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StanfordCollins
Reviews
Rippu Van Winkuru no hanayome (2016)
the downside of a proper upbringing
When well-intentioned parents coddle their children, the children may have difficulty fending for themselves after leaving the family rose garden. This film depicts the travails of a naive young woman who faces the world alone after her protective bubble bursts. Her story is structured in two parts. In the first the heroine Nanami seamlessly continues her comfortable middle class life after finishing college, but then loses her husband and her job. Uprooted and displaced, in the second part she broadens her social exposure, and for the first time experiences the intense union of passionate love, with a nonconformist woman of great personal integrity who is a law unto herself. Contrasts between part one and part two expose shortcomings of typical middle class child rearing and of passionless relationships, and reveal the potential for self-affirmation through our fundamental need to love.
Nanami speaks for many young adults who are ill-prepared to deal with reality. The film is psychologically insightful, emotionally eloquent, witty, moving, and executed on a high technical level. Acting is wonderful, brava brava Haru Kuroki and Cocco. Renaissance man Shunji Iwai proves himself to be at the pinnacle of auteurs. The connection between the music and Nanami's emotional states is so intimate that the film could be viewed as an interpretation of the music. For example, in part one Mozart's delicate and other-worldly Concerto for Flute and Harp mirrors the blissful innocence of one who is naively out of it. Part two begins with Bach's Air on the G String, solemn, melancholy, like a funeral march infused with tenderness and sympathy. It captures her dire state of helpless bewilderment and our compassion for a despairing soul. This film is in that tradition of Japanese cinema where enlightenment on important humanist issues was accomplished through empathy. There is much to appreciate for viewers who are interested in the existential crisis that can occur during the transition from a conventional middle class upbringing, to a sustainable path toward self-fulfillment as an adult.
Nam-gwa yeo (2016)
A Greek tragedy from Jeon Do-yeon
In the first 32 minutes of the film the protagonist Sang-Min behaves with two radically opposite personalities. While visiting Finland, she impulsively takes a car trip with a complete stranger, then has consensual sex with him without a twinge of conscience toward her husband. This reckless, amoral adventure with a quiet man gives her a sense of calm for the first time in years.
Back home in Seoul, together with her supportive husband she is selflessly devoted to their their son who suffers from severe autism, and she is CEO-manager of a large boutique. Beneath her well-ordered surface, this wonder woman suppresses a colossal burden of pent-up anxiety, in part because she refuses professional help for her very difficult son.
The film traces her struggle for calm and self-fulfillment. She gradually falls under the spell of a lover who takes her outside her hectic family and professional life. When they are together her sense of self is nourished within their private cocoon of warmth and tranquility. Soon she takes a huge risk against her better judgment, leaving her family to be with him. Her vacillating prince immediately abandons her in favor of his family. She is left entirely alone, no lover, no family, no dream.
This film warns of the potential folly in abandoning a salvageable relationship. It is tragic that an accomplished and thoughtful woman with a loving family could impulsively sacrifice everything she holds dear, in reckless pursuit of a dead-end escapist fantasy with an unstable, depressed stranger. Such was the depth of her need to recover her neglected self and live in peace. The ending suggests she will find her way back to husband and son, hopefully wiser, stronger and better able to integrate all that she is.
This film is a character study. A simple plot about motivations and consequences of adultery is elevated to a higher level through psychological detail. Jeon Do-yeon is at her considerable best as she sensitively portrays the plight of a mother whose all-consuming devotion to her son has robbed her of herself. She enlightens and moves us with well-tempered expressions of feeling. Technically the film is fine. One weakness is that we learn almost nothing of her relationship with her husband. Another weakness is music. We hear minor variations of the love melody repeated endlessly, it becomes a distraction that often misses the mark. The great strength of this film is the resonance of its message: contentment depends on integrating all that one is, so that life can be full and satisfying. This film helps us ponder that truth.
La vallée (1972)
valley of spiritual freedom
It's not easy to do justice to La Vallee in a few sentences. It weaves adventure, anthropology, social criticism, nature, and relationships into a parable of self-revelation. The film focuses on Viviane, one of the beautiful people who know all good things except heart-felt passion. Literally by accident, her fascination with exotic feathers draws her into an expedition with a "family" of Utopian idealists. As they cross New Guinea in search of an isolated valley, Viviane simultaneously experiences a joyful odyssey across her suppressed inner landscapes. Sumptuously filmed events interlaced with moments of self-revelation transform Viviane from a pampered woman of the world to an impassioned child of nature, and beyond. Each character influences her personal quest differently: pragmatic enlightenment (Olivier), universal love (Hermine), visionary fanaticism (Gataen), oneness with nature (native tribe).
Outer and inner realities begin to merge, eventually reflecting and enhancing each other in mystical parallelism. She becomes possessed by a sense of seamless unity between her self and her environment. Feeling herself flow into the world around her is a joyful reward that richly compensates for forfeiting every accoutrement of civilization. Anyone expecting to see them giggling merrily over tropical drinks in a valley of palm trees and friendly monkeys is in for a rude shock. This is an honest film. Our little self-styled cult of postmodern zealots knows the price of following the inner path and they have prepared themselves to pay it fully. We do see their valley though we may not readily recognize it as paradise. The Valley obscured by clouds is the ultimate parallel symbol in this film of symbols: it is the undiscovered depths of ones being, and an enabling realm of detachment totally cut off from self-alienating civilizations. La Vallee marks a path by which one aspires to universal harmony through unfettered spiritual freedom.
Schroeder uses varying combinations of sound and picture as an expressive tool. As the story progresses, he steadily diminishes emphasis on words while increasing the importance of images. Conversations in rather bland settings dominate the first part of the film (excepting some rapt moments under the seductive spell of magic feathers). Gradually, visual elements gain prominence. The final scene is in the style of silent film, with only sparse dialog inserted like a few lines of printed text in a Chaplin movie. Our experience of this shift from word-biased content to image-biased content is also Viviane's experience as she gradually reaches into parts of herself that are beyond words. This structural analogy lets us join her inner transformation through our eyes and ears, thus making the abstract seem real. It also unifies style and substance in a way that contributes handsomely to the film's focus and intensity. Every aspect of this film was created solely by movie professionals. La Vallee is an impressive example of the unique potential of their craft.
Those who would turn to this film mostly to hear Pink Floyd's music should buy the CD instead. Three years later Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here which has a similar theme. If you like Wish You Were Here, you will probably also like La Vallee.
O lyubvi (2017)
Understanding Nina
This worthwhile movie is psychological, and must be approached psychologically if it is to be fully appreciated.
Nina tells us that it is most important for her husband to be Prince Charming. She was raised in abject poverty. Yearning for a rescuing prince shaped her personality from the beginning. She is a good person in a good marriage with little income (as in her childhood), but is drawn into an affair because she experiences Sergei, a rich banker twice her age, as Prince Charming. Her irresistible attraction to Sergei is not love, it is years of pent-up yearning for a rescuing prince. For Sergei, the affair is all about sex with a submissive woman with no strings attached. For Nina, the affair is all about uniting with Prince Charming, sex being one vehicle to indulge her deepest desire for union with a powerful prince. For her the affair is prince & princess, it is emotional; for Sergei it is stud & mistress, it is physical. Neither she nor Sergei has a clue about what motivates the other, and Nina understands nothing about the all-consuming love that captivates her. There is no common motivation. This sets the stage for disaster.
Nina's behavior becomes bizarre, she even stalks Sergei. Their affair is prolonged by Sergei's sense of responsibility ("I don't want to, but I have to."). His material support after leaving husband Sasha allows her to continue her Prince Charming fantasy long after Sergei intentionally tries to get rid of her (at one point he refers to her as stubborn). Sergei ignores her to the point of rejection and she lives alone without friends. Her ability to tolerate virtual solitary confinement and still be totally consumed by love is a good measure of the strength of her prince fixation. She acknowledges that Sergei treats her badly, but says there is nothing she can do to change her love. But there is something he can do. Her imaginary world is shattered only when Sergei expresses no joy over her pregnancy and rejects parenting their child. With this unpardonable betrayal by her prince, now-cynical Nina goes to the opposite extreme, declaring total independence while rejecting love as a disease (which is correct in her case). A major weakness of the film for me is that it doesn't show anything about her transition from prince to non-prince. With the persuasion of Sergei's wife, the affair proceeds into marriage, but without the prince delusion and against Sergei's will. There is no joy and no emotion in this marriage, there is nothing beyond a contract and a baby.
The final scene. Nina arranges a rendezvous with ex-husband Sasha. It is intensely emotional with only implied eroticism. Sasha declares his love, Nina bares her soul. The suffering of an innocent heart betrayed from within and without is palpable. If you examine this scene closely you will see many indications of inevitable return to Sasha, whose love for Nina knows no bounds. Nina hasn't experienced such emotion in a very long time. She leaves the hotel looking as if she is on her way to jail. Nina has begun to appreciate Sasha, her real Prince Charming.
This movie examines one of the psychological underpinnings of romantic choice and its potential for pathological consequences both consciously and subconsciously. Filling psychological fixations with good relationships is essential for emotional growth, it allows us to heal and move on. Despairing Nina is not a lost soul. If she can resolve her Prince Charming fixation and its residue, and replace it mentally with a male ideal that can exist in the real world, then she can have a safe, mature relationship. She knows she can rely on Sasha's love and she can afford a battery of therapists, and Sergei wants out. She initiated their rendezvous. Her chances are good.
There are just a few movies that reach deep into the mind and give insight into the hidden causes of our behavior. By showing us how and why we think, they help put us in control and make us more tolerant of others and ourselves. These movies tend to be mysterious and often quite artistic. This is creating art for the highest purpose. The tension at the end of About Love really needs to be resolved. Earlier in the film Nina was suspended in a state of faux love, at the end she is suspended in a state of anti-love. Only half the lesson has been taught. This cast, with scripts co-authored by therapists, could provide a huge service and a very good movie about Nina's road back home. An anti-dote to silliness and the social damage done by pervasive film violence.