SUNDANCE 2014: R100

A scene from R100.

A L-O(a)de to (en)Joy

By John Esther

Once upon a time, a mild-mannered man named Takafumi (Nao Omori) needed some sexual excitement in his life. His wife was in a coma, so sexual relations in the biblical sense may not have been the most decent thing for him to do. 

Thinking, or feeling, he should just have his sexual needs fulfilled by sadistic, random encounters instead, Takefumi enters into a yearlong contract where dominatrices will appear unexpectedly to humiliate and hurt him until his head comic(book)ally swells -- thus indicating sexual gratification. (It would have been funnier, more subversive and more apropos with the film's conceits if the filmmakers had done that with Takefumi's crotch area instead.)

Unfortunately, for Takafumi, and soon others, these sadistic encounters become increasingly intrusive, degrading and violent. Random encounters move from the public to private sphere -- threatening Takafumi's workplace and home. Soon, Takafumi wants out of the contract, but getting out of the contract has never been an option. But does he really want out? The upping of the sexual ante leads to a bigger payoff.

Certainly not for everybody's viewing pleasures (but what film is?), the latest film from writer-director Hitoshi Matusmoto (Big Man Japan) is a surreal, absurd tale of an everyman combating his sexual desires. The more dangerous the abuse and sex become, the more Takafumi wants it to stop. But the danger is just too erotic to stop. The more the women come after this department store salesman, the more explosions, metaphorically and literally, will be necessary.

Reflecting the absurdity of Takafumi's sexual-cinematic adventure is a metanarrative involving a film ratings board (or is it the film crew?) consisting of three men and one woman watching Takafumi's story. Their bewildering comments about what the viewer (them and us) has seen, suspects, and speculates adds a layer of humor and intelligence to the primary narrative. Their responses to the lack of continuity or reality in the film are amusing, but what is especially amusing is that the male board members are less comfortable with the film's sexual tropes than the female board member -- in particular the first scene with the Gobble Queen (Hairi Katagiri), a metaphor for the all-consuming vagina; or, perhaps, vagina dentata run afoul.

However, when a film goes for this level of absurdity and humor it is bound-ed to have a few, exasperating, or very unfunny, scenes, such as the prolonged ordeal between Saliva Queen (Naomi Watanabe) and Takafumi. Prancing and oral spitting is so limiting. Plus the casting of Lindsay Hayward, AKA professional wrestler Isis the Amazon, as CEO of the bondage company. Casting a six-foot nine-inch blonde American woman in a Japanese film may have added more leverage to film's satire of petite bourgeois sexual desire -- or theory of desire, notably in the relation with the constructions of desire in Occidental imagery -- had Hayward been less cartoonish, or a better actor, than her professionally wrestling persona.

But those are mere drawbacks to one fun film to watch. Director of photography Kazushige Tanaka, costume designer Satoe Araki and composer Hidekazu Sakamoto wonderfully abet the film's atmosphere of sex, violence, dread, desire, humor and whimsy.

 

FANTASTIC FEST 2012: HOLY MOTORS

Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) in Holy Motors.

 

A short ride in a borrowed car

By Don Simpson

The man who we will refer to as Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is a shape-shifting chameleon being shuttled around Paris in a sleek white limousine. At each stop, Oscar adopts a new disguise and persona, like an over-booked character actor tirelessly bouncing from set to set. Holy Motors might be a film about playing roles and fulfilling the fantasies of others, but there is so much more to it than that...

Even before we meet Oscar, the opening scene of Holy Motors puts everything in motion. A recently awoken man (Leos Carax) -- or is he sleepwalking? -- opens a secret door in his apartment only to enter a theater in which a mannequin-like audience watches King Vidor's The Crowd. By casting himself in the singular role that delivers us into the surreal world of Holy Motors, Carax suggests the nonsensically dreamlike nature of the film that stands before us. We quickly surmise that the pure, unadulterated dream logic of Holy Motors is the only thing that will tie the experimental narrative together. This set-up also permits Carax the opportunity to remind us of our roles as voyeurs in this hyper-cinematic world. We are the mannequins in the audience, coldly observing the on screen events; we are rendered desensitized, emotionless.

It is not long before we cut to Oscar as he exits a house and enters his white limousine, chauffeured by his loyal aid, Celine (Edith Scob). Whether this is Oscar's real life or just another play-acting gig, we will probably never know. For all we know, Oscar may be a character actor playing a character actor who is playing a series of characters. Regardless, Oscar performs a series of roles that showcase a kaleidoscope of cinematic genres including: science fiction, monster movie, gangster film, deathbed drama, and musical romance. Whether the menagerie of other people who interact with Oscar are on to the ruse we do not know -- for all we know, they might be actors as well.

Holy Motors is not about understanding what is going on, it is about freeing yourself of inhibitions and preconceptions and allowing yourself float in Carax's sea of surrealism for two hours. Like David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, Holy Motors shuttles us through its narrative in a white limousine (Carax even permits us the opportunity to see where all of the while limousines go to rest), allowing us a tour of the decaying moral fiber of our post modern world. Holy Motorstakes on the crazed environment of internet culture in which people will do anything to attract web traffic. There are a few hints that suggest that is precisely what Oscar might be doing -- acting in a web serial. However, Oscar's career choice (it is a choice?) is an exhausting and dangerous one, as his relentless timeline could very well be the death of him.

 

AUSTIN 2011: PILLOW



Ed Lowry and John Isner in Pillow.



Shhhh!

By Don Simpson

The cackling voice of an overbearing mother (voice by Mitchell Crisp) screams from an unseen upstairs bedroom that she wants a “respectable pillow.” The local general store’s pillow bin is bare, but when a feather falls from approaching storm clouds, the two hapless brothers (Ed Lowry and John Isner) get the bright idea to go fishing for an angel while a haunting rendition of “Amazing Grace” (by Michael Sutterfield) plays from their phonograph. That is where the angel (Kristen Stracener) comes in. Umm… Yeah, Pillow definitely is a surreal fantasy.

Co-writing/co-directing/co-producing brothers Joshua H. Miller and Miles B. Miller rely solely on their adept visual styling to convey the story because, well, the brothers in the film don’t talk much—heck, they don’t talk at all. Except for the screaming mother (who is only heard and never seen), Pillow is essentially a silent film. This stunningly photographed (by Gabe Mayhan) Southern Gothic tale set somewhere in the Southern Plains during the 1930s, recalls the stylistic sensibilities of the illustrious cinematographer Roger Deakins (who is probably best known for his work with the Coen Brothers—and his nine Oscar nominations).

LAFF 2011: DETECTIVE DEE

Detective Dee (Andy Lau) in Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

A reason to explode

By John Esther

Once upon a peg tale in 7th Century China, a giant Buddha statue was being built for the coronation of China's first female emperor, Empress Wu (Carina Lau). It would be a great day in Chinese herstory, but there were many misogynistic men who did not take kindly to the notion of Miss Lady "wacky eyebrows" Boss.

With just a few days away from the equal-rights event, important men started bursting into flames. Nobody could figure out why. Clearly this was a case for Detective Dee (Andy Lau).

In prison for treason, Detective Dee is released and appointed head of the case by the Empress herself. Of course, the Empress does not trust him so she sends her spy, who might be a double agent, to watch Detective Dee as he finds the bad guys or bad gals.

But this was to be no ordinary adventure. Detective Dee will have to visit places like Spooky Pandemonium in order to find Donkey Wang for information on Fire Turtles and other crazy characters. And just when you think Detective Dee has caught the culprits, a more menacing figure is lurking behind the next clue.

Stuffed to the sensory gills with stunning set designs, elaborate costumes, flamboyant martial art scenes, sneaky sounds, absurdly-sexual innuendos, fantastic photography, masterful special effects and an array of images conducive to multiple viewings under different methods of intoxication (for the record, I had just one beer before the screening), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame would be a wildly entertaining film on your typical movie screen. However, in a stroke of brilliant programming, the single screening of the film at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival was at the Ford Amphitheatre. 

Outside and under the stars, the neighborhood's frogs, birds and other creatures accentuated the atmospheric film-going experience. The real and the reel meshed into a synchronicity, breaking common film-viewing experiences. A bird catches on fire in the film; a second later a real bird makes a sound. Dogs barking in the distance may as well have come from "off screen" in the film. At one particularly precious moment, a live plane flew by the Ford Amphitheatre as the screen showed the gigantic Buddha against the blue sky.

Sometimes art and life just jive right and, as a result, it was the most fun I have had at the movies in years.

And then I attended LAFF's theatrical event, The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, the next night. Oh my!

 

HOLLYWOOD BRAZILIAN 2011: A FUGA DA MULHER GORILA

A scene from A Fuga da Mulher Gorila.

Time in the mi(d)st

By Don Simpson

The original title of co-directors Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande’s film -- The Escape, Anger, Dance, Ass, Mouth, The Calm, the Gorilla Woman's Life -- is as nonsensical and free-flowing as the film itself. The film essentially ends in the same figurative place it begins, in media res, like a surrealist fantasy in which time has no influence on the events on screen. In fact, the passage of time is only recognizable by the linear passing of the gorilla costume from one character to the next.

The film’s two protagonists, sisters Flora (Flora Dias) and Morena (Morena Catonni), embark upon a journey across Brazil in an old Volkswagen Kombi van with no destination. Other than the need to earn money in order to afford the bare necessities (gasoline, food) for their trip, Flora and Morena have shed all other earthly chains. They are free to do what they want to do, whenever they want to do it. There is no purpose or deadline for this road trip. As it turns out, A Fuga da Mulher Gorila is an anti-road movie, or at least an elaborate deconstruction of one.

Dirty toilets, gas stations, oil refineries, beaches, forests, bodies of water, the interior of the van, the circus tent -- Flora and Morena are never influenced or affected by these spaces, the settings have absolutely no bearing on the narrative and are completely replaceable; even the actor (Alberto Moura Jr) who they pick-up is inconsequential to their actions -- merely a rag doll for the sisters to keep for a short while. It is as if Flora and Morena are acting on a sound stage and the scenery is just a trick of the eye. Yet, simultaneously, the surrounding environment is the only aspect of A Fuga da Mulher Gorila that is grounded in reality. The gorilla motif is an even more direct comment on the illusions created by light and mirrors (and cinema). Like a Georges Méliès film, a woman transforms into a guerrilla in front of our very eyes. The guerrilla costume, sequined bikini and low-budget circus sideshow tent is how Flora and Morena earn their modest income.

The seemingly nonsensical lyrics of their stream-of-consciousness songs are the truest clues we can gather about Flora and Morena’s thoughts, but these oblique puzzles are nearly impossible to decipher. Sometimes the words appear to be signs announcing what will happen in the future while other times the words are meant to allow us to delve deeper into the present or the past. Even spoken words and phrases (such as "no, no, he has a gun") are toyed with and repeated ad nauseum in order to reveal how different intonations, inflections and vocal frequencies will change the meaning. It is the words -- spoken and sung -- which present Bragança and Meliande’s incredibly unique film in a squishy bubble-wrap of insanity.