Tokyo Story (1953)

The canon of great movies can sometimes feel imposing. During the first twenty minutes of Tokyo Story (1953), as the elderly couple settle into their eldest son’s home during their visit to Tokyo, I did think, “This is one of the most acclaimed movies?” Less a reaction to the film being boring or bad, but more just a reaction to continued exchange of polite pleasantries between people (barring the little boys acting rude). This is the second film I’ve seen of director Yasujiro Ozu (Late Spring being the first) so I knew his style was slow and that this was an accumulation, beginning with the ways in which people put on good manners and small talk, particularly within an extended family. By the end of the two hour and twenty minute film, I had tears welling up in my eyes. This is one of the most acclaimed movies, and deservedly so.

Even though Tokyo Story speaks to specific aspects of Japanese culture and the post-war transition to commercial growth, the film still remains very human and empathetic. It doesn’t stop at the obvious melodrama of an elderly couple being palmed off between their adult children during their Tokyo visit. As the narrative progresses, further details are revealed, shining new light on the relationships, from the history of the family and even that the elderly couple are not idealised, with the husband often being rude to the wife in private moments. Even with a film that ends on two characters agreeing that life is disappointing, the film doesn’t feel depressing or dispiriting, just complicated and nuanced, allowing for tenderness and kindness to remain even as characters remain alone in the frame. Great performances, particularly the transcendent Setsuko Hara as Noriko, the daughter-in-law, and Chieko Higashiyama quietly heartbreaking as the unassuming mother.

A beautiful film which gave me a certain warm glow of satisfaction – that I’d finally watched Tokyo Story and that it was as great as they say. Watched a copy on Kanopy. Recommended.

Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (2023)

“Where’s the director? … I have one word for you: emotion.”

Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (2023) is the third film of Romanian director Radu Jude’s that I have seen and I love his approach and style. Taking inspiration from Jean-Luc Godard and others, Jadu makes essay-films that bring a lot of texts to the table and look for the contradictions, overlaps and tensions between them. Here, this near three-hour film cuts between three media modes: the present day in black-and-white cinematography observing overworked P.A. Angela (Ilinca Manolache, who is fantastic) as she drives endlessly between assignments, pumping loud music to stop herself falling asleep; the TikTok/Instagram uploads that Angela makes as a character named “Boba,” using a filter to transform herself into a parody of toxic bro incels; and the repurposing of an older Romanian film, Angela Moves On, from the 1980s, made during stricter government censorship about a woman taxi driver also named Angela (played by Dorina Lazar). The older film is shot in colour and often the footage is slowed down to inspect the background, of people and locations that have changed.

There are tensions between the two representations of Romanian society then and now, and how the two drivers are treated by the men around them. Without knowing more about Romanian culture than what the movie comments on, there are strong themes that would speak to everyone, specifically the work culture of today, between Angela’s overtime and struggle to get through another day on the road, to the corporate video about workplace safety that she is interviewing potential actors for. Satirical, funny, observational, and dynamic in its intermingling of styles, texts and quotes (even throwing in hand-written quotes into the closing credits), this was masterful and compelling. Being slowly crushed by the wheels of industry but finding the time to get 40K viewers on your latest fucked-up TikTok.

The decision to have Angela wear a sparkly dress on her rounds is such a masterstroke in the black and white images. When she pulls over to sleep during the day and the sun hits the dress for a reflective glare like a disco-ball, further compounding the inability to find relief.

Available to stream on Mubi. Recommended.

Place Vendôme (1998)

Place Vendôme (1998) fits the bill for French neo-noir in that the key female characters are glamorous blondes while the men are all weathered looking mutts. The cinematography feels very 1990s “movie for adults” in the dark hues of the interiors, and its overall polished feeling, reminiscent of a Grisham or Le Carre adaption from this era. And though it alludes to being a thriller in tone, Place Vendôme is more about intrigue, and how people will act in circumstances, and the sense of double-dealing and double-crossing in the world of high-end diamond-selling.

Mostly the film is a dramatic showcase for lead actress Catherine Deneuve, who plays the widow of a diamond merchant. We are introduced to her staying in a clinic, an alcoholic prone to fits of depression, struggling with social engagements and discussed by her husband’s staff as a “scary” train-wreck. After her husband’s death, Deneuve’s character begins to sharpen through the grief, particularly the discovery of precious diamonds he has squirrelled away. She starts to shake things off and return to her previous skills as a diamond seller, even as people around her are making moves to obtain the diamonds in question.

I was pulled into the movie through Deneuve’s fantastic performance, and the quartet of characters including a younger employee (Emmanuelle Seigner), a dodgy repo man (Jean-Pierre Bacri), and a mysterious figure from the past (Jacques Dutronc), eventually all connected by affairs past and present. Building to a simmering plot initiated by diamond rivals who have been ripped off, the film surprises in the very end by choosing to be sincere rather than fully suspenseful. In the end, this is an elegant melodrama that might test your patience, or understanding as the plot is very obfuscated in its unfolding. I enjoyed watching it, particularly the acting and the sense of classiness director Nicole Garcia takes to it.

Available to stream on Kanopy. Recommended.

Le Navrie Night (1979)

When it comes to art cinema, and slow cinema, I often think of an ideal viewer that must exist who is 100% alert and awake, and intellectually keyed into the symbolism and poetics that might take place. But then again, why should I judge myself against an ideal viewer that doesn’t exist? If you fall asleep, you fall asleep. Rewind and re-watch. If something goes over my head, I can just zero into what makes me think, or feel. Or even just appreciate the aesthetics, and the intention. That something like this strange art film exists.

Late at night and I couldn’t sleep, lying in bed listening to music, before I decided to decamp into the living room and start watching something. When I selected the Marguerite Duras film to watch, Le Navrie Night (1979), from the Rarefilmm website, I was hoping it would fit the circumstances. And in the first five minutes, I knew it would. The opening narration talks about the stillness in a night, the silence, and the proceeding film feels like it lives in that stillness, despite how talky it is. Cameras pan across empty spaces and the story is about two lovers who only communicate over the phone during the night. It was an ideal circumstance to watch, sleepless in the morning hours and existing in the film’s poetic reverie.

Duras is an author and her approach as a filmmaker seems to prioritise the power of words, taking a postmodern approach to the medium. There are a lot of distancing effects. The story is told mainly by voice-over with Duras telling the narrative, not from a first person perspective but describing the characters in third person. A country estate is the location of the film shoot, and we see the film lights in the corner of the room. Three actors are assembled (Bulle Ogier, Mathieu Carriere, and Domnique Sanda). They ask questions to the off-camera director of the stories being told, and one by one we see them getting make-up applied in close-up as they sit in silence. But they don’t play the roles written. They are mainly visual points of interest in the frame as the story is told over the narration. Sitting, or standing, as the camera pans around the house’s interior. Though a writer by trade, Duras and her collaborators also create great film images. There’s a slow shot of a camera panning down the seine river at dusk which I thought was especially beautiful.

The story? Two people fall in love over the phone, and their relationship is only carried out through late night telephone calls. There are complications involving sickness and class, and the effect is hypnotic. It is slow cinema and I did have to pause the film and fall asleep on a couch before resuming. The micro-nap was satisfying and when I woke up, I returned to Le Navire Night and continued watching. I didn’t necessarily feel a strong connection to the story of the lovers, their trials and tribulations, the confusions and the doublings of identities. I was more taken in by the way the story was told, the empty spaces outside, or in the outskirts of Paris, the slowly panning camera as the voices talk over the images. Or the actors standing in the frame. Or the wooden table lit gloriously within the darkened living room. Duras and her crew create an overall mood and an atmosphere of haunting loneliness, and the hook of a spoken word, even if it’s faceless and transmitted across time and space. Recommended.

Ghostbox Cowboy (2018)

The dream for me is to read about a film on Letterbox that I’d never heard of before, and then immediately discover it’s been available to stream on Tubi this whole time. Ghostbox Cowboy (2018) is an example of that dream, which in a few reviews compared it to New Rose Hotel and Demonlover, the milieu of tech-thrillers in the time of globalisation. Airports, hotels, conference rooms. Corporate espionage and street level subterfuge. While Ghostbox Cowboy is more satire than thriller, it does invoke an atmosphere of dread towards the industrialized landscape.

David Zellner plays Jimmy Van Horn, a midwestern dude who arrives in China through some connections and invents himself as a cowboy entrepreneur. Completely out of his element in regards to business knowledge and even knowing Chinese language, his pitch of a “ghostbox,” a device that allows people to communicate with spirits is supported by other American business contacts, mainly middle-aged white guys who are excited by the prospect of young Chinese investors with lots of money. The film is a rise-and-fall narrative for the clueless cowboy, who finds himself feted and celebrated before becoming dumped on the street and scrambling to understand the way he’s been taken advantage of.

Shot guerilla style within China on digital cameras and phones through separate trips, director-writer John Maringouin has a background in documentary, and uses that for his first fictional narrative, responding to locations and personalities. The editing and performances really key into a strong sense of tone, never going over the top, always feeling authentic even as it devolves into strangeness and a sense of the surreal. The only other known actor is Robert Longstreet who is hilarious as Jimmy’s buddy, Bob, a garrulous gifter who is an unforgettable sight with his blonde wig and his dentures to appear younger than he is. Another white tech operator known as The Specialist (who is credited as playing himself, and was apparently a source of inspiration to Maringouin) is also amazing, and his reveries that are inserted as voice-over monologues are filled with disdain for other humans.

A funny movie (there’s a sequence involving a segue that had me laughing hard) and yet pulls off its switch into a weird capitalist dystopia, with the cowboy walking alone in an empty prefab city out in the desert, looking for a man named “Johnny Mai Thai.” The more I think about, the more I appreciate what it pulled off.

Recommended.