Bangkok 09: Breathless, Ponyo and the Golden Kinnaree winners!

Posted on Wednesday September 30, 2009, 22:21 by Sam Toy in Under The Radar

Asian cinema seems to pretty much have to market cornered these days on monosyllabic loners who beat the crap out of people a lot, so any addition to the genre had better be a good one. Japan are the current crown holders, thanks to yet-to-be-deposed king Takeshi Kitano, but even he will have to come up with something special to compete with Korean writer/director/star Yang Ik-June, and his behind-camera debut Breathless.

It opens with Sang-hoon (Yang) stepping into a dispute between a man and a woman in the streets of Seoul. He easily beats him to a pulp, but then he spits in her face, starts slapping her, and asking why she takes it. Like a lot of great movies, nearly everything you need to know about his character is represented here before you even know it.

You’d expect someone like Sang-hoon to have as little social contact with others as possible, but there is something in there, and this is where Breathless’ other great strength comes into play – a fantastic array of supporting characters. He already associates with boss and childhood friend Man-shik (Jeong Man-shik), and has a strange interaction with a lonely little boy (whom he frequently refers to as a ‘fucking idiot’, but is always giving money to). Then he meets similarly mouthy schoolgirl Yeon-Hee (Kim Kot-bi), and somehow they identify each other as kindred spirits.

Yang doesn’t have any great revelations in his plot that you can’t see coming, but the construction of the screenplay – a sad exploration on the cyclical nature of domestic violence - is a journey that’s simultaneously moving, shocking, and - surprisingly often - funny. I was struck the entire way through by the same thought over and over: "this feels so much like a Shane Meadows film, but Seoul rather of Solford." It’s not perfect – there’s a few too many contrivances for that (especially towards the end), but this is still magnificently powerful stuff.

At the absolute other end of the scale, I today saw Ponyo. I’d been a bit worried about Miyazaki-san’s latest, as word has been mixed. To begin with, I’m a fan of his darker works – Princess Mononoke and Grave Of The Fireflies are easily my favourites, but in the right mood I can appreciate his more frivolous work.

And Ponyo (or Ponyo On The Cliff, to give this Japanese language, susbtitled version its full title) certainly is that; a goldfish with a face, is born of a rather menacing wizard father (bearing an uncanny resemblance to actor Julian Rhind-Tutt, if ever they do a live action version) who lives in a strange submarine, and an absentee mother in the Goddess of the sea herself, Gran Mamare. Because of her heritage, Ponyo has magic in her veins. She’s also strong-willed, and after busting out of her membrane, finds herself trapped in a jar, washed up on a Japanese beach. She’s saved by small boy Sosuke, who cuts himself breaking the jar, and Ponyo ingests some of his blood, enabling her to become human by will. That’s not the half of it though – from there it gets too consistently, playfully bizarre to succinctly explain, but it’s the kind of flight of fancy stuff that kids love.

There’s a big eco-message running through the film, which seems mean-spirited to call heavy handed, especially as it’s mostly a message imploring the Japanese to stop fucking up theirs and other oceans – anything that can persuade the next generation to heed that warning can be as heavy handed as like likes, as long as it works. Some of this though, to be fair, is very nicely integrated into the film. Ponyo, fascinated by a rechargeable light, refuses to put it down, even as they eat dinner. When the islands are flooded in the film’s second half, the children use a candle-powered boat to find Susoke’s mum, Lisa. Who, speaking of which, is bonkers, but I’ll leave you to discover the details of that for yourselves.

Maybe, after a week of mostly quite heavy material, I’m going easy on Ponyo, but I enjoyed its bright colours and light touch. There’s very little malice in the film, even the most remotely menacing person is really only worried that his daughter has upset the balance of nature – but between its overt plot and its subtext, it’s not a film about blame; it’s about a generation changing, and the older generation accepting that change - even the ‘stop dumping your shit in the sea’ message does take rather a back seat by the end.

For some reason, the Golden Kinnaree Awards (sadly not presented by Goldblum & Kinnear) were scheduled to begin before Ponyo had ended (and, for that matter the official closing night film Sawasdee Bangkok), so I had to miss out on the ceremony, but the winners for 2009 are:

SOUTH EAST ASIAN COMPETITION:
Grand Prize: Independencia
Special Jury Prize: Nymph
Special Mention: Call If You Need Me / Imburnal

MAIN COMPETITION:
Grand Prize: Altiplano
Special Jury Prize: The Search
Special mention: I Killed My Mother

And now it’s time to pack up and head home. It’s been a fantastic festival, and the programming has been solid – and even though I chose Fireball over the Grand Prix winner, I’m convinced I made the right choice, and there’s always another festival a short way down the calendar to catch Altiplano. Many thanks to the organisers who put up with my non-existent Thai, and who were the most gracious hosts you could wish for. This is a festival I highly recommend film fans in the area to head along to next year. I’ll certainly be doing my best to return.