Tag Archives: AFI Fest 2014

AFI Fest 2014: November 11

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Day Four: Takashi Miike’s Over Your Dead Body (2014)

I had a ticket to Song of the Sea, the new animated film by Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells, 2009) but couldn’t make it. I’m looking forward to seeing it, albeit on a much smaller screen, when it comes out on DVD. I don’t expect it to come to Santa Barbara, but I’d be delighted if it did. Maybe it’ll be in the Santa Barbara International Film Festival lineup in January.

…and now for something completely different.

I love Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins (2010), although I haven’t yet made it through his brutal Ichi Ichi-The-Killer-Poster13-Assassins-Posterthe Killer (2010) and not for lack of trying. (And I haven’t tried Audition [1999], either, though I mean to.) Miike has a great eye, and he constructs breathtakingly beautiful mise-en-scènes. Over Your Dead Body is no exception. It’s a gorgeous film. Of course, the other thing Miike is known for is gore, often sexual in nature. Over Your Dead Body is also no exception in this regard, but the gore was (for me) manageable, and in retrospect, I think the gore really did matter in the context of the story. The film is a sort of cross between revenge-driven horror (a Miike staple, from what I understand) and what some film scholars have called “body horror.” Body horror would include lots of Cronenberg and films like Carrie (1976) that focus on horrors that originate within the human (and most often female) body.

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Ebizô Ichikawa as the cruel Kosuke/Iemon

It’s unfair to focus on the gore, however, even though it may be the first thing one remembers, because the majority of this film is gore-free. The film meanwhile makes use of a number of sub-genres, most noticeably that it’s structured as a play-within-a-play. The main characters are rehearsing for a live performance of Yotsuya kaidan, one of the most famous of the more recent Japanese ghost stories (rather than 18th-century ones that became films like Mizoguchi’s wonderful Ugetsu [1953]). These traditional tales often start with romance and end in some richly-deserved and bloody revenge, not unlike Over Your Dead Body‘s frame story, the affair between the play’s lead actors, Kosuke (Ebizô Ichikawa) and Miyuki (Ko Shibasaki). The actors’ affair mirrors or doubles or is maybe caused by the relationship between their characters Iemon and Oiwa and which the actors play again and again. (In addition to being a play-within-a-play, Yotsuya kaidan is said to be based on actual events, adding another layer to the story.) There is some supernatural influence here (keep your eye on that creepy doll), but Miike never offers an explanation for the events, which I think works just fine. The film creates a trance-like sense of suspended animation, and an “origin story” would undo the effect, diluting it into a dreary One Missed Call (2008) sort of affair.

maxresdefault-1The acting is excellent, particularly Ichikawa as Kosuke/Iemon, but it’s the art direction/staging (by Yuji Hayashida and Eri Sakushima) that blew me away. One of the most interesting things about the film is the way it cheats at being a play. We watch a lot of the performance unfold as though we were an audience at a live play—but an audience with an unnaturally mobile eye, contributing to our growing sense that something here is just…off. The camera weaves around the actors and through the set, avoiding any sense of a static adaptation of a drama. When the camera tracks back to include the rest of the warehouse rehearsal space (see above) with its rows of desks for the director, actors, and technicians, it’s often jarring because we’ve forgotten they’re there. But by the last third of the film, that off-stage space has become part of the play’s stage for us, as well as for Kosuke and Miyuki, apparently trapped in the roles they keep performing.

teaser-overyourdeadbodyHardcore Miike fans may be disappointed if they’re looking for gore, but as a film and as a story, it’s excellent. (Most of the gore is based in the 19th-century story, the result of Oiwa being poisoned.) If you’ve enjoyed other horror films based in Japanese folklore (which is a lot of ‘em nowadays), this will be right up your alley. It’s also worth seeing if you’re interested in the interplay between stage and screen, though you may have to avert your gaze when Miyuki/Oiwa goes looking for the fetus she’s convinced she’s conceived with Kosuke/Iemon (and I’m guessing that’s not an episode in the earlier version).

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I do want to hunt down some other adaptations of Yotsuya kaidan, as I love Japanese ghost stories almost as much as I love more well-known fairy tales. But in the meantime, I have my final Fest film to write about, Villa Touma, the only film I saw, I am sorry to say, that was directed by a woman.

Also coming up, my much-delayed entry in the British Empire in Film Blogathon, George More O’Ferrall’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of the Matter (1953). And eventually, I’ll get to Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die. Eventually. Villa Touma and Heart of the Matter were not light-hearted romps, so I may well need some frothy-Lubitsch-type palate cleanser before tackling Lang’s Hangmen (which is, in comparison, almost a light-hearted romp).

Thanks for reading!

AFI Fest 2014: November 10

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So this is the movie I took my Mom to.

Mind you, that wasn’t the original plan. We planned to see Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh’s new film about the painter J. M. W. Turner. That was before we realized the film was 149 minutes, and we agreed we weren’t ready to commit to almost 3 hours of sitting. The Iranian Fish & Cat was what I had tickets to next, so Mom figured she’d tag along. We whiled away the time before the film with some very nice drinks at the Roosevelt Hotel across the street. I had a Spiced Cucumber Collins (Hendrick’s Gin, lime, shishito pepper, cucumber, and mint) which was quite refreshing. I heartily recommend trying to recreate it at home. Yum.

flyer_largeThere was a healthy line for the film, which the AFI schedule advertised as a “horror comedy art film,” like “a Friday the 13th installment directed by Alain Resnais.” While that is one of the finest descriptions I have ever come across, I suspect that it did the film a disservice by attracting people who were expecting more Friday the 13th and less Alain Resnais.

It’s hard to say much about the film without utterly ruining it. Here goes.

The film has been making the rounds of festivals and doing very well, but there is no sign yet that it will be distributed. It certainly should be. However you want to categorize the film generically, it’s worth seeing for the formal experiment. The 134-minute film is one take, but what’s really interesting is how the director, Shahram Mokri, uses that formal restriction to play around with time. The assistant programmer who introduced the film argued that it has flashbacks. I’m not so sure that’s what they are; regardless, there is something tricky (not gimmicky) and fascinating happening with the element of time. The film mostly follows its characters around, often literally from behind, slowing down and elaborating on the “West Wing” walking and talking method of shifting from one character or group to another. This allows the viewer to “return” to scenes that have already happened, from a different perspective.

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Yes, they are each missing an arm, in case you were wondering.

 

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An earlier set of creepy twins (“The Shining,” 1980).

 

0Aside from its formal value, the film is beautiful and often darkly funny. I was enchanted by Babak, one of a trio of possibly murderous restaurant owners, played by Babak Karimi. If you’re familiar with Iranian film, you may recognize him as an editor and actor. (He was in Asghar Farhadi’s 2011 film A Separation.) That’s Karimi in the poster up on the left. He has some wonderful sequences, including the beginning—a riff on American horror films, in which a car full of young adults who have gotten lost on their way to a campsite stop at a run-down restaurant to ask for directions. Babak’s response to the young man’s request for directions is to ask for his ID. Repeatedly. And to ask him whether or not the gate they passed was closed. Repeatedly. The kid is lucky he got his ID back.

I spent the first 40 minutes or so chafing against my expectations (more Friday the 13th), but once I let go of them, I enjoyed the film immensely. So did my Mom. If it does get picked up, I do hope that whatever tiny marketing campaign it gets does it justice.

If you’re interested in finding a screening of the film, check out the film’s official website here. Variety has a brief write-up of the film here.

 

I’m still really looking forward to seeing Timothy Spall make this face on a big screen. (And the paintings. Of course. Obviously.)

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