Hold You Tight (Yue kuai le, yue duo luo)

HOLD YOU TIGHT (Yue kuai le, yue duo luo)                   A-                   

Hong Kong  (93 mi)  1998 d:  Stanley Kwan

I fear tragedy will recur

I am fated in my fate

To be out of touch with what’s beautiful

History repeats itself

In this bustling city

It is not possible

To love without undercurrents

What use is there for me to go on cherishing you?

If I hold you tight this time

Will it not be another empty embrace?

Still quietly waiting

For you to say I’m too sensitive

I have a sense of foreboding about everything

And then I cannot open my eyes to see fate arrive

And then clouds gather around the skies

⸺“Undercurrents,” written by Lin Xi, sung by Faye Wong, 1977, 王菲 - 暗湧 YouTube (4:22), reorchestrated and sung by Anthony Wong for the film, 暗湧 黃耀明-愈快樂愈墮落(Hold You Tight)電影結尾 插曲 YouTube (3:37)

On the surface, this is a film about people and relationships.  Beneath the surface, it’s a study of the way people in Hong Kong – including myself – have reacted to the ‘1997 issue.’  I didn’t set out deliberately to deal with either the 1997 issue or the gay issue, but I find myself more and more drawn to these questions.  The film shows three ways of approaching relationships, and all of them are drawn from my own past experiences.   —Stanley Kwan

A beautiful and dazzling film, provocative to the extent that personal anxiety is interwoven into the political uncertainty of the city’s postcolonial transition, moving in and out of moods, revealing the high-powered modern landscape of Hong Kong at night, neon-lit, heavily populated, with a fast moving camera jarring our senses, then switching to more personal interiors, gyms, malls, swimming pools, bars, apartments, where the virtuoso camera artistry by Leung Ping-Kwan in just his second feature film reveals slow languid moments of quiet, solitary reflection that mirrors isolated, alienated souls.  Kwan’s ability to elevate the city’s historical context into his films, where the streets, the back alleys, the food vendors, the bars, or the musical set pieces all come to life within the telling of the story, so the audience literally gets a “feel” for this place in time.  The film is intentionally ambiguous about identity and confusingly uses the same actress, the lovely Chingmy Yau in her last movie role, playing two different parts, although that is not clear until the end, written specifically with her in mind.  Both are at the airport at the beginning of the film, one (Moon), a business executive, gets on the plane to Taipei and perishes, as the film follows her shy, surviving spouse, Fung Wai (Sunny Chan), a good looking but repressed computer programmer, while the other similar looking actress (Rosa), a clothing boutique owner, forgets her passport, never boards the plane, and survives, ending up in Taiwan.  While Kwan is known for women’s pictures and daring performances, this film explores repressed sexuality through a trio of Chinese men, two of them revolving around the quietly sullen Wai who is devastated by the tragic plane accident, including Jie (Lawrence Ko), a Taiwanese immigrant in Hong Kong who is strangely attracted to Wai, whose constant presence hovers around and near him throughout, though always indirectly, like a shadow figure, never making his intentions clear until the end, while Tong (Eric Tsang), an openly gay real estate broker also develops a secret longing for Wai, openly befriending him, but never revealing his secret crush, with Tsang winning the Golden Horse award for Best Supporting Actor, easily the most appealing character in the film, exuding warmth and humor throughout.  An intricate web of relations drives the plot, largely fueled by underlying homoerotic desires, revealed at the outset in a gay bathhouse cruising scene, men checking out other men, with Tong spontaneously picking up a naked stranger, leading to graphic sex and an eruption of intensity.  A jolting cut to his professionally dressed business demeanor comes as a shock to the system, yet this emphasizes the multi-faceted aspect of living in a cosmopolitan city like Hong Kong, always in constant flux, where one is expected to play multiple roles. 

This is the first Kwan film after coming out in 1996 as the first openly gay Asian filmmaker, also a year after the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong to Mainland China, expressing a sense of profound alienation, perhaps expressing the internalized pain of living a closeted existence, using the Tsing Ma Bridge leading to a newly built airport as a metaphor for Hong Kong’s uncertain post-1997 future, reflecting a transition from the old Hong Kong airport depicted in the opening scene.  There’s even an early television announcement of the death of Communist leader Deng Xiaoping, marking a clear delineation from pre-handover times to postcolonial.  Told in non-linear fashion, the film is actually divided between two cities, opening in Hong Kong, moving to Taipei, which serves as Hong Kong’s alter ego (also a way of honoring Taiwanese cinema), and then back again, viewed as mirrored locales with shared destinies of returning to the motherland, examining displaced characters that inhabit both cities, with a pronounced undercurrent of homosexuality commenting on that displacement.  Tong catches a glimpse of Wai while waiting for a train and instantly falls for him (completely unaware that he’s being followed by Jie), then sees him again later in a restaurant, discovering he’s alone, and offers to help him sell his apartment, befriending him in the process, learning of his heterosexuality, still finding excuses to be with him, making it appear that his motives are strictly platonic, but viewers know otherwise, causing his sexual ambitions to be displaced and unfulfilled.  In Tong’s own apartment, kept as a reminder of an ex-lover, there is a movie poster prominently displayed on the wall of Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi) (1989), which becomes one of the alienated symbols in the film, accentuated by frequent orchestral variations of the Rolling Stones song, Rolling Stones As Tears Go By 1966 - YouTube (2:27), the same name as Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s 1988 film, a reflection of the character’s mixed emotions, honing in on the instability and inner turmoil of the young widower.  There are flashbacks of Wai’s marriage, happy days when he and his wife picked out the apartment, but also days of avoidance and loneliness, experiencing marital difficulties with Moon, who seems to enjoy bossing him around.  They were beginning to discover a renewed interest in one another the night before she died.  In more flashbacks, this time his wife’s memories, not known to the husband, she was having an affair with Jie, a poolman from Taiwan, who can be seen observing the husband when the wife disappears, developing a fascination for Wai, continually following him, where his attraction to Moon seems inherently driven by a desire to get closer to him.      

Completely unpretentious, what stands out here is Tong’s friendship with Wai, clearly cultivated by chance encounters, yet due to his middle age, no longer looking youthful, he seems to rule out any possibility of another romantic relationship, so instead he channels his sexual interest into helping others, exhibiting a generosity of spirit towards other men.  When he learns Wai’s wife has died, they go out for drinks where he sympathetically listens to Wai’s deepest sorrows, offering a comforting shoulder, becoming a loyal confidant, even inviting him home for a gourmet dinner with wine, describing himself as an illegal immigrant who often has to hide his identity, yet he’s open to Wai about his sexuality, but nonetheless hides his love.  When the more youthful Jie enters the picture, he’s been stalking Wai for some time, and even gets a job as a bartender at a gay bar he and Tong frequent, finally learning of Moon’s fate, overhearing Wai lamenting the loss of his wife, where a drunken Wai has to be driven home afterwards by Jie and Tong, with Jie insisting he needs no help in getting Wai back into his apartment, rolling him into bed while he examines his home, staring at the photos of Moon, finding the cologne he gave to her, then branding the sleeping Wai’s backside with it, like an animal marking his territory.  Though he kept Tong waiting for quite a while, when Jie starts to offer an explanation, Tong quickly cuts him off, “I have no interest in your story,” leaving him in a state of denial and self-pity.  This moment contrasts with sentimentalized earlier depictions of Jie and Moon happily chasing each other by the sea, frolicking like young lovers, holding hands, having sex on the beach, all set to a romantic pop ballad, offering a kind of generic, old-fashioned version of young love, sequences that stand apart from the rest of the film, as if set in a different time period.  Jie eventually returns to Taiwan where he discovers Moon’s double, Rosa, but she is an earthier, more promiscuous woman, a false reflection in the mirror of memory, leaving him in a state of emotional flux, still obsessed by a sexual longing for Wai, with Rosa helping him reconcile his unreturned feelings, finally leaving Wai a mysterious telephone message that apparently explains all, that we never hear.  While there is a flamboyant gay disco scene in Taipei where film critic Tony Rayns makes an appearance, there is also a reference to the Powell and Pressburger film THE RED SHOES (1948), a reminder of the British colonial legacy, as Rosa lays in her bed watching it on television.  Near the end of the film Wai turns to Tong for support, both looking out over the water, with Tong suggesting he can see China, notorious for its autocratic control over all aspects of Chinese culture, comparing his own life to the lives of illegal immigrants (or more likely, the invisibility of an LGBT community on the mainland), suggesting he could never live in hiding like those on the mainland.  Despite his outward gay leanings, however, and his perception of being liberated, his real love for Wai remains hidden throughout.  The film explores these parallel lives, each character confused about their sexual identity, a frequent theme of Hong Kong films as they convert to Chinese rule, where the drive across the Tsing Ma Bridge at the end is literally a bridge to the future.

Pieta (2012)

PIETA             D+                  

South Korea  (104 mi)  2012  d:  Kim Ki-duk

Senselessly appalling and repugnant throughout, this pathetically dreary film features overly brutal, utterly despicable human behavior from start to finish, yet it stupefying won the Venice Film Festival, which makes one wonder what else was in competition?  Actually, this was not the initial choice, as while the speakers were at the podium announcing their awards, they initially awarded Best Film to Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012).  However, the festivities were interrupted from a live telecast when a festival official whispered something into the ear of the speaker, where Venice rules only allow any given film a maximum of two major awards, and The Master had already been issued Best Director and Best Actor, awarded jointly to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix.  So after a brief but embarrassing delay, the Jury, headed by American director Michael Mann, handed out the Golden Lion Best Film to Kim Ki-duk’s PIETA ("Venice Film Festival Jury Yanks Top Prize from 'The Master' (Exclusive)").  Other overlooked films at the fest included the latest from Harmony Korine, Takeshi Kitano, Brilliante Mendoza, also Marco Bellochio’s equally dreadful Dormant Beauty (Bella addormentata) (2012), Ulrich Seidl’s downbeat Paradise: Faith (Paradies: Glaube) (2012), Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder (2012), which had the critics thoroughly confused ("Terrence Malick's To The Wonder confounds Venice press"), but also the near brilliant 2012 Top Ten List #7 Something in the Air (Après mai), Olivier Assayas’s autobiographical account of the political slide after May ’68.  Apparently the Italians held little interest in the French student movement, although in March of ’68 Italian students shut down the University of Rome for 12 days during an anti-war protest.  Kim Ki-duk is one of the few directors to receive more praise abroad on the festival circuit than he does at home, as he’s never been embraced by Korean critics or audiences, and was attacked ferociously in the press by film critic Tony Rayns in a November/December 2004 Film Comment article entitled Sexual Terrorism: The Strange Case of Kim Ki-duk, claiming, among other assertions, that he’s a purveyor of gratuitous violence and misogyny purely for shock and that he “shamelessly plagiarizes,” something Western filmmakers quite commonly do.  Largely self-taught, from a lower class background with no formal training in film, Kim usually focuses on marginalized characters leading morally questionable lives that seem to exist in a universe all their own. 

What apparently captured the attention of the festival was the completely uncompromising aspect of the film, where at least on the surface, the film presents an artificially exaggerated view of a descent into a mercilessly brutal world that only exists in the world of movies, displaying a sadistically crude human quality that has come to be known as torture porn, where the audience is treated to endlessly repetitive sequences of sad and pathetic humans at the bottom of the food chain who are subjected to ruthless cruelty, where Lee Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a collector for underworld loan sharks, and if the money is not there he savagely breaks bones, feeding arms and limbs into industrial machines, or cracking them himself, turning his victims into cripples in order to collect the insurance money needed to repay their debt, subjecting each individual to excruciating pain and a lifetime of dependency on others.  This is shown in such a dispassionate manner, including all the desperate pleading followed by endless screams, that one quickly grows disgusted with having to sit through this nonsense.  The picture of Lee Kang-do is a pathetic wretch of a man, someone with no scruples whatsoever, that trolls the bottom of this Hellish existence by terrorizing weak and thoroughly moronic creatures who would idiotically stoop to borrow money from such an inhumane brute that prowls the neighborhood inflicting nothing but pain.  Out of nowhere, an older woman, Cho Min-soo, arrives at his door claiming to be his long-lost mother, apologizing profusely for abandoning him in childhood.  At first he finds it ridiculous and throws her out, calling her an “Evil bitch!”  But when she persists, he treats her with the same callous disregard he shows everybody else, viciously raping her on the spot.  Despite her prolonged agonizing moans of despair, she doesn’t leave him. 

Somehow this new mother in his life becomes an Angel of Forgiveness, pathetically sobbing her apologies, absolving him of all crimes, cleaning his house, buying him food, and regularly cooking for him.  Her presence suddenly alters his mindset, where he worries about her and begins to depend upon her kindness.  But she is more of an Avenging Angel, a kind of Satan in disguise complete with her own agenda, which sets him in an existential turmoil.  Due to the relentless monotony of neverending brutality, the film bears a similarity to Mel Gibson’s dreadful THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004), as both are mindless and nauseating films that are little more than sadistic displays of human torture.  The problem here is the exaggerated tone, where every emotion is so over the top, where characters yell and scream at one another all the time, constantly bickering, calling each other names, making threats, carrying out their threats, screaming in pain, where the film is one long, continuously procrastinated revenge saga, ugly, grotesque, and mercilessly brutal.  Lee Kang-do comes to personify the lowest form of human existence, evil incarnate.  Some have suggested he’s supposed to represent the ruthlessness of capitalism, a heartless economic system that doesn’t care who it destroys, that hears no sympathetic pleas, but simply bulldozes and lays waste to people’s lives in a momentary frenzy of violent, catastrophic destruction, and then moves on to the next person.  Others find meaning in the title, where the Pietà is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo, a subject in Christian art depicting an all-forgiving Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, the first of a number of Michelangelo sculptures with the same theme.  Anyone who’s seen Kim’s SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER…AND SPRING (2003), where the director himself plays the part of a monk, knows his familiarity with Buddhism and reincarnation, where this overly simplistic parable of evil incarnate seems to suggest that even the lowliest, most despised and hateful creatures on earth have redeeming qualities, where their lives can earn redemption, if not in this life, then the next, much of it underscored by the Kyrie eliason (Lord, have mercy) section of a Catholic mass.  The quietly poetic qualities expressed in the final few moments of the film offer a peaceful visual transcendence, completely at odds with the gruesome violence that comes before, where death chants in a state of perpetual darkness bring the film to a close. 

Breath (Soom)

BREATH (Soom)                                       C                    

South Korea  (84 mi)  2007  d:  Kim Ki-duk 

Apparently the Kim Ki-duk controversy is still brewing, as one of the scathing accusations made by film critic Tony Rayns in the November/December 2004 issue of Film Comment is that Kim “shamelessly plagiarizes,” calling Kim’s 3-IRON (2004) a rip-off of Tsai Ming-liang’s VIVE L’AMOUR (1994).  Now nearly four years after the film opened in Korea and at Cannes, and three years after it premiered at the U.S. Palm Springs  and Portland film festivals, this movie is finally getting a release in Chicago, and the film also has the Tsai Ming-liang imprint (for Christ’s sake, the message here is that Tsai Ming-liang’s films are starkly original), namely THE HOLE (1998) or again in THE WAYWARD CLOUD (2005), where Tsai inexplicably makes a quick exit from the monotonous, dreary reality depicted onscreen with a jolt of color and musical extravaganza, breaking out into the nostalgia-tinged artifice of song, which is a complete shock to the system.  Also doing a riff on one of his own themes, namely the changing seasons, Kim mixes the two together in what initially feels like a satire on Korean cheerfulness, where that ever present artificial smile is ingrained into the culture.  But he goes nowhere with this idea, so by the end of the film it really does feel like he simply stole the idea.  This film is structured around a loveless and near wordless marriage (only the husband speaks), set inside a spaciously modernized apartment that probably didn’t come cheap, where artistically inclined Yeon (Park Ji-a) creates sculpture objects while her boring, completely unimaginative yet overbearing husband, Ha Jung-woo, barks out orders and commands that she simply ignores.  His authority is passively undermined by her mute response.  Instead, she’s fascinated by the TV news reports about a convict on death row that has attempted suicide twice by jabbing a sharp object into his throat, but has recovered each time, effectively extending his date of execution.  The husband callously turns off the TV and tells her to find something better to do.         

Yeon finds herself inexplicably grabbing a taxi cab heading for the prison asking to visit the condemned killer Jin Jang, none other than Chang Chen, or 14-year old Xiao Si’r from Edward Yang’s autobiographical A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991), now seen some twenty years later sitting on death row, also playing a mute character due to the throat injury (evidently the Taiwanese actor speaks no Korean).  While she has no business whatsoever getting in, after an initial rejection, the warden, played by the director sitting in an enclosed booth with cameras following her every move, mysteriously allows the visit, including every known violation of prison security, where she speaks plainly and openly to this prisoner, recounting a personal story of her youth, returning home to her husband afterwards who is stunned and perplexed, thinking all along that his wife never left the house.  But she gets a taste for it, buying herself a bright yellow spring dress and hops back in a cab for the prison, this time plastering the walls with a colorful décor, adding flowers and turning the room into a spring paradise, placing a boom box on the table and sings some karaoke style ode to spring, which couldn’t be more preposterous, as she has a terrible voice.  After another frank discussion where she reveals some more deeply personal thoughts, she leaves a picture of herself as a little girl for the prisoner, which of course the other prisoners fight over once he’s back in his cell, which he shares with 3 others, none of them ever uttering a single word.    

At some point, the artifice of the musical number joins the script as well, becoming blatantly absurd with only rare moments of humor.  You’d think the film was heading somewhere, as the song’s artificial cheerfulness does seem to be a statement about the nation’s identity, as this is how Koreans continually express themselves, this is the face they show even during troublesome times, and both Yeon and the condemned man actually share a life of drudgery, yet both remain mute on the subject.  There’s no evidence however that this is what Kim had in mind, as Yeon develops a blasé attitude about her family and casually returns for summer karaoke, where the summer beach décor is especially outrageous, especially when the prisoner puts on the giant-sized plastic dark glasses, but by now the storyline is following an all too predictable pattern, as she returns for fall, and yes even winter – no surprise.  What gets ridiculous is the empty-headed idea that somehow this kind of bone-headed therapy is actually helpful to Yeon’s marriage.  In other words, the director starts taking this outlandish idea seriously.  Well all one can say is thud, as there goes all interest and plausibility, as all that’s left is watching the director lose his grip over his own material.  What makes Tsai Ming-liang’s material work so well is his complete lack of pretentiousness, even in scenes that are plastered in highly decorative artifice or absurd humor, as there’s an authenticity underneath that simply doesn’t allow pretense.  His films express genuine human concerns, where the drama can take any number of directions, but there’s a universality that’s unmistakable.  Not so here, as Kim’s storyline plods on, growing predictably repetitive and ever more pretentious, losing every ounce of credibility earned by the originality of that first musical sequence.  What was initially amusing and clever, perhaps still holding up the second time, but repeated four times, as if a marriage can be saved by the spin cycle, couldn’t be more ludicrous.  Chang Chen and Park Ji-a are both excellent, and their unusual performances are to be admired, but there isn’t an ounce of believability here, as the director simply became enamored with his own idea and undermines it, leaving behind a movie that’s pretty to look at, but not much use to anyone.