Golly. Palm Pictures first demonstrated that they had a clue about Asian film last year when they picked up the rights to the Pang Brothers stellar horror flick The Eye but I have to confess that I didn’t give the company much thought beyond that release and the DVDs they just did collecting the video works of Spike Jonez and Michel Gondry. My bad. In the past few months Palm has gone and acquired a STACK of killer Asian films and though none of them are getting massive releases they are all receiving limited theatrical runs and the folks at Palm are thus far proving themselves far more respectful of these films than the hacks at Miramax – in other words they release their films in a timely fashion without subjecting them to pointless re-edits.
So what’ve they got? Currently receiving theatrical runs are Last Life in the Universe, 6ixty-Nin9, Bright Future, Dolls and Purple Butterfly. These are all solid films, all well worth supporting, but I’ve got to throw some weight behind Last Life and Bright Future. Read on for my thoughts …
A major award winner at this year’s Fantasia Festival, Last Life in the Universe is just an incredible film, an absolute must see for anyone who appreciated the mood of Lost in Translation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The third feature from Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (6ixty-nin9 was his first) Last Life features Tadanobu Asano – easily my favorite Japanese actor these days – as a compulsively neat and death obsessed Japanese man living a rootless life in exile, working as a librarian in a Japanese cultural center in Bangkok. Asano is thrust into a relationship with a young Thai girl when he witnesses her sister killed in a traffic accident, and the film simply tracks the slow growth of hope as a friendship gradually builds between these two isolated characters who can barely make themselves understood to one another. Asano’s performance is deeply textured, Ratanaruang’s direction is firm and assured, the occasional flights into fantasy are beautifully executed, a bleak sense of humor runs throughout the film, the camera work is staggering thanks to long time Wong Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle’s presence behind the camera, and by the time you get to the cameo appearance from Japanese cult figures Takashi Miike and Riki Takeuchi I guarantee that you will have been completely won over. Seriously, I love this film. Love. If you want to read a more detailed review I wrote for this thing you can find it here and though the official English language website appears to have maxed out their bandwidth you can find a stellar French trailer for the film here. Go watch it a few times then GO SEE THIS FILM if it’s playing anywhere near you.
Bright Future is quite possibly my favorite film from Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Cure gives it a bit of a run depending on my mood – who is also one of my very favorite directors in the world today, and it also happens to star Tadanobu Asano. Bright Future is the story of two young Japanese men (Asano and Jo Odagiri) living largely pointless lives, who meet at their incredibly dull job at a heated towel factory. The two bond through their frustration and over their shared fixation over Asano’s pet – a highly poisonous phosphorescent red jellyfish that he is gradually training to survive in fresh water environments. When Asano’s character finally lashes out in a burst of violence – largely to prevent his friend from destroying his life by doing the same thing – his father becomes a sort of surrogate parent to Odagiri and a relationship builds around their shared loss and Odagiri’s continued care for Asano’s jellyfish, which becomes a central and powerful image as the film progresses. Yeah, I know – the synopsis is a mess but Kurosawa’s films generally can’t be summarized well. His stuff is simply too complex and subtle to be broken down into a series of events so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that this is one stellar film – a slow burner that speaks quietly but will leave a lingering impression with you for weeks after seeing it. The acting is stellar across the board and the cinematography features some intriguing split screen work to convey emotional distance. Once again I have been unable to turn up an English language trailer online, but those wacky Koreans have got one posted here.
A lot of noise gets made here, and in numerous other places online, about how Miramax are idiots for the way they handle their Asian properties. Well, these guys are doing it right. They’ve quietly built a fantastic roster of properties, they’ve treated the films with respect while also respecting the intelligence of their audience and I cannot possibly overstate how important it is that fans of this type of cinema support these films. If they can’t turn a profit doing it right they’ll just stop and all we’ll be left with are the Weinsteins and their ilk hacking and slashing away everything that isn’t ‘western’ enough, leaving us with pointless, homogonized pap. These are amazing films. Go see them. I believe in both of these films enough, and want them both to succeed here badly enough, that although there are cheaply priced foreign DVDs of both of these available I’m not going to link to them. Support the domestic release. I’m getting off my soap-box now.
