visually experimental but still conventional in its storytelling methods. The film can accurately be described as a photo-montage, where black and white images are flawlessly stitched together. Guided by a narrator, the film takes the shape and feel of a storybook being told from start to finish.

Let not its unique form and style intimidate you. La Jetée showcases Marker as a filmmaker adept in the basics of filmmaking. The twenty nine-minute film is perhaps the most impressively edited film I've ever seen. The black and white stills magically move through the fades to black, the perfectly-timed cuts, and the transitions that are all the more made effective by pertinent yet bare sound effects and the memorably apt musical score. In one sequence, the man is first experimented upon by the victors. The rhythm of his heartbeat provides an unmitigated tension that fuels the ethereally ravishing photographs of the man suffering; his teeth sinking on the reed hammock which serves as his bed and his hands contorting in manifestly pained shapes.

There's a single moment in La Jetée wherein Marker decides to suddenly erupt from the confines of still memory, and allows one of his subjects to move, although very momentarily. It's intriguing because it is both startling yet magical, the way the girl awakes from slumber and truly awakes, blinking and smiling. It is as if the image has escaped from being merely encapsulated as a figment of memory but has become a part of the present, unlimited by the inadequacies of the human mind. But why did Marker choose that moment to break his unique style? It is perhaps it is only in that moment wherein the man has sufficiently let go of the memory, and believed it as a present emotion: of comfort and relief. In contrast, it is only in the museum where the animals of the past have been frozen for perpetuity did the man truly perfect the art of time travel (probably in acceptance that the past, like these frozen animals, need to be immobile for that is memory's most innate nature). That was exactly what the man's captors needed, a perpetuated memory not a fleeting emotion.

La Jetée is a film that is continually changing and evolving. It inhabits the very quality that makes photography a veritable art form, the way it captures a real moment in time for perpetuation and incessant interpretation. Similarly, La Jetée has the story of a man and his obsession with his memory of a girl waiting in the jetty made eternal. Yet beyond that story is Marker's art which plays differently every single time it is seen. The first time I saw it, it impressed me with how the narrative was perfectly told through mere photographs. The second time I saw it, I was left enchanted by its subtle tackling of the interconnections of time, memory, love, and obsession. The third time I saw it, I became fascinated by Marker’s fluency in his medium. Metaphorically put, La Jetée is as open as the clear skies that day when the image of the girl was engraved on the man's mind, and as tremendous and terrifying as the apocalypse that befell the world after it.

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

The Forbidden Kingdom (Rob Minkoff, 2008)

The Forbidden Kingdom marks the first on-screen team-up of Jackie Chan and Jet Li's, two of Hong Kong's most internationally-bankable superstars. However, all promise of being superbly entertained gets thrown out the window because film, instead of being helmed by Hong Kong's roster of directors (who've had experience working in Hollywood) like Tsui Hark, Ronny Yu, Wilson Yip or Benny Chan, is directed by Rob Minkoff. Minkoff directed the two Stuart Little films (1999, 2002), the horrendous The Haunted Mansion (2003), among a few other movies. The problem with Minkoff is that he has no real sense of why kung fu movies are so fascinating. Instead of concentrating on the spectacular acrobatics and stunts (which Chan and Li would be more willing to perform), he goes on into making a film that is as colorful as a pack of Skittles and as dumbing as an entire day watching the Disney Channel.

The plot is your standard The Wizard of Oz-derivative, where the young hero gets spirited away to another land to accomplish a mission, helped of course by a few of the land's friendlier natives. The young hero here is Jason (Michael Angarano), oft-bullied Boston native whose dreams are composed of vivid recreations of the kung fu flicks he regularly watches. He is drawn to a mysterious staff he chances upon in his favorite Chinatown store. The same staff transports him to mythical China, where the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) rules tyrannically while everyone awaits for the prophesied boy who will return the staff to the Monkey King (Li) and restore order in the world. With the help of a Taoist immortal Lu Yan (Chan), a mysterious monk (Li), vengeful Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei), Jason travels to the Jade Warlord's castle to complete the prophecy and return home.

Unable to muster the competency and imagination to mount a rousing kung fu-fantasy epic, Minkoff makes do with aping under the guise of influence. The Forbidden Kingdom has a little bit of everything in the Hong Kong section of your nearest video rental store. There's Chan's reprise of his fighting style in Drunken Master (Yuen Woo-ping, 1978); the Golden Sparrow is a character popularized by Pei-Pei Cheng in Come Drink With Me (King Hu, 1966) and Golden Sparrow (Chang Cheh, 1968); Li Bingbing's white-haired witch is an obvious reference to Brigitte Lin's star-turning turn in The Bride With White Hair (Ronny Yu, 1993) and its sequel The Bride With White Hair II (Ronny Yu & David Wu, 1993); there are scenes that echo Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000), and a few other popular Hong Kong titles.

I must admit that the film's geeky fascination with Hong Kong pop culture is endearing, but the endearment quickly wears off when the film jumps from one fight scene to another with reckless abandon, supposedly showcasing the talents of its two Hong Kong superstars but only succeeds in showcasing the director's deficiencies. Despite a team of effective artists and technicians including cinematographer Peter Pau (who lensed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, glitzy Hong Kong musicale Perhaps Love (Peter Chan, 2005), and beautifully shot yet disappointing The Promise (Chen Kaige, 2005)), action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping (who directed Jackie Chan in many of his earlier films and has made a successful career choreographing fight scenes for several Hollywood films), and art director Eric Lam (who effectively recreated Hong Kong and Shanghai during the Japanese occupation in Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007)), Minkoff was not able to make all the elements cohere.

The humor is quite corny, far cornier than the slapstick humor which paved for Chan's indubitable charms. Li is a very stiff comedian and fares better when kicking, punching, and jumping rather than when he's exchanging witty retorts with his co-star. For all the hype that this film collaboration is getting, the result is rather infuriating. Even their inevitable face-off inside an ancient temple lacks the requisite kineticism, that cinematic spark, to even be remotely fascinating. Thus, their most memorable moment together turns out to be in the director's tasteless attempt to get laughs out of the audience, where Chan comes face to face with Li's urination. All in all, the promises that the idea of Chan and Li working on a film together fizzled right from the get-go.

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura, 2001)
Japanese Title: Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu

In one of my morning commutes to work, I inadvertently sat beside this peculiar old man of probably eighty years of age. He smiled at me. I did not return the unspoken morning’s greeting as I was in no mood for weekday pleasantries. When the conductor came to collect our fare, I immediately gave him the correct amount and went on with my business. The old man got two little coins which I knew were not enough to cover his fare and gave it to the conductor. The conductor remarked “Sir, this isn’t enough. Your eyesight must be so bad that you picked up the wrong coins.” While, struggling to remove from his purse the correct fare, the old man retorted with a grandfatherly smile, “I may not be able to see these coins, but I can see a gorgeous woman more than a mile away.” The conductor laughed and received the correct payment. I, however, was more humbled than anything. It would take a quirky old man and his witty retort to make me realize the youth I was wasting away in my intent to flow along the work-a-day world. I finally gave the old man the long-delayed smile he deserved minutes ago.

At the very ripe age of 74 and with several outstanding films including two Cannes Palm d’Or winners under his belt, Shohei Imamura crafted Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a quirky if not entirely whimsical concoction that seems to be dwarfed by the richer and more complex films Imamura made before it. The film tackles the story of Sasano (Koji Yakusho), a retrenched salary man who moves from the riverside tent city in Tokyo to a rural town upon the parting advice of a homeless philosopher named Taro whom he befriended. The philosopher urges him on a treasure hunt but upon arrival in the seaside town, he gets sidetracked when he discovers and eventually falls in love with Saeko (Misa Shimizu), woman with the curious condition of swelling up with immense amount of water that can only be released by the commission of a wicked act such as shoplifting or through sexual intercourse.

Despite the very simplistic if not trite predisposition, the film is still very much underneath the umbrella of the Imamura’s constant artistic interest, the relationship between the marginalized social strata and human sexuality. Here, Imamura again examines the always-reliable downtrodden Japanese corporate slave, pushed away from the norm of the economically successful post-war Japanese individual by forces which are beyond his control. However, instead of furthering such examination of the unlucky impoverished Japanese as composite for a commentary on contemporary Japanese society, Imamura most delightfully steers away from what is expected of him. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge does not have anything drastically important to say about society in general nor does it need to say anything pertinent of the times. Imamura has already spent a long and illustrious career doing exactly that.

Later in his career, Imamura would strive for humanism within the familiar context that he has grown accustomed to. Such humanism finds climax and maybe, near-perfection in Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, where Imamura’s thematic thrusts are inward, very similar to traditional parables and fables where the narrative primarily serves the characters’ growth to their inevitable betterment supposedly to touch on a universal human trait. The inward thematic thrust of Warm Water Under a Red Bridge becomes more apparent when the film is compared to his earlier works where the elaborate storytelling and characterizations are usually evocations of social and cultural situations that are larger than the films themselves, like the anti-American sentiment within a Japanese society that is under the influence of the American victors in Pigs and Battleships (1961), the struggles of the post-war Japanese women living in the fringes of society in The Insect Woman (1963), among plenty other grander themes that most of Imamura’s films apparently allude to. What Warm Water Under a Red Bridge most successfully imparts is the very personal appreciation of the proper pursuit of happiness --- not through the modernized method of financial stability as dictated by modern norms but through the most primitive yet certain representations of human satisfaction: a job that sufficiently provides and more importantly, an always interesting sex life.

In Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, sex symbolizes a bevy of human needs. In a humorous utilization of magic realism, Imamura conceives a woman’s orgasm as life-giving. He meticulously, and with a glorious touch of lyrical humor, paints how Seako’s fluids flow from the wooden panels of her house, down the drain, and into the river where a school of freshwater fishes delightfully feed on the water-bound nutrients. The sudden abundance of catch impresses the group of village fishermen, including the African student who is training there for the Olympics. It’s quite a refreshing tone, especially in a nation whose pornographic offerings consider such abnormality as a prized commodity along with other impractical yet curiously alluring sexual acrobatics. Here, its nothing short of magical, the way a community of men suddenly become under the spells of a particularly special woman, not through her ill-motivated whims but simply because she is created by nature that way.

Above the life-giving metaphor of sex is the overt satisfaction that is derived from letting go of the societal norms that have encaged the salaried Japanese man, and just seeking out true happiness. That is exactly the inevitable course that Sasano finds himself in. It’s a brush of impractical yet kind fate --- the way he becomes entrusted with the secret treasure by Taro, the way he is conveniently pushed out of the marriage by his nagging wife, the way he notices Saeko in a fit of orgasm while shoplifting in a nearby convenience store. Drawn first by the his desire to cure Saeko of her shoplifting ways through thrusting his sexual capabilities as the least immoral method of releasing her overflowing fluids, he eventually finds his place within the simplistic demands of that rural town where his unique schedule provides for him a sense of belongingness that is absent among the impersonal atmosphere of city living. It is the sex that perpetuates his purpose there, and when that is suddenly troubled by an enterprising ex-convict who sees Saeko’s talents as a source of fortune, he comes out the surprising hero, and defends it the way he hasn’t defended anything in his entire life.

The final few scenes in the film are both intriguing and wonderful. Sasano, jealous from the supposed infidelity of Saeko and disappointed because of the sudden depletion of the fluids that has become the source of his satisfaction, confronts his woman in the breakwaters beside the highway. All reason, sorrow, and questions are erased when in a fit of emotional upheaval (similar to Saeko’s being filled with water), he just lets go and makes love with Saeko. It’s probably one of the loveliest sex scenes ever committed to celluloid, where the sex is there not to make a harsh and guilt-ridden commentary on such pleasures but to celebrate it. Imamura’s visual style makes sure that the sex scenes in the film are both tasteful yet interestingly comical, with both of his actors brandishing an unlikely thus surprising indifference of the entire erotic act --- as if the sex only serves that very particular purpose of momentarily curing Saeko’s condition. In that final lovemaking sequence, it’s different. We are suddenly become knowledgeable of the emotional investments both have committed in that previously only sexual relationship. We acknowledge the hurt, the insecurities, the probable disappointments that suddenly blew up a few moments before Sasano lets go and makes love to Saeko. In that scene, the copulation is clearly not to cure Saeko’s condition, but to represent that final vow --- that with or without the fluids, Sasano has committed his entirety to Saeko. Metaphorically, that also represents Sasano’s acceptance of this new type of happiness, this new type of satisfaction that only Saeko and the entire simplicity of that rural town can provide. Imamura, in a stroke of genius, caps that final lovemaking with Saeko bursting her fluids in the air like a geyser exploding. Funnily, affectingly, and beautifully, a rainbow appears from her fluids as the film’s quirky musical score plays in the background.

In one of the film’s flashbacks, Taro reminds Sasano to have fun while he still can, or in the screenplay’s more imaginative terms, while he can still get an erection. Taro continues to say “Drown yourself in a woman's arms, be faithful to your desires without worrying about daily cares.” Taro’s reminders are the indubitable theses of Imamura’s swansong. It is inaccurate to refer to Warm Water Under a Red Bridge as profusely impertinent compared to Imamura’s other works. In fact, it probably is his most revelatory film; wherein the socially-aware artist suddenly steps out of the supposed legacy he is building to create something surprisingly amiable, entertaining, and personal. He generously grants his viewers the same grandfatherly advice the old man in the bus made to me --- to live your life how it should be lived thus finding true happiness.

The Love of Siam (2007)

The Love of Siam (Chukiat Sakveerakul, 2007)
Thai Title: Rak haeng Siam

To label Chukiat Sakveerakul's The Love of Siam as simply a gay teen romance is to misjudge its power and intention. Within the two and a half hour running time (the director's cut is reportedly four hours long) of the film, Sakveerakul essays not only the two young leads' reunion and inevitable attraction but also a family's slow and painful road to accepting a long-delayed reality. I would like to think that The Love of Siam, above everything else, seeks to reaffirm the life-affirming values of loving and being loved without sacrificing the portrayal of the very palpable pain that usually accompanies the emotion.

The twenty-minute prologue tracks the histories of young Mew (Arthit Niyomkul) and Tong (Jirayu La-ongmanee), who are both schoolmates and neighbors. They form a very close friendship which was abruptly ended when Tong's family had to move out when Tang (Laila Boonyasuk), Tong's elder sister, went missing during a trip in Chiang Mai, causing the family tremendous and irreparable sorrow. Years later, Mew (Witwisit Hirunwongkul), lead singer and composer for an up and coming boy band, again crosses path with Tong (Mario Maurer), who is struggling at home with his domineering mother (Sinjai Plengpanich) and alcoholic father (Songsit Rungnopakunsri). The two reconnect and inevitably fall for each other, disrupting whatever peace they have grown accustomed to.

To make matters more complicated, Mew's Chinese neighbor Ying (Kanya Rattanapetch) is hopelessly in love with Mew, not knowing of his homosexual tendencies. On the other hand, Tong is currently dating Donut (Aticha Pongsilpipat), presumably not knowing of his own homosexual tendencies too. Tong's family, more specifically the father who's been spending days and nights drinking, is still suffering from the loss of Tang. June (also played by Boonyasuk), Mew's band manager who looks a lot like Tang, is then recruited to pose as the long lost daughter, momentarily easing the father of his staggered pains.

The Siam in the title refers to Siam Square, a shopping district in Bangkok where most teens hang out to shop, dine, meet, and have fun. Siam Square, in the eyes of the Bangkok youth, has become both the place for welcomes and farewells, of declarations of love and hurtful break-ups, of chance encounters and scheduled meetings. In the film, the popular venue is not only the setting for Mew and Tong's reunion and the numerous other events in the story but it also represents the unpredictability of the many facets of love which the film so intricately paints. While Siam Square or any other shopping mecca are ordinarily thought of as accessories to the bastardization of love and romance because it commonly equates blatant commercialism with the love's outward depictions like dating, gift-giving, and hanging out, The Love of Siam uses that very element to depict love's many wanderings and permutations. Underneath the glow of the traditionally amiable romance, The Love of Siam strives to say something more about the act of loving, whether romantically or familial: that it is more a nebulous network-like journey to maintain hope than a straight path to the assumed happy ending.

In fact, The Love of Siam ends without any of its characters fulfilling the traditional conclusions of a love story. There are no happily-ever-afters or expected closures. Instead, the film ends with a mere spark of hope. That hope that closes the film actually opens up million of possibilities for its characters, as numerous as the countless fortuitous encounters in Siam Square that initiate relationships between strangers or abruptly conclude long-standing affairs all within the fateful movement of time. Sakveerakul drafts a bittersweet ode to the complexities of loving, which commercial cinema has tended to avoid throughout the years. What he exclaims in The Love of Siam is that daringly traversing outside the common simplicities of love is far more gratifying than safely assuming formula.

Through the interconnected lives of two boys who are on the verge of self-awareness amidst their own individual conflicts and the people surrounding them, Sakveerakul notes that love survives notwithstanding the dilemmas that pervade the world. As Ying translates from a Chinese song, "as long as there is love, there is hope." Corny as it sounds, the Bangkok of The Love of Siam thrives, without knowing it exactly, with that noble aspiration.

Doomsday (2008)

Doomsday (Neil Marshall, 2008)

In the near future, a viral outbreak would force Britain to separate from Scotland, constructing a well-guarded wall on its border to enforce an unusually cruel quarantine where an entire people are left to die. Decades later when the same virus starts threatening London, a group of courageous soldiers lead by chick-with-a-history Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is commissioned by the government to go back to Scotland and bring back a survivor to London. Long-neglected Scotland has transformed into a world of its own, with grunge rocker-cannibals lead by mohawk-donning Sol (Craig Conway) and medieval knights lead by their eloquent lord Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell) lording over what feels like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Doomsday, Neil Marshall's third feature film, is obviously gifted with a large-enough budget to pay for all the indulgences of his unusually wild imagination. Marshall largely succeeded in creating atmosphere from scraps with his werewolf mayhem flick Dog Soldiers (1999) and his underground pseudo-feminist gore-fest The Descent (2005). In Doomsday, Marshall replaces his gift for magically pulling out cinematic dread out of a hat bought from a 99 cent store with his delusion that he can transform his fanboy knowledge of the best moments in cult filmmaking into a working and coherent film. Unfortunately, the delusion remains a delusion. Blanketed with the look and feel of a 20th century cult classic without the paramount intelligence that made those cult classics withstand aging, the film feels severely outdated. Doomsday is literally an anachronistic mishap. Although enjoyable because of its relentless display of blood and gore, it feels like an utter anomaly right from the get-go.

It's a good thing that at times, Doomsday can be hilarious. While Marshall starts off the film with an air of seriousness (with an authoritative voice narrating the details of the viral outbreak up to Scotland being enclosed with miles of steel and mines), the heavy tone is quickly buttressed by a valuable shoot-out, where the ridiculosity of big 'fro assassins and big-titted blondes in a bathtub slugging it out until they are brutally killed. From then on, Doomsday descends into an arena where big budget meets purposeful bad taste. It doesn't entirely work but at least the imaginative blending of supposedly unmixable genre elements supplies the viewer with a source for laughs and disbelief. Think of it like a cod-flavored ice cream; it isn't exactly something one would call a perfect dessert but is something the gastronomically-daring would try out of at least, curiosity.

While there is a flagrant abundance of heads being severed and limbs being smashed, at least the violence is done with cartoonic flair (something completely absent from the abysmal massacres of The Descent). The violence is done at the expense of humanizing characters, but Marshall is not a director who cares much for humanity anyway, especially with films where characterizations are mere a setups for his grisly situations. Apart from Sinclair who is propped with a backstory, the rest of Marshall's characters aren't given enough personalities to distinguish themselves from each other. It's probably best to kill them off that way, since without the baggages of natural pity, sympathy and empathy to the human characters, their honorless deaths (one gets his throat slit; another is roasted and fed to a hungry mob) become less offensive to the senses.

Doomsday is comical, undaunting, and perplexing in its illogical absurdity. It isn't punctuated with a distinct style that might make it an intriguing piece of cinema, aside from the fact that it harbors the same distaste for humanity Marshall has always inflicted his films with. It isn't one of the films that will be thought of as "so crazy, it's genius" many years from now. It is more a hodgepodge of influences than anything else. Unfortunately, Marshall is still in no position to adequately copy off from the masters. It's a delirious effort of unifying Marshall's cinephile artifacts into a bubble of gratuitous bad taste. It is still a fun ride, one I would never dare experiencing again unless I am threatened to be fed to a mob of hungry Scots.