VIFF, pt. 6: Parts Unknown
A Land Imagined For those who felt that
Crazy Rich Asians presented a too homogeneous, rose-colored image of Singapore, Yeow Siew Hua's film is the perfect, murky antidote. Part police procedural, part story of foreign migrant workers hired to literally expand Singapore (via land reclamation),
A Land Imagined is the pointed opposite of jet-set luxury porn: Its protagonist, a young migrant laborer from China, can't get any sleep in his hot, bedbug-infested dorm room in a Chungking Mansions-like housing block, and so spends his nights playing video games and finding air-conditioned relief in a neon-lit, 24-hour internet cafe. It's his exhaustion--tired eyes staring blankly at a computer screen for hours on end--that serves as the catalyst for the narrative's quick turn toward the surreal. Not all of the ensuing plot pieces ultimately fit together in a coherent way (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), and Yeow's dependence on the idea of land reclamation as a metaphor for Singapore's uneven economic ascent is effective yet a touch heavy-handed (especially when one character explicitly spells it out). But on the whole, this is an impressive and provocative movie, likely to reward to repeat viewings.
Fausto Andrea Bussmann's film-poem is even harder to describe in concrete terms than Godard's latest, and it's nearly as good (!), though, upon reflection, I'm really not sure what Goethe has to do with any of it. Set along Mexico's beautiful Oaxacan coast, it's about the ways in which stories, myths, legends, etc. can be creatively projected onto the physical/natural world, creating webs, or constellations, of meaning, yet never (in
Fausto's case) at the expense of the essential, intractable mysteriousness of that landscape. Or that's my take, anyway. The program note mentions "colonization, greed, and the limitations of human perception," which didn't occur to me, but sure--this is an uncommonly
open film, in the very best sense.
The Darling If local cinephiles have ever found themselves hoping for a Hong Sang-soo film set in Vancouver, this black-and-white gem by Lee Seung-yup will likely be the closest they'll get. Featuring a terrific lead performance by Jang Jieun as a well-known Korean actress venturing around the Lower Mainland in relative anonymity, Lee's film is as funny, charming, and occasionally moving as Hong's signature work (its unambiguous model), if not quite as formally sophisticated and subtly inventive.
Microhabitat Jeon Go-woon's wholly wonderful and remarkably assured directorial debut takes place in Seoul, not Vancouver, but it nonetheless presents a serious dilemma with which
Vancouverites can
acutely identify: the increasing challenge of finding decent, affordable housing in a city that is ostensibly growing ever-more "liveable." Centering on a problem too infrequently considered in films (or TV shows) set in urban locales other than New York,
Microhabitat finds both droll comedy and low-key tragedy in the either/or decisions imposed by a tough market: choosing between life's small pleasures and personal living-space (hence the film's title), layering up indoors to avoid a massive heating bill in the wintertime, switching to an inferior brand of cigarettes as prices inflate yet again. When the couchsurfing protagonist tells her friend that she's saving up for a deposit and holding out for a place with cheaper rent, the friend replies, "Seems like you're living a fantasy." But few recent fictional films hew closer to real life.
