NY ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL Aug. 28-Sept. 12, 2020 online

[Chris Knipp]

KIM DO-YOUNG: KIM JI-YOUNG BORN 1982 / 82년생 김지영 (2019)


JUNG YU-MI IN KIM JI-YOUNG: BORN 1982

A well off young woman seen as a victim of ingrained misogyny in Korean society

Kim Ji-young Born 1982 is a conscientious issue picture. It's about female discontent and unfair male dominance even in upper middle class contemporary Korean society, and is based on the eponymous bestselling semi-autobiographical novel about a typical young woman: "Kim Yi-young" is like "Jane Doe" in Korean. These basics could not be more clear, and are familiar from other societies where situations and feelings are quite similar. In the film, the details - which it's said have aroused strong arguments or even caused breakups between couples in Korea - can be confusing to sort out. The film provides a sequence of scenes and flashbacks whose interrelationship isn't so easy to follow, though it is evident that despite advances, and well educated women working in executive positions, Korean society remains highly patriarchal, and older generation women can tend to reenforce that. And this is a film that obviously needs to be seen. The specifics may be elusive, the film may have failings, but the subject is so important the book has been translated into over a dozen languages.

The message may be confused by the complexity of the protagonist's situation, or just be presented confusingly. Kim Ji-young has worked at a firm where some women have - well, one has anyway - a respected position, even though the males get promoted first. She may have found this work challenging and interesting - her female boss was encouraging - or a pain in the neck. Now she is at home to care for her new baby. The rigid relationships of dealing with her in-laws at holiday time may drive her nuts. She may simply be suffering from postpartum depression. She may just be tired of being cooped up in the house all the time (and this is why she thinks of taking a part time job at a local shop. Or she may just be losing her mental stability for reasons that have nothing at all to do with her current situation. But the story's point must be that the protagonist's experience of a totally male-dominated sexist world has driven her literally mad - as an only way out.

Unfortunately, this immaculate-looking, well cast and acted film is a little opaque. It doesn't provide very many clear guidelines, particularly in indicating the chronology of scenes set at different times, and some "scene skips" are so rapid it's not clear who the new characters are. Through depicting the protagonist as largely a helpless victim, the film fails to show what's actually going on inside her, but perhaps she does not know.

Then there is the prolonged issue of Ji-young's returning to work, when her husband offers to take a year of paternity leave so she can do it, but family members balk, and she won't be able to earn as much at the same level. Kim Ji-young's husband Jung Dae-Hyun(played by the rangy, serenely authoritative and sexy Gong Yoo) becomes ambiguous in all this. It's not clear what he really wants; he may not know. He promised to help when pushing to have a baby, he makes the paternity leave offer, but then he tells Ji-young she's not well, and proves she has acted strangely.

Perusal of a Guardian review of the source book shows it is differently organized, being mostly a linear chronological account by the psychiatrist the woman goes to. This structure, the reviewer, Sarah Shin, argues, is used to convey a sense of a"claustrophobic" as well as "airless, unbearably dull world." That aim must explain the tidiness of all the interiors in the film as well, though sometimes they just feel glossy and bland.

But the film may not convey some of the author, Cho Nam-joo's points as well as the her book, or the film's subtitles may lose subtleties that are embedded in the Koran dialogue. Korean is uniquely structured in its complex linguistic distinctions among generations and status levels. When the protagonist starts speaking like her mother at the family gathering and her father-in-law is outraged, subtitles can't convey this very well. Indeed some points (quoted in the review) are made by statement, "told" rather than "shown," e.g. "The world had changed a great deal, but the little rules, contracts and customs had not, which meant the world hadn’t actually changed at all." (This is a statement quoted from the book in the Guardian review.)

The group scenes nonetheless are what work best, in themselves, even if they don't fit together into a cogent whole: they show the subtle tensions that may exist in all interactions where people aren't happy with their situation, but can't overtly show that - yet keep constantly almost showing it. The blurb for the festival presentation suggests Kim Ji-young (Yu-mi Jung) starts having visions or being possessed. But at the family gathering when her husband whisks her away, saying she's unwell, it merely seems she has spoken up out of anger and frustration. This is the kind of moment when a sense of alien family pressure seems at its most intense.

The book came out at a particularly opportune time of much heightened Korean awareness of gender inequality (see theGuardian review). Non-Korean viewers should know particularly what happened in Korea when Kim Ji-young's mother's wish of a woman president came true - the worsening gender inequality, the patriarchal authoritarianism, the scandal and ouster, the counter reaction, the new movement for a feminist consciousness. The film may be less opportune, or serve a different audience.

Euny Hong's New York Times review of the book is more blunt. She says the book shows the "banality of the evil that is misogyny," that the subject is "young stay-at-home mother driven to a psychotic break" (by that misogyny as it impacts her), and adds that this story forced her to confront her own "traumatic experiences" that she had pretended were "nothing out of the ordinary" (perhaps they weren't!). She also writes that the book became a kind oof Uncle Tom's Cabin for gender roles in Korea. She is astute and specific in highlighting details of the book's Korean dialogue that show how the accomplished and ambitious Ji-young is abused by men from childhood to the present. She likes the translator's choice of a word in the subtitles, suggesting they're well done. But as a non-Korean, one can't help feeling much of the heft and meaning of this film remain allusive. It's not entertaining and accessible to a western audience like a Hong Sang-soo film (especially when one has seen a dozen of those!).

Sarah Shin, the Guardian reviewer, ties the book in with Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. Let's hope that the social commentary here is more subtle and precise.

Kim Ji-young: Born 1982 / 82년생 김지영, 118 mins., opened in Korea in Oct. 2019, showed in the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival Nov. 2019, and opened in many other countries in Nov. and subsequently. Received a number of nominations and awards in Korea. Screened for this review as part of the 2020 virtual New York Asian Film Festival (Aug. 28-Sept. 12, 2020).

[Chris Knipp]

TRAN THANH HUY: RÒM (2029)


TRAN ANH KHUA AND TRONG VAI IN ROM

Running for lottery numbers in Ho Chi Min City

Tran Thanh Huy wins the most intensely kinetic award for this film about a couple of Ho Chi Min City teenage street boys, a promising Slumdog Millionaire-esque debut whose inspiration was one of a series of shorts by the filmmaker that was a Golden Kite winner 16.30, shown at Cannes in 2013. The action here is central but its direction is immaterial. What counts is the propulsive movement and the fluid camerawork of dp Nguyen Vinh Phuc. Notably, the wide aspect ratio images are stylized by alternating left or right diagonal tilts, giving a kind of order to the chaos. Two boys are running around here, and at the end, they're still running: there's no resolution. More of a story-line is needed than this, but there is a lot of potential here, a light, comprehensive touch with urban life, if another time there is more of a script and some sequences that are allowed to breathe.

This is all about two scrawny, energetic Ho Chi Min City street boys who survive (or do they just keep in motion?) through acting as intermediaries for bookies selling numbers tickets - and finding good numbers: this is an impoverished world where, as elsewhere on an overpopulated planet, the poorest of the poor live on dreams of sudden luck, and where there is much reliance on superstition and magic. The debut-burdened customers in run-down apartment complexes - trying to ward off their housing from being demolished - beat the boys if the numbers lose and give them a nice tip if they win. Both the boys, who look underage for there 14-15-16 chronological age, yet also ageless, are engaging as well as indefatigable.

The initial focus is on Ròm (Trần Anh Khoa), who says he once got a 25USD tip. It's the most money he's ever seen. Rom was abandoned by his parents after a demolition and failed relocation scheme, but expects them to come back to pick him up. He keeps waiting, and lives by this dream. Rom soon gets a rival in the nimble, penytailed Phuc (Nguyễn Phan Anh Tú), a fast talker who also does a mean back flip of a wall, or in the middle of the street if the spirit strikes him. Phuc, who's as fleet and acrobatic as a young Jackie Chan, tries to move in on Ròm; his deviousness relies so much on speed he seems to outrun immorality. . Phuc says (is it a joke?) he adopted the name from an American client who kept losing and would say "Fuck!" ever time, which he thought sounded cool. It's one of many throwaway moments because this movie is in such a hurry it's all over in seventy-nine minutes.

As Allan Hunter notes in his Busan Screen Daily review, this action, like Danny Boyle's Slumdog, Has "a Dickensian sweep" in the way Rom's life is "measured in the characters he meets" (at whose mercy he is from moment to moment, his survival, and the way he's "constantly at the mercy of fate." But we don't have a thrilling, satisfying Slumdog plot here. Rom is brfriended by the motherly lottery dealer Mrs Ghi (Do Nhu Cat Phuong), buteverybody's out for themselves here. There are many frantic fights, especially between Rom and Phuc. There is one sequence when Phuc takes Rom on a rid on a tiny grass-lined raft. Rom's afraid to get on, for good reason. They're constantly falling off, and one shutters to think what the water is like.

The climactic action climax is a scramble where everything goes wrong, and the slum dweller customers and Rom both get cheated. There's no prize: the way to the prize is the prize. All the fun there is is in trying to get there, even if you don't. Some of the editing by Lee Chatametikool is pretty nifty in a Guy Ritchie kind of way, but even that kind of cheating survives because the vernacular realism makes almost anything seem real. Another reviewer mentions not only Boyle's Slumdog, but also City of God. But this film, for all its kinetic charm and neorealist grip on street life, doesn't have those kinds of grandeur, violence, or plot payoff.

Rom, 79 mins., debuted at Busan oct. 2019 and released theatricallyl in Vietnam Jul. 31, 2020. It was screened for this review as part of the 2020 virtual New York Asian film Festival.

[Chris Knipp]

LIEN CHIEN-HUNG, SUNNY YU, LIAO CHE-YI: DEAR LONELINESS 致親愛的孤獨者 (2019)


LIU KUAN-TING IN DEAR LONELINESS

Girls on their own

There is more: a TV series and a novel are tied in with these three short films about young women and sexual fantasy commissioned by a Taipei production company called Dream Image. Surprisingly, they shorts draw inspiration from a two-part documentary on 80 of Taiwan’s independent bookstores. The bookstore is in the first short and the third but only as a resting place in the second. Loneliness is a common theme, but in quite different ways. These three shorts are fine, but, being by different directors, are different in theme and feeling. If there's a common literal object, it's not so much books but cell phones. Not for that reason, or not alone for it, the three shorts' cumulative impression is very sad.

Why did the first of the three remind me of Gaspar Noé's wife Lucile Hadžihalilović? Because there's something at once extreme and creepy and sensuous and pretty about it. The girl (Lin Chi-en?), whose name Xiaoyu (Cih En Lin) is as unspellable as Hadžihalilović, doesn't look twelve, though her boy classmates do. She's a little plain, but also a seductress. Strangely, her erotic fantasies of sexy Teacher David (Chung Cheng-Chun), licking him all over, etc. have nothing to do with reality, and yet she somehow does manage to get him fired for inappropriate behavior just the same. She has little real inner life, so we don't know what she might have felt about what happens. The other teacher is a monster. He gives Chinese poetry a bad name. His screaming commands are hysterical. The girl Xiaoyu is very sly. What is she doing on the smartphone she steals and hides in the bathroom, with its Turkish-style toilet seen from high above? This is a strangely tense and economical piece and a reminder that depictions of school life are one of the best ways to make films about weirdly warped and frustrated human behavior. This is an excellent short film and its mix of fantasy and reality is just right.

Second short's girl establishes more sense and control. She arrives in town with pink daypack and roller-blade suitcase with simple questions. "Where is the girls' dorm?" "Is this room 2019?" Her name is easy: Chan Kai Han (Angel Lee). This is a tale of alienation and bureaucratic hassles and Chinese meanness that is first Kafkaesque and then violent and finally bitterly ironic. Wow! Another excellent short film that's sure to leave memories. Imagine going away to college and when you get there, they have no room for you, and your parents blame you for it. A very sardonic world vew is here.

Third and longest short focuses on Xun or Hsun (Janine Chang or Chang Chun-ning or ‎Ning Chang or Zhang Jun-ning: there is little hope of getting a grip on a Chinese name if you're not Chinese), a twenty-something newcomer to Taipei from the provinces who ekes out a living, after a worse sex worker job, off playing flirtatious visits to lovelorn inmates. They are paid for this. Really? How does this work exactly? Instructions from the girls' 'boss' (who of course like any pimp has designs on the girls, prior access) are to open your jacket and show cleavage, act happy, and say you'll "wait for him" and be his girlfriend when he comes out. Second inmate she sees is #2923 (Liu Kuan-ting), a big young man with a sensitive face and sad eyes - he reminded me of one of Claire Denis' great regulars, Grégoire Colin. He does not speak at all the first visit, but asks for her for next time. The relationship continues. There's no use trying to cheer up the prisoner, and Hsun becomes honest. #2923 sees through her cheeriness. He speaks in favor of loneliness and - here comes the tie-in: when she asks where she can go for a quiet escape, he recommends she spend the day in a bookstore. The Grégoire Coin lookalike has rapidly become adorable. But also a little predictable, and this segment doesn't quite justify its extra length. The bookend of the three, a writer-bookstore owner and his musings, and the closing song, are trite and unworthy of the vivid short stories. If you're looking for a short film collection, this presents three promising young filmmakers.

Dear Loneliness 致親愛的孤獨者, 99 mins., was released in Taiwan Sept. 2019. It was screened for this review as paort of the NY Asian Film Festival 2020 virtual edition (Aug. 28- Sept. 12).

[Chris Knipp]

]KIM CHO-HEE: LUCKY CHAN-SIL (2019)


KIM YOUNG-MIN AND KANG MAL-GEUM IN LUCKY CHAN-SIL

Woman at a crossroads

At a drunken wrap-party, the director collapses and dies. Producer Lee Chan-sil (Kang Mal-geum), a middle-aged, never-married woman who has so long worked with him, finds herself out of a job and questioning her life. This is the premise of a new Korean film by a woman director, a collaborator of Hong Sang-soo (who has in fact herself co-produced eight of his films in the last decade), that's been seen as a riff off Hong or a lighthearted parody nodding at and perhaps chiding Hong's male point of view.

The reference to films and filmmakers and focus on one of the latter in difficulties come straight out of Hong Sang-soo. This certainly seems self-referential, and by indirection a reference to Hong. It's harder to detect a parodic, satirical, or comedic aspect referring to Hong or of any kind. This seems primarily a warm-hearted female professional midlife-crisis film, small and based on conversation like Hong, but more like a conventional film than like one of his. Pleasant and not very demanding (which might fit Hong, but his films are complexly self-referential by now), this has a bittersweet quality.

The constant presence of Granny (Yoon Yuh-jung), an old lady with philosophical observations from an end-of-life position, heightens the focus on self-reflection. Likewise a young man in underwear (Kim Young-min) who identifies himself as the ghost of Leslie Cheung, the Hong Kong megastar and regular of Wong Kar-wai films, who committed suicide in 2003. He serves as a quiet cheerleader and contributes to the meditative mood - and sense that Producer Lee is at the end of her tether.

She has gone to stay with an actress friend she calls Sis, Sophie (Yoon Seung-ah), does housekeeping for her, and helps Granny with her "homework." Granny can't read, it turns out, because in her day girls weren't allowed to learn because it would make them uppity - one more sign of Korea's deep misogynous bent whose current manifestation is shown in another 2020 NYAFF film, Kim Do-young's Kim Ji-young: Born 1982.

But the main self-realization comes through a would-be romance. Sophie has a man giving her French lessons, Young KIm (Bae Yu-ram) who's also an aspiring filmmaker. Producer Lee has some friendly conversations with Young Kim; both are single and have little to do, they share some meals, and Producer Lee gets ideas which eventually Young Kim sets straight. He thinks of her more like an older sister. A rude awakening for Producer Lee. But she has Granny and the ghost of Leslie Cheung to consult with. And when Producer Lee finds Young Kim found Ozu's Tokyo Story boring and prefers Christopher Nolan, she's relieved of her illusion they might be compatible. Only trouble is she's realizing now she's missed out on love by being work-driven and never entering into couple-hood. Granny warns her not to regret the past, to enjoy each day: you know the drill.

Yes, this does have a "transition from female sacrifice to female empowerment." Simply being a film about someone (formerly) involved in making films doesn't, however, make it a "smart metanarrative on the art of filmmaking," though the film may be a comment on the filmmaker's own life. It's a more conventional one than Hong Sang-soo's. It does have the one opening drunken scene, too short for Hong though; and Hong-like exterior scenes, perhaps duplicating actual locations he's used, though I can't be sure of that. I might have enjoyed it more had I not been asked to see complexities and cross-references I couldn't find.

Lucky chan-sil / 찬실이는 복도 많지("There are many corridors in the cold room"), 96 mins., debuted at Busan Oct. 2019, also showing at Seoul, Independent Film Festival, Osaka and Pyeongchang festivals in 2019 and 2020. It won Best Picture at Seoul and the CGV Arthouse Award, the KBS Independent Film Award, and the Director’s Guild of Korea Award. Screened for this review as part of the virtual 2020 New York Asian Film Festival (Aug. 28-Sept. 12).

[Chris Knipp]

SABU: DANCING MARY ダンシング・マリ (2019)


AINA YAMADA AND NAOTO IN DANCING MARY

Before remodeling, an exorcism is sometimes needed

Some of the scenes in this genre mashup are delightful, perhaps especially ones that have nothing essential to do with the plot. I liked when some young office drones finish an urgent conversation in the cafeteria and one says, "Good lunch!" And when the protagonist Kenji Fujimoto (dancer-rapper Kataoka Naoto, known as Naoto) is in a hospital for the spirit medium he's recruiting and two women with cancer in the ward mercilessly rag him for being a cowardly loser. It's not essential to the action, but the rhythm is great. The government agency for which the normally lazy Kenji works has put him in charge of a nightmare job - the demolition an old showa-era dance hall to be converted into a mall and offices. There's a serious snag: the ugly old building is haunted and people are afraid to go in. So the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, is called in as well as some ghosts who can help out. And Kenji, who never stops being comically frightened, enlists the medium he hears about (who's being bullied for it, by the way, the class "Carrie"), a high school girl called Yukiko ((Aina Yamada)). It doesn't hurt that to channel the ghost connection, Kenji has to hold hands with Yukiko all the time. A dancer called Mary (dancer model Bando Nozomi. haunts the building. (The involvement of Naoto and Bando Nozomi is due to a contract Sabu (Hiroyuki Tanaka) has signed with a talent agency.)

A plane ride take Kenji to an all-out battle of dead guys in limbo. An aim is for lost souls to be allowed to go to heaven (So: ghost story meets martial arts.) He and the medium go over with a slaughtered yakuza full of swords from "death by a thousand" - or a dozen anyway - cuts. They come back with the wild Johnny (Kaito Yoshimura), a scruffy, rambunctious ghost of a rocker Mary's lost boyfriend, who hopefully will free Mary of her entrapment in the dance hall building. Johnny is a laugh all the way. Notice his wild reaction to being in a plane; and his demands after landing, en route to see Mary - chewing gum and a boutique outfit - and his critique of the boring modern car - lots of fun, throwaway moments come with Johnny.

Jason Maher, whose review in VCinema elucidates details of the narrative that had eluded me, is one of several who note, in his case admiringly, that the style Sabu evokes here at times recalls the early Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Sabu acted in Kurosawa's 2001 Pulse). Maher notes that Sabu exchews "jump-scares and gore," and adopts (I liked this) a "texture" that is "damp and cold." Refreshing on a hot day! Maher describes the sensory atmosphere of the movie admirably : "Shrill strings, wailing winds and melancholy music are heard while cobwebbed corridors, abandoned abodes, decrepit danchis and the mouldy dance hall provide the settings." There are several supple ballet sequences too, by the way.Ghost-communication scenes are in black and white. Maybe it doesn't all hold together because there are so many disparate genre elements. But if you hang on for the ride, fun is to be had.
Dancing Mary ダンシング・マリ, 96 mins., released Japan Oct. 2019, Imagine Film Festival (Netherlands) Sept. 5, 2020. Screened for this review as part of the virtual 2020 New York Asian Film Festival.

[Chris Knipp]

HUR JIN-HO: FORBIDDEN DREAM 천문: 하늘에 묻는다 (2019)


HAN SUK-KIU, CHHOI MIN-SIK IN FORBIDDEN DREAM

A period celestial bromance with complicated consequences

This is the story of the extremely important 15th century Korean scientist-inventor-engineer Jang Yeong-sil (Choi Min-sik) and King Sejong the Great (Han Suk-kiu), who nurtured his talents. Hur Jin-ho has made a grand and glorious costume drama out of this well known part of Korean history featuring two of the nation's most distinguished actors (united for a second time, the first being for the 1999 thriller Shiri). Korea's dominance by China hangs over this story. Since Yeong-sil's most notable inventions were astronomical, his work was bound to violate the Chinese rule that the skies were a sacred region Koreans were forbidden to broach. Yeong-sil also caused local hostility in the royal court because the free-thinking Sejong had made him, a person of lowly status, a high-ranking advisor. This is the story of the complications of this important relationship, which is both enhanced and diluted by costume drama pomp.

The West has stories like this, like Galileo's, which comes a century or so later. One wants this film to be more intellectual, richer in the science of the time. But perhaps it does the best it can. In any case it is handsome to look at and the moments of intimacy are unique and touching if a bit schmaltzy at times, especially on the part of Choi; Han is more wont to laugh, as if being a radical Joseon dynasty king was all a lark.

In the film it's said that Yeong-sil was initially a slave. Elsewhere he is described as one of the Cheonmin or "vulgar commoners." In any case his discovery and elevation to the status of a court counselor is an important and controversial event. This King Sejong is egalitarian, and also grandiose. In one gesture he selects a star and tells Yeong-sil it's his, that social status doesn't restrict who can own a star, and goes on to say all the stars rank as his personal servants. Perhaps, for his time and place, they truly seemed to be. The grand operatic string orchestra rings out in the background. Yeong-sil and Sejong lie down beside each other and contemplate the stars. By this point, if not before, this has become a real sentimental bromance. During the honeymoon period, Jang designs a special clock and astronomical globe, and many other things not fully described in the film. I wish they were, that one got more of a sense what it was like to be the Leonardo of Korea.

In these activities competition with or defiance of Ming, the Chinese emperor, have to be somehow implied. And this is a great danger, since China is far more powerful and Korea owes fealty to the Chinese emperor.

When King Sejong asks Yeong-sil what reward he would like for his achievements, he answers, "Always to be with you, Sire."

Naturally this can't last. There are courtiers who never liked the raising of a person of such low status to such a high position nor his having the ear of the king - though it's insinuated that years pass before the trouble comes. Yeong-sil has made numerous positive contributions to the country having to do with time and water as well as the stars, and he has advocates in the court. Sejong never personally, fully, turns against him until Yeong-sil forces him to.

Through pressure from the Chinese, Yeong-sil's largest device is torn down - his celestial globe, a grand device, yet primitive by modern standards, of course - and King Sejong himself torches it. Others are afraid to, perhaps disagreeing with its destruction or afraid Sejong is not truly in favor of it. Now King Sejong heads out for Incheon to recover from ill health.

The extended turning point is the collapse of the gama, a large carriage designed by Yeon-sil, in rain and mud and muck while King Sejong is riding in it. This is probably the most demanding of a number of complicated physical reenactments in the film involving elaborate reconstructed period machinery. Miraculously, the king is alive. All the very many royal servants who are found surrounding the crashed gama bow down in the muck - from which King Sejong has emerged chanting in unison, begging to be put to death. Members of the court regularly chant in unison. It's disconcerting; also one of several things that make one feel the film, with its color-coordinated court uniforms, is about to morph into a musical. It's assumed by all that the collapsed wheel of the gama was sabotage: everyone agrees that a I]gama[/I] designed by Yeong-sil simply could not collapse. This seems mistaken, though it shows what regard the man is held in. But if tragedy could strike at Cape Canaveral, why not a broken carriage wheel in the 15th century?

In the wake of this, when the quartet of royal maintenance men are tortured and jailed and Yeong-sil is under investigation and eventually sent to the same cozy cell, it's discovered that he has had in his quarters a little wooden box with some odd squares in it. He professes to know noting of it. This is the beginnings of Hangul, another great innovation during the regime of King Sejong. It's made very clear (though students of Korean culture would not need to be informed) that Hangul was part of Sejong's democratizing, liberal moment by ending the necessity of using Chinese characters, which effectively made literacy in Korea a thing of the aristocratic and powerful. A system of letters (though to us they look like characters), it was created to replace the complicated use of Chinese characters. But use of Chinese writing kept literacy firmly in the hands of the aristocracy. Hangul would make ordinary people able to become literate with easy and writ their own language. So this is part of the story of the period, though how it relates to the relationship between the King and the commoner-sage is a bit complicated, and perhaps a little dry. As Yoon Mitn-sik says in his Korea Herald review, the film "mixes it up" at this point. It blends the bromance, the conflict with China, the carriage accident scandal, and the creation of Hangul and the mix creates tension but not a sense of narrative logic. .

Yeong-sil and King Sejong have another intimate meeting. But Yeong-sil is held with the four maintenance officers for the gama accident. We know Yeong-sil was flogged, but nothing more. An online biography says it's possible he may have survived into the next regime. There's material for another, more purely invented story, perhaps, a great inventor living out his last days in obscurity - like Tesla? But the best part of this film comes early, the star-gazing and bromance moments, where the interaction of these two fine actors is most effective.

Forbidden Dream, /천문: 하늘에 묻는다 (2019), 132 mins., released theatrically in Korea Sept. 2019, and in Japan Dec. 2020. It was screened for this review as part of the virtual 2020 New York Asian Film Festival (Aug. 28-Sept. 12). It's currently available for rent on Amazon.

[Chris Knipp]

LAYLA ZHUQING JI: VICTIM(S) 加害者，被害人 (2020)


POSTER FOR VICTIM(S)

A lurid movie about bullying full of ugly scenes of abuse

This debut feature about school bullying, murder, and bad parenting from mainland Chinese director Layla Zhuqing Ji shot in Malaysia for greater freedom is ambitious, but confusing, and doesn't shed new light on the subject. It seems overly busy, too much sliding toward horror movie genre, lacking in emotional depth, particularly after seeing another, much better new film about bullying in the NYAFF, Naito Eisuke's touching Forgiven Children.

Ji indulges energetically at first in in multiple platforms - present action, kids' group chats and messaging, individual interviews, flashbacks - conveying the busy media-dense atmosphere of such situations, but the action drops back to a simpler two-pronged narrative approach later with emphasis on flashbacks; the crime of murder somewhat falls by the wayside. The flashbacks show that the murder victim was a chief bully, the killer mercilessly bullied by a small group of vicious class misfits to which the victim belonged.

But things are further complicated by there being homosexuality in two of the main boys - though this is a theme not followed through on. And yet, though, anyway - how does this make sense, exactly? - they both seem interested in and in competition for the same new girl, an art school transfer. She it turns out was molested by a teacher, and she too is soon mercilessly bullied and teased at the new school for that by the girls. Both the girl and the boy are subjected to having their mistreatment filmed on smart phones. She and the bullied boy, the top student, become comrades in misery. (It was at this point, 45 minutes in, that I discovered this is a coed boarding school.)

The boys' social statuses and mothers are contrasted. The murdered boy's is a lowly masseuse with a drunken husband (not followed through on),while that of the killer, who was cruelly bullied, is a woman well off from the sale, we're told, of violent video games. Everyone seems to hate the "rich" boy for being uppity. I'm not sure the filmmaker is aware how ambiguous and confusing a lot of details are, such as the sexuality of the boys; the uppityness of the killer's mom.

Her interest seems more in shooting violent encounters and sudden actions, scary, penumbral scenes, shadowy interiors alternating with bright street or schoolroom exteriors, some of which are beautiful as lensed by dp Eunsoo Cho.

The school and the authorities come in for some harsh depiction. No one is ready to step in and prevent bullying, or make the classroom a human space. The classroom scenes are crudely stylized things out of a comedy film. The system is stark. Students are seated in order of GPA, top in front, lowest in back. All emphasis is on test score and rote knowledge. When the group bullying sessions come they're depicted in horror movie mode. They are trying to observe, and the mode they're in makes it hard to take them seriously, though not hard to be disgusted by them. The grasp on tone is very uneven.

While undeniably effective as crude fiction degenerating for a while into misery porn with hideous torture scenes, this film has too little sense of reality to work as a comment on current events, on which it's only an impressionistic riff, in any case. Since it's approach to these events is so crude, it also can't be taken seriously as cinema. But that doesn't mean it won't contribute to discussions of these issues, especially by Chinese audiences. An uncertain beginning for Layla Zhuqing Ji, who studied in the US but plans next to make a film in China, which she says has rich opportunities for independent cinema. That's all except for the censorship, I guess.

Victim(s) 加害者，被害人 ("Perpetrators, victims"), debuted at Udine (Udine Far East Film Festival) June 2020. Screened for this review as part of the virtual 2020 New York Asian Film Festival (Aug. 28-Sept. 12, 2020).