Feature by Kathie Smith: If the Vancouver Film Festival is known for one thing, it's the "Dragons and Tigers" program: a diverse series spotlighting established and up-and-coming Asian filmmakers, its been home to the debut features of such luminaries as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hong Sangsoo and Jia Zhang-ke, who all received a notoriety at VIFF that helped launch their respective careers. The series has benefitted from years of programming curated by Tony Rayns, and has recently added Shelly Kraicer, a Mainland maverick, to its programming team. Like a kid in a candy store, I saw 35 of the 44 selections this year, and many I will carry with me for years to come regardless of their eventual Stateside distribution. This year felt like a particularly good year for this Asian sidebar, with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” leading a strong charge of critically lauded films from major filmmakers.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

/ Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Anticipation is a dangerous thing, and as I walked into VIFF’s sold out screening of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” I worried my own would present a problem. Ever since I first saw “Mysterious Object at Noon” nearly ten years ago, my enthusiasm for Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul has grown with each film he's made, and I've yet to be disappointed. But this is his moment: ‘Uncle Boonmee’ won highbrow accolades and the Palme d’Or at Cannes and scored some hometown success during an early theatrical run in Bangkok. Now making the festival rounds before its early 2011 US release, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ continues to earn heaps of critical praise, and I’m not going to do anything to change that. I'm going to add to it: at a comparatively short 114 minutes, Weerasethakul’s latest succeeded in skewing my expectations and in wholly satisfying my desire for an enchanting cinema. Where his previous films required the audience to let go of preconceived notions of narrative structure, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ asks the audience to let go of preconceived notions of the physical world. Inspired by a book of the same name that Weerasethakul picked up from a monk, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ is a relatively straightforward account of a man nearing death. What's unique is its setting—the jungles of the Khon Kaen region of northern Thailand, which evoke the supernatural.

The soft-spoken Jen travels to the countryside to visit her brother-in-law Boonmee, who tends to his tamarind grove and bee houses. Jen's nephew, Tong (played by Weerasethakul regular Sakda Kaewbuadee), accompanies her. Although Boonmee seems at first to be in good health, we soon learn of his kidney disease through an early scene depicting his dialysis. While Jen, Tong and Boonmee eat dinner, surrounded by the darkness of the jungle, Boonmee’s wife (and Jen’s sister) Huay, who's been dead for 19 years, magically appears at the table, followed by Boonmee’s son, Boonsong, who went missing 13 years ago. Boonsong, however, appears in the form of a monkey ghost, hauntingly coming up the dark staircase with glowing red eyes. The surprise of their arrival quickly passes and the costumes and effects hardly matter as the five settle into a conversation that ponders the special circumstances of their meeting. Jen asks Huay if she received the offerings that she left for her; in a touching confession representing the connection between the living and dead, she says that she did and that she felt the presence of the offerings and their prayers. Weerasethakul counters some of this seriousness with humor; when Jen tells Huay she had to chase her husband out with a butcher’s knife, Huay laments to Boonsong: “Son, earthly matters never cease to surprise, right?” Unease, comfort and joy are all handled with a resolute calm and the unspoken knowledge that the arrival of these spirits is related to Boonmee’s health.

On the periphery, the echoes of Boonmee’s past lives rumble and reverberate into the story. A water buffalo breaks away from the tree to which it's tied and wanders into the jungle, giving us our first glimpse of the monkey ghosts we see later on and then obediently returning to the field from whence it came. A similar diversion occurs when an ancient princess is carried through the jungle by sedan chair; mourning her imperfect features near the edge of a roaring waterfall, she forms a bond, so to speak, with an all-knowing catfish, requesting a youthful beauty. But the anchor of all this is a series of snapshots referencing the military past of Khon Kaen (and Boonmee’s karma), photos that depict soldiers who hold one of these monkey ghosts captive. Perhaps the ghost is Boonmee or perhaps it's Boonsong—either way these images resonate with an eventual fall from grace, possibly spiritual and possibly political in nature. There's an undeniable physicality to Boonmee’s peritoneal dialysis but it's gently extrapolated alongside mystical apparitions of reincarnation. ‘Uncle Boonmee’ is a rare comment on death and spirituality that is completely original in film, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes the bold assumption that his audience is as adventurous as he is. With an ending best discovered, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ flaunts Weersethakul’s poetic license and his desire for us to interpret the meanings in his films ourselves.

I Wish I Knew / Jia Zhang-ke

Jia Zhang-ke's “I Wish I Knew” plunges into the depths of Shanghai's living history with artistry and humanism. Politically bold and socially rich, “I Wish I Knew” represents a compassionate search for the heart of a city now defined by its modernity and its booming economy. Since opening its ports to foreign trade, Shanghai has maintained the aura of a European city, even in China's most xenophobic moments. As a symbol of the country's ills and advances, Shanghai was built by its trade prowess, but defined by war. Although under constant threat from the Japanese for nearly 15 years, it was the brutal battles between the Communists and Nationalists that posed the threat which so effected Shanghai's residents, physically and emotionally. It's this fragile moment in the 1940s that Jia excavates, culling stories from people who still reside in the Paris of East and others flung by fate to either Hong Kong or Taiwan: the daughter of a gangster, the son of a KMT officer, and the son of a Communist officer. Most recall moments from their childhood and the trials their parents endured. But Jia also interviews the son of actress Shangguan Yunzhu (“Two Stage Sisters,” “Crows and Sparrows”), the daughter of director Fei Mu (the original “Springtime in a Small Town”), and actress Wei Wei (also making an appearance at VIFF in the premiere of Freddy Wong's “The Drunkard”). Jia spends time with Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsein as well (their interview takes place in the last car of a train, of course), and eventually turns his camera on the new generation of Shanghai residents, represented by the hugely popular writer/blogger/race car driver Han Han. Each interview, as one might expect, is beautifully staged, intercut with elegiac scenes from the city that recall moments of Jia's “24 City.” But unlike that film, “I Wish I Knew” firmly remains a documentary, with only brief interludes featuring Jia’s muse Zhao Tao. The English title, “I Wish I Knew,” is an epitaph for Shanghai's history, buried beneath modern wealth and privilege. It also seems to describe the desire of a director trying to understand a city that defines his country. The Chinese title, “Hai Shang Chuan Qi” “海上传奇” (with the characters for Shanghai inverted like Hou Hsiao-hsien's “Flowers of Shanghai”), literally translates to "Legend on the Sea," and certainly has similar connotations as the English title. "Legends," at least in China, hail from the days of the Tang and Song Dynasties—and to the people in this film, their memories are nearly as distant. Commissioned for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, “I Wish I Knew” is an elegant tribute to the city this city once was.

Note: VIFF screened the 138-minute cut of “I Wish I Knew”; a subsequent cut runs 118 minutes and edits out sequences the Chinese Government felt portrayed China poorly. In essence, three interviews were cut, including a heartbreaking interview with Shangguan Yunzhu’s son. Unfortunately, it's the truncated version, edited for the Shanghai Expo, that is currently set to play in the U.S.

Hahaha / Hong Sangsoo

Hong Sangsoo had two films at VIFF this year, but where the newer "Oki’s Movie" feels like a rehash, “Hahaha” possesses a startling lightness that, unexpectedly, does not recall other Hong movies; as humiliation and introspection collide and congeal, Woody Allen is far more prescient than Eric Rohmer. Pitched with cutting dialog and featherweight humor, “Hahaha” involves farcical attempts at human connection (usually between the opposite sex) and large amounts of soju. Friends Munkyung and Jungshik discuss recent events over drinks, trading stories of their respective trips to Tongyung, on the southern coast of Korea. What we realize and they don’t is that their tales of debauchery run parallel to each other. Munkyung is a recently fired professor who now calls himself a film director (even though he hasn't yet made a film), and who's planning to immigrate to Canada and help his aunt run a photo franchise. His mother runs a globefish restaurant in Tongyung which Munkyung visits frequently. Meanwhile, Jungshik has traveled to Tongyung on the pretense of visiting a friend, but in fact he's there to spend time with his mistress. Although the two friends' paths never cross, they visit the same places and socialize with the same people. The action in “Hahaha” takes place in segmented flashbacks joined together with black-and-white photos of Munkyung and Jungshik in the present, their inane drinking narration overdubbed. ("Wow. You were really great!" "Yeah." "Cheers!" "Cheers." "Hahaha.") Munkyung is played to pathetic perfection by veteran Hong actor Kim Sangkyung; a mama's boy prone to weeping, Munkyung is a Hong-ready everyman, but Sangkyung is given the space to indulge in conventional character tropes including a surreal dream sequence and a very funny fist fight. His character is balanced by Moon Sori's performance as Seongok, an odd and irreverent museum tour guide that Munkyung woefully takes to chasing. Hong toys with his characters, pushing them into situations that nearly pull the rug out from under them. But Hong remains gleefully audacious and pulls off this farcical comedy gracefully. There's a certain formal and tonal restraint to Hong's films, and just a touch of that restraint falls away in “Hahaha,” easily making it one of the most enjoyable films this great talent has made.

Cold Fish / Shion Sono

In this follow-up to 2008's megalomaniacal 3½-hour epic “Love Exposure,” Shion Sono delivers a far more focused and fleshed out film. “Cold Fish” is more somber in its damnation of family culture and modern social schemas. Dubiously based on a true story, it charts an emasculated man's journey to the edge of his violent misogynistic psyche. Shamoto is a mild-mannered fish shop owner psychologically beaten down by his unresponsive teenage daughter and his frigid wife. Soon we find out there is a seriously twisted hierarchy in the household that seems to be careening out of control. Until Murata steps in, that is. A competing but much more successful fish shop owner, Murata wants to set the patriarchal record straight and takes Shamoto and his family under his sadistic wing. Nothing that happens will come as a surprise to those familiar with Sono's films, but the dark mood just gets darker and the humor less humorous. A brutal yet symbolic ending is likely to have any audience squirming, but Sono tightens the screws with unexpected efficiency. The opening montage is an efficient visual allegory to the barbarity that lies just beneath the surface of modern domestication. “Cold Fish” feels like a transition into serious filmmaking for Sono, with gravitating performances and solid production. At over two hours, it's a rigorous and unrelenting experience.

Winter Vacation / Li Hongqi

My personal favorite film at VIFF, “Winter Vacation” is a perfect mixture of Chinese specificity and avant-garde bravado. An incredibly austere set piece, it never concerns itself too much with drama or realism, but instead builds a laconic daydream filled with irony and surrealistic flourishes. It's set during winter break, which normally coincides with the Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year), a season characterized by lively family gatherings, bountiful food and firecrackers. But Li Hongqi paints the antithesis of this vision, with youth standing around dispassionately and occasionally spouting slurs at one another; their guardians do much of the same. “Winter Vacation” is anchored by two sets of characters: five apathetic teenage boys, and an antagonistic grandfather and grandson sitting at opposite ends of a couch, trading jabs. The film cycles through the non-events in the town—a thug extorting money from a kid, a woman buying cabbage, a couple getting a divorce—but always returns to the aforementioned groups. At first these individuals seem oblivious to the surrounding absurdity, but it's slowly revealed that they're more than aware of their sardonic setting. One of the boys has decided not to return to school, and when asked what he plans on doing, he replies with a popular communist slogan, “Continue to build socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The slogan is as empty as the emotion behind it. Earning comparisons to Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Winter Vacation” functions on an economy of words, but the minimal dialog is scripted with perceptiveness and delivered with deadpan perfection. This whip-smart rhetoric and ironic humor are complimented by a stylistic verve that feels completely unique to Mainland Chinese film: Li punctuates beautifully sparse imagery with a subtle soundtrack by experimental composer Zuoxiao Zuzhou (who has also contributed to soundtracks for Jia Zhangke, Zhu Wen, Yang Fudong and Ai Weiwei). The film ends with a befuddled schoolteacher delivering a hilarious diatribe to his apathetic students, telling them they're the soul of the universe but that they know nothing. The insults keep flying until another teacher informs him he’s in the wrong classroom. The new teacher then informs the students (in English), who have the same blank looks on their faces, that they will discuss “How to be a good person in society.” "Winter Vacation" is that rare social commentary that is not intended to draw tears or pull heart strings, but to tickle our funny bones.

Feature By:
Kathie Smith