a year in film, part II
new titles added to the Seemoya Canon
It took far longer than expected, but here is part two of my favorite first-time watches of 2023. These are my personal canon films, instant favorites that just get me and what I’m about. The first part is here.
Ladies in Retirement (1941) - dir. Charles Vidor
I love atmospheric crime/mystery movies that suggest terror or eeriness without supernatural influence. Ladies in Retirement is a stellar example but it also has two of my favorite character types: weird women and devoted sisters. And love so fierce that it leads to murder! The sheer delight this mad little story gave me can't be overstated. It truly is a hidden gem, because how had I never heard of it before? Especially since it stars Ida Lupino and Elsa Lanchester.
Rebels of the Neon God (1992) - dir. Tsai Ming Liang
As Tears Go By's younger brother. Moodier and less tragic with quieter intensity. Hsiao Kang loathes Ah Tze, the hoodlum who vandalized his father's cab, but yearns to be accepted by him too. He articulates his confused desire through stalking and revenge. These kids are headed nowhere. They just drift along a cityscape pulsing with movement. But the film never feels flat or dull even in the quiet, arrested moments. I love films with aimless youth, petty crime, neon, arcades, and crowded streets. Urban squalor looks so artful here.
Anjaam (1994) - dir. Rahul Rawail
I know Shah Rukh Khan is a legend of Indian cinema. I know that I love how unconstrained Bollywood movies are, that they are unselfconsciously over the top and excessive. And I know that I love obsessive, illogical love that leads to...murder. SRK is an irredeemable villain, the wealthy and entitled Vijay Agnihotri who stops at nothing in his pursuit of Shivani Chopra (Madhuri Dixit). She has already rejected him multiple times but he refuses to accept it. He even frames her. It's the type of movie where you’re waiting for relief; each time you think nothing else can go wrong, it does. Our heroine suffers unimaginable cruelty because of this man's obsession, and even after she's wrongfully sent to prison, things still worsen.
How does a movie like this still include a sultry, spellbinding musical number? How can it be so exaggerated but real, so horrifying but heady? I don't know, but I do know that I love it without reservation.
The Quiet Family (1998) - dir. Kim Jee-woon
The Korean Addams Family but so much more wicked, macabre and unwholesome. When guests keep dying at a family run lodge, the owners are plunged into panic mode. But rather than get the authorities involved, they bury the dead on their property. Not the most foolproof plan, and things get even more complicated with the arrival of a hit-man and a detective. Keeps you guessing and hoping they'll get away with the murders they do commit. I already have a crush on old Song Kang Ho but young Song Kang Ho...!😍
Summer of the Serpent (2004) - dir. Kimi Takesue
Summertime at the pool seen through the eyes of eight year old Juliette. It's a day as ordinary as all the rest until a mysterious couple arrives. The woman is dressed in all black, the man clad in a suit, shielding her with a parasol. They would catch anyone's attention, but Juliette is the only one who notices. She keeps silent watch from a distance, a sharp eyed observer. This film brilliantly captures the allure of the unfamiliar, a child's vivid imagination, and it does so without dialogue or explanation.
Secret Reunion (2010) - dir. Jang Hoon
After the assassination of a North Korean defector, agent Han Gyu is blamed for failing to stop the hit and fired from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. Ji Won, a spy from the north, makes a narrow escape and goes into hiding. The two men meet again after years, Han Gyu making a modest living as a bounty hunter (of mail order brides who flee their abusive Korean spouses...) while Ji Won is a construction worker. An uneasy partnership forms which then leads to an unlikely friendship. ONCE SWORN ENEMIES. But it is so much more than that.
Extreme tonal shifts are the norm in a lot of Korean media, and the charm of Secret Reunion relies on this. Billed as an action thriller, you wouldn't guess it's also a heartfelt buddy comedy. I mean, these two get called romantic bastards at one point. When one man tells the other to handcuff a chicken, when they eat the chicken the next day and one man gives the other the biggest piece, that is a rare kind of magic. I wouldn't even know to look for that! It found me :")
Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned (2016) - dir. Um Tae-hwa
Sometimes, I wish I didn’t like sad movies so much, especially the ones with kids trying to survive a hostile world. This one though, tempers its realism with a fantasy plot. Three boys go missing after exploring a cave and just one of them returns a couple of days later. He’s no longer 13; he’s aged into a 29 year old man. No one believes him except for his best friend, Su-rin. The adults think he’s a predator who brainwashed her. A very lyrical film, potent in its melancholy. I was overwhelmed, so utterly devastated, but oddly comforted too.
Broker (2022) - dir. Hirokazu Koreeda
Like his 2018 film Shoplifters (another in my canon), this one is about a family of misfits, not blood related, but bonded by their outsider status. Living outside the law, they do look like criminals, but only from a limited viewpoint. You aren’t getting the full picture; you have to look deeper. That’s what Koreeda does here and in Shoplifters, he gives us an entirely new point of view.
Unlike the other film, the characters do behave unethically in Broker. Two men run a black market adoption scheme, stealing babies left in baby boxes at a church and selling them to prospective parents. A young mother who dropped her baby off catches up to the pair, joining them to screen the new parents for herself. She is by all appearances an ‘unfit’ mother, but she still fights for her child like hell. No one will understand what it meant for me to see that. I’m not even a mother. I’ve never given birth with all the odds stacked against me. Still, it resonated with me.
Broker did break my heart, but it also put it back together. Love. No matter how messy or difficult it looks. Family. Found anywhere. What a tremendous movie.
Concrete Utopia (2023) - dir. Um Tae-hwa
I was very keen to see Um Tae Hwa's vision of a post-apocalyptic world after the intimate portrait of adolescent tragedy in Vanishing Time. I was not disappointed. This was South Korea's submission to the foreign film category at the Oscars, but it wasn't accepted. I knew the actors wouldn't receive any nominations, but in a perfect world, Park Bo Young would've gotten one. She wasn't even nominated at the Baeksangs, which is egregious since she gives the best performance of her career and is the soul of Concrete Utopia.
An apartment complex is the only remaining intact building after a massive earthquake devastates Seoul. The residents have managed to maintain some order as they eke out a tenuous survival. But this is not South Korea in the future: it's our world today, right now. I could not help but be reminded of the people trapped beneath the rubble in Gaza and Palestine. But that incidental parallel aside, this film is a potent depiction of selfishness, placing our own survival above everyone else's, trampling the weak, becoming inhumane. And it condemns those attitudes. It says that we don't have to forget our humanity even in a brutal world. I really want to write more about this film and how beautifully Bo Young embodies that commitment to humanity. Love that this was the first film of hers I got to see on the big screen. Hopefully not the last!!
Suzhou River (2000) dir. Lou Ye
I had to save the best for last. A dreamy modern day fairytale set on a polluted river. Not very magical. There's a mermaid but no prince. Instead there's a motorcycle courier who falls in love with a girl and betrays her with his involvement in a kidnapping scheme demanding a ransom for her. He goes to jail and upon his release, searches for the girl he once loved, the one who went into the river and never came back out. Fishermen swore they've seen the mermaid of Suzhou River. The courier believes he's found her again, but this new girl isn't his beloved, she just looks remarkably like her. That's enough for a synposis because there's nothing else I can say about this lovely lovely lovely film that captures its magic. Someday I'll try again.
