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Beyond H.K. By Johnny Ray Huston FRANK LEE'S FOUR Star Asian Film Festival always gathers a peerless array of Hong Kong thrillers and comedies, but in recent years Lee's programming has expanded. His 2004 lineup includes the local, and in some cases national, debuts of critically praised movies that have either been bypassed or missed by other impressive fests. One possible standout is Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's Antenna, which somehow – if reviews and plot descriptions are any indication – might unite Kiyoshi Kurosawa's melancholy musings and Takashi Miike's warped family portraiture. Below is a far-from-complete survey of other noteworthy titles. Failan (Song Hae-sung, South Korea, 2001) This melodrama has played in the Bay Area before, but it's worth seeking out – or revisiting – for a pair of tender lead performances and for its inspired era- and continent-leaping update of Max Ophüls's classic Letter from an Unknown Woman. The queen of the Four Star's 2004 fest, Cecilia Cheung, takes the love-struck, sacrificial, Joan Fontaine-style title role. Director Song Hae-sung adds some sociopolitical commentary to his penchant for swoony crane shots; Cheung plays the title character, a Chinese émigré who obtains a quickie marriage to a hapless – and romantically uninterested – gangster (Choi Min-shik) so she can obtain a work permit in her new home country. A marriage certificate is more than a scrap of paper to Failan, but it takes Choi's misguided bumbler an agonizingly long time to realize he's ignored her dedication and love. Somehow the actor (who has since starred in Park Chan-wook's Tarantino-fave Cannes winner Old Boy) still manages to grab your sympathy, co-rescuing this shameless tearjerker. Mon/16, 7:10 p.m. Also Tues/17, 12:30 p.m.; Aug. 22, 12:30 p.m. If You Were Me (Im Soon-rye, Jeong Jae-eun, Park Chan-wook, Park Jin-pyo, Park Kwang-su, and Yeo Kyun-dong, South Korea, 2003) An effective omnibus of six short films produced by South Korea's National Human Rights Commission, If You Were Me begins with "The Weight of Her," a comic slice of teen spirit by Im Soon-rye, one of the country's new wave of terrific female directors. One of the best vignettes here, it exposes the prejudices within beauty standards – by positing a society where those prejudices are not only spoken aloud but also codified into law. A short by Jeong Jae-eun (Take Care of My Cat) pays homage to Fritz Lang's M in examining societal unease about a convicted sex offender, and the most renowned director here – Park Chan-wook – exposes the deportation threats and layers of discrimination faced by a Nepalese woman. But along with Im's short, If You Were Me's highlight might be Too Young to Die director Park Jin-pyo's "Tongue-Tied," a graphically disturbing children's story placed in a cheerful, seemingly benign setting. Aug. 18, 2:30 p.m. Also Aug. 20, 7:40 p.m.; Aug. 23, 2:10 p.m. Ju-On: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, Japan, 2003) This year's festival begins with a jolt: the initial celluloid entry in Takashi Shimizu's potentially infinite horror serial, after two video efforts, the first of which has attained Ringu-like infamy. Ju-On: The Grudge owes plenty to Ringu director Hideo Nakata as well as Kiyoshi Kurosawa (a teacher of Shimizu's who serves as a creative consultant here), but Shimizu brings his own antic, fun-house-rigged-with-booby-traps sensibility to scaring, if not scarring, audiences. His Möbius strip approach to narrative adds new dimensions and perspectives to the epidemic scenarios found in zombie and ghost stories, and the free-floating rancor is creepily suggestive of news stories about airborne disease. He doesn't possess Nakata's flair for mood, let alone the emotional and philosophical substantiveness of his mentor, but Shimizu knows how to generate roller coaster-like effects in a movie theater. Only a sold-out crowd is required, and the Four Star fest's opening night – and closing night, which brings Ju-On: The Grudge 2 – should supply it. Thurs/12, 8 p.m. A Living Hell (Shugo Fujii, Japan, 2000) Further proof that J-horror motifs spread like viruses: an exterior shot of a house in this movie almost duplicates a signpost harbinger of dread in the Ju-On series. First-time director Shugo Fujii also strives for Miike-like attacks on viewers' eyeteeth, but he looks beyond borders as well when cannibalizing sources. A Living Hell frequently flashes back to the heyday of giallo and American low-budget horror – variants of Suspiria's black witch, Sisters's Siamese twins, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre's family feast, and Psycho's psychiatric postanalysis are unleashed with great enthusiasm and varying degrees of success. The acting is sometimes wretched, the plot and dialogue display a horror-crazed eight-year-old boy's sense of logic, and the mock-organ score is clumsy and repetitive, yet none of this matters. What we have here is a crude shocker, and unlike most, it actually delivers some shocks – particularly when it adopts the POV of a paralyzed victim as a murderous evildoer races madly toward him. Aug. 19, 9:45 p.m. Also Aug. 21, 10:30 p.m.; Aug. 23, noon. |
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