White on Rice (Director: Dave Boyle): 40-year-old Jimmy (Hiroshi Watanabe) is living with his sister and her family after his divorce, sharing bunkbeds with his young nephew, but only until he finds someone better than his ex-wife. Alas, this potentially funny premise is not able to sustain an entire film, especially when none of the other characters feel developed enough to serve as anything other than foils for Jimmy’s pratfalls. Not much to describe in the way of plot, either. Jimmy develops a crush on his brother-in-law’s niece, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Despite cribbing from all kinds of other comedies (Napoleon Dynamite, a few of Wes Anderson’s films, even the little-seen Kiwi comedy Eagle vs. Shark), White on Rice never really rises above the quirkiness of its moon-faced protagonist.
There are plenty of gaps in exposition as well. Jimmy is Japanese, and speaks Japanese with his sister and her husband who live in an American suburb, but we have no real idea whether he’s only recently moved from Japan, or whether his ex-wife lives in America too. At one point he tells a potential love interest that he’s only been divorced “a few years” but it’s unlikely he’s been sleeping in his nephew’s room for that long. Much of the humour comes at Jimmy’s expense, such as his frequently mangled English, and although the cast is mostly Asian, I wonder if this isn’t just perpetuating stereotypes other Hollywood comedies have traded in.
Overall, I just expected a bit more and found myself disappointed and a bit bored by the end. The film is competently made and, at least in Watanabe’s case, enthusiastically acted. But the script failed to deliver any surprises or authentic characters. Worse than that, when it had opportunities to subvert Asian stereotypes, instead it just milked them for the film’s few cheap laughs.
Official site of the film
(6/10)
Tagged as:
#reelasian09
Each year, the Reel Asian festival’s lineup gets stronger and stronger, and this year looks particularly good to me. Now in its 13th year, this annual festival of cinema from East and Southeast Asia will bring 49 films from 14 different countries to Toronto audiences from November 11–15. Here are a number of films I’m particularly excited about:
When The Full Moon Rises (Malaysia, Director: Mamat Khalid): A mashup of film styles including film noir, horror, slapstick and musical make this hard to resist. Disgraced journalist Saleh blows a tire out in the countryside and soon finds himself in a very strange village filled with gangsters, spies and cabaret singers. A string of disappearances keep him in town to write the story he knows will get his career back on track. That is, if he can survive to tell the tale.
White on Rice (USA, Director: Dave Boyle): Reel Asian always seems to have at least one zany comedy scheduled each year (Finishing the Game, Ping Pong Playa) and White on Rice seems to take the same delight in playing with Asian stereotypes as those other films did. Jimmy is a 40-year-old Japanese man who comes to the US to live with his sister’s family after a painful divorce. Sharing a room with his 10-year-old nephew doesn’t seem to bother him, though, as Jimmy’s a bit of a child himself.
Breathless (Korea, Director: Yang Ik-Joon): Described as both incredibly brutal and incredibly moving, this story of a violent man who meets his match in a schoolgirl has been scooping awards all over the place, most recently winning the award for Best Feature Film at Montreal’s Fantasia Fest. If I know anything about Korean dramas, there won’t be a dry eye in the house by the end.
Fish Story (Japan, Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura): I count on festivals like Reel Asian and Toronto After Dark to bring me some of the stuff from the fringes of Asian cinema, too. While Asia produces a huge number of accomplished “art” films, it also produces some stuff that’s just plain weird. Japan is a particular source of strange cinema, and Fish Story seems a perfect example. In 2012, a giant comet is set to destroy the earth, but all is not lost. A forgotten punk band’s obscure song will save us. Somehow. I’m a sucker for Japanese films that feature bands, so whether this makes any sense at all isn’t really that important to me.
Those are just a few of my picks so far, but I’m sure there will be a few surprises as well. Tickets and passes are on sale now. See you at Reel Asian!
Tagged as:
#reelasian09,
asia
Flower in the Pocket (Director: Liew Seng Tat): Just before the screening, I overheard someone praising the Malaysian filmmakers’ ability to tell interesting stories on miniscule budgets and then when the film was introduced, it was revealed that this film was made for US$10,000-$15,000. After seeing this, I can concur with that judgement. In his directorial debut, director Liew Seng Tat weaves a remarkably rich and evocative portrait of an unusual family with an unexplained core of pain. When the film begins we meet Ma Li Ahn and Ma Li Ohm, two young Chinese-speaking brothers living in Kuala Lumpur. We observe their impish play and their difficulties at school, and how they depend on one another. When they do finally get home, the older boy, who appears to be about 9, makes three bowls of soup. The boys eat theirs, and leave the other bowl covered up as they head off to bed.
Later that night, their father Siu comes home. A single father, he works as a mannequin maker, and seems profoundly cut off from human contact, even contact with his own sons. Remarkably, father and sons aren’t even in the same frame for almost an hour. But the boys are resourceful and have each other. They seem to be happy. When they meet the tomboyish Ayu, she takes them home to meet her mother, who feeds them like the almost-feral creatures they resemble. It’s only at this point that the audience realizes how neglected the boys are.
Their father isn’t exactly uncaring, but he almost seems incapable of expressing love. Only later do we get a hint of the wound at the heart of the family, when Siu takes an old photo of a couple out of a shoebox, tears it in two, and tries to swallow the half with the woman’s picture. I assume this is the boys’ mother, but they never seem to ask for her. All this would seem unbearably sad except for the wonderfully impish performances of the brothers. As well, near the end, Siu seems to be making an effort to reconnect with the world, and most importantly, with his sons. There is also a good amount of humour in the film, some of it bordering on the zany.
I believe this may have been my first experience watching a film from Malaysia, and it was enlightening to observe just how multi-racial and multi-lingual a place like Kuala Lumpur is. With so many different cultures clashing, there is plenty of room for misunderstandings, many of which the director plays for laughs. But it’s also a place where people can fall through the cracks, and the scenes where the younger boy struggles in school because he can’t understand the Malay language point out that without family or friends, the modern multicultural city can be a scary place for children.
(7/10)
Tagged as:
children,
fathers-and-sons,
malaysia
West 32nd (Director: Michael Kang): John Cho (Harold from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle) plays John Kim, an ambitious young lawyer who offers to represent a Korean teenager accused of a gang-related murder in New York’s Koreatown. His firm wants to raise its profile and he feels by doing this pro bono work, he can advance his career as well. His own Korean background helps convince the boy’s family to sign on, but in reality, he doesn’t even speak the language.
Before he knows it, he’s caught up in an underworld he didn’t even know existed. He meets Mike (Jun Sung Kim), a mid-level gangster trying to move up in the hierarchy, and the two quickly recognize each other’s ambition and begin an uneasy cooperation. But John is soon over his head in a culture he doesn’t really understand, and before long, there are more dead bodies and he’s no closer to winning his case. By the end of the film, any hint of altruism in John’s offer to help is peeled away to reveal that he’s really not that different from the gangsters he’s trying to bring down.
Though Cho is effective as John Kim, it was Jun Sung Kim’s character Mike Juhn who really lit up the screen for me. Unfortunately, the female characters seemed largely decorative, but that seems to be part and parcel of the traditional Korean culture that runs these criminal organizations. The locations in Manhattan and in Flushing, Queens added to the gritty realism of the film, and Kang used many actual Korean-American denizens of the neighbourhoods to further boost the authenticity factor.
Kang has made a slick and effective thriller that, while not particularly original, pays homage to both the American gangster films of the 70s and the more recent wave of Korean crime films. His co-writer is Edmund Lee, a former Village Voice reporter who spent years thoroughly researching gangs and organized crime in New York’s Korean community. As Kang described the project, he started out trying to make a Korean-American version of The Departed and ended up with something more like Mean Streets.
Here is the Q&A with director Michael Kang from after the screening (contains possible spoilers):
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Duration: 14:00
Official site of the film
Director’s blog
(7/10)
Tagged as:
crime,
gangsters,
korea,
newyorkcity,
nyc
The 12th annual Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival unspools November 12–16 and the schedule announced yesterday features more than 50 films from 14 countries. I have to admit that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the breadth of Asian cinema, so I’ll need a little more time to research the lineup (and consult with my more well-versed colleagues), but one film I have heard something about is the Closing Night Gala. Tenten (Adrift in Tokyo) sounds like just the sort of off-kilter Japanese film I enjoy. Takemura, a “shambolic and wild-haired loser” takes a walk across Tokyo with a debt collector, creating what sounds like an intriguing take on the road movie (and the buddy picture as well).
I’ll be digging more into the program in the weeks to come, and will add to my picks here. If you’re going to Reel Asian, what looks good to you?
Tagged as:
japan
