Night Flight - teenage complications in high school Korea's pressure cooker

Night Flight is the always involving story of Yong-Ju, a lovelorn Korean teenager with a hopeless crush on classmate Gi-Woong, a taciturn school gang leader who is bullying Yong-Ju’s best friend and is probably completely wrong for him in every way.  Both Yong-Ju and Gi-Woong are struggling with secrets: Yong-Ju worried that his classmates will find out that he is gay, Gi-Woong searching the streets for a relative recently released from prison.

South Korean education is sometimes held up as something the British education system should aspire to given the former’s success in international tests.  If this film, along with last year’s Pluto and this year’s Han Gong-Ju bear any resemblance at all to reality, then I’m not sure any increased educational attainment is worth the downsides.  All give a sense of a system with incredible pressure and an utter disregard for student welfare.  Anything that does not fit within the strictures must be pushed under a rug or swept out of the door. No failure or distraction will be allowed.  When Yong-Ju mentions to a teacher that his friend is being bullied, he is told that the only things that matter are exam results and university entrance.

All this creates a setting for the film of a pressure cooker or perhaps an over-inflated balloon, about to burst.  A law of the jungle society is allowed under the surface as long as outwardly it is a picture of academic success. This allows the vicious to get away with most things and no-one daring to rock the boat.  Gi-Woong and his gang earn extra cash as bulliers of bullies- hired by parents to beat up and threaten the kids picking on their own kids. In such a setting, how can a student dare be different, let alone openly gay?

In these circumstances, any relationship between the more genial Yong-Ju and the coiled ball of anger that is Gi-Woong is surely doomed.  It is also hard to root for, given Gi-Woong’s initial violent homophobia.  But the film just about overcomes this because of Yong-Ju’s devotion to the romantic idea of it - nothing can dampen his longstanding feelings.  It is credit to the character created by the film that this is the case, and the continually changing, somewhat ambiguous relationship between the two is brilliantly acted and unpredictable.  The film brings the viewer into Yong-Ju’s way of seeing the world, particularly through smart use of flashback to their previous friendship in junior high.

The film is visually striking, turning Seoul and its surrounds into a beautiful landscape through some beautiful cinematography and filling many scenes with a real vitality, whilst creating a stifling, almost prison-like feel for the school scenes.  The film also makes an interesting use of panning away from the characters during scenes whilst their voices continue off-screen; in doing so it reinforces the sense of restlessness within both the main characters.

This is an intensely dramatic film, but one which knows when to turn up and down the volume on the drama, to let the characters evolve and come through and to keep the viewer engaged.   The final outburst is gut-wrenching and horrific but also feels consistent with what has gone before despite being so much more extreme.  It is a confidently directed, well-acted and consistently interesting film which focuses in detail on some complex relationships to illuminate wider society. 

I Believe in Unicorns - the magical and the very real add up to something extraordinary

This skillful, absorbing and imaginative film tackles a difficult subject not often seen on screen in a way that doesn't feel like an “issues” film. As a film feature debut it is the work of someone with remarkable vision and talent and was one of the most impressive and memorable films I saw at the Festival this year.

I Believe in Unicorns is the story of 16 year old Davina (the utterly remarkable Natalia Dyer), who is sole carer for her disabled mother, and her relationship with the older Sterling.  It is hard not to start anywhere other than Dyer’s performance.  One of the first times we see her, on her face is a look of such vulnerability and uncertainty that you know exactly where this character we have never met is in that moment to a degree that you rarely get from an actor.  The rest of the performance is of a similar high quality throughout: that the actor was 16 at the time of filming is extraordinary. Davina gains respite from her caring responsibilities by disappearing into a fantasy world. In these scenes, Dyer doesn’t have much dialogue to express the character through and the film is also intercut with micro scenes where Davina is trying to work out the precise facial expression that will capture herself exactly for a school assignment on self-portrait.  Again, in all of these elements of the film, Dyer’s performance is pitch perfect and nuanced, revealing in depth the precise emotional state of the character in that moment.   It is a highly challenging role, and director Leah Meyerhoff revealed in the Q&A that character development throughout was a collaborative effort between actor and director. 

The central theme of the story is the not particularly secure relationship between Davina and Sterling.  This is a relationship of shifting power dynamics that Davina is rarely in control of and perhaps doesn't always quite understand. She is certainly out of her depth much of the time.  The challenge for the film-makers is for us to understand why the character would put herself in these situations, even return to them to try gain some control back, without it just seeming like her reasons are youthful naiveté or teenage irrationality.  Aided by excellent writing and direction, Dyer’s performance makes Davina’s choices seem believable for the character, however much as a viewer you wish she wouldn't make them.

The way in which I Believe in Unicorns deals with the dynamics of a relationship like this is frank, unflinching and brilliant.  Meyerhoff is exploring the danger and violence in relationships where one person has a lot more power than the other. Davina may be consenting to sex but rarely in the way that it plays out.  Any time she tries to take initiative or a little control, Sterling will wrestle control back, often taking advantage of the fact that Davina is trying to be ‘grown up’ and adventurous but is also young and lacking confidence and will not resist his direction. Sterling is angry at life and unpredictable but Davina has written her concept of the relationship, something she sees as an exciting escape and adventure, into the fabric of her fantasy escapes.  In making the film, Meyerhoff set out to represent the dangers of power imbalance and violence in relationships, particularly teenage ones – the grey area which may not always tip over into actual criminality but which is damaging and dangerous to the person with less control and power . She does this with perception and honesty and I hope her aim to engage teenagers in the conversation around this issue continues to succeed.

Meyerhoff has enhanced her chances of doing so by making her film so beautifully crafted and imaginative.  It opens with a brilliant credits-type sequence that grabs you right into the story, giving you Davina’s backstory through a freeze frame and stop motion whirl of photographs of Davina’s increasingly ill mother and her birthday cakes through the years.  I knew I was hooked from those opening minutes.  Meyerhoff has shot on Super 8 and Super 16 and used only in-camera effects to give the film, particularly the fantasy elements, the feel of something Davina might have crafted herself.  This ensures the fantasy sequences, for example Davina’s fairy tale of unicorns and dragons, feel like they have come from the character’s own mind rather than as the whim of a flashy director (which could have been the feeling if they were done in a more ‘sophisticated’ or hi-tech way). The little details within these scenes are yet another avenue into our understanding of and empathy with Davina. The film is also excellently edited, making the viewer fully entwined in Davina’s moods and emotions.  Somehow both the lo-tech effects and clever editing never feel like we are jarringly switching between trivial and gritty, or between artsy and real: they feel like two genuinely intertwining parts of a wider puzzle – the puzzle that is Davina trying to figure out what she wants and what she needs.

This is a film that I cannot speak highly enough of.  Some scenes of Davina and Sterling together are hard to watch because you feel every moment of Davina’s fear and uncertainty. But the inventiveness of the fantasy scenes keeps the audience going in the way that they keep Davina going.  Meyerhoff is clearly a director of amazing perception and creativity and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Snowpiercer - vision and ambition that doesn't quite grab you by the shoulders as it should

Here was a film that was extraordinary in many ways, but which was also somewhat ordinary in some crucial ways that made the overall film feel like a tiny bit of a let-down and a little bit of a wasted potential.

Let’s start with an introduction to the setting and the best thing about this film. Snowpiercer is set after an attempt to stave off climate change disaster goes horribly wrong and causes the world to freeze. (There is something unnerving when the first date on the expositional news report is three days from when I saw it – and incidentally, the date I got round to typing this up – spooky!) Seventeen years later and a specially designed, self-sufficient train is still travelling around the world with a few hundred of so passengers, ruthlessly split into an elite luxury front section and a miserable, poorly fed, oppressed tail section.   The production design and vision on the film to create this unusual and disturbing world is exemplary: imaginative and both otherworldly and realistic.  It is like a compressed microcosm of the production design in the Hunger Games films (which thematically it is very similar to) distilled into a much smaller universe.  The detail and visual imagination behind it is highly impressive.

The visuals just about overcame what is a pretty clichéd plot, with a twist that felt rather predictable and a nonsensical (if visually spectacular) ending that didn't really go with what went before. The scenario felt imaginative and original but the narrative arc felt a little stale and unconvincing. I even started to wonder if in the fight over final cut between the director and Harvey Weinstein, if the latter might just have been trying to fix this weakness, although if the cuts were to make it more commercial, then perhaps not.  I have to say that if I had seen this film between a couple of summer blockbusters, I probably wouldn't have had these qualms – it is certainly better than many half-decent big Hollywood pictures in this respect.  But it suffered a little by comparison sat in the middle of me watching a lot of festival films, with their more unique stories to tell and characters to bring to life.  I was entertained throughout but never quite as gripped as I would have liked.

Within this, there were some fantastic scenes. One standout was in a primary school type class, where young children are frighteningly indoctrinated into loving Wilford, train owner and engineer.  IT is a smart piece of exposition and a toe-curlingly horrible piece of black comedy.  Another standout scene is a bloody fight in a sauna car, full of sweltering tension.

A talented cast is a little let down by weaker characterisation and script than they needed.  Octavia Sepncer, in particular, deserved better, though she does her best with a frantic mother role. Jamie Bell has fun with a mouthy sidekick role (inexplicably Irish accent and all), but has probably played a variation of that part a few times before.  And it felt like John Hurt and Ed Harris did their John Hurt and Ed Harris thing, which is of course magnetic, but not exactly stretching for them and not as interesting as they could have been.  Song Kang-Ho is good support as a security expert, bringing world-weary cynicism and simmering anger.  Alison Pill and Tilda Swinton are the real standouts from  this cast though. Pill’s slightly deranged school teacher is ferociously and unnervingly funny.  And Tilda Swinton does the live action version of Wallace and Gromit villain (it has to be seen to believed) and I mean that in as complimentary way as possible.  It is Swinton that sets the film’s tone as slightly unreal, with a deranged stir-craziness from being trapped on board that has infected everyone, an unsettling unspoken mood that lies under the surface of the film.

Chris Evans is effective in the lead and his character Curtis proves an interesting comparator to the recent Captain America film.  Curtis, like Steve Rogers, is trying to do the right thing, trying to find a moral compass in a series of impossible moral dilemmas, is a reluctant leader who wants to protect others from harm but feels he has no choice to pull them into it.  They are distinct characters and Evans mines a gritty, grim darkness from Curtis, particularly when he reveals his back story motivation near the end.  In his scenes near the end with Harris where being faced with impossible choices, you really feel how lost Curtis is by that point.

Snowpiercer may well have been hampered in its plotting and characterisation by its source material, which I’m not familiar with.  Through a talented cast and superb design and vision it brings out something that captures the imagination and looks and feels like little else – it is certainly worth seeing for these aspects.   But once the lights have gone up, there is a feeling of what it could have been, of a level that it could have stepped up to, but it is still entertaining and worth viewing.

Blind Dates - nice guys don't always get what they want

This dramedy from Georgia was an interesting and engaging film, although is probably the film I connected least with at this year’s EIFF (that may be due to the very high bar set elsewhere!).  That may also be because I was expecting more of an actual comedy. Although there were some funny scenes, particularly with lead character Sandro’s parents and their determination for Sandro to get married as soon as possible, as the film advanced it was clear that this was intended to be more of a drama.

Despite not being the most compelling film I saw this year, this is not to say that it doesn’t feature an interesting story told in an interesting way.  The leads are excellent, with a well-rounded supporting cast. Similar to ‘Anatomy of a Paperclip’ that I also saw at this year’s festival, much of the comedy comes from the put-upon nice guy and the absurdities he is surrounded by.  Sandro is less passive and more engaged in his life, but his determination to do right by everyone does mean he finds himself taking on responsibilities that most would shirk from, and it is quite ridiculous in some cases that they should fall to him.

Sandro makes for an interesting lead character, much more in tune with the people around him, aware of how society works but instead of cynical about the world, he goes along with what is needed from him, wherever it places him.  This is particularly true of his interactions with women, greatly in contrast to his friend Ivan.  Sandro seems much more aware of how his actions might make women in particular feel.  Whether international or not (and it seemed to be a conscious decision) Blind Dates does a good job of illuminating a low-level sexism that is presumably as prevalent in Georgia as it is in other countries.

All-in-all, Blind Dates is an interesting and frequently very enjoyable film, but not one that had a massive impact on me or that will stay with me for a long time. 

Han Gong-Ju - when your past is this traumatic, you can never escape

This devastating and moving Korean film was one of the most harrowing films I have seen in a long time, but always compelling.  Right from the opening scene, when we hear the central character Gong-Ju talk detachedly how she copes with something horrific that has happened to her and see her exiled to a new school through to the traumatic, ambiguous ending, there is an unrelenting feeling of marginalisation and despair, with only a few moments of escape in between.  This is not to say I didn't appreciate is as a powerful piece of film-making, and I think it may have been a little less disturbing that I remember, but it was also very hard-going in its unflinching portrayal of a rape survivor being abandoned by everyone around her.

One of the things the film does well, and which helps clamp the viewer to the story emotionally is to full focus its gaze on Gong-Ju.  It brings you into her isolated state, partly through its occasional flashbacks as if the viewer themselves is blinking at the memory.  This only intensifies as the horrific ordeal that she went through is revealed. Music is the only solace for Gong-Ju and it is well-used throughout – both to reflect her state of mind and as a potential route to redemption (although it will become yet another part of her life that betrays her).

I don’t know how accurate the film is as to how survivors of rape are treated in Korea and whether these precise set of circumstances could happen, although frighteningly, this is inspired by a real case.  However, even if metaphorical, it is all too believable in creating an atmosphere and sense of the victim being the one abandoned, doubted or blamed, seen as a messy inconvenience, and of the power structures that lead to the act in the first place. Perhaps it takes the depiction of such an extreme coming together of shocking and horrific events to demonstrate how the world’s indifference or worse must feel for people in that situation.  There are so many studies that have showed how we as people have preconceived notions of how a victim should behave. Maybe it should not be such a surprise when one character intimates hat if Gong-Ju really was innocent in all this, why has she gone on living?  But it still hits like a body blow to the viewer – another episode of the horrifying lack of compassion displayed by characters throughout the film, even from the ones you think will finally be a source of support.  Interestingly, it may only be the teacher who seems most open about having his own interests at heart who actually tires to act in Gong-Ju’s interest as well throughout – finding her somewhere safe to stay at his mother’s house and recognising the potential danger of Gong-Ju being in touch with her alcoholic father.

As mentioned the film ends with a singularly devastating but ambiguous event as we finally learn the full reason why Gong-Ju has put so much of her focus into learning to swim. In some ways, you could see some hope or light at the end of the tunnel in the ambiguity, but with all that had gone before, it felt like a punch to the gut.