Brisbane International Film Festival Wrap-up Part 2: Revenge: A Love Story; Martha Marcy May Marlene; Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope; The Yellow Sea

Brisbane International Film Festival Wrap-up Part 2: Revenge: A Love Story; Martha Marcy May Marlene; Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope; The Yellow Sea

Posted on Monday November 14, 2011, 12:10 by Sam Toy in Under The Radar

The first thing you need to know about Revenge: A Love Story is that it’s extremely spoiler-prone. So if you like violent Hong Kong thrillers and plan on seeing this, don’t read a synopsis, don’t look it up on IMDb. If anyone begins to mention the plot, cover your ears and repeat “La la la la la” until they go away; you MUST go in with as little pre-knowledge as possible. You’ll need the stomach for some strong violence (around the levels of Drive and Seven), and brace for disappointment as director/co-screenwriter Ching-po Wong can’t hold the story together all the way to the end, but know that for the first half he plays a blinder.

I was disappointed to have missed Martha Marcy May Marlene in Cannes this year, so it was one of the first films I circled on my BIFF program. So glad I did: after Olivia Colman’s superb performance in Tyrannosaur, here’s another contender for Best Actress at the forthcoming Oscars. Elizabeth Olsen is amazing as the titular character (she uses all of those names at some point), who has recently left/escaped a dodgy cult. The story then focuses not only on Martha’s difficulty in re-acclimatising to life outside of the creepy commune (led by a menacing John Hawkes), but also chiefly on her fear that she is going to be abducted back.

Incredibly, this is director Sean Durkin’s debut feature, and his use of flashbacks is as clever as it is seamless; by the film’s end, you’re as paranoid as she is. A word of warning: this is a slow burn, and it takes its time moving its pieces into place, but by the film’s climax, audience members in the rows behind me were actually gasping.

I’m very glad to declare that despite the iffy title, Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, puts documentary maker and very nice guy Morgan Spurlock back on form. There’s a significant change to his style here, in that he’s never on camera due to the film following multiple protagonists (with multiple camera crews) through the 2010 Con.

First up there are two amateur artists hoping for a shot at working with the big boys (Comic Con, before growing into the all-encompassing pop culture mega-event it is today, was originally set up 40 years ago as a means for Joe Public to learn how to do exactly that). Then there’s the obsessive action figure collector, the geeky couple who met at last year’s event (and the boyfriend’s secret mission to propose to his other half at a Kevin Smith panel), a crew of amateur costume designers entering the highly competitive Masquerade Ball, and the most interesting of all, Mile High Comics proprietor Chuck Rozanski, who’s in times tough enough to consider selling his most prized book, valued at half a million dollars. All this is intercut with famous people (including exec producers Stan Lee, Joss Whedon and Harry Knowles) inking lyrical about both the artform and the event.

Empire has covered Comic Con many times, so I was sceptical as to what Spurlock could show of the event that I didn’t already know. More fool me. Comic Con is a BIG event, and I was elated to find that he has focused on areas that Empire barely can: comics themselves. The film crews have outdone themselves in terms of coverage (I doubt they can have stopped rolling for the entire four days of the event), so Spurlock has lots of material to play with (or it certainly seems that way), allowing him to present just the right number of great moments: frivolous, dramatic and poignant. It’s also very warm-hearted without ever spilling over into sentimentality. This is one for geeks to treasure.

My final film for BIFF this year was the Korean thriller The Yellow Sea. It was recommended by a friend, who promised two “ker-azy action set pieces”. And I got them; I just wish I could have seen them a bit better.

I’m not a detractor of shaky-cam: I like the Paul Greengrass’ kinetic, quasi-verite style very much, and I don’t have a problem with every second Hollywood actioner ripping it off for whatever reason. But Hong-jin Na’s film takes it to another level. A level where a man thoughtfully staring at a stain on the wall requires a generous bit of shake, and where action sequences are a vomitous blur. Remember the opening car chase in Quantum Of Solace? This makes that look like Quetin Dupieux’s Rubber. Seriously, dude, smooth it out a little.

The good news is that what I could see looked terrific. The noirish set-up opens on the tri-border area of the title, where China, Russia and North Korea meet. Down-on-his-luck cab driver Ku-Nam (Ha Jung-Wu) is in debt for a shitload of money after paying for his wife’s visa to go and work in South Korea, only to have heard nothing from her in six months. He’s spotted by local gang boss Myung-Ga (Yun-Seok Kim – a great actor in a film-stealing role) who will clear Ku-Nam’s debt if he’ll go to South Korea and kill a man. From there, it gets really complicated. Too complicated, actually – I must confess, by the time the dust had settled, I didn’t understand each character’s connection to certain others (especially a late arrival in the final act) and I wasn’t alone. Where The Yellow Sea excels however, is (where visible) in its Old Boy-style antics – knives, axes, pipes, bats, and bones as weapons… in the immortal words of Martin Riggs, “we’re gonna get bloody on this one.”

Despite those two highly impressive set pieces (and a few other cracking moments besides), I can’t honestly recommend going to see this in a cinema due to the nausea factor. However, this should be much improved on a smaller screen, and I will certainly watch it again - possibly with a fluent English/Korean speaker to help in decoding the devilishly tangled details. A great film that is, sadly, barely watchable in the literal sense, this is a recommendation, but only in the right viewing circumstances.