Eiga Sai 2009 has just concluded. Out of the eight featured films (including 1 anime) screened at the Shangri-La Mall EDSA, I managed to see five of them, and some of them are the finest I'd seen:
(July 3, 2009)
"Of being alone and ending up alone... of being alone and filling up the loneliness..." That was what I summed up, mumbling, after attending the second day of Eiga Sai (Japanese film festival). I could, like, relate!
Tony Takitani was a cinematic vaccuum, full of scenic voids that revolve around it. I mirrored myself in the tormented title character. I knew the feeling - the initial joy of being in love for the first time after having been alone since birth, eclipsed by later fears of losing someone you love and ending up being alone, again. The beautiful woman Eiko (who will become Tony's wife) is a clotheshorse, a compulsive shopper. During their short marriage this uncontrollable urge of hers eventually has made Tony alarmed. So he gently tells her off to cut back on her excessive shopping. And so, Eiko's sartorial obsession - or rather the urge to resist it - has made her to die via a road accident.
Two years later, Tony meets another young woman who bears much resemblance to his late wife. After the job interview, Tony takes her into his firm, with one condition: she should wear his wife's fabulous designer coats, dresses and shoes when going to the office. Clearly, she never understands all this. Initially, I expected it to be as another
Vertigo - where Jimmy Stewart's equally tormented character molds a young woman into the image of his dead beloved. But it didn't turn out that way. In the end, and on the death of his trombonist dad, he literally sells all of the past tokens: his wife's beautiful dresses and shoes, his father's mold-infested collection of rare jazz records. He then succumbs to this fate of loneliness, probably for the rest of his life.
Somehow inside the chilly cinema watching it I woolgathered that I could find that perfect someone to fill up the my void, just as the clothes that filled up Eiko's empty soul, or just as Eiko herself filled up Tony's empty heart - even just fleetingly.
But on the other hand...
After seeing the second film
Turn-Over - An Angel Is Coming On a Bicycle, the second thoughts about marriage came flooding in my crazy, little corner of my paranoid brain. I couldn't help it - it's natural for a married couple to turn his or her calls for help, or the little sweet things he or she does for you, into a deaf ear and a blind eye. And it is a real pain, especially if your marriage could last as long as the elderly couple's in that film.
What's worse, it you're hopelessly in love and committed, you stand the chance to endure of being taken for granted - just for the sake of being married.
The elderly couple, Gen and Chie, have been wed for 45 years. Gen has a long-standing reputation in Kyoto as a robe maker for Shinto priests, and steadfastly sticks to the old traditions and customs especially in his garment-making methods. His wife Chie, is suffering from a debilitating illness that renders her hands and fingers almost useless and painful. Throughout their marriage Gen in some ways doesn
't appreciate her, or even just acknowledge her presence, maybe because of his work, which has been taking over almost his whole life (even when he admits toward the end that he doesn't really love it).
So to cheer up Chie, Gen asks a young genetic engineering student Shunsuke, who happens to be a magician for the neighborhood kids. Shunsuke comes to their house every day to teach Chie his sleight-of-hand tricks. But it turned out somehow that indirectly, Chie teaches Shunsuke (and moves him moreover) the magic of determination as she struggles to hold up the playing cards Shunsuke has laid out for her. The two become close buddies, and somehow I also thought that Chie sees him as her own son, as the couple are childless.
But as Chie's health worsens, Gen has decided to close shop in order to take care of her. Meanwhile, Shunsuke has received a scholarship to study in the US. Megumi, his girlfriend, objects to this. Although Shunsuke loves Megumi and cares for her, he also ponders seriously for his own future. Will he remain in Kyoto and miss the golden chance, or will he pursue this rare opportunity and leave Megumi behind?
Well, it's doubly hard to be paired up, hehehehe.
Hindi na sarili mo lang ang dapat mong isipin, hehehehe. The likelihood of being unappreciated and ignored, that's worse and can generate a lot of hurt. Although you look at your partner with unconditional love and give him or her the way, all the time... there's still a little scream of dissent inside your heart. Only when you're gone will they realize... and it's too late to feel that way. :-(
As the film was finished and I hastened my way out of the cinema, I overheard one girl behind me,
"Hindi na lang ako mag-aasawa!". Whether she was joking or she really meant it, I thought I was going to subscribe to her idea. I chimed in with her - perhaps with the tinny sound of the "cat's bell" that Chie has installed in their house. Oh, call me a bit selfish... :D
My darkened mood (I blamed that on the first 2 films, hahahaha) began to see a ray of sunshine, so to speak, when I got to see
Kamome Diner, the last one screened for the day. Well, I was to put it in my words, a lucky customer who managed to line up for the tickets. Watching it, I sort of indulged myself in a mental, visual, and virtual gustatory and gastronomic delight, hehehe.
The film's story revolves around the new-ish, dainty small diner in Helsinki named "Ruokala Lokki" ("kamome shokudo" in Japanese, and it means "seagull diner"). It is a pretty joint: smooth white wooden tables and chairs that go well with the white walls with powder-blue wood panelling, and the ambience seems bright and homey and relaxing... I bet it all smells brand new. A Japanese woman named Sachie runs the place, and although she keeps her routine inside and outside of the restaurant diligently, the diner sees no signs of a customer yet. Long until a young local named Tommi drops by at the place. He speaks Japanese, and requests Sachie for the lyrics of the Gatchaman theme song. She remembers only the opening lines, but vainly recalls the rest. However, the song has stuck in her head ever since. Then Sachie chances on a odd-looking tall woman named Midori on a bookshop cafe, and the first thing she does is to ask the Gatchaman lyrics. Midori doesn't only know the lyrics, but is willing to write them!
The only thing I was up for was that how the diner would beckon prospective customers, and eventually succeed. Midori soon moves to Sachie's place as her roommate, and helps her out in the diner for free (although it still receives no customers yet). Things start to perk up when a mystery guy enters Ruokala Lokki, and teaches Sachie the secret to making really delicious coffee. And then Sachie and Midori together bake some mouth-watering cinnamon rolls... you know, if there's a technology called smell-o-vision I would have breathed these fragrant aromas of coffee and cinnamon around the moviehouse... mmmmm-mmmm!
Although you might have an idea what that would lead to,
Kamome Diner was still a lovely film to finish. My favorite character there perhaps had to be Masako, the small spinster who has found herself in Finland because her luggage goes missing. She's quirky, and really, really cool - especially when she takes on a booze challenge with an angry-looking drunk lady, hahahahaha! She has the ability to understand and communicate with locals although she doesn't speak any Finnish, wears colorful dresses, and goes to the forests to pick up mushrooms (because, upon asking Sachie and Midori why the Finns seem to be care-free and laidback, Tommi overhears their conversation and butts them in with the answer, "Forests").
Ang kulit ng matandang 'to, hahahaha!.
There are some enigmatic elements in the film: aside from the man who teaches Sachie about "Kopi Luak", there's also another guy who strolls around the port, holding a pet cat. And these three ladies' reasons why they end up in Finland: Sachie dodges them with jokes, while Midori has said that one day she closed her eyes while her finger pointed at the world map, and decided to go where her finger has landed (
sana ganun din ako pag-mag travel, hehehehehe). And Masako, well, she has decided to stay longer in Finland because of the luggage issue. :)
I was anticipating for and witnessing the path of small-town success this diner is going through, but I eventually realized it wasn't the tenderest meat (so to speak) of the film really. It was all about friendships, and camaraderie, the discovery of each other's differences as well as similarities, of your own destiny, and of your new sense of self. I assumed they were the things the film was trying to covey, and it did so with much aplomb. Deprived of the cinematic and artsy pretensions,
Kamome Diner is an otherwise simple film about slices of life in the eyes of these three Japanese women in a foreign land. It's a small movie, yet it comes out big - even bigger than what I earlier expected. Warning: it can make your stomach churn and mouth water, hehehehe. (I even watched this twice!)
(July 10, 2009)
I was oddly depressed after seeing
Memories of Matsuko. And oddly, I was flabbergasted with a booming music as I was comfortably perching in my seat. That greeted me into the lively Tokyo street scene which reflects so much about their unique pop culture. But a garish side of the city opens with a dead woman lying beside the river. Dust swirled with chaos around Matsuko's lifeless body as policemen are caught in a hubbub.
A young guy named Sho is tasked by his calloused father (who is Matsuko's brother) to clean up his aunt's rickety apartment where she spent her last years. As Sho discovers her interesting, intricate life, he realizes that life
does have meaning, even when there seems to be nothing.
As if she was born to carry the stigma throughout her life, Matsuko has endured what life's most suckiest "moments". She has been disowned by her family, faced the scandal that led her to job loss, encountered with prostitution, pornography and yakuza, straddled the procession of her good-for-nothing lovers. And her death, that was what I considered as utterly meaningless!
A maze of colorful and eye-popping sets and effects as well as music and songs don't only work for fillers but in fact are really the vital part and parcel of this stunning film. It also shows Matsuko's noble sacrifices at a world that showed her nothing cruelty and misfortune... except for Megumi, her bosom friend she met from the correctional (and the star of the Sho's porn dvd's!) She's the only shining beacon, the representation of Matsuko's only hope, of this otherwise dark film, notwithstanding the colorful, Disney-esque scenes and merry tunes.
Well, I brushed that depressed feeling off as I left the cinema.
"Ok lang yun... at least
natapos na rin yung mga kamalasan niya, hahahhaha!"(July 11, 2009)
I took my sister to watch
Kamome Diner, the film that I have been so loving since I first saw it. After that, we trooped to McDo, and I made the treat for both of us. We deliberately starved ourselves in order to really appreciate the film, hehehehe.
Meanwhile, I enjoyed the last film
Memories Of Tomorrow, and I didn't care if it was labeled the disparagingly-titled "disease-of-the-week" fare. In fact, I much so like themes like that (in my childhood I loved the TV movie
Go Toward The Light, a real-life story about a child's battle with AIDS - his family had prepared themselves for his imminent death)
Here, it tells about a story of a high-flying, workaholic executive Saeki (I recognized Ken Watanabe, who serves also as the film's executive producer, as that Chairman in
Memoirs of a Geisha). His advertising firm's team has just landed a big account. As he is riding on the crest of success, he starts to forget minor to a bit troubling things, like vainly recalling the name of the
Titanic star ("Dick-Caprio!") to losing car keys and driving towards the wrong exit lane.
Then, for the first time in his career, he forgets an all-important business meeting - and Saeki himself was shocked. As his memory begins to flag down, his wife Emiko suggested for a checkup. After a series of tests, it is confirmed that Saeki has the early onset of Alzheimer's. And it's a downward spiral from there, despite their noble fight against Alzheimer's, as the dreaded disease eats the brain and the memory away - and it's incurable.
The most painful scene must be the one happening at the dining room where Emiko tries to literally struggle with her husband's seizures of desperation. Watanabe's performance as the Alzheimer patient is really superbly effective, and grips you from your apathetic stupor. His character refuses to go down because of the illness by his stubborn will. And for that I could forgive all the maudlin strings in the background to cue the tear-ducts, hehehehe.
