Udine Far East Film

[mark schilling]

Here's my own report on the Udine film festival, for the Japan Times

Mark Schilling

Udine Far East Film

Film festivals generally exalt Art and disdain Commerce, save when they are
trying to lure
the fickle media with Hollywood star power. Nicole Kidman in a clingy gown
generates a
heck of a lot more buzz than the director of a Bosnian war movie. Thus the
large disjunct
between so-called "festival films" and movies most people pay to see. This
is especially
true in Japan, where younger directors commonly aim more at artistic
prestige abroad than big
box office numbers at home. So foreign critics and fans get a skewed view of
Japanese
audiences tastes; the latest festival sensation they hail as "representative
of the Japanese
new wave" is often all but ignored here. There is a parallel with the
pottery Japanese used
churn out for export, with "exotic" scenes of geisha and Mount Fuji, and the
stuff they
made for home consumption.

Since 1999, the Far East Film festival in Udine, Italy has tried to redress
the balance with a
program focusing on East Asian films for general -- not coterie --
audiences. Not all their
comedies from Hong Kong or cop thrillers from Korea have been masterpieces,
but they
have offered European filmgoers (as well as the occasional American critic)
a window on
contemporary Asian films that most festivals ignore as "too commercial," but
are often
more entertaining -- or better, period -- than the usual festival
selections.

This year, from April 19 to 27, at a cavernous theater that doubles as a
concert hall, the
Udine festival presented 64 feature films, including special sections on
Chinese animation,
Japanese "pink" films and the work of Hong Kong director Patrick Leung. The
festival
also hosted daily panel discussions on the special sections, national
cinemas and the state
of Asian cinema in general.

My own impression, after my third trip to Udine, is one of rapid change,
with old
stereotypes giving way to new realities. Hong Kong still turns out
chop-socky action flicks,
just as it has for decades, but some its biggest recent hits have
been sweet-tempered romances and high-concept comedies.
Meanwhile, Chinese producers still make patriotic historical epics for local
audiences and
minimalistic human dramas for the festival circuit, but younger directors
are taking more
inspiration from MTV than from their impeccably high-minded Fifth Generation
elders. Also,
though the Japanese film industry still earns more than the rest of its East
Asian
competitors combined -- $1.5 billion in 2001 alone -- the upstart Koreans
are making
stronger films -- and the rest of the world is starting to take notice.

My own favorite was Kang Woo-suk's "Public Enemy," whose disheveled hero
might
described as a compendium of Dirty Harry, Popeye Doyle and Columbo, but is
sui generis.
Veteran homicide detective Kang Chul-joong (Sol Kyung-gu) is casually
corrupt, but
usually broke and totally indifferent to appearances, personal, professional
or otherwise.
He takes a greater than usual interest, however, in the fatal stabbing of an
elderly couple --
his own wife was murdered by a knife-wielding killer -- and begins to
suspect their only
son, an insufferable yuppie whose grief strikes him as fake. Kang's one-man
investigation
is unorthodox -- he tails the yuppie like a bad conscience and beats him
like a drum -- and
gets him fired from the force. No surprises there. What is surprising -- and
delightful -- is
the energy and inventiveness director Kang Woo-suk (Two Cops) brings to this
familiar
cop-on-a-mission material. Despite its headlong pace, the film is full of
sharp observations,
comic and otherwise, into the characters of its principals (one is that Kang
's top desk
drawer is empty save for a bent pen). Sol Kyung-gu turns in a brilliant
no-frills
performance as the lead, playing his rules-breaking cop as a shambling
everyman, but with
a bullheaded rage for justice that make Clint "Dirty Harry" Eastwood look
like Kenneth
Branagh in a Shakespearean snit fit.

Also excellent was "Failan," Song Hae-sung's story of a young Chinese woman
who
comes to Korea to work after the death of her parents  and marries a
gangster, sight
unseen, to get a working permit. The woman, played by Hong Kong star Cecilia
Cheung,
works diligently at a laundry, while naively regarding her unknown husband
as a savior.
The gangster, a disheveled type played by the great Korean actor Choi
Min-shik, alienates
everyone in sight with his numerous screw-ups, while dreaming of returning
home to a
simpler life. Then he becomes aware, too late, of his wife's great love --
and his
unworthiness overwhelms him. Choi's performance, with its combination of
power and
delicacy, is nakedly revealing but never bombastic.

Also worthy of note was the crowd-pleasing comedy "Hi, Dharma!," about a
crew of
fugitive gangsters who take refuge in a Buddhist monastery. Though its
premise may be
too clever by half, freshman director Park Chul-wan makes the ensuing
cultural clash
between its wise guys and wise men funny and even touching, while briskly
tying the
elements of Park Kyu-tae's well-written script into a tight, coherent whole.

The audience also loved "Guns & Talks," a comedy about a gang of  cool dude
hitmen
who pride themselves on their "humanistic" hits, but end up falling for one
of their victims
-- a pregnant beauty. I became less enthralled, however, as the cutesy gags
descended to
the level of s SMAP comedy skit. Funnier -- and on a similar theme -- was
Edmund Pang's
"You Shoot, I Shoot," a comedy about a sybaritic hitman who, faced with a
slump in
business, begins offering a new service -- videos of his work, produced by
an ambitious
film student who sees himself as the next Martin Scorcese. As a satire on
the Hong Kong
film industry, "You Shoot, I Shoot" hits its mark.

I have already reviewed most of the Japanese films at the festival,
including "Laundry,"
"Satorare" and "Travail," in this space. Among the ones I missed, for good
reason, were
the "pink eiga" -- soft-core porn made for the grind house circuit. But as
awful as many of
these films can be, with simulated sex as mechanical as an oil rig in
overdrive, a few, by
such talents as Toshiki Sato, Takahisa Zeze, Masahiro Kobayashi and Yuji
Tajiri, succeed
at being something more than turn-ons for dirty old men. The pick of the
ten-film section
was Tajiri's "Rustling in Bed" (OL no Aijiru Love Juice), whose two
protagonists -- a
lonely 29-year-old OL and an emotionally distant college student -- find in
each other an
ideal sexual match, but fail to connect as human beings. An odd message for
a porn flick --
humping is not enough -- is conveyed with heat, subtlety and a touch of real
pathos. One
of many finds at a most extraordinary festival.