London Film Festival report

[Roger Macy]

Perhaps I could report on a few films at the London Film Festival, if anyone is interested.  These are UK, not world premieres.

 

Koreeda's Air Doll, Kuki ningyo, has already had a number of write-ups, including by Tom at Midnight Eye.  It didn't look promising here when it was scheduled for Vue9, where there have been some gruesome projections all festival (after each of which they would say it was 'fixed').  However, 'Air Doll' screened OK because, I surmise, it was projected digitally through a different machine.  There may be out-of-work projectionists but, we can only get by by de-skilling.  That's not a complete match for a possible interpretation of the film.  Or should I say movie.

Most encounters occur in a video store, which sets up various cinematic digressions.  But, was it a period film, circa 2003 ?    I don't recall any very recent movies in the video store and its manager, in explaining everything de novo to the Air Doll character says that a movie is a very long length of celluloid.   That begs a question, especially as for nine-tenths of the movie, Koreeda obeys the laws [if not the practice] of celluloid montage, only to come out into CGI at the end [what's with the obviously fake dandelions?  what has Itami Juzo got to do with this?].  The period of the movie is a genuine question, as I can't , unlike K's air doll, instantly read and write, without any tuition, half-glimpsed Japanese.  Which is why I want one of those for Christmas.

 

On this a year or more back, it was mentioned that there were nine or so films in production on the Nanjing massacre.  The only one to hit the UK shores so far is Lu Chuan's Nanjing Nanjing, co-staring NAKAIZUMI Hideo. 

In a packed house, I don't think anyone so much as moved for 136 minutes, apart from one or two running out.  There's an obvious contrast with the start of Katyn.  There, a fleeing population is caught on a bridge between two invading armies, with their own army maintaining its own identity. In the film Nanjing, Nanjing, one disintegrating Chinese army is caught before a wall, in front of another Chinese army trying to keep their compatriots in the falling city.  But from there they diverge.  Katyn was not a war-film, whereas Nanjing, Nanjing is completely so.  Katyn was all about conflicting stories.  Nanjing, Nanjing did not address this crucial issue.

If Lu is right that the film was controversial in China for showing a Japanese soldier with humanity [his was a racially-qualified humanity] and for showing a non-Communist fight-back, then it's even more depressing.  Lu did certainly not even touch on "how and why the war happened" [catalogue], let alone the slippery slope to militarism, and includes no senior Chinese or Japanese figures.  In the way that he partially breaks the taboo on the myth of lack of KMT resistance, he manages to convey the impression that the only resistance to Japan in all China was in Nanjing after the city had fallen, thus actually giving some unintended justification to murders of prisoners by the Japanese army.

 

A film described by the convenor of a Q&A as a kind of alternate and partial view to Scorsese's Il mio viaggio in Italia was Valerio Jalongo's Di me cosa ne sai? (What do you know about me?).  But it reminded me strongly of Eiga Kantokutte Nan de! (Cut!), with its sad tales of out-of-work directors and abandoned cinemas.  I couldn't resist asking whether there was anything Uniquely Italian about this, compared to say, Japan.  Jalongo wasn't adamant about film, but Italian TV, yes, was uniquely dire.

 

'Koma' by KAWASE Naomi is the name of the village where this short was entirely set, shown with two others from the Jeonju festival under the tag: 'Visitors'.  If Kawase stays rooted in Nara, YOKOHAMA Satoko's first commercial feature, Urutora mirakuru ravu sutori ('Bare Essence of Life') stayed within the small world of Aomori.

 

SAI Yoichi's Kamui Gaiden was billed [by Tony Rains, of course] as 'the best ninja movie ever made'.  I thought it was a swashbuckler, and reminded me, in its sprawling story, complete with pirates and ship, idyllic village and evil court, of TANIGUCHI Senkichi's Rangiku monogatari.  But this was apparently derived, not from a Tanizaki story but, from a manga of SHIRATO Sanpei (whose 'Band of Ninja', filmed by OSHIMA, showed at the same cinema the previous week). The CGI didn't help, got laughter in all the wrong places, but the film did get some applause at the end.

Roger
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