PLAN 75 (B-minus) - Maybe it's me, but I've been having trouble making real connections with movies that are intended to pack an emotional punch. This drama features a near future (or alternative present) where the Japanese government offers an incentive to people 75 and older to submit to euthanasia, a program intended to relieve the burden of an aging population.
It focuses on Michi (Chieko Baisho), who is shown losing her hotel-cleaning job at the beginning of the movie, and her decision to enter the program, which we learn about through snippets of TV ads that occasionally pop up in the back ground of scenes. We also spend time with a couple of young people selling Plan 75 (one of whom who has an uncle entering the program) and a former co-worker of Michi's who is a Filipino immigrant worried about getting surgery back home for her 5-year-old daughter.
It would have helped to have maintained focus on just one or two characters here. As it is, it is difficult to get fully invested in Michi's fate, especially since she is rather blase about the matter. This is a debut feature from Chie Hayakawa (co-writing with Jason Gray, normally a translator), and she definitely knows how to create a mood. There just needs to be a more compelling narrative to go with that mood and the nuanced performance of her placid star. Sometimes showing the banality of bureaucratic evil is just banal.
HERE (B-minus) - Movies don't get duller that this lethargic contemplation of human connections. It's about as exciting as watching moss grow -- moss being one of the key characters in the limp, laconic drama from Belgian writer-director Bas Devos ("Ghost Tropic").
Construction worker Stefan (Stefan Gota) makes a pot of soup from the dregs of his refrigerator in anticipation of his four-week vacation back in his homeland of Romania. Over the next few days, while waiting for his car to get fixed, he gifts Tupperwares of soup to various people, including the mechanic and Stefan's sister. While on his haphazard rounds he happens to meet a woman, Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), who studies mosses. In a typical film this would qualify as a meet-cute, as the pair cross paths several times and seem to make a good match.
Apparently this is supposed to represent the "organic" development of a relationship, whether it turns out someday to be romantic or platonic. The problem is the film rarely rises above the excitement of watching moss grow. It's not particularly funny or even heart-warming. It just exists. Sometimes it's enough to present a slice of life and move on. Here it feels too much like Devos has just the bare bones of an idea and he's stretching the soup into some pretty thin gruel.
DRYLONGSO (1998) (B+) - This is more like it. Cauleen Smith's debut feature, coming out of film school, turned out to be her only full-length film. That's a shame, because she showed a lot of potential with this visually interesting tale of a photography student chronicling the dangers faced by young black men in Oakland in the late 1990s.
She follows a restless young woman named Pica (Toby Smith) who insists on taking Polaroids even though she is taking a class on 35mm photography, and she's woefully behind on finishing her final presentation. She is distracted by a gloomy job pasting up posters on walls, and she is disturbed by society's targeting of young men who, like now, too often ended up in the criminal justice system or dead on the streets.
Smith is a low-key but sturdy force of nature as an artist and an advocate. A young man she falls for soon ends up dead at the hands of a serial slasher terrorizing Oakland's west side. At the start of the film she also meets a woman getting slapped around by a boyfriend and lends a hand to the woman, Tobi (April Barnett), who later turns up dressed as a young man as a way to avoid the pitfalls that women face. Pica and Tobi form a strong bond that artfully blurs traditional gender roles or expectations.
The film is full of one-off performances by non-actors. Salim Akil is particularly crucial as Pica's professor, who nudges and nurtures in perfect proportion. (Akil co-wrote the script with Smith.) Pica's mom (Channel Schafer) likes to laze on the couch and open the house to massive poker parties, presenting a challenge to Pica's ability to focus on her art and future.
Smith actually has a compelling plot to unfold, and she meanders pleasantly to a satisfying conclusion after an efficient 86 minutes. No one associated with the film went on to have a breakthrough career, as if this were intended to be an urban bookend to a previous generation's "Spring Night, Summer Night." They left behind this little gem, which is just now getting a proper release (on Criterion).
No comments:
Post a Comment