iPad Round-Up 3 - PAUL

What is it about British comedians that they go to America, garner a little success, and then get the urge to mock the key difference between America and Britain - Christian fundamentalism. Don't get me wrong - people who believe in Intelligent Design give me the heebie-jeebies - but there does seem something rather odd, and pathological even - in these movies that delight in undermining religious belief. I speak here of Ricky Gervais' THE INVENTION OF LYING and, now, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's new film, PAUL.

The plot is simple.  Frost and Pegg play two best friends and sci-fi geeks who attend a convention in the US. They pick up an alien who needs to get home, voiced by Seth Rogen, and so set up a comedy road-movie that could've been a clever satire on genre films, just in the same way that SHAUN OF THE DEAD brilliantly spiked zombie movies, or HOT FUZZ spiked cop films.  But  no, Frost and Pegg add a fourth character to their movie - a religious fundamentalist (Kristen Wiig) whose entire world-view is over-turned by her realisation that there is life on other planets.  

Of course this could've been as funny as anything in HOT FUZZ or SHAUN, but somehow - maybe the sensitivity of this material in the US, or maybe the real Hollywood money behind the picture - dulled their wit. (Or maybe it's that Frost and Pegg are without their usual collaborator - Edgar Wright?)  There are still flashes of the kind of ribald, laugh-out-loud comedy that we got in the earlier films, but overall this seems like a much tamer, and less memorable affair.  That unmistakeable damp squib sensation that settles in at about the hour mark isn't helped by a rather flat cameo by Jason Bateman as the spooky Fed, and can't be saved by a cameo from Sigourney Weaver. I also feel that Seth Rogen is straying into the territory occupied by Jack Black - that of always playing himself - even when voicing a CGI alien. 

PAUL was released earlier this year in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Canada, the US, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, the Ukraine, Australia, Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Iceland, Italy, the Philippines, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Lithuania. It is currently on release in Sweden, Thailand and Turkey. It opens in Spain on July 22nd.

iPad Round-Up 2 - GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

When I was a pre-teen and we all obsessively watched the lo-rent sci-fi TV comedy, RED DWARF, the phrase "almost Swiftian in its rapier-like subtlety" became a standard term of praise, long before we'd read Swift in class and fully appreciated the radical, deliriously scabrous nature of his political satire. That was back in the day when schools taught children useful shit like calculus and Latin.  Nowadays, family audiences have no use for political satire - although one might have thought that in the post global financial crisis world - with governments insolvent and political systems ossified by special interests - now would be EXACTLY the time for it.  And so, dear reader, we get the movies we deserve. Towit, Rob Letterman's utterly banal children's movie, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS - a film based on Swift only insofar as it incorporates a man who wakes up in a land filled with tiny little people called Liliputians.

So, Swift aside, how does it fare as simple family entertainment? Shockingly poor.  A mindlessly simple plot, piss-poor CGI effects, hammy acting from the largely British cast of character actors, and Jack Black playing the character he always plays - the childish, rock-obsessed but ultimately love-able frump. Director Rob Letterman and writer Joe Stillman display none of the wit or imagination seen in MONSTERS VS. ALIENS or SHREK. Must try harder.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was released over the 2010/2011 holiday season. It is now available to rent and own.

Shinsedai Cinema Festival 2011

The 3rd annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival runs from July 21st to 24th in Toronto. In addition to an exciting selection of independent feature films, the programme also features a screening of Keita Kurosaka’s masterpiece Midori-ko (2010) and the CALF Animation Special. It’s an amazing opportunity for Torontonians to see some of the best in recent indie Japanese animation.

Featured guests of the festival this year include actress and producer Kiki Sugino, star of the opening night film Hospitalité. Actor, director, comedian Devi Kobayashi will be on hand to present a double bill of his quirky comedies (Mariko Rose the Spook/ Hikari). 15-year-old film-making prodigy Ryugo Nakamura will presenting the North American premiere of his drama The Catcher on the Shore. All guests will be participating in post-screening Q&A’s and all of their films will be competing for the very first Kobayashi Audience Award.

To learn more about the indie animation in the programme, you can read my reviews of Midori-ko, its opening film Man Eater Mountain, and the CALF Animation Special.  Individual reviews for most of the films featured in the CALF Animation Special can also be found on this site.

Thursday, July 21st
Hospitalité – 7:00PM Reception
- 8:00PM Screening

Friday, July 22nd
Shirome – 7:00PM
Midori-ko (w/ Man-eater Mountain) – 9:00PM

Saturday, July 23rd
Azemichi Road – 12:00PM
Kid Commotion (w/ live sound foley) 2:30PM
Footed Tadpoles – 4:00PM
The Catcher on the Shore – 6:00PM
Wandering Home – 8:00PM

Sunday, July 24th
CALF Animation Special – 1:00PM
KanZeOn – 3:00PM
Devi Kobayashi Special – 5:00PM
Sawako Decides – 7:00PM

Japan Cuts 2011

Summer is here, which means the return of JAPAN CUTS: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema to The Japan Society.  The festival runs  from July 7^th to July 22^nd with 32 titles and 33 screenings, including 10 co-presentations with New York Asian Film Festival. They will be presenting a wide selection of films from uplifting family fare to brooding dramas, blockbusters and thrillers. Special guests will include directors Masashi Yamamoto and Tak Sakaguchi, and actress Sora Aoi.  

The July 20^th screening of Haru’s Journey, which stars legendary actor Nakadai Tatsuya, will see 50% of the proceedings go to Japan Society’s Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.

Other festival highlights include screenings of Sketches of Kaitan City (dir. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri), Into the White Night (dir. Yoshihiro Fukagawa), The Last Ronin (dir. Shigemichi Sugita), Ninja Kids!!! (dir. Takashi Miike), The Seaside Motel (dir. Kentaro Moriya), Heaven’s Story (dir. Takahisa Zeze), A Liar and a Broken Girl (dir. Natsuki Seta), Milocrorze: A Love Story (dir. Yoshimasa Ishibashi), A Night in Nude: Salvation (dir. Takashi Ishii), Toilet (dir. Naoko Ogigami), and Vengeance Can Wait (dir. Masanori Tominaga).  

I recommend seeing Mai Tominaga's  Rinco's Restaurant (食堂かたつむり, 2010), which I enjoyed at Nippon Connection this spring. 

Order from Cdjapan (no subs)

Here is the JAPAN CUTS line-up:

Thursday, July 7
Buddha 6:45 PM
Ringing in their Ears 9 PM

Friday, July 8
Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano 7 PM
Battle Royale  9:15 PM

Saturday, July 9
Gantz: The Movie, Part 1 12:30 PM
Gantz, Part II: Perfect Answer 3 PM
Ninja Kids!!! 6 PM
Yakuza Weapon 8:15 PM
+ After Party!

Sunday, July 10
Buddha 12:30 PM
Heaven’s Story 2:45 PM
Milocrorze: A Love Story 8 PM
+ Q&A with Yoshimasa Ishibashi  
Tuesday, July 12
Sword of Desperation 6:30 PM
The Last Ronin 9 PM

Wednesday, July 13
Rinco’s Restaurant 6:30 PM
Birthright (a.k.a. Umbilical Cord) 9 PM

Thursday, July 14
Rail Truck 6:30 PM
Yuki and Nina 9 PM

Friday, July 15
Toilet 6:15 PM
Three☆Points 8:30 PM*
+ Q&A with Masashi Yamamoto and Sora Aoi  
+ After Party!

Saturday, July 16
Love Addiction 2:30 PM
The Seaside Motel 4:30 PM
+ Q&A with Kentaro Moriya 
A Liar and a Broken Girl 7:15 PM
+ Q&A with Natsuki Seta  
Love and Treachery 10:30 PM

Sunday, July 17
The Knot 2 PM
Torso 4 PM
Strangers in the City 6:15 PM
A Night in Nude: Salvation 9 PM

Tuesday, July 19
Sketches of Kaitan City 6:30 PM
Control Tower 9:30 PM

Wednesday, July 20
Haru’s Journey 7 PM
+ Q&A with Masahiro Kobayashi and Reception

Thursday, July 21
Vengeance Can Wait 7 PM
Wandering Home 9 PM

Friday, July 22
Into the White Night 7 PM
+ Closing Party

iPad Round-Up 1 - RABBIT HOLE

RABBIT HOLE is an earnest but workman-like film about grief, adapted for the screen by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (INKHEART) and directed in an uncharacteristically conservative manner by John Cameron Mitchell of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and SHORTBUS fame.  The overall effect is of a sensitive and well-acted TV movie - worth watching but curiously unmemorable.

The movie stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as an affluent, suburban couple grieving for their son who was killed in a car accident eight months before the movie began.  Grief tests their marriage.  The wife reacts by clearing out her son's possessions, opting out of group, wanting to move house and, perhaps, most disturbingly, by striking up a friendship with her the preternaturally sensitive teen who was driving the car in the accident.  The husband seems to be much more open about his grief and rage and feels frustrated by his wife's secretive and volatile behaviour - almost tempted into an affair but with the fortitude to bend toward his wife one last time.  

Kidman got the plaudits for her performance - including an Oscar nomination - and she is just fine in her role - particularly good in a scene where she secretly returns to the City hoping to find the life she left behind only to realise it has left HER behind. But her complete shut-down restraint -  very well calibrated - makes for a sterile hole at the centre of the film, and I'm not sure the film survives it. This isn't helped by the rather flat, uninteresting work behind the screen from John Cameron Mitchell and his regular DP Frank DeMarco using a RedOne.  What saves the film is Aaron Eckhart in what is probably his best performance to date. He manages to combine great sensitivity and humour  - and in the key cathartic scene he never trips into hysterical melodrama but keeps it authentic.  It's a less showy performance as a result, and perhaps went overlooked for that reason, but it's completely emotionally devastating. 

RABBIT HOLE played Toronto 2010 and was released last year in Canada and the USA. It was released earlier this year in Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Ireland, the UK, Greece, Italy, Australia, Singapore, Finland, Serbia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Turkey, Poland, Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina. It is available to rent and own.  Nicole Kidman was nominated for Best Actress at the 2011 Oscars but lost to Natalie Portman for BLACK SWAN.

Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ, 2009)

It is rare to find an individual who is completely happy with themselves.  Most people, especially those without love in their lives, find themselves constantly searching for a way to improve or replace these pieces of themselves that they find lacking.  Momoko Andō’s Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ, 2009) is peopled with characters who are unhappy with their present circumstances and are looking without rather than within in order to fulfill their needs and desires.

Kakera tells the story of a college student named Haru  Kitagawa (Hikari Mitsushima of Love Exposure), who stays with her boyfriend (Tasuku Nagaoka of Moon and Cherry) despite the fact that he treats her quite badly.  One day in a café, she is approached by an older woman named Riko Sakata (Eriko Nakamura) who finds her attractive.  This awkward, yet tender scene marks the beginning of a complicated relationship between the two women which runs the gamut of emotions from warmth and affection to jealousy and confusion.  

Momoko Andō has managed to capture the fragile beauty of a romance between women with an authenticity and sensitivity rarely seen in feature films.  Each of the characters in the film has a kind of void in their lives that they try to fill with the love they have for another character and as in real life the course of these relationships never runs smooth.  Riko’s love for Haru is complicated by Haru’s unresolved feelings for her boyfriend and her own sexuality.  Haru’s boyfriend is one of those types of people who seem to always desire what he cannot have.  And Riko’s client and lover Tōko (Rino Katase) is also consumed by desires that remain only partially fulfilled.  This theme is visually represented in the film by the prosthetics that Riko designs for people who have lost body parts.  Prosthetics allow their wearers to disguise the ravages of illness or accidents that they have suffered, but they are not a permanent replacement for what has been lost.

Kakera is a film that examines female sexuality in all its ambiguities.  Riko’s love for Haru is complex.  She can be loving and kind, but she can also be possessive and jealous.  It is a brave film in many respects, though might have been even braver if Andō had included less chaste lovemaking scenes between the female protagonists.  This would have been a welcome contrast to the cold, empty sex scenes between Haru and her boyfriend that look more like rape than love-making.

The film has a feeling of authenticity about it thanks to not only the sincere performances of the actors but also the use of recognizable locations from around Tokyo, which ground the film in a very realistic, contemporary setting.  As a female spectator, I also took great delight in Andō’s use of female spaces that normally get left out of films.  There is one wonderful scene in which Haru is shot from a high angle using a public squat toilet to put a menstruation pad into her underpants.  It is an intimate moment that marks a new phase in Haru and Riko’s relationship.  This scene should not have been as surprising as it was as it’s a part of women’s everyday lives, but  startles because these moments always get omitted from films.  

  

Order the DVD

Kakera was adapted by Andō from the popular manga Love Vibes by Erica Sakurazawa  and was filmed beautifully by cinematographer Hirokazu Ishii.  The soundtrack was written by James Iha, the former guitarist of Smashing Pumpkins.  It is available on DVD in the UK from Third Window Films.  It is also available from cdjapan (JP only).

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs. To read more LGBT posts from the blogathon click here.

Manji (卍, 1964)

The impassioned voice of Kiyoko Kishida in the lead role of Sonoko Kakiuchi dominates the narrative of Yasuzo Masumura’s 1964 classic feature film Manji (卍, 1964). Just as in the original novel Quicksand (Manji/卍, 1928-30) by Junichirō Tanizaki, the story is told from Sonoko’s point of view to a man she refers to as “sensei”.

  

The Taniguchi novel

Sonoko is stuck in a loveless arranged marriage to Kotaro Kakiuchi (Eiji Funakoshi). The marriage is childless because Sonoko is secretly taking measures to prevent pregnancy, and she fills her empty days with art. She attends art lessons at a local women’s college. During life drawing classes, it is brought to Sonoko’s attention that she has become the subject of gossip because instead of drawing the model’s face, she has been drawing the face of beautiful fellow student Mitsuko Sido (Ayako Wakao).

Sonoko is brought to her knees by Michiko's unadorned beauty

The two women develop a friendship with each other that blossoms into a full-fledged love affair. The passion Sonoko feels for Mitsuko is so strong that she brazenly conducts the affair in her own marital bed and defies her husband’s wishes for her to end the relationship. It does not take long however for cracks to appear in what Sonoko believed to be a perfect love. She soon discovers that Mitsuko has a secret fiancé Eijiro Wakanuki (Yuusuke Kawazu), a man whose impotence leads him to behave in a jealous, irrational manner. This awkward ménage-à-trois becomes even more complicated when Mitsuko also draws Sonoko’s husband into the fray.

Michiko embraces Sonoko.

It’s a frenetic narrative that rarely stops for air as it races towards its dramatic conclusion. Set among the Osakan upper classes, we rarely see a glimpse of the city streets as the story for the most part unfolds in the interiors of the Kakiuchi home or in anonymous rented rooms. The use of interior spaces and frequent use of close-ups adds to the stifled atmosphere created by the oppressive passions of the four narcissistic lovers. The Japanese title “Manji” is the Buddhist swastika with its four arms representing each of the four lovers. Sonoko also uses Mitsuko as the model for her painting of the Goddess of Mercy, which serves an ironic function in the plot as Mitsuko turns out to be anything but merciful in the way that she skillfully manipulates her lovers.

Sonoko and Michiko's love letters.

In the wrong hands, Tanizaki’s story of obsession and jealousy could have easily been turned into a tawdry film exploiting love between women. Masumura avoids this thanks to Kaneto Shindō's poignant script and his use of highly stylized framing. Love scenes are rendered in fragments with each frame carefully composed with the elegance of an oil painting. The pureness of Sonoko's love for Michiko is emphasized through one of the few outdoor scenes in which the two women stroll through a verdant forest and pause in front of some Buddhist statues.  Throughout it all, the tremulous voice of Kyoko Kishida as Sonoko reminds us that with all the lovers’ threats of suicide at the very least one passionate woman will survive the maelstrom that is Manji. 

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs. To read more LGBT posts from the blogathon click here.  This film is widely available on DVD (Fantoma in the US, Yume Pictures in the UK - who have interestingly dropped the swastika from the poster).  Click here to order from Japan (no subs).

BRIDESMAIDS - chicks aside, pretty conservative

BRIDESMAIDS is getting massively hyped because, contra-vention, it's a bromance starring chicks and, shock, horror, chicks sometimes talk about sex! The reality is that, once you get over the shock of the all-female cast, BRIDESMAIDS is actually a deeply, boringly, conventional movie with a predictable plot, pedestrian direction, and over-written jokes. (Not to mention a random Irish cop - they try to make a joke about it - but seriously, why?) It all just makes me deeply depressed about how reactionary Hollywood is that such a simplistic gender-switcheroo can have everyone salivating.

Anyways, on to the plot, such as it is. Kristen Wiig plays Annie, a thirty something woman whose life is falling apart. Her business failed, she is divorced, her fuck-buddy treats her like shit, her house mates are kicking her out, and her boss is about to fire her. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) becomes engaged and, despite picking Annie to be her Maid of Honour, seems to be gravitating toward her new glamorous friend Helen (Rose Byrne), Annie has a mini-breakdown. The pressures of the wedding combined with Annie's low self-esteem, lead to her pissing off everyone who cares for her, not least Lillian and Officer Rhodes - a sweet police-officer whose attentions she scorns. Still, this being Hollywood schmaltz, you just know that all this pain is leading toward a moment of self-revelation, a last minute reconciliation with Lilian, and a Happy Ever After with Rhodes.

I didn't have a totally bad time watching this flick. It was funny enough to get me through the two-hour run-time, although I didn't as many did, laugh at Kristen Wiig's physical comedy and the gross-out humour of the entire cast. Rather, I was kept in play by Jon Hamm's hilariously oleaginous turn as the fuck-buddy; by Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson as Annie's fat flat-mates; and by the normally very pretty Melissa McCarthy ugly-ing up as the butch Megan. I also liked how Rose Byrne managed to transform Helen from an out-and-out baddy into a really sympathetic character, whose insecurity was far more pitiable than Annie's. After all, Annie gets Rhodes while Helen stays where she is. Take a look at Rose Byrne's subtle double-take as she sees Annie look at Rhodes for what she thinks is the last time. Now that's good acting.

BRIDESMAIDS is on release in the USA, Canada, Romania, Slovenia, Iceland, Australia, Hungary, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Russia, Norway and the UK. It opens on July 7th in Greece, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Estonia. It opens on July 22nd in Germany, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden. It opens on July 29th in Poland. It opens on August 4th in Denmark; on August 10th in France; on August 10th in France; on August 19th in Italy; on August 25th in Thailand; on August 28th in Spain and on September 9th in Brazil.

GREEN LANTERN - the fifth rule of cinema: all green superheroes suck big honky ass

The Green Lantern strikes me as a remarkably anachronistic, even parochial, name for a superhero, considering that it's meant to have been invented by a bunch of super-intelligent Nietzchean aliens, who police the world with their Green Lantern corps officers powered by the energy of Will. I mean, can we take seriously any super-hero who has a magic ring (my precious!) powered by an old-school lantern - whose special power is basically manifesting his imagination as kids toys and power-tools? A superhero so crappy that his friends see right through his mask to his real identity? A superhero whose evil nemesis is basically a mean-looking Cloud, and whose human enemy basically looks like a weedy version of The Elephant Man? Colour me unimpressed.

And what can we say about the translation from comic book to screen? Well, sadly not much. Ryan Reynolds is certainly buff, but the screenplay doesn't take advantage of his talent for comedy, or of his genuine acting chops, as last seen in BURIED. Blake Lively, so impressive in THE TOWN, is limpid as his love interest, Carole Ferris, and about as believable as a test pilot as Jessica Biel in STEALTH. Tim Robbins is a caricature, Angela Bassett is under-used, Mark Strong, as Sinestro, looks like some camp Flash Gordon throwback, and as for Peter Sarsgaard as The Elephant Man, full marks for effort, but he chews up the scenery like he's in JURASSIC PARK.

GREEN LANTERN fails on every level. The plot is simplistic and predictable; the acting wooden; the special effects goofy (despite alleged millions spent on the CGI green suit); the action set-pieces unengaging. I didn't give a crap about any of it. And the tragedy is that we KNOW all these actors can act, and we KNOW, having watched X-MEN:FIRST CLASS, that origins movies that grapple with big ethical questions about the use and abuse of superpowers can be genuinely profound. I blame Martin Campbell, sometime BOND director. He looks like he was overwhelmed by his first big CGI action block-buster, and never really had the balls to bring some subtlety to the script. And the depiction of both the aliens and their perfect planet also looks like a lo-rent throwback - production design so goofy and unimpressive that kids were laughing at the alien Guardians in the screening I attended.

GREEN LANTERN is on release in the UK, US, New Zealand, Belarus, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Canada, India, Ireland, Poland and Qatar. It opens on June 23rd in Armenia, on June 30th in Argentina, on July 17th in Azerbaijan, on July 22nd in Japan and on July 29th in Belgium. Germany, Estonia, Spain and Sweden. It opens on August 5th in Australia, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway. It opens on August 10th in France, on August 11th in Hungary, on August 19th in Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Portugal. It opens on August 26th in Turkey and on August 31st in Italy.

Naomi Kawase’s Genpin (玄牝, 2010)

“The valley spirit never dies. It is named the mysterious woman (genpin).” 
The valley spirit at the source of a large river ceaselessly gives birth to life and never dies out. Like the valley spirit, women are the source that gives birth to all life, and that function never ceases.
– Naomi Kawase on the words of Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu (source)

A self aware menstruating woman feels an elemental affinity with the natural world as her mood rises and falls with the cycles of the moon. This feeling grows even stronger during pregnancy when a woman feels at the height of her powers. During pregnancy a woman goes through a complex range of emotions from exhilarated delight to deep-rooted fear. The top pregnancy fear is that of the unknown: a woman asks herself if she will be able to endure the labour process and if her child will be born safe and healthy.

Unfortunately for many women, modern medicine actually increases rather than allays such fears. Despite all our advances in medicine over the centuries, modern medicine has actually distanced women from enjoying a natural childbirth. Things are not as extreme as they were when Adrienne Rich wrote about her personal experiences in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976) – women are not gassed during childbirth anymore and babies are not carted off to sleep in separate rooms – but there are many practitioners of modern medicine who continue treat pregnancy and childbirth like an illness rather than a natural process.

Fit for Birth: a woman scrubbing the wall behind Dr. Yoshimura (L) / A woman chopping wood (R)

I have a rather unique perspective on Naomi Kawase’s documentary Genpin (玄牝, 2010) having experienced two very different approaches to pregnancy and childbirth. My son was born in an NHS hospital in South West England, and my daughter was born in the Red Cross Medical Centre in Hiroo, Tokyo. Although in both cases, midwives were on hand for the births, in England I felt that my hospital midwife’s advice during labour was overridden by the high-handed opinions of the hospital doctors whose insistence on speeding up the labour ended up making my first childbirth experience more traumatic than it should have been. In Japan, I was not only supported but encouraged by my doctor to have a natural birth and there were only midwives present in the delivery room. This was a deliberate choice on my part, as the first maternity hospital we had visited was a fancy, white-walled, machine filled place with English speaking nurses. I was repulsed by how impersonal it was so we instead sought out a clinic where regular working and middle class Tokyoites give birth.

Yet even the Red Cross Medical Centre with its friendly midwives is too clinical for some. In recent years, many urban mothers in Japan have been seeking out more traditional childbirth methods. Genpin tells the story of the Yoshimura Clinic in the city of Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture through the perspectives of Dr. Tadashi Yoshimura himself, his staff, and the women who use his clinic. Expectant mothers from across Japan come to this clinic in order to experience a natural childbirth. Many of them are pregnant for the second time and bring with them tales of disappointment from their first experience of childbirth due to medical intervention such as induced labour. Dr. Yoshimura offers these women a place to commune with other expectant mothers and a traditional childbirth experience.

Dr. Yoshimura’s approach is based on Japanese traditional childbirth practices. Rather than prescribing rest, as many Japanese doctors do, Dr. Yoshimura encourages his patients to make their bodies prepared for birth through manual labour. Rural women in Japan traditionally continued to work in the home and in the rice fields right up into the final month of pregnancy. Dr. Yoshimura prescribes a regime of gardening, cleaning walls, and chopping wood - the latter two activities basically involves the expectant mothers doing hundreds of deep squats per day.  The idea is that by making their bodies physically fit, the women will be prepared for a safe, natural childbirth.

Back to Nature: an expectant mother gardening with Obaasan.  Obaasan says that when she was young women worked in the rice fields right up until giving birth.

The doctor is not so extreme in his belief of natural childbirth as to eschew modern medicine altogether. He still offers women reassuring glimpses of the growing child in their belly through regular ultrasounds. Yet on the day of the birth, the woman does not give birth in a cold medical facility but at home on the tatami floor, surrounded by her family including older siblings of the baby.

The naturalness of the setting is reinforced by the ease of the relationship between Naomi Kawase’s documentary camera and the pregnant women. The intimacy of her interviews with the women suggests that she has built up a relationship of trust and understanding with them and the doctor. Indeed, according to an interview with Kawase, her interest in making this documentary stemmed from her own experience of the natural birth of her son. On her first visit, she and her film crew went to meet the doctor without any cameras or equipment in order to become comfortable with each other before the filming started. (source)

The beautiful faces of the women at the Yoshimura Clinic: chopping wood (L) and moments after giving birth (R)

The women unabashedly share remarkably intimate information with her. From the details of their personal lives to allowing the film crew to record them giving birth. One woman, for example, is in the later stages of her pregnancy and struggling with the fact that her husband appears to have abandoned her. She shares these details with Kawase, but admits that she has not yet told any of the staff or other patients at the clinic because the situation is so mortifying. She even allows Kawase’s camera to follow her home as she struggles to move her heavily pregnant body, with her daughter on her back, up the hill to her home. The most awkward moments in the film come when the straying husband turns up again for the birth and is confronted with the documentary camera.

Adding to the sense of intimacy are the warm colours of the film. Kawase has achieved a soft look for the film through her use of 16mm film. This also meant that the camera could not be on all the time. A 16mm reel is only 10 minutes long and so Kawase had to judicially choose when to have the camera on. One thing that struck me about the film was the beautiful faces of the women during their pregnancy and immediately after birth. Their faces, devoid of make-up, open to the world, quietly determined to make their experience of child birth both positive and natural.

Genpin is the most beautiful documentary I have ever seen about child birth.  It is also the most infomative for the way in which it records the varied experiences, hopes, and fears of the women.  Although the birthing methods might not appeal to all women, I would encourage pregnant women to watch the film for an alternative perspective on pregnancy and child birth. 

Follow Nishiakta Eiga on Facebook to find out when this film becomes available on DVD.

Other recommended works by Naomi Kawase on DVD:

Embracing / Kyakarabaa (English Subtitles)

Letter from a Yellow Cherry Blossom (Tsuioku no Dance) (English Subtitles)

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

BAD TEACHER - by far not subversive enough

Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, the screen-writers who brought us the piss-poor alleged comedy, YEAR ONE, markedly improve with their new comedy, BAD TEACHER, but still have a long way to go. Cameron Diaz is deliciously scabrous as the cynical gold-digging teacher, Elizabeth Halsey. She spends most of the movie scamming her way to the cash-prize for highest student test score results - money she needs to fund a boob job, that will help her snag a rich football player, or at a pinch her flaky but rich co-worker Scott, played by Justin Timberlake. Problem is that the goody-goody co-worker is falling for the irritatingly up-beat, not to mention suspicious, Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch). And poor Jason Segel has to look on as warm-hearted gym teacher, Russell, killing time for the third act redemption scene.

The resulting film is an entirely predictable, and pretty banal rom-com. Its virtue is that it's short (under 90 minutes sans credits), and while never as subversive as its name-sake BAD SANTA, it has enough comedy-cameos to propel it forward. Lucy Punch is turning into a regular scene-stealer with her pitch-perfect performance as Miss Squirrel, and I also really like The Office's Phyllis Smith as Elizabeth's dopey friend and fellow-teacher Lynn. Do I need to see this film again, ever? Nope. Did it have me laughing out loud? Nope. But it was a perfectly fun way to spend an hour and a half, and it reminded me just how good Cameron Diaz is at comedy.

BAD TEACHER is on release in the UK and Ireland. It goes on release on June 23rd in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the US and Sweden. It opens on July 7th in Argentina, on July 27th in France, and on July 28th in the Czech Republic. It opens on August 6th in Japan, on August 12th in Lithuania, on August 18th in Greece and Hungary and on August 25th in Singapore. It opens on September 1st in Hong Kong, on September 2nd in Italy, on September 23rd in Colombia and on October 20th in Malaysia.

Clap Vocalism (人間動物園, 1962)

In many ways Yōji Kuri’s 1962 animated short Clap Vocalism (人間動物園/Ningen Dōbutsuen) is a partner film with his work Love (愛/Ai, 1963). Not only did both films, together with his short works The Chair and AOS and Tadanari Okamoto’s A Wonderful Medicine jointly win the Ofuji Award in 1965, but they also share similar themes, motifs, and animation styles. Kuri uses his characteristic illustration style in this film, but without the Japanese cloth/paper cutouts of Love.

As with Love, Clap Vocalism is based on a poem by Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川 俊太郎, b. 1931) with music composed by Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹, 1930-96/Pitfall, Ran). The voice actors are also the same: H. Mizushima and Kyōko Kishida (The Woman in the Dunes, An Autumn Afternoon). The film actually has two titles – one in English, the other in Japanese – which point to two important thematic concerns of the piece. The English title “Clap Vocalism” refers to the experimental style of composition used by Takemitsu in the piece. Instead of using classical composition or song, Takemitsu has composed a piece that uses the male and female voices in an animalistic manner - sometimes staccato, sometimes sustained as if moaning.

I have deliberately used the term “animalistic” because as the Japanese title “Ningen Dōbutsuen” – “Human Zoo” – indicates, the human characters in this film are pictured as caged animals. A series of scenes are presented of male/female couples in a cage. As in the film, Love, Clap Vocalism is another example of misogyny in the works of Kuri. The women are all larger and dominating the male figures. There is the motif of the man being held on a leash like a dog, beaten with a broom by the woman, a prone man being poked with an umbrella, a man in a bird cage being prodded by a stick, and so on. Female sexuality is depicted as being threatening to men. Illustrating this are a small man trapped between the exaggerated breasts of one large woman and a woman’s breasts suddenly growing in order to injure a man trapped by the bars of the cage.

The male figures bark like dogs or moan when abused by the female figures. The images are in complete harmony with the soundtrack in a way that suggests that there was a close collaboration between the composer and the animator. The film is significant for the way in which it presents a rather bleak male perspective on the changing roles of women and men in the politically turbulent 1960s.

You can support this artist by purchasing his work here:

Order the Collected Works of Yoji Kuri

This review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

Yoji Kuri’s Love (愛, 1963)

I think that it is safe to say that Freud would have had a field day with the animated shorts of the grandfather / bad boy of Japanese alternative animation Yōji Kuri (久里洋二, b. 1928). His black, and often bawdy, sense of humour pervades the mood of most of his films.  In his 1963 film Love (愛, 1963), a big woman with prominent breasts breathily gasps the word “Ai” (Love) repeatedly as she chases a man who is much smaller than her. The woman is depicted as being so desperate for love that she even embraces trees in frustration. In contrast, the man seems repulsed by her attention and races to keep himself out of her clutches. 

Examples of the woman dominating the man in Love

In one moment, the woman clutches the man as if he were an infant or a ragdoll and he transforms into a giant drop of water in order to slip from her grasp and escape. The man also chants the word “Ai” but in a less passionate, more matter-of-fact manner. The couple play a kind of hide-and-go-seek amongst a row of trees. The woman chases the man with a net as if he were a butterfly. Once captured, she consumes him whole, only to have him come out the other end and escape again.

She chases him through a gallery lined with portraits of the man and through an empty café with identical tables. Their chants of “Ai” are sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted at top volume, increasing in tempo and desperation. The woman’s arms stretch out to an impossible length in order to grab the man again. In another scene, he stands on all fours like a doll on a leash and eats his food on the floor.

Order the Collected Works of Yoji Kuri

The chase grows increasingly desperate with the woman beating the man into submission with a baseball bat, reducing him to a stuttering idiot in their shared bed, and putting a leash on him and taking him on a walk. The ends with the soundtrack fading out as the man leads the woman into the horizon like a dog on a leash.

This animated short is based on a poem by Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川 俊太郎, b. 1931) with music composed by Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹, 1930-96). Takemitsu is perhaps best remembered today for his composition of soundtracks for the films of great directors like Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Dosdesukaden), Hiroshi Teshigahara (Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes), and Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri, Kaidan, Samurai Rebellion) and for his significant contributions to aesthetics and music theory. I am a fan of Takemitsu’s early experimental period, and his anti-academic Jikken Kōbō (experimental workshop) had a profound impact on the animator Yōji Kuri, who has used experimental composers like Takemitsu extensively in his films.

Examples of Kuri's use of Japanese cloth/paper in Love

The soundtrack of Love does not fall into the category of “music” in the classical sense, but in the postmodern sense of creating music using unconventional techniques and instruments. The recorded voices (H. Mizushima and Kyōko Kishida) have been distorted using a synthesizer. Sometimes the voices draw out, like a record playing at the wrong speed, or at other times they playback at pitches impossible for the human voice to attain. The tempo and volume is varied in order to create tension.

Love demonstrates the misogyny that is a prevalent theme in Kuri’s work. He frequently depicts women as either obese or having exaggerated or grotesque features. The portrayal of a large woman dominating a small, seemingly helpless man is a common motif in his work. The film unambiguously suggests a fear of female sexuality and a man’s fear of being controlled or dominated by a female partner.  Kuri emphasizes the feeling of entrapment through his use of perspective with the long labyrinthine art gallery, row of trees, and long arcade.  Kuri's depiction of "love" is claustrophobic and abusive.

Love is a fine example of Kuri’s characteristic minimalistic animation and illustration style. The characters are drawn in a clean, minimalistic style reminiscent of the work of New Yorker illustrator Saul Steinberg. Kuri’s illustration style is antithetical to the popular manga and anime styles of the day. The film is, however, given a Japanese aesthetic through Kuri’s choices of cloth and paper cut-outs: the pattern behind the title card and the pattern used on the tables in the café and on rooftops are all very typical of traditional Japanese paper and cloth patterns.

Kuri’s films Love, Clap Vocalism, The Chair, and AOS were joint winners of the Noburō Ōfuji Award in 1965 along with Tadanari Okamoto’s film A Wonderful Medicine. In fact, this review is part of Nishikata Film Review’s  2011 Noburo Ofuji Award Challenge.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011