I forgot my Montreal guidebook back in Cambridge (hey, when you try to pack and sleep between Boston's Fourth of July fireworks and an early bus, something going to be left behind), so I'm feeling a little antsy about not having an easy reference and not even knowing a good place to get an English-language guidebook here off the top of my head. Maybe I'll go see some penguins; that's always fun.
Today's plan movie-wise is the "Outer Limits of Animation" shorts program, The Restless, The Signal, and Flight of the Living Dead.
Tekkon Kinkreet
* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
The decaying city is a staple of anime and science fiction (though Tekken Kinkreet doesn't really fit that genre). It appears in many conventional urban genres, too, but they seldom have the ability to really show the audience just how magical the place is to its inhabitants, or just why they remain so fiercely loyal. For all cities are described as characters in a story, these characters are seldom as original as they are in a fantasy like Tekken Kinkreet.
Treasure Town, a rough area of the city of Takara, is both crowded and decrepit. There are fanciful signs piled high, and there's a jolly contrast between neighboring buildings. Still, you don't have to look very close to see that the paint is peeling, or that those signs don't provide much light. We spend a lot of time in a junkyard, and it doesn't miss our gaze that Treasure Town is on an island, easily neglected by the surrounding city. It's a beautiful place from about fifteen or twenty feet above ground level; once you're on the street, it's a little more dangerous. Still, by that time the place has already gotten under the audience's skin a little; the visuals of the city are simply a visual feast - most drawn by hand, but scanned into a computer so that the camera can move freely.
That's the world that two orphan brothers, Kuro ("Black") and Shiro ("White"), live in. Homeless, living out of a car in the junkyard when not visiting "Gramps", an older homeless man, these children also serve as the city's superhero guardians, although older brother Black must also give a great deal of personal attention to White, who even for a ten-year-old can sometimes seem very disconnected from reality. They're going to have to be on the top of their games, because a pair of Yakuza - "Rat" and Kimura - are returning to Treasure Town, but to a certain extent their only front men for a group of developers looking to build a family amusement center - and they've hired the monstrous looking "Snake" and his inhumanly powerful goons to make sure it gets done.
The first voice we hear is White's, and it certainly sounds like a kid playing make-believe, so there's a good chance that we're in unreliable-narrator territory. That's probably the simplest way to view the film, too - the fantasy lives of a pair of young children living on the streets, which means that any gaps in logic can be easily explained away. If that's the case, though, these kids have some pretty dark fantasies. Kids probably wouldn't view an amusement park as a threat to the city - that's an adult view. There are some moments that are almost unquestionably happening in the minds of the boys, and director Michael Arias will often go to a different art style to depict that.
Those sequences are often depicted in what look like watercolors, or feature the boys imagining themselves underwater. The visual style tends toward the loose and somewhat abstracted in any event; it's reminiscent of the studio's previous film Mind Game. While few characters look as flat-out demonic as Snake and his henchmen, Arias and company favor slightly caricatured character designs and a thin line that sometimes gets swallowed by the coloring. The coloring itself tends to invoke classic ink & paint rather than the potentially flashier digital tools which were actually used, except when people get some ugly bruises.
Anthony Weintraub's script is a lot more coherent than that of some manga adaptations, perhaps because the source material (sold in the U.S. as "Black & White") is only three volumes long. A few of the characters seem to get short shrift - especially the cops - but he does a good job with Black and White. Arias's work is also very impressive, frequently using the techniques of live-action film even while giving its characters the ability to all but fly: A scene where Black attacks Kimura's office especially looks like it was shot with handheld cameras.
The visuals are never less than striking, more than enough to keep the audience's attention when the story starts threatening to go off the rails toward the end. Treasure Town may be a brutally harsh place, but it's worth a visit.
(Formerly at EFC)
Perfect Creature
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
For Perfect Creature, the question of "what if vampires were real" isn't quite good enough; it asks what if vampires were real, but instead of being feared, they were objects of worship? It's kind of a dodgy idea, but the film runs with it. If the film is disappointing, it's not because of the basic idea.
Although the long-lived, blood-drinking "Brothers" have long organized as a church and claim to protect humanity in exchange for their blood, we find that one - Edgar (Leo Gregory) has started to act more like a traditional vampire, biting and exsanguinating young New Zealanders. The church, naturally, would very much like to keep this under wraps, and have Edgar's brother Silus (Dougray Scott) tracking him down. Eventually, though, one of his killings is seen by a young boy who calls the police. The case is assigned to Lilly (Saffron Burrows), who immediately sees that it's a ticking time bomb. Though no Brother has ever harmed a human, there have also been no new ones born in seventy years; their mutation (which occurs exclusively in males) leaves them sterile. Even though most people go to church and have their blood drained regularly, there's still a certain level of resentment, as personified by Lilly's partner Jones (Scott Wills).
In some ways the very things which make Perfect Creature so interesting work against it. Writer/director Glenn Standring has created a world which follows from its premise without feeling particularly beholden to making it match ours. It's a steam-engine world, with technology lagging behind our own, blimps in the sky, and a constant paranoia of disease (I imagine all that sharing of needles in church doesn't help). It's a nifty look, although Standring takes it a bit too far - we're really given no reason to think of the Brothers as creatures of the night, but it seems as though the sun never comes out in "Nuovo Zelandia". The film often ends up on the wrong side of the line between "atmospheric" and "murky".
Dougray Scott's performance falls in the somewhat murky category. His character is supposed to be stoic, but Silus often just feels lifeless. He seems a decent, idealistic guy, to the extent where it's hard to figure out how he's somehow risen almost to the top of the Brothers' hierarchy. He doesn't seem to have the ambition, or much personality at all. There's really nothing to suggest he exists before the film starts. Brother Edgar is completely insane, but Leo Gregory throws himself into the role with relish. There's no question who's in charge of any scene he's in. Saffron Burrows is great to watch, too; Lilly's background is familiar and a little generic, but there's always the sense that she's actually lived it. Scott Wills plays his less-sophisticated cop broadly, but Jones's crudity is a good contrast to the very professional Lilly.
The film is set up as a cat and mouse game, and while sometimes there's not a whole lot of "game" to it (Edgar actually tells them where he'll take his next victim at the start of the film), there are a few good chase scenes. Standring frequently reminds us of the Brothers' enhanced senses, so when Silus and Edgar are tracking each other through walls and throwing a good beating down, , it's a pretty good rush. The excitement does stall a bit towards the end, as we get the almost inevitable conspiracies and cover-ups (which, frankly, we've been waiting for ever since a Brother priest commended schoolchildren on recognizing that the Brothers were the source of all good and humans the source of all bad). And the end is kind of a head-scratcher - sure, it's something new and different, but what's it mean?
To a certain extent, Perfect Creature is a victim of its own ambition. It reminds me of the original film of Alien Nation, in that it posits a world rich with possibilities for satire, commentary, and good old science fictional (or horrific) adventure, but confined to a single hour-and-a-half-long feature, it's stuck as an odd-looking crime film, chasing down one man when there's a whole world to explore.
(Formerly at EFC)
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