Although I first saw Hirokazu Kore-Eda's Still Walking way back in 2008, when I named it as the best film of that year's London Film Festival, there's something fitting about the way it has appeared in UK cinemas now, during the BFI's two-month tribute to the work of Yasujirō Ozu. The influence of that great Japanese filmmaker (and that of his contemporary Naruse) is obvious in Kore-Eda's new film, from the deceptively simple shooting style to the familial subject matter. But this is no empty homage; Kore-Eda pays tribute to that earlier era of filmmaking while making Still Walking absolutely his own. It is a film that is both deeply personal and universally resonant, a film that has a classical style but feels completely modern. Still Walking may be indebted to the great directors who went before, but it also confirms Kore-Eda's status as a young master in his own right.
Still Walking documents 24 hours in the life of the Yokoyama family, brought together for a reunion that marks the 15th anniversary of the eldest son's death, making this another Kore-Eda film in which a person's absence is felt almost as much as those who are present. Junpei drowned while rescuing a young boy from the sea, and his death was particularly hard for his father (Yoshio Harada), as Junpei was undoubtedly the favoured son, the one who was going to become a doctor and inherit his father's practice one day. In contrast, Ryo (Hiroshi Abe) left the family to become an art restorer, something his father has not forgiven him for, and his parents disapprove of his marriage to a widow who already has a young son from her previous marriage. So it's no surprise to see Ryo dreading this get-together as he travels home on the train with Yukari (Yui Natsukawa) and Atsushi (Shohei Tanaka), preparing for an anxious weekend of tensions, petty resentments, and constant reminders of his failure to live up to the impossible standards set by his late brother.
These tensions do occasionally come to the surface, but Kore-Eda generally lets them simmer just underneath it. While we may be anticipating an emotional explosion to provide the climax to the drama, the director maintains an understated and quietly absorbing tone. He fills scenes with the realistic bustle of family behaviour, and allows the dramatic weight to fall on small gestures, moments of silence, or the occasional barbed line of dialogue, which slices through the nostalgic conversation. Kore-Eda orchestrates the dynamics between the three generations of the Yokoyama with incredible skill, providing us with authentic characters, all of whom have their own hopes and regrets, and making them interact with each other in a way that is totally convincing. Other characters drop by during the course of the film; an old family friend making a sushi delivery, and an overweight, awkward and sweaty individual who, we learn, is the man Junpei died trying to save 15 years ago. As has become a tradition, he has been invited on the anniversary to pay his respects, although Ryo is unsettled by the young man's obvious discomfort. "That's why we invite him," his mother (Kirin Kiki) tartly explains, "to see him suffer".
Still Walking is a film filled with a sense of loss, but Kore-Eda finds a pitch-perfect balance between sadness, humour and joy, giving us a picture that encapsulates so much essential truth about family life. Aside from the occasional flourish – such as a transcendent moment involving a butterfly – the director's handling of the material is marked by a beautiful simplicity. His compositions are faultless, and he generates an evocative atmosphere through the accumulation of tiny details – the chopping of radishes, the broken bathroom tiles, the flowers in the garden. Sometimes, his camera will cut away from the main source of the drama to find a character in isolation, but even then we can hear the family chatter echoing around the empty rooms and corridors. He makes us feel like a guest in the Yokoyama family home, and by the time the film has finished, we feel like we know these characters intimately, and yet there is still so much more to know. I have seen Still Walking twice now, and it becomes an even richer, more moving experience on repeated viewings, where the film's subtleties and nuances are ripe for re-examination. I was initially unsure about Kore-Eda's epilogue, which felt a little clumsy and out of place, but my second viewing dispelled those doubts. I can now see how it fits with neatly with the overall piece, and provides a satisfying resolution to a film that is nothing less than a modern masterpiece.
There's something magical about the simple childhood tale Treeless Mountain. So Young Kim's second feature is the story of two children who have to adapt to a new environment and a new way of life when their mother leaves them to search for their father, and the director has done an incredible job of ensuring her two young leads feel completely comfortable in front of the camera. Six year-old Jin (Hee-yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song-hee Kim) both seem unaware of the film that is being made around them, reacting to every situation with such authenticity that it doesn't seem fair to deem their contributions as 'acting'. Kim's film takes a naturalistic approach to telling their tale, with her unobtrusive camera staying close to the children's faces and letting them carry the drama at their own pace. Scenes frequently pass by without any major incidents occurring, but Treeless Mountain makes us see the world from the children's perspective, and as such, even the smallest developments can feel momentous.
When the children are first uprooted, they are sent to live with their 'Big Aunt' (Mi-hyang Kim). She is not exactly a cruel guardian, but she treats them as something of a nuisance and shows them little affection, often leaving them to take care of themselves for long stretches while she drinks. They manage to make friends with a local boy and learn to make some money by catching, cooking and selling locusts, with the proceeds going straight into the piggy bank their mother gave the girls before she left. She promised them that they would receive pocket money for good behaviour, and that she would return when the bank is full, and the sisters cling to this hope throughout, frequently checking the bank to see how close they are to a long-awaited reunion. There's a wonderful moment when they realise that their big coins can be exchanged for a larger amount of smaller coins, which will fill the bank up more quickly, but following this breakthrough, there can be few more poignant sights than the girls sitting at the bus stop, clutching their full piggy, and forlornly waiting for their mother's return.
Scenes such as this are all the more touching because Kim avoids sentimentality. Her patient, unobtrusive style never forces the issue, allowing us to share Jin and Bin's experiences and gradually become absorbed in their story. She has an eye for small details – Bin's favourite blue dress, or the girls' fascination at the sights of the fish market – and the sibling relationship the film depicts is utterly convincing. Treeless Mountain is a tribute to the unexpected resilience and determination of children, with the sisters eventually accepting their fate, and learning to come to terms with their new life. The final scenes are a perfect conclusion to this lovely film, with Jin and Bin finding happiness in their new surroundings, and discovering a use for the money they have been so dutifully collecting – a moment that is a quiet but deeply touching epiphany.
The full title of Lee Daniels' Precious is actually Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, and if you think that's overkill, just wait until you see the movie. The catalogue of abuses that Daniels rains down upon this unfortunate girl beggars belief. Claireece 'Precious' Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a morbidly obese and illiterate black teenager living in Harlem in 1987. She lives with her mother (Mo'Nique), a beastly figure who sits in front of the TV all day, smoking, eating, and hurting her daughter both physically and emotionally. Her father is mostly absent, but he does turn up occasionally to rape his daughter; she had a child by him at the age of 12, and she is currently carrying another. The first child was born with Down's Syndrome, and Precious calls her Mongo (Mongo!). Later, we learn that Precious' father is HIV Positive. Jesus, what a life.
The horrors inflicted upon Precious are painful enough to require no further embellishment, but Daniels doesn't seem to understand that, or else he doesn't trust his audience to get it without bludgeoning them into a reaction. The rape scene goes something like this: Precious is thrown onto the bed by a shadowy figure as her mother walks past the open door; we get close-ups of a Vaseline tub and a belt being unbuckled under a sweaty torso; the father grinds away on top of Precious ("Daddy loves you, baby") as Daniels intercuts shots of greasy eggs and bacon sizzling away on the stove. The effect to is undermine the seriousness of what is happening on screen, turning it instead into a lurid melodrama, which is too overheated to be taken at all seriously. Even while the power of the performances drew me into the film, the stunningly crass nature of Daniels' exploitative direction kept pushing me away. Precious finally lost me during a ridiculous scene that climaxes with Precious' mother trying to crush her daughter and newborn grandson with a TV. Many of my fellow audience members gasped at this point – I couldn't help but laugh.
Precious is at its best when Daniels gives his lead character some space and allows her to develop in front of us. At the start of the film, Precious is a monosyllabic lump who has responded to her abuse by withdrawing into herself and shutting down her emotions. Through her voiceover, we get a sense of the character's inner life, the one she is too afraid to reveal to the outside world, and Daniels shows us her imagination at work by cutting away from the misery with a series of fantasy sequences. In one, she pictures herself as a movie star walking the red carpet, in another she's a model posing for the cameras, while one fantasy – interesting, yet unexplored – has her wishing she was a thin white blonde girl. Unfortunately, these inserts are unimaginatively and cheaply shot, and some of them don't even make sense. At one point, Precious' mother, who watches nothing but TV quiz shows, is found sitting in front of an Italian neorealist movie, purely so Precious can have a black-and-white subtitled dream sequence.
The real stage for Precious' emergence is a remedial class she enrols in when her pregnancy causes her to be expelled from school. The class is run by the improbably named Blu Rain (Paula Patton), an idealistic teacher who never develops into anything more than a collection of clichés, and after an awkward introduction, Precious finds writing as the key to her self-expression. Gabourey Sidibe makes us believe in the character's transition with her utterly authentic performance, and there's something undeniably touching about watching this seemingly defeated person gradually come out of her shell. I do believe it was a mistake on Daniels' part to cast all of Precious' saviours as attractive, light-skinned people (Patton, along with Mariah Carey's social worker and Lenny Kravitz's nurse), but he does draw uniformly strong performances from his ensemble, with the interaction between Precious and her fellow students being particularly pleasing.
The one performance that seems likely to garner most of the headlines and awards attention is that of Mo'Nique, whose display as Precious' vile mother is a remarkable, all-or-nothing piece of acting. As written, Mary Jones is a one-note character, and Mo'Nique plays her with all of the hatred and rage that she can muster, but she also manages to suggests the occasional hint of depth and shade in the role, in her rare quiet moments, and she just about manages to pull Mary back from tipping over into caricature. Throughout Precious, there's a tension between Daniel's crudely simplistic approach and the hard work of actors capable of taking their roles to a deeper, more truthful place. If there is any reason to watch Precious, it is for this cast and for the performances of Sidibe and Mo'Nique in particular. They grab you by the collar, pull you through the muck and misery, and help you make it to the other side, but for all their efforts, you still might end up wondering if this was a journey worth taking.
If you saw and enjoyed Michel Hazanavicius' OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, it's fair to say you'll probably get a kick out of its sequel. Lost in Rio is pretty much the same film in a different location, with Hazanavicius employing the same blend of genre spoofery, broad gags and light satire to achieve the same results. For the uninitiated, OSS 117 is the code name of Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, the suave spy who would like to think he's the French answer to James Bond, but whose sexism, racism, arrogance and general obliviousness take him closer to Austin Powers territory. He is perfectly played by Jean Dujardin, delivering a fine comic performance that is inarguably the series' major strength, and in this breezily entertaining second adventure, he's off to Brazil to track down a microfilm that contains the details of French WWII collaborators ("It must be a small list, no wonder it's on microfilm" the proudly patriotic spy exclaims).
Subsequently, the film develops as you'd expect. The plot gives Hubert plenty of opportunities to embarrass himself and others, notably during his initial investigation (he blithely strolls into the German embassy and asks to see a list of former Nazis hiding in Brazil), or his inappropriate attempt to infiltrate a Nazi fancy dress party. Along the way, he gets a taste of hippie counterculture, frequently offends his Jewish companions, and comes under attack from a seemingly never-ending supply of Chinese assassins. Hazanavicius' direction ensures the silly plot moves at a smooth pace, and there's much to enjoy in the period details, from the evocative production design, camerawork and score, to the more specific movie pastiches, with Hitchcock being referenced heavily during the climax. As a director, Hazanavicius' sense of comic timing could be sharper, though. The film's humour remains hit-and-miss, and he often lets a scene drift awkwardly before cutting away, undermining the big laughs he has developed within it. Still, let us be grateful that there are big laughs to be had, and Lost in Rio – with scenes like the crocodile barbecue or a painfully slow hospital chase – is occasionally inspired. A third OSS 117 film is already in development, and as long as the filmmakers can keep things tight and funny, and keep Dujardin in the lead role, there's no reason why this series can't run and run.
Gerardo Naranjo's I'm Gonna Explode is so preoccupied with paying homage to its influences, it almost forgets to tell a story of its own. The film is a familiar tale of two lovers on the run, and it makes no secret of the debt that is owed to its many predecessors, with Godard's Pierrot le fou being the most obvious touchstone. The camerawork, editing and use of music employed by Naranjo is unmistakably reminiscent of Godard, and the director injects a lively momentum into his film's opening half hour. Gun-toting Román (Juan Pablo de Santiago) is the rebellious son of a politician who harbours murderous fantasies and has been expelled from school, while Maru (Maria Deschamps) is lonely outsider who is instantly attracted to him. The pair decide to hightail it together, but they don't get very far, setting up camp on the roof of Román's family home, and watching their worried families from above. At its best, Naranjo's script captures the amusing gulf between the posturing of these characters and their actual adolescent naïveté, and the pair's passionate mood swings give the movie an engagingly offbeat tone. The two central actors are fine, but not quite charismatic enough to compensate for the film's dead spots, and before too long, it becomes clear that I'm Gonna Explode doesn't have much of a story underneath its self-consciously trendy surface. Too much of the picture is spent waiting for something to happen, and when it finally does – with a tragic final twist – it has been too clumsily telegraphed for the events to have any significant impact.
