Rotterdam awards

[Jasper Sharp]

>Any first-hard reports on the festival?  On films seen?


>Any first-hard reports on the festival?  On films seen?

My computer has been out of action for the past week, so I apologise for
this belated contribution to the KineJapan list regarding the Rotterdam Film
Festival. These are just a few notes I made for myself on two of the films I
saw at the festival which would fall under the aegis of this list, namely
the Thai film 'Nang Nak' and part of the Kinji Fukasaku retrospective, 'Kimi
Ga Wakamono Nara'/  'If You Were Young: Rage' from 1970.
These past two months have been an excellent time for Japanese films in
Holland. Aside from my two fleeting visits to Rotterdam we have been treated
to the excellent 'No Cherry Blossoms' season in the Nederlands Film Museum
where I got a chance to see 'The Ring' at last, as well as Fukasaku's
delightful 'Black Lizard'/ 'Kurotonage' (1968) on the big screen, the same
director's recent 'Omocha', the new anime 'Jin-Roh', and also 'Ghost in the
Shell'. And still another two weeks to go of this season; check out this url
for the schedule's : http://www.nfm.nl/

Anyway, onto the films themselves:

Kimi Ga Wakamono Nara / If You Were Young: Rage ( Kinji Fukasaku , Japan
1970 ) 

Five youths come to Tokyo from the country to work in a factory. When the
factory goes bust they hit upon the idea of buying a truck to in order to
start up on their own business as a freelance haulage firm. Business is good
at first but eventually the group splits apart due to death, marriage and
imprisonment until only two are left carrying the torch. Tensions begin to
mount between the remaining two which are brought to a head when one of the
original team escapes from prison after murdering a guard and goes into
hiding in their apartment. 
This very obscure film received probably its first ever screening outside of
Japan at this year's Rotterdam International Film Festival during their
tribute to the Fukasaku Kinji, one of Japan's most popular directors. An
ex-critic, best known his violent Yakuza Pictures (including 'Jingi Naki
Tatakai' / 'Battles Without Honour and Humanity', 1973 and 'Graveyard of
Honour' / 'Jingi no Hakaba', 1975), Kinji directed his first five films for
Toei in 1961 and has kept up a prolific output up until last year's 'The
Geisha House' / 'Omocha', along the way giving us such memorable pictures as
'Black Lizard' / 'Kurotokage' (1968), 'Green Slime' / 'Gamma Dai-Sango: Uchu
Daisakusen' (1968) and 'Samurai Reincarnation' / 'Makai Tensho' (1981). 
'Kimi Ga Wakamono Nara' was Kinji's first independent production, and this
is reflected in both the modest ambitions of the film's story and its
contemporary setting. Focusing on the two charismatic male leads, the film
begins likeable and warm before its tone turns darker towards the latter
half. Photographed by a former documentary cameraman Ezure Takamoto, it
energetically captures the spirit of the Tokyo slums of the seventies. From
the evidence of this and the other Kinji films I have seen I like his style,
which is more accessible and character driven than most Japanese pictures,
and a good modern parallel for this would be Takeshi Kitano's 'Kids Return'
(1996). 

 
Nang Nak ( Nonzee Nimibutr , Thailand 1999 ) 

I had high hopes for this particular film. I've never seen a Thai film
before, and more than that I can't even think of any titles that have had
any sort of release in the West at all, so I went into watch this film with
little in the way of preconceptions. 
After the domestic success and critical plaudits on the festival circuit of
his first feature 'Dang Bireleys and the Young Gangsters' in 1997, director
Nonzee Nimibutr turned to a traditional Thai legend that had been made a
number of times before in his country. Two years were spent making this
highly polished horror, and the end results seem to have paid off: according
to the festival program 'Nang Nak' was "a box-office blockbuster in Thailand
to compare with Titanic in America", and the highest grossing film in
Thailand upon its release last year. 
It was generally well received by the audience at Rotterdam, and certainly
looks polished enough in a lavish 'Baraka'/ 'Discovery Channel' sort of way,
luxuriating in its lush verdant jungle locations teeming with wildlife, but
for some reason I failed to be gripped by this film. Set in the countryside
in the 19th century, 'Nang Nak' is a ghost story in a similar vein to the
Japanese 'Kaidan' ghost stories ('Kwaidan', Masaki Kobayashi, 1964; 'Kaidan
: Bontandoro', Satsuo Yamamoto, 1968 for example). Mak leaves his house and
his pregnant wife Nang to go to war. When he returns a year later, he finds
his doting wife waiting for him with his first-born in her arms. Unbeknownst
to him is that whilst he was away, Nang actually died in childbirth, and
that this interloper is a ghost responsible for several mysterious deaths in
the neighbouring village. 
If the story is very Asian in theme, the approach owes a lot to Western
horror, be it with the gorey set-pieces and zombie dream sequences a la
Lucio Fulci ('Zombie' 1979 et al) to the climactic showdown between a
resident Buddhist priest and the ghost of Nang echoing 'The Exorcist'
(Willaim Friedkin, 1973). There are a lot of bangs and crashes on the
soundtrack and some fast and effectively edited action sequences to keep
audiences on their toes, and it has obviously been contrived as the glossy
crowd-pleaser that it evidently was. However the film's style is
melodramatic and overblown - sunlight dappling through the trees, slow
motion shots of Nang looking winsomely past the camera to a rousing score -
as if Adrian Lyne had directed 'The Emerald Forest'. 
Ultimately, despite its exotic setting, 'Nang Nak' borrows a lot more ideas
from other films than it creates itself. It looks like a film far too
calculated to please, and beneath the showy surface lies a rather simple and
unchallenging story which might have benefited from being told in a slight
more modest fashion. 
Still, it rather seems I was alone in my opinions on this one, as it faired
very well in the audience vote and attracted large crowds throughout the
festival.
 
Jasper Sharp
j.sharp at publitec.vnu.com