Even in the pre-Covid times, the Belmont World Film spring series could be an easy one to overlook - you've got to take the 73 bus to get to a theater that always feels like it might be about to shut down (except when a show is someplace else), it overlaps with other local film events, and it's easy to lose track of in the time between the main series and the January family film festival, even though there's often a sort of pop-up series or two in that time. In the current circumstances, you really have to be on the mailing list or checking back at their page every couple weeks, and although I feel like I've given my email address in the past, maybe I haven't or maybe it just hasn't stuck.
That's an explanation, not an excuse, since they do solid work in bringing interesting world cinema to the Boston area that will absolutely slip through the cracks otherwise. This one has a director whose name is worth remembering and has been picked up by Strand Releasing (as an aside, I love that Strand's animated logo hasn't changed in at least 30 years and has the feel of being from even earlier than that), but that doesn't mean much; a lot of us loved Agnieszka Holland's Spoor on the festival circuit four years ago and it just hit American (virtual) theaters last year.
That relatively small gap is interesting, though; they're her two most recent Eastern European films and both offer up older protagonists who have more interest in the natural world than most of those around them, an interesting connection given that Holland does a lot of work-for-hire in multiple languages between movies that necessarily get categorized as hers. It also makes me curious about a film I didn't know existed before digging for an Amazon link for this one - Julie Walking Home (aka The Healer) is English-language and has someone visiting Poland to find a faith healer, and I wonder whether Jan Mikolásek served as any sort of inspiration for that.
I don't know that this is necessarily a great film, but it's the sort where the way it maybe doesn't entirely work is interesting enough to give it a bit more consideration than just dismissing it, and it can lead to other things that are just as interesting. As I hit publish, there's about 24 hours to go to Belmont World Film's website (or jump straight to their Eventive page and buy it in order to watch it before the zoom discussion.
Šarlatán (Charlatan)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2021 in Jay's Living Room (Belmont World Film, Eventive via Roku)
There were a lot of stories like the one depicted in Charlatan happening during its 1950s Eastern European setting, and by now audiences have seen a lot of movies or read a lot of books about those tragedies, which presents the filmmakers with a tricky problem: How does one make a movie that both examines a man who is such a singular character and considers the one-size-fits-all machine that will inevitably destroy him? It's not an issue that the filmmakers necessarily must resolve - that history is under no obligation to provide a thematically satisfying resolution is part of its lesson - but it does make me wonder if maybe this should have been two movies, rather than one.
The film starts with the end already in sight; no sooner has Czechoslovakia's President Zápotocky died than the papers are starting to run stories attacking Jan Mikolásek (Ivan Trojan), mocking the "Oracle of Urine" whose clinic in Jenštejn is busy and apparently very effective. Mikolásek is not a doctor but an herbalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants' healing properties and an uncanny ability to diagnose someone's health issues by examining their urine - and though he has long been protected by patrons at every level from local officials on up to Zápotocky, his personal wealth, unorthodox methods, and long-term relationship with assistant Frantisek Palko (Juraj Loj) do not fit well in the conformist and communist nation, and the system may now finally be able to purge itself of him.
Jan Mikolásek emerges as an intriguing figure before the downfall story that frames the movie in large part because Ivan Trojan - and son Josef, who plays Jan during the flashbacks to his earlier life - capture the drive and arrogance of this sort of savior so well. The script by Marek Epstein occasionally ascribes almost supernatural abilities to Mikolásek, but though belief is an important part of his character, it doesn't make him close to perfectly selfless. His compulsion to heal is almost impossible to extract from his fascination with the means, and the elder Trojan has a particularly nice knack for finding the spot where Mikolásek's sense of entitlement is well below cartoonish villainy, instead the sort of thing that may or may not rub one the wrong way should they just meet him in passing without the rest of the story. He's an intriguing contrast to the mentor (Jaroslava Pokorná) who takes little pleasure from her good work, and there are interesting scenes where his knowledge of his limitations seems more unnerving than the ones where similar characters promise the moon.
That's half the film; on the other side, Mikolásek's belief that he is untouchable is important but the main thrust is how his fall comes not necessarily from his own hubris but from a stubborn form of progress that has no room for variation. Director Agnieszka Holland and the other filmmakers don't noticeably distinguish between the Nazis and the Communists, visually, though there is a bit of a grainy faux-film look to some of the earliest flashbacks, and there's never any invocation of particular ideology in justifying the government coming for Mikolásek; he's just different and his methods seem unscientific, and the system is better built for crushing that than accommodating it. The story with Jirí Cerný as Mikolásek's lawyer discovering the truth is built out of the same pieces as a thriller but plays out as futile.
The film pointedly doesn't check in with Frantisek much after the police raid Mikolásek's clinic, an odd choice considering that he often seems to be the point-of-view character in the scenes between his arrival and their arrest, and he's often making personal choices that eat at him in a way that the more self-certain Mikolásek often doesn't. Holland and her crew are too strong for the film to ever feel disjointed, so that even the stylistic flourishes that stand out (such as the bright yellow dandelions in the middle of the slate-gray prison that dominates that portion of the movie) always feel tied together. Parts of the film feel blunted, like the split focus prevents the filmmakers from digging deep into any one particular facet of the story.
It's at times unsatisfying, but there's a certain sort of truth to that; many lives were upended in this way, one at a time but in relentless, standardized fashion. Mikolásek's life story gets derailed and cut off, and while that leaves a movie at loose ends, it does give the feel of just how arbitrarily and efficiently an authoritarian system can snuff things out, and this movie does so without stopping to underline how that's the point of the exercise.
Also at eFilmCritic
Showing posts with label Belmont World Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belmont World Film. Show all posts
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Asako I & II
It's not actually that hard to get to the Belmont Studio when they have a special event like Belmont World Film's annual series - the 73 bus departs Harvard Square every few minutes - and it's apparently had a recent renovation to switch its previous seats out for couches, making for a fairly unique room. BWF itself is a neat event, with movies from around the world followed up by a discussion. Not necessarily with anyone connected with the film, but maybe someone who can speak to the subject matter. In this case, it was Shuei Kozu, who works at Boston Children's Hospital and teaches at Simmons, but who besides being from Kobe didn't necessarily have a lot of specific connection to this movie's subject matter.
She read the book to prepare, bringing her copy to show us - the density that Chinese and Japanese writing allows means that the book can be pretty compact compared to an English-language book of the same scale. Unfortunately, it kind of sounds like the book itself is a "Gen X dumping on Millennials" thing, with Asako a much less sympathetic character and Baku & Ryohei maybe not actually identical. The time frame was also changed, as the book was published before the big 2013 earthquake, and the film integrated it into the story. I suspect that I'd prefer the film if I read the book, but who knows?
One thing that was amusing was that she started out by talking about how this was a really weird movie, and I don't know about that. It's kind of a high concept movie, but maybe not truly bizarre in terms of what I've seen elsewhere It makes me wonder whether my conception of what constitutes a "weird Japanese film" is badly skewed from fifteen years of Fantasia trips and more before, or if the mostly-older crowd really needed to see Takashi Miike's Audition when it played the next weekend.
Netemo sametemo (Asako I & II)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 April 2019 in the Belmont Studio (Belmont World Film, DCP)
From what was said after the screening of Asako I & II that I attended, the film Ryusuke Hamaguchi made is rather different from Tomoka Shibasaki's novel, maintaining the basic concept but apparently giving the title character a more sympathetic characterization and otherwise moving things around. To whatever extent that's true, it seems to work out well; the movie version may occasionally be frustrating but only when meant to be, and it uses its concept of two apparently identical lovers to cover a lot of romantic ground without losing a sense of intimacy.
It opens in 2005, when Asako (Erika Karata) is a student in Osaka and meats Baku (Masahiro Higashide) outside an art gallery. Her friend Haruyo (Sairi Ito) immediately figures that Baku is bad news, even if she is classmakes with Baku's cousin Okazaki (Daichi Watanabe), but he is the sort that inexperienced girls like Asako fall for hard, no matter how clear the warning signs, and it ends when Baku goes out to buy shoes and doesn't return. Two years and a bit later, she's living in Tokyo and working at a coffee shop, collection some kettles from a meeting in a nearby office building when she meets Ryohei. He's a dead ringer for Baku but his polar opposite in personality - considerate, dependable, low-key in his charm - and immediately begins to pursue her, with neither her roommate Maya (Rio Yamashita) nor his co-worker Kushihashi (Koji Seto) understanding why she's being so weird about the whole thing.
There's an intriguing idea or three hidden inside Asako I & II that might work a little better if what I had expected to be the first half of the movie were given a little more space to play out - the film moves on from Baku and Osaka very quickly, and could maybe spend a bit more time giving an impression of who Asako is to start out with and maybe get Baku as solidly wedged into the audience's collective head as he is in hers. Being ghosted by her boyfriend messed with Asako enough to be positioned as this traumatic, formative experience but the impact winds up being a bit elusive for the audience. It's an understandable choice - first loves are powerful but this one in particular is pointedly superficial - but a little more of Asako pre-Baku or actually showing the breakup rather than a dry run could have helped a lot.
Full review on EFilmCritic
She read the book to prepare, bringing her copy to show us - the density that Chinese and Japanese writing allows means that the book can be pretty compact compared to an English-language book of the same scale. Unfortunately, it kind of sounds like the book itself is a "Gen X dumping on Millennials" thing, with Asako a much less sympathetic character and Baku & Ryohei maybe not actually identical. The time frame was also changed, as the book was published before the big 2013 earthquake, and the film integrated it into the story. I suspect that I'd prefer the film if I read the book, but who knows?
One thing that was amusing was that she started out by talking about how this was a really weird movie, and I don't know about that. It's kind of a high concept movie, but maybe not truly bizarre in terms of what I've seen elsewhere It makes me wonder whether my conception of what constitutes a "weird Japanese film" is badly skewed from fifteen years of Fantasia trips and more before, or if the mostly-older crowd really needed to see Takashi Miike's Audition when it played the next weekend.
Netemo sametemo (Asako I & II)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 April 2019 in the Belmont Studio (Belmont World Film, DCP)
From what was said after the screening of Asako I & II that I attended, the film Ryusuke Hamaguchi made is rather different from Tomoka Shibasaki's novel, maintaining the basic concept but apparently giving the title character a more sympathetic characterization and otherwise moving things around. To whatever extent that's true, it seems to work out well; the movie version may occasionally be frustrating but only when meant to be, and it uses its concept of two apparently identical lovers to cover a lot of romantic ground without losing a sense of intimacy.
It opens in 2005, when Asako (Erika Karata) is a student in Osaka and meats Baku (Masahiro Higashide) outside an art gallery. Her friend Haruyo (Sairi Ito) immediately figures that Baku is bad news, even if she is classmakes with Baku's cousin Okazaki (Daichi Watanabe), but he is the sort that inexperienced girls like Asako fall for hard, no matter how clear the warning signs, and it ends when Baku goes out to buy shoes and doesn't return. Two years and a bit later, she's living in Tokyo and working at a coffee shop, collection some kettles from a meeting in a nearby office building when she meets Ryohei. He's a dead ringer for Baku but his polar opposite in personality - considerate, dependable, low-key in his charm - and immediately begins to pursue her, with neither her roommate Maya (Rio Yamashita) nor his co-worker Kushihashi (Koji Seto) understanding why she's being so weird about the whole thing.
There's an intriguing idea or three hidden inside Asako I & II that might work a little better if what I had expected to be the first half of the movie were given a little more space to play out - the film moves on from Baku and Osaka very quickly, and could maybe spend a bit more time giving an impression of who Asako is to start out with and maybe get Baku as solidly wedged into the audience's collective head as he is in hers. Being ghosted by her boyfriend messed with Asako enough to be positioned as this traumatic, formative experience but the impact winds up being a bit elusive for the audience. It's an understandable choice - first loves are powerful but this one in particular is pointedly superficial - but a little more of Asako pre-Baku or actually showing the breakup rather than a dry run could have helped a lot.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
The Treasure
I think this is the first time I've been back to the Belmont Studio since they were closed down for a few months last year, and I sort of wonder if during that time they removed the nicer seats and put them in West Newton, leaving the ones without cupholders here. I distinctly remember there being cupholders, because I used one to hold my burrito the last time. But now, now cupholders, and the affiliated burrito place next door is no more. Bummer, because it's a tiny lobby with limited concession options, and I was hungry.
I was out there for Belmont World Film, which is a neat little even that was kind of homeless last year. It was pretty crowded for that lobby, with a lot of local Romanians coming out for the film.
I get more impatient than I should at these sorts of screenings, where the post-film Q&A/discussion becomes a lot of rambling statements, but I'm trying to appreciate that more, hoping to be less impatient because it's not helping me with the topic at hand (the movie) and more interested in learning about other cultures in general. Not exactly succeeding (and it gets tougher when the person talking has missed something basic and there's a half hour between buses if I don't catch the next), but it's probably worth trying to get to one or two more of these this year.
(And I appear to have written this review just as the film comes off Amazon streaming. I am just generally behind this year.)
Comoara (The Treasure)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2016 at the Belmont Studio Cinema (Belmont World Film Series, digital)
Even the titles of Corneliu Porumboiu's best-known recent films - 12:08 Easy of Bucharest and Police, Adjective - are focused on a sort of precision that can sometimes be maddening and The Treasure, ("Comoara" in the original Romanian) certainly starts out that way, hitting the audience right off the bat with a pair of the sort of conversations about minutiae that just don't happen outside of art-house films. It does eventually loosen up into a deadpan comedy, but that humor might not be enough for some considering the painstaking steps Porumboiu takes to get there.
The film centers on Costi Toma (Toma Cuzin), who is getting by a bit better than many in Bucharest, but still doesn't have enough money to float his neighbor Adrian Negoescu (Adrian Purcarescu) the loan he asks for. Not at first, at least; when Negoescu finally explains that his great-grandfather buried valuables on the family estate before it was sized by the communists (with the land only returned to the descendants relatively recently), Costi grows interested and scrapes enough together to hire a guy with access to a metal detector. Once he has stated along the path, the operation becomes more questionable - the government tends to seize anything with historical and cultural significance (interpreted broadly), and the details of Negoescu's story seem to become a little less favorable with each telling.
Costi is detail-oriented and basically honest, which would seem to be about half-useful in terms of this particular scheme. It also gives the film a dry sort of start as he initiates protracted discussions with both his son Alin (Nicodim Toma) and Negoescu about things that seem extremely extraneous. That Toma Cuzin and Porumboiu opt to underplay the character initially seems like a curious choice - there are beats that, if emphasized, could give Costi a stronger personality or make what's slow going more dramatic - but it pays off later on when the audience is able to get a fuller picture: We see a man who is curious but not obsessive, on the lookout for opportunity but not necessarily greedy, and mostly level-headed and conciliatory. That kind of man is not usually an exciting character, and though it describes most in the audience, viewers don't necessarily identify with him because they tend to grab on to something that sticks out. Still, by the time the film is over, an affection has likely developed for this man; Cuzin and Porumboiu have quietly brought his virtues to the fore, even if they are sometimes well-disguised.
Full review on EFC.
I was out there for Belmont World Film, which is a neat little even that was kind of homeless last year. It was pretty crowded for that lobby, with a lot of local Romanians coming out for the film.
I get more impatient than I should at these sorts of screenings, where the post-film Q&A/discussion becomes a lot of rambling statements, but I'm trying to appreciate that more, hoping to be less impatient because it's not helping me with the topic at hand (the movie) and more interested in learning about other cultures in general. Not exactly succeeding (and it gets tougher when the person talking has missed something basic and there's a half hour between buses if I don't catch the next), but it's probably worth trying to get to one or two more of these this year.
(And I appear to have written this review just as the film comes off Amazon streaming. I am just generally behind this year.)
Comoara (The Treasure)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 March 2016 at the Belmont Studio Cinema (Belmont World Film Series, digital)
Even the titles of Corneliu Porumboiu's best-known recent films - 12:08 Easy of Bucharest and Police, Adjective - are focused on a sort of precision that can sometimes be maddening and The Treasure, ("Comoara" in the original Romanian) certainly starts out that way, hitting the audience right off the bat with a pair of the sort of conversations about minutiae that just don't happen outside of art-house films. It does eventually loosen up into a deadpan comedy, but that humor might not be enough for some considering the painstaking steps Porumboiu takes to get there.
The film centers on Costi Toma (Toma Cuzin), who is getting by a bit better than many in Bucharest, but still doesn't have enough money to float his neighbor Adrian Negoescu (Adrian Purcarescu) the loan he asks for. Not at first, at least; when Negoescu finally explains that his great-grandfather buried valuables on the family estate before it was sized by the communists (with the land only returned to the descendants relatively recently), Costi grows interested and scrapes enough together to hire a guy with access to a metal detector. Once he has stated along the path, the operation becomes more questionable - the government tends to seize anything with historical and cultural significance (interpreted broadly), and the details of Negoescu's story seem to become a little less favorable with each telling.
Costi is detail-oriented and basically honest, which would seem to be about half-useful in terms of this particular scheme. It also gives the film a dry sort of start as he initiates protracted discussions with both his son Alin (Nicodim Toma) and Negoescu about things that seem extremely extraneous. That Toma Cuzin and Porumboiu opt to underplay the character initially seems like a curious choice - there are beats that, if emphasized, could give Costi a stronger personality or make what's slow going more dramatic - but it pays off later on when the audience is able to get a fuller picture: We see a man who is curious but not obsessive, on the lookout for opportunity but not necessarily greedy, and mostly level-headed and conciliatory. That kind of man is not usually an exciting character, and though it describes most in the audience, viewers don't necessarily identify with him because they tend to grab on to something that sticks out. Still, by the time the film is over, an affection has likely developed for this man; Cuzin and Porumboiu have quietly brought his virtues to the fore, even if they are sometimes well-disguised.
Full review on EFC.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
This Week In Tickets: 17 March 2014 - 23 March 2014
Quiet week, what with being busy at work and having a good chunk of my weekend claimed.
Not particularly complaining, mind you: There have been weeks at work when I have worried I'm not doing enough to be kept on, and the weekend was a chance to see a whole bunch of my immediate and extended family, if the reason for it is because my youngest brother and his wife are moving to Chicago for a new adventure and everybody who lives in the area is looking to wish them well. I won't lie - even though I didn't see Matt & Morgan as often as I'd like given that we can get to each others' houses with one bus line and a bit of a walk, it's going to be kind of different not having them nearby.
So, that made for a quiet movie-going week. I went to the Belmont World Film series to catch Ilo Ilo on Monday, which was kind of weird at first for much the same reason that the previous week's trip to West Newton was (the first leg of the trip out there was, once upon a time, my commute to work), but it was neat to visit the Studio Cinema in Belmont and catch a pretty decent film from Singapore.
Because the send-off party was at another brother's in Maine, it ate a bunch of the weekend, so I had to schedule my movie-going around that. That meant catching both Particle Fever and Grand Piano on Friday night, but those were both good choices: The former is as inviting a documentary on searching for the Higgs Boson as you're going to get (and, happily, still playing in Boston), while the latter is a thriller with a ridiculous premise that does a much better job than you might expect in using how unusual it is to the film's advantage.
After that, I went to Maine and spent some time verifying that my nieces are the cutest nieces as well as seeing all my brothers, many cousins, et al. On the way, we stopped at this place in the New Hampshire border, because Matt really likes pinball. I did manage to clean his clock at Burgertime, though.
I got back home just in time to head out to Arlington for what turned out to be the last in the Gathr Preview Series, Hide Your Smiling Faces. Pretty good way to go out, though it's a shame it was never able to get much traction.
Up next: The Boston Underground Film Festival.
Not particularly complaining, mind you: There have been weeks at work when I have worried I'm not doing enough to be kept on, and the weekend was a chance to see a whole bunch of my immediate and extended family, if the reason for it is because my youngest brother and his wife are moving to Chicago for a new adventure and everybody who lives in the area is looking to wish them well. I won't lie - even though I didn't see Matt & Morgan as often as I'd like given that we can get to each others' houses with one bus line and a bit of a walk, it's going to be kind of different not having them nearby.
So, that made for a quiet movie-going week. I went to the Belmont World Film series to catch Ilo Ilo on Monday, which was kind of weird at first for much the same reason that the previous week's trip to West Newton was (the first leg of the trip out there was, once upon a time, my commute to work), but it was neat to visit the Studio Cinema in Belmont and catch a pretty decent film from Singapore.
Because the send-off party was at another brother's in Maine, it ate a bunch of the weekend, so I had to schedule my movie-going around that. That meant catching both Particle Fever and Grand Piano on Friday night, but those were both good choices: The former is as inviting a documentary on searching for the Higgs Boson as you're going to get (and, happily, still playing in Boston), while the latter is a thriller with a ridiculous premise that does a much better job than you might expect in using how unusual it is to the film's advantage.
After that, I went to Maine and spent some time verifying that my nieces are the cutest nieces as well as seeing all my brothers, many cousins, et al. On the way, we stopped at this place in the New Hampshire border, because Matt really likes pinball. I did manage to clean his clock at Burgertime, though.
I got back home just in time to head out to Arlington for what turned out to be the last in the Gathr Preview Series, Hide Your Smiling Faces. Pretty good way to go out, though it's a shame it was never able to get much traction.
Up next: The Boston Underground Film Festival.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Ilo Ilo
I've gotten a bit better about not missing programs at the various local theaters as I build "Next Week in Tickets" every week, so I was able to keep the annual Belmont World Film program in mind as it approached. It's an interesting program which does a fairly impressive job of getting movies that almost certainly would not have much other visibility in America at all up on the big screen, and supports them with guests to put what we see into context.
The trouble, at least from my perspective, is that it's out in Belmont, which means a non-minor trip for me, especially since I'm arriving from Burlington. I think the only bus route that goes by the place is the 73, which can be somewhat erratic in scheduling. The good news, though, is that the Belmont Studio Cinema is not a bad destination. It's run by the same guys as the West Newton Cinema, and it's actually kind of intriguing how they seem very willing to try different things, both in different locations and as something doesn't seem to be working. For instance, the last time I saw something at the Studio, they had computers set up along one wall of the lobby, doing a "cyber-cafe" sort of environment. Those are gone now (for the better - it's already a pretty cramped space), but they have opened the "Cafe Burrito" next door, with the theater's website making it clear that bringing one's order in from there is quite okay. They have even removed some seats from the single, fairly large auditorium to install tables; they're dotted around the room rather than concentrated in a particular area, which is kind of a neat choice.
I do kind of wonder, since there's no connecting door between the cinema and cafe, what the reaction would be if someone brought a pizza from the restaurant on the other side of the building in. On the other hand, that would be pretty unwieldy unless you sat at one of the table seats, whereas the burrito, I found, will fit nicely in a cupholder.
The movie itself was pretty good, and I found I liked it and saw more upon further reflection, and that tempers some of my dissatisfaction with the post-film discussion a bit. The guest was an immigration reporter who immediately started speaking about certain types of exploitation that weren't immediately evident in the movie, although they were important with a bit of time to mull it over. In general, it didn't feel as though she had seen the movie or boned up on the specifics of this in regards to Singapore to prepare beforehand. That was fine, in that a lot of people in the audience were less interested in discussing the movie as opposed to the issue anyway. Even by that standard, though, it was a lot of people with fairly vague opinions or memories of newspaper articles they read months ago.
I ducked out before the discussion was finished, which I almost never do, but the next bus would have been something like a half-hour later. There's certainly a good chance I'll be back some other time for this series or just to see another movie at the Studio sometime soon - big, single-screen theaters are a rarity that deserve support, and the ready availability of actual meal-type food at a reasonable price is certainly a draw when the movie is going to be your entire night out.
Ilo Ilo
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2014 in the Studio Cinema (Belmont World Film, digital)
You can finish Ilo Ilo and come away feeling like you've seen something more uplifting than it really is, and it would not shock me if a fair amount of people identified with the parents of a problem child, especially in the film's native land of Singapore. The tone of this film is carefully managed, enough so that it does not necessarily feel like it is condemning the exploitation of foreign workers depicted - at least, not until the pieces have been separated, added up, and put back together.
The kid on question is Jiale (Koh Jia Ler); he's constantly in trouble at his school and not much less trouble at home. Mother Hwee Lang (Yann Yann Yep) and father Teck (Tian Wen Chen) are stretched thin as it is, so they do what a number of families in a similar position do and hire a servant. A placement agency send them Teresa (Angeli Bayani), who had left her own child with family back in the Philippines to take this job, and while Jiale initially treats her even worse than his parents, a bond eventually forms that Hwee Lang finds threatening.
There's a scene a bit past the midpoint of the film that initially comes off as just sort of darkly funny: Jiale has been given a clutch of cute baby chicks to raise as pets for his birthday, and as he runs out to the balcony to play with them, the camera swings back to the living room to remind the audience that the family was having fried chicken for dinner. It doesn't quite become the movie's central metaphor, but the meaning isn't hard to extract as things play out a bit more; Teresa may feel like part of the family, but given that Hwee Lang is holding onto her passport "for safekeeping", she is in a bit of a cage as well - and a housemaid can be a luxury in the same way as a pet chicken.
Full review at EFC
The trouble, at least from my perspective, is that it's out in Belmont, which means a non-minor trip for me, especially since I'm arriving from Burlington. I think the only bus route that goes by the place is the 73, which can be somewhat erratic in scheduling. The good news, though, is that the Belmont Studio Cinema is not a bad destination. It's run by the same guys as the West Newton Cinema, and it's actually kind of intriguing how they seem very willing to try different things, both in different locations and as something doesn't seem to be working. For instance, the last time I saw something at the Studio, they had computers set up along one wall of the lobby, doing a "cyber-cafe" sort of environment. Those are gone now (for the better - it's already a pretty cramped space), but they have opened the "Cafe Burrito" next door, with the theater's website making it clear that bringing one's order in from there is quite okay. They have even removed some seats from the single, fairly large auditorium to install tables; they're dotted around the room rather than concentrated in a particular area, which is kind of a neat choice.
I do kind of wonder, since there's no connecting door between the cinema and cafe, what the reaction would be if someone brought a pizza from the restaurant on the other side of the building in. On the other hand, that would be pretty unwieldy unless you sat at one of the table seats, whereas the burrito, I found, will fit nicely in a cupholder.
The movie itself was pretty good, and I found I liked it and saw more upon further reflection, and that tempers some of my dissatisfaction with the post-film discussion a bit. The guest was an immigration reporter who immediately started speaking about certain types of exploitation that weren't immediately evident in the movie, although they were important with a bit of time to mull it over. In general, it didn't feel as though she had seen the movie or boned up on the specifics of this in regards to Singapore to prepare beforehand. That was fine, in that a lot of people in the audience were less interested in discussing the movie as opposed to the issue anyway. Even by that standard, though, it was a lot of people with fairly vague opinions or memories of newspaper articles they read months ago.
I ducked out before the discussion was finished, which I almost never do, but the next bus would have been something like a half-hour later. There's certainly a good chance I'll be back some other time for this series or just to see another movie at the Studio sometime soon - big, single-screen theaters are a rarity that deserve support, and the ready availability of actual meal-type food at a reasonable price is certainly a draw when the movie is going to be your entire night out.
Ilo Ilo
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2014 in the Studio Cinema (Belmont World Film, digital)
You can finish Ilo Ilo and come away feeling like you've seen something more uplifting than it really is, and it would not shock me if a fair amount of people identified with the parents of a problem child, especially in the film's native land of Singapore. The tone of this film is carefully managed, enough so that it does not necessarily feel like it is condemning the exploitation of foreign workers depicted - at least, not until the pieces have been separated, added up, and put back together.
The kid on question is Jiale (Koh Jia Ler); he's constantly in trouble at his school and not much less trouble at home. Mother Hwee Lang (Yann Yann Yep) and father Teck (Tian Wen Chen) are stretched thin as it is, so they do what a number of families in a similar position do and hire a servant. A placement agency send them Teresa (Angeli Bayani), who had left her own child with family back in the Philippines to take this job, and while Jiale initially treats her even worse than his parents, a bond eventually forms that Hwee Lang finds threatening.
There's a scene a bit past the midpoint of the film that initially comes off as just sort of darkly funny: Jiale has been given a clutch of cute baby chicks to raise as pets for his birthday, and as he runs out to the balcony to play with them, the camera swings back to the living room to remind the audience that the family was having fried chicken for dinner. It doesn't quite become the movie's central metaphor, but the meaning isn't hard to extract as things play out a bit more; Teresa may feel like part of the family, but given that Hwee Lang is holding onto her passport "for safekeeping", she is in a bit of a cage as well - and a housemaid can be a luxury in the same way as a pet chicken.
Full review at EFC
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