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Cannes in 2004 had a whole bunch of big names competing for the top prize. Already here we've looked at a couple - Oldboy and Tropical Malady (from this year's winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul) measured up against such directors as two-time Palme d'Or winner Emir Kusturica, a new film from previous winners the Coen brothers, Wong Kar Wei, Olivier Assayas, and the eventual winner that year Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It wasn't necessarily a banner year on the French coast (compared to the pedigree of this year, for example), but it seems to have made a decent play at making its mark in this here blog.
That was a very longwinded way of getting to the point. The Consequences of Love
, Paulo Sorrentino's uber-stylish second feature also played in the competition. It is a beautiful and pointed, very precise film strikingly shot by Luca Bigazzi, rendered somewhat distant by its own insistence on pitch-perfect on-screen beauty.
Titta (Toni Servillo) has spent the last eight years living in a hotel in Switzerland, separated from his family who don't really want anything to do with him, doing a mundane delivery job for the Italian mafia as a punishment for losing an extraordinary amount of their money on the stock market. He is too afraid to start anything with Sofia (Olivia Magnani), the girl behind the bar, because he doesn't want to complicate things. His brother, a flighty character, convinces him to leap off and go after her, and Titta follows his advice. How much of what follows can be attributed to this action is debatable, but it must be said that things do indeed start to go wrong.
It is truly beautiful to watch. From the opening shot of a big long hallway with a porter on a travelator you know you're in for something special. And then there is the beautiful 180 degree spinning shot of Titta in the hotel room - stunning. Matched with some exceptional music, both original by Pasquale Catalano and existing from bands such as Mogwai, it truly lends an incredible backdrop from which to build the characters.
And don't get me wrong, the characters do build. Titta, who is the undeniable focus of every moment of the film, is a hard character to get into, but he does let his guard down and gradually allow you to see inside his emptiness and hopelessness - he has been almost entirely hollowed out emotionally and spiritually by his strange form of imprisonment by the Italian mafia. What hasn't been emptied, however, is quickly given over to Sofia. Servillo especially excels, dominating the characterisation. But you're never really allowed to see totally inside him, or, for that matter, Sofia. His grand gestures are nervous, with fear of failure that you know he is going to try and convince himself he doesn't feel but which is electrically charged through every movement. And Sofia, with her reactions, shows her fear of all of the unknowns surrounding the strange man who lives in the hotel. Even after all of his secrets are spilled, however, this fear still seems to permeate. And while you are swept away by everything you are watching as the film moves towards its terrific climax, I never truly found myself engaged with the people within the film. I was there intellectually, fine, it got me there. But I was still entirely able to switch it off at the end, say I was done and move on. What stands out to me are the visuals without an emotional attachment - unlike, for example, Days of Heaven where the visuals may well have been what stood out but they brought with them the associated feelings announced through the narrative.
I don't really know where to place this film. I liked it. I really liked it. I thought it was very entertaining, it kept me watching, I was never bored. But I also never felt. It's a strange feeling (and one that I'm going to be repeating soon when I get up to writing up a certain summer blockbuster that everyone has been talking about...), but it's not necessarily a bad one. I am convinced, however, that it could have been that little bit more, that it should have been a little bit more. Producer Domenico Procacci has brought us plenty of films that manage that before (see Gomorrah) but here he couldn't quite get all the pieces aligned. But there is enough promise to make me look forward to my next engagement with Sorrentino, and indeed Procacci (whose relationship with Rolf de Heer will always keep me intrigued.) 4 stars.
My lord that sounds racist, doesn't it?
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance is the last part of Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy, after Sympathy For Mr Vengeance and Oldboy. To get down to brass tacks, it's my least favourite of the three. There, I said it. It's still pretty good though.
After the male protagonists of the first two, Lady Vengeance follows a woman for the first time. Lee Geum-ja (Lee Yeong-ae) has just been released from prison after being sentenced to fifteen years for the abduction and murder of a young child - which she didn't do. The real killer, Mr Baek, forced her to confess on the threat that he would kill her young daughter if she didn't. Whilst in prison, Geum-ja was the model prisoner, helping others in need, donating kidneys - the normal. While she wasn't all goodness and light (she poisoned and killed a fellow inmate who was torturing another, all the while pretending to help her), she was owed many a favour by her ex fellow convicts, which she calls in following her release.
Geum-ja's persona has completely changed post her release. Where she was all sweetness and light inside, she is cold and vicious outside, relentless in her search first for her daughter (who was adopted by an Australian couple living in the outback - and how strange it was to see Tony Barry suddenly pop up unexpectedly in a Korean thriller) and then for revenge on Mr Baek. Mr Baek is now married to another ex-con who owes a favour to Geum-ja, and it is her assistance that allows our villainous hero to capture the killer. In doing so, she discovers that he has killed more than just the one she took responsibility for.
With the help of the detective who was looking after the case, she gathers up the rest of the relatives and gives them a couple of options regarding his fate. Let it just be said that what follows is particularly disturbing.
Where Mr Vengeance was gritty and real, obviously the first of an acclaimed series, probably without the money or the gravitas of uber-respect behind Chan-wook, and Oldboy was glossy but still very real, Lady Vengeance felt it had gone too far towards that Hollywood slick look, and it really detracted from my experience. From the opening credits (which looked a lot like the advertising going around for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, don't you think?) you could see that it was deliberately targeting a far bigger audience, and from then on in it felt altogether safer than the previous two entries. The little Australian segment didn't work for me (maybe because I'm Australian - I honestly do not believe for a second that a Korean girl would be adopted into a farming family. My extended family on one side is all farming, and I simply struggle to see it), amongst other things. Yeong-ae was fine in the role, but I also don't think she hit the highs of the previous leads. Chan-wook and Yeong-ae seem to have decided on a hammed up take on her character in prison, which leads to a lack of real belief in her on release. Her character also didn't have any real highs or lows in the outside world. She just wafted through with a stern look on her face until right at the end.
The film did look pretty, again shot by Chung Chung-hoon, but I don't think it suited this time. Maybe something a little dirtier, a little more hand-held and immediate would have loosened it all up a little and left it in the realm of possibility. As it is, though, it felt quite abstracted.
This kind of sounds like a negative review, but it was a good film, believe me. It's just, compared to the previous two entries in the trilogy, it pales. Not enough to stop me looking forward to getting a chance to see Chan-wook's latest Thirst, however.
3.5 stars. Writing this I've oscillated between 3 and 3.5, but my memories of the ending involving the families of the dead children and Mr Baek tipped me towards the higher. It really is quite an affecting scene.
Following on from Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, Park Chan-wook came through with the Cannes Grand Prix winning Oldboy, the second part of his vengeance trilogy (to be followed shortly by Sympathy For Lady Vengeance.)
Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), outside a police station after being bailed out by a friend for drunk and disorderly conduct on his young daughter's birthday, suddenly disappears, and is held captive in a cell of sorts for fifteen years - why, he does not know. With nothing but a television to pass the time, he begins training and plotting revenge on whoever has done this for him. Fifteen years surrounded by four walls, never changing, with no means of escape sets his mind ruthlessly on revenge.
Upon his release, a sudden awakening inside a case on the top of a high rise building, he wanders into a sushi restaurant, where he meets sushi chef Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong.) Whilst eating a live octopus he suddenly collapses, and finds himself back at Mi-do's house, ill on her bed, blaming fifteen years of poor diet leading to an extreme vitamin deficiency for his collapse. Whilst he is recovering, Mi-do reads the diaries he kept in his prison, outlining all those he has wronged who may be seeking their own back, and the musings of his mind, detailing his experience. Mi-do then becomes his accomplice in trying to find first his daughter (who they are told is now living in Sweden with a foster family) and then whoever it is who wronged him.
They begin by tracking down the dumpling house that served him his food every day (known to Dae-su as he once found an identifying piece of paper in his food), trailing a delivery boy to the hotel. Dae-su breaks in and accosts the proprietor, discovering that people pay him to lock people up for however long they wish to, and that all he has as far as identification of Dae-su's kidnapper is a tape recording outlining his reasoning when Dae-su was locked up. Caught in an epic fight with a number of people in the corridor, Dae-su succeeds in overcoming them but is quite seriously injured - he collapses on the street and a stranger puts him in a taxi, directing it to Mi-do's address and referring to Dae-su by name.
The next day this stranger identifies himself to Dae-su as Lee Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae), telling Dae-su he is his kidnapper. Woo-jin gives Dae-su five days to find out why he was locked up, and if he is successful Woo-jin will kill himself, but if he is not, Mi-do (whom Dae-su has become quite intimate with) will die.
I will stop there on the synopsis as anything more will start to give it all away. Rest assured that this is the least intriguing part of the story - from here it twists and turns time and time again, becoming more and more sordid with every second, before ending in a final bloody battle.
Mr Vengeance, as outlined, was a good film. A very good film, even. Oldboy is brilliant. The performance by Min-sik is extraordinary, as the hardened by still feeling victim, paying for something relatively trivial in amounts far beyond due recompense. Hye-jeong as his love interest is dutiful to a fault, something you don't quite understand until much later in the film. And Ji-tae does wonders as the antagonist of the piece, with an almost constant smile playing around his lips and eyes, making him all the more menacing for his lack of remorse. Shot by Chung Chung-hoon, Oldboy is wonderfully rich, taking the ganster sensibility of a cold Seoul and making it beautiful in its own gritty way. Cool tones dominate, so the moments of colour really shine through.
It is an astonishing piece of work, truly compelling. 5 stars.
Both Oldboy and Sympathy For Lady Vengeance by Park Chan-wook were on my list to see, but, as they're the second and third parts of a trilogy, I figured I should start at the beginning. And so the beginning I did start at, with his Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, from 2002.
Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun) is a deaf-mute who is laid off from the factory job that supports not only him, but his sister, who needs a kidney transplant and can't take one from Ryu as their blood types don't match. Ryu tracks down some black market organ dealers, desperate to help his sister, and is told that for 10mil won and one of his own kidneys they will find a kidney for his sister. Having taken his kidney and his money, Ryu hears nothing from the dealers, and a few weeks later is contacted by the hospital, saying they have found a suitable donor and for 10mil won they can go ahead with the transplant. Of course, Ryu no longer has the money, and so has to come up with a way to find it to help his sister.
He and his anarchist girlfriend Yeong-mi (Bae Doona) come up with the plan to kidnap Yu-sun (Han Bo-bae), the daughter of the friend of Ryu's ex-boss, holding her for ransom. His sister looks after Yu-sun as Ryu and Yeong-mi manage to keep her happy, waiting for the ransom money to come through, but when Ryu's sister finds out about the plot and the reasons behind it, she takes her own life. Devastated, Ryu takes her to a river bank to bury her, accompanied by the suitcase full of cash and Yu-sun. Ryu, with his back to her, cannot hear Yu-sun's cries as she falls into the water - unable to swim, she drowns.
Once more wracked with guilt over an unforeseen death that he unwittingly played a part in, Ryu's rage takes over and he exacts revenge on the organ dealers while Yu-sun's father grieves and vows his own vengeance. Back at the river side he does this, recognising Ryu as a good man but stating he has no option, drowning Ryu. Shortly after, he is set upon by four activist friends of Yeong-mi, taking revenge for her own death at his hands.
Mr Vengeance is a powerful revenge thriller, filled with quirky characters and scenes reminiscent of a David Lynch film, seemingly without much of a point but creating mood and tone far beyond what the mere narrative might create. Delving into the grimy worlds of kidnapping and organ theft, it never manages to feel as dour and depressing as something like Dirty Pretty Things, retaining a sense of hope, fun and optimism even as everything is going wrong.
Chan-wook does a great job of crafting this story, aided by a terrific performance by Shin Ha-kyun - like Mathieu Amalric in Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon, he gives off a performance without uttering a word in real time, reliant on what he does with his body, his eyes, his expressions (and often a complete lack of them) to convey his emotions. The supports, including the young Bo-bae, are generally solid, though their parts to play in the story mean they are generally little more than stereotypes and caricatures, which fits in well with the surreal aspects of Ryu's silence.
As the first part of the thematic trilogy, it is a solid entry, setting up expectations well for the subsequent Oldboy. 4 stars.
