Of all the movies so far that have stood a chance of being called “The Best SIFF Movie So Far” (I don’t think that 2046 or Mysterious Skin should be up for that title since they are sort of in a league of their own — being objects of my obsession and all…), Clean would easily win hands-down. This movie was excellent: great acting, great music, great cameos, great story.

To briefly summarize the movie: Maggie Cheung plays Emily. At the beginning of the movie, Emily is with her boyfriend Lee. They are rockers. Lee is an aging rocker, but they are rockers nonetheless. They are also heroin addicts. After a fight, Emily leaves a motel room they are staying in to shoot up alone. When she returns the next morning, she finds the police at the motel because Lee has died of an overdose. She spends six months in rehab and then tries to deal with entering the real world sober. It also turns out that Emily and Lee have a son, Jay, who has been left in the care of Lee’s parents (Lee’s father, Albrecht, is played by Nick Nolte), who live in Vancouver. Albrecht meets with Emily and tells her that until she gets her life back together, he doesn’t think she should see Jay — the kid needs stability, etc. in his life. So once out of jail, Emily spends most of the movie trying to get her life back in order so she can be back with her son. Things go pretty well (she first has a job as a waitress, which doesn’t work out, but she does ultimately end up working at a department store, apparently) and she convinces Albrecht to see Jay. Their meeting, which has a rough start, ends up pretty okay. At the end of the movie, Albrecht agrees to let Emily take care of Jay and Emily goes off to record an album with a woman she met while in prison.

Okay, so that synopsis doesn’t get to the emotional value of the movie, but trust me: it’s great.

I have seen some interviews where Cheung mentions that this role was a difficult (from her acceptance speech at Cannes 04 (where she won best actress for the role): “It was difficult to play but not the most difficult, technically speaking. It was difficult because it was painful”) role for her, and she pulled it off tremendously. No surprise here that she won best actress. I also saw somewhere that is somewhat of a “break-through” role for her in the West, since prior to Clean she had been cast in non-Asian movies as a stereotypically beautiful, quiet Asian woman, and this role really gave her a chance to break from the mold.

As for Nolte, I have to say: he impresses me. I’ve really only seem him previously in Lorenzo’s Oil, U-Turn, and Affliction. Affliction is definitely one of the movies that has stayed with me ever since I saw it, and although I don’t think about it often, I would easily say is one of my favorite movies. He has an uncanny ability to play that raw, emotional, weak-but-gruff character and he does a great job as Albrecht — reluctant to trust Emily, but at the same time all-too-aware that her son is all she has left and that the two of them need each other.

Music is, obviously, a central theme of this movie since Emily was a rocker. A lot of the songs were very shoegazer and ambient -like… and that would make since because David Roback of Mazzy Star was involved with the movie (see the cameos below). The cloudy, atmospheric music definitely helped shape the mood of the film. It’s all-too-easy to include lots of pop-type songs in a drug movie soundtrack (see: Trainspotting, Casino, etc.), but I think the subtly of the music in Clean made it all the more powerful.

One scene, in particular, that I loved was when Emily was playing pool with a friend. She had recorded a demo tape while in prison and wanted her friend to check it out. The friend put on a pair of headphones and listened to the song while playing pool. While she was listening, the soundtrack for the song was turned way up, but you could still sort of hear the background noise — much like really listening to music on headphones.

The film also had some great cameo appearances. I am always delighted to see Tricky in movies. I’ve previously seen him in The Fifth Element, though that was a “character” role. In Clean he played himself — and he apparently talked to Albrecht often and was friends with Lee. Emily tried getting him to talk to Albrecht about seeing her son at one point, but Tricky was being somewhat of an asshole and wouldn’t help her. It was great. The other cameo appearance was David Roback (as mentioned above). He was one of the pivotal members of Mazzy Star, and probably did more than anyone to establish their wall-of-guitar sound. In Clean he plays himself as a record producer who works with Emily at the end of the film. The song the two of them create (which Cheung performs) at the end, “Down in the Light,” was hauntingly wonderful, and made me wish that the two would collaborate on an entire album. We can wish, at least.

Two more things of note:

First, the film made great use of oners (long, continuous shots). I specifically remember one that must have lasted about two or three minutes (which is considered long in film — especially nowadays when shots are so quick) when Emily was working in the restaurant. The camera followed her from a table down some stairs to the bathroom to outside where she smoked and back into the restaurant. It was lovely.

Second, when Jay tells Emily that he hates her because she killed her father and that people who use drugs are bad, weak, etc. Emily responds with something to the effect of: your father was in a lot of pain, drugs helped him, he was brilliant, drugs are fun sometimes, your father and I had lots of fun with drugs, but we paid the price, what they tell you about drugs (they are bad, for weak people, etc.) doesn’t address how complicated they are. It was probably one of the best realistic, anti-drug speeches I’ve heard.

In case my introduction didn’t make it apparent, I gave this movie 5/5. I hope it gets a wider U.S. release, as I really think it deserves wider exposure.

So far I’ve been mostly happy with the film I’ve seen as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. Not all of them have been 5s, but I’m still glad I spent my money seeing them.

That changed last night when I saw L’Amant, a Japanese film about a girl who is purchased by three men (two infertile, one impotent) to be thier personal sex slave for a year.

I had hoped that the movie might be edgy or controversial in the same vein of Lies or Audition or even A Hole in My Heart (from the night before). Not so, with L’Amant.

The film is just about how these three older men oogle over their sex slave. Along the way, a girl befriends her because she is jealous of her hickey. Then that girl’s younger brother seems to fall for her. Then the girl is raped by some other (younger) guy and she gets pregnant, so the other girl’s younger brother tries to help her… but her “owners” are upset she had sex with somene else (and we never really finds out — can she perform an abortion by “touching her womb”??). In the end, of course, the girl ends up loving the three men who bought her (or something like love — she doesn’t hate them, that’s for sure). Like I said, pretty lame.

I gave the film 2/5 stars.

What is it about a “film” that can distinguish it from “pornography”? What is the difference between acting and exploiting? After seeing A Hole in My Heart, I’ve been doing some serious thinking about these ideas.

When he introduced the film, the SIFF guy made a comment like, “It’s always nice to see an audience challenged.” This movie certainly challenged its audience. I wonder what it is about filmgoers that makes us want to be challenged in such ways. There is no complex way of putting this: A Hole in My Heart was gross and disturbing… but I liked it.

The movie sort of reminded me of Lies. The most basic explanation of the movie is, like Lies, people become consumed with their sexuality and feel the need to push the limits in order to achieve more interesting pleasure.

A Hole in My Heart follows four people: Rickard, Eric, Tess, and Geko. Rickard creates/films porno films staring Tess and Geko (sometimes he participates). Eric is Rickard’s shut-in, gothic son who basically spends the entire movie in his room.

There isn’t too much of a plot with this film. It’s more like a series of episodic moments. For example, I thought the climax of the movie might have been when Geko complains about the smell of Tess’ pussy (behind her back — which is what pisses her off) and Tess packs her things and storms off. I figure Rickard and Geko will be forced to come to terms with their behavior and somehow change. Nope. Instead, Rickard and Geko turn their abuse to Eric (forcing him to shoot airguns — at the tits and pussy of a poster of a naked woman). Tess returns shortly thereafter (with food!!) and the insanity continues.

The movie is extremely claustrophobic. Basically everything happens within the confines of the apartment. The two or three scenes that don’t happen in the apartment feel really strange.

The camerawork is very experimental/artistic. Many of the scenes (especially those taped during the taping of a porno) are very shaky and handheld. Digital perhaps? The decision makes sense, of course, since it captures the really raw aspect of what happens. There are also some scenes shot with a night vision camera (green skin, beady eyes a la Paris Hilton included!) that feel like some sort of confession. Another interesting camera technique to note is the selective blurring. Like a reality show, brand names and whatnot are often blurred… but there are also a few scenes when the peoples faces (both strangers and the main characters) are blurred as well. This is very unsettling and it seems rather profound, so I wanted to mention it.

The best (technically) aspect of the film is the sound design. The movie, obviously, is pretty uncomfortable. The sound really reinforces this with loud screeching noises a la David Lynch’s Lost Highway. There is also lots of feedback and distortion -type noises throughout the film. It also seems that the “music” Eric listens to is nothing but abstract, noisy soundscapes. More than a few times I could’ve sworn that the noises were sampled from Primal Scream’s XTRMTR album, in fact.

As for the taboos this film addresses, there are plenty: pubic hair shaving, overweight and hairy men having sex, vomit, piss, threesomes, rape scenes/gangbangs, latent homosexuality, incest, body odors, and on and on. There is also some underlying theme dealing with bodily modification and there are quite a few cut-ins of random surgeries that are really interesting — they look so visceral and gross. It’s weird.

A final aspect I need to mention is the anti-misogyny of the film. Rickard and Geko are obviously misogynist and treat Tess horribly. There is a “pseudo”-rape scene that is brutal to watch. Basically Rickard and Geko decide to “rape” Tess without letting her know. It’s the most difficult part of the film, I think, and it’s obvious that the filmmaker is trying to show the evilness of men. Likewise, there is a particularly memorable scene where Eric makes a statement to the effect of:

What do the sickest people, rapists, and people who start wars all have in common? They are all men.

I have to say, I agree, and I wonder if that is maybe one of the larger themes of the film?

Overall, I gave this movie 3/5. I wanted to give it a 4, but in the end it felt more like a shocking-for-shocks-sake art film. I wasn’t quite sure what the director was trying to say. If he just wanted me to think things over, then I guess he succeeded, but I’m guessing there was more going on — it was just too oblique for me to know.

The SIFF web site describes November as:

[a] change-of-pace homage to the mind-bending thrillers of David Lynch

well, I would say that November is less David Lynch, and more Run Lola Run. Though I felt at times that the movie borrowed ideas from Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, that was really only the first third of the movie. The rest felt pretty conventional. Oh, and this review will contain spoilers.

The movie is broken into three parts: denial, despair, and acknowledgement (I think?). Each part of the film was white-balanced differently (the director spoke after the movie, so I learned a bit about the making of it). The first part was very green/blue, the second part was very yellow/orange, and the final part was very naturally lit.

All three parts deal with Sophie (played by Courtney Cox, who proves that all of the female cast members of Friends can act… I can’t say anything for the guys, though) and her boyfriend Hugh and a late-night visit to a convenience store. Each part also involves Sophie visiting a therapist (Nora Dunn from Saturday Night Live!!), dining with her mother (Anne Archer from Fatal Attraction!!), and teaching a photography class.

In “Denial,” Hugh is killed during a hold-up at the convienence store. “Denial” is by far the most abstract and interesting part of the film. When Sophie visits her therapist we learn that she had been having an affair and that when Hugh was killed in the store she was actually talking to the guy on the phone. She also tells her therapist that the medication she is on makes her feel sick and gives her headaches. When Sophie has dinner with her mother, her mother tries to convince her to cut her hair because her current style “looks like an underachiever’s haircut.” The dinner is very tense, and when Sophie’s mom spills some red wine, the image of red liquid on the table cloth freaks Sophie out.

What makes “Denial” so interesting, though, is the appearance of the “Lynchian obscure object” — a slide that one of her students inadvertently (and unknowingly) shows during class. The picture is of Sophie sitting in her car the night of Hugh’s murder. Sophie gets in touch with a detective who tries to help her unravel the mystery. Ultimately, he discovers that she is the one who developed the slide, which is basically impossible since: 1. she was the subject of the slide; 2. there didn’t appear to be anyone outside or near the car taking pictures; 3. why would she take the picture in the first place?; 4. why/how could she forget visiting the photo lab to have it developed? Other Lynchian elements of “Denial” include the incessant loud music and banging noises Sophie hears in her apartment.

“Denial” ends with Sophie freaking out and bleeding in the bathroom with very Lynchian sound effects (screeching, etc.) overwhelming her and the audience.

“Despair” basically makes the affair between Sophie and her student much more explicit. During the convenience store robbery, Sophie and the guy she was cheating with were in the store taking photographs. He left to get something from the car when the robbery took place. Being a photographer, Sophie manages to snap some photos of the person doing the robbery (though when developed, they are “too arsty” [says the detective] and the thief appears as a black blur). She also snaps a picture that includes the guy she was cheating with, but doesn’t really turn it over to the police or something.

At the visit to the therapist, Sophie reveals that she has been having dreams in which Hugh is shot in the stomach. She also mentions that she has been having stomach pains herself. The therapist makes some obvious statement like, “So in the dream your are hurting Hugh, and then when you are awake it hurts you too. Why don’t you draw the line?”

This statement, coupled with the bizarre appearance of the slide in “Denial” and the loud noises in “Denial” lead me to believe that the movie was somehow about the physical effects of guilt and guilt manifesting itself in different ways a la the scar on Pete’s forehead in Lost Highway or the blue key in Mulholland Drive. The theory still may hold. I’m not sure.

Eventually Hugh figures out that Sophie is cheating on him, and leaves her (taking the couch but leaving a photograph from their first encounter together). When Sophie meets her mother for dinner, she asks here Hugh is, and Sophie is forced to dodge the issue, making for a rather tense dinner. During the photograph class, Sophie makes a statement like, “What is excluded [in a photograph] is just as important as what is included.” I’m guessing this was some obvious attempt at making the movie rather philosophical?

The final part of the film, “Acknowledgement” (or whatever?) is the most boring. Sophie and Hugh have a great relationship. When she encounters the student she had an affair with (which is all over now), they talk like normal people and leave open the possibility of having coffee later. She tells her therapist that, though it “may sound crazy,” she thinks she’s done with therapy, and the dinner with her mother goes very well (her mother worrying that her haircut is too much of an underachiever’s, and that maybe she, not Sophie, needs to visit the stylist).

In a möbius strip form of logic, as everything is going well Sophie and Hugh decide to go have Chinese food for dinner. One fortune from the fortune cookie reads something like, “It’s never to late to change your life” (i.e. a non-fatalist view of life), the had something to do with a more fatalist perspective of life. How to reconcile? Hugh and Sophie just laugh.

After dinner Sophie tells Hugh that she is still hungry (and we are back to the opening scene). He goes into the convenience store. Before he gets in she calls to tell him that she loves him and to hurry. A after flipping through a weekly newspaper (with the cover story: “Is Modernism Dead?”) she hears a gunshot and rushes inside. Hugh has already been shot, and Sophie is next (taking the bullet in her stomach).

The movie ends with them lying on the ground next to teach other then fading into a flashback to the first time they met. Totally cheesy and happy — now they are together and content and in heaven, etc. etc.

Like I said, the first third (“Denial”) was really good and creepy and set a mood for the film that wasn’t followed through at all. I guess the fact that the timeline of “Acknowledgement” wasn’t linear (in “Denial” and “Despair” she visits the therapist, has dinner whit her mom, etc. a month after the deadly trip to the convenience store) made that part slightly interesting, but in the end I felt the movie wasn’t ambiguous enough.

My interpretation is that, like Mulholland Drive and Jacob’s Ladder and other films, the entire movie is a flashback of the main character, imagining/dreaming of/hoping for alternate versions of his or her life. Not too ambiguous and not too profound, as far as I’m concerned.

As for things I learned since the director was there:

• The film was done for less than $150,000. This is very very cheap compared to most Hollywood films.
• The director (Greg Harrison) comes from a background of making movie trailers. Though he didn’t work on the trailer for November because he learned that directors make the worst trailers for their movies.
• He intended for the trailer to capture the mood of the film rather than the story (and, really, I think it only presents the mood for the first third of the movie…)
• Everything was filmed on digital video (miniDV to be exact) and edited on a desktop Macintosh computer.
• Because David Fincher is a friend of Courtney Cox’s, he viewed a rough cut of the film and gave Harrison some feedback.
• The movie was filmed in fifteen days.

Overall, I gave the movie 3/5 stars. It had lots of promise in the beginning, the second and third parts really disappointed me.

Have you ever seen a movie that you think has some deeper meaning but you just don’t get it? And then after some consideration you wonder if you did infact miss something or whether the movie was just fucking with your head the entire time — trying to be all pretentious and meaningful but really just trying to be self-consciously showy?

I’m still not sure what Izo is. But I liked it, nonetheless.

I’m not sure how I can summarize it. Izo is some sort of guy who kills a lot of people. Toward the end of the movie he begins to turn into a demon. After the movie I heard a lot of people complaining that the movie didn’t have a plot. They were probably right. Mostly Izo kills people. At first, the people he kills are ghosts/reincarnations of people he killed in the past. Then he just starts killing everyone.

The movie is, for lack of a better term, very postmodern. Movie is very aware that it is a movie. For example, there is some random guy who appears throughout the film and plays guitar and sings (in a very insane/punk voice) some bizzare song. Nobody seems to notice to care about him. Additionally, Izo is frequently in one place then suddenly appears in another. Plus, the amount of blood and violence is so over the top, that it almost feels like a parody.

My working theory throughout the movie was that the character Izo was a physical representation of the idea of abjection. He is a formless form, a souless soul, he is living but his life is death, etc. Plus there is some line about how Izo is basically disruptor of the system and a contradition.

Furthermore, all of the blood and vommiting allude back to abjection — both of which are common ways of relaying the theory.

There is also some group of men who seem to somehow be behind Izo’s existence. I think they are related to war?

In my Postmodernism and Japanese Mass Culture class the professor suggested that pretty much every aspect of Japanese culture post-WWII is somehow influenced by the fact that they were defeated and the fact that the nuclear bomb was dropped on them (twice). Assuming that is true, Izo is a perfect example. In addition to strange conspiracy of men, there are also numerous cut-ins containing footage of the war and occupation and soldiers and Hitler.

Thus, I think Izo, in addition to being a manifestation of the theory of abjection, is also a manifestation for the guilt/pain/hypocrisy of war.

The film is filled with pretty profound one-liners, and I constantly wish I had a notebook with me so I could jot things down. Overall, I gave the movie 4/5 and will definitely be seeing it again (on DVD, though).