FILM OF THE DAY :



Romuald Karmakar's Between the Devil and the Wide Blue Sea



All films seen on Wednesday 26th October in Vienna during the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival)


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Bashing : [6/10]
Japan 2005 : KOBAYASHI Masahiro : 82m (feature) : seen at Kunstlerhaus cinema

   There was negative word-of-mouth around Vienna for this Cannes competition entry - the general reaction back in spring on the Croisette being, if memory serves, of the "why-is-this-in-competition?" variety. Then again, that's reportedly what all of the jury (bar Benoit Jacquot) thought about A History of Violence... Bashing isn't anywhere near that level, of course, but if nothing else director Kobayashi (is the English-language title supposed to be an oblique, somehow annoying echo of his surname?) does tackle his subject-matter head on: namely, the way Japanese society has, as an opening title-card informs us, shunned those of its citizens who were recently taken hostage in Iraq.
   Except "shun" is a bit mild for what happens to Bashing's gloomy heroine Yuko (Fusako Yurabe) - who comes in for all kinds of stick in her (unspecified) non-scenic oceanside home-town. The flak gets to her father (Ryuzo Tanaka), who loses his job as a direct result, and also her stepmother (Nene Otsuka, fine) - the latter identified as such only in the end-credits. Chilly and forbidding, grim and repetitive in its quotidian details (buying soup at the local Spar becomes a very big deal) Bashing isn't exactly an easy watch - but the unfairness of Yuko's plight does make for a surprisingly compulsive atmosphere.
   You sit there thinking: well, if all this is accurate (and we're told that it's only "loosely" based on true events) then Japan really is one seriously f*cked up society, insular and conformist to a bone-headed degree. If it isn't accurate, of course, Kobayashi is guilty of cinematic libel on a fairly huge scale (and may well come in for similar 'shunning' as Yuko here). You're very much inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt - bravely, he makes Yuko a somewhat unsympathetic, even irritating central character, and tells her story with an admirable economy and directorial restraint that makes the few outbursts of shouty emotion all the more jarring.

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Between the Devil and the Wide Blue Sea : [6/10]
Germany 2005 : Romuald KARMAKAR : 90 mins (documentary) : seen at Stadtkino cinema

   "You can run but you can't hide! / You can look but you can't touch! / Lucky in love unlucky in life! / Between the devil and the WIDE BLUE SEA!!!!!!!!" So bellows Douglas McCarthy, angry "singer" of electronic-music duo Fixmer/McCarthy, in the rousing final moments of Romuald Karmakar's latest experimental documentary. Despite his dopey lyrics McCarthy - who pioneered a particular brand of techno-industrial-pomp-stomp-goth back in the (eighties) day with Nitzer Ebb - is pretty much the star of the show here. It's an extended compilation of twenty-or-so electronic-heavy tracks, from half a dozen bands displaying the wide range of current electronic music: the others include Captain Comatose, Alter Ego, Cobra Killer and T.Raumschpiele. Some have cult followings, others may not be household names in their own households.
   Where some of the other participants are little more than knob-twiddlers (Alter Ego twiddling in particular forceful style) McCarthy at least puts on a hyperkinetic show: in the film's most remarkable sequence, we see him before as well as during one particularly raucous number, psyching himself up at the bottom of an outdoors ramp before bounding on stage. Despite such highlights, 90 minutes is pushing it for this kind of material - fans of the genre will be in heaven, those who can't stand it will be in hell, neutrals may be intrigued by the audaciously down-the-line aesthetic displayed. No context, no voiceover, no explanations, no history, no titles, no nothing apart from the bands doing their stuff. If Icelandic docu Screaming Masterpiece was 9 Songs without the sex, Between The Devil is Screaming Masterpiece without the landscape shots and tubthumping chatter. And it's all the more refreshing for that.

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Shin Sung-Il Is Lost : [5/10]
Shin Sung-Il-Eui Hangbang-Bulmyung aka The Forgotten Child 1 - Shin Sung-Il Is Lost : (South) Korea 2005 : SHIN Jane : 103 mins (feature) : seen at Stadtkino cinema

   And he certainly isn't the only one by the time the credits roll. This the latest addition to the unofficial genre of what we may brand "bugf*ck" movies - the term used by Mike D'Angelo when reviewing Takashi Miike's Gozu. And Shing Sung-Il Is Lost is perhaps what Miike have come up with if he'd been asked to come up with child-centric version of cult British TV show The Prisoner, with a heavy One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest vibe and an utterly discombobulating plot.
   We're in a desolate orphanage in a desolate corner of South Korea, where the adults' doctrine is a weird interpretation of Christianity that stigmatises the public consumption of food. Tasty stir-fries are available, but the children are "guilted" into consuming a diet entirely comprising "Choco Pies" - and they do so under beds, in old fridges and cupboards, etc. A new arrival expresses bemusement at the odd regime - inadvertently stoking the fires of rebellion which circle around the mysteriously porky figure of Shin Sung-Il (Hyun Sik-Cho)...
   Writer-director Shin clearly has satirical ambitions for her surreal parable: but what's being satirised? Religion? Free will? Education? The recent politics of South (or maybe North) Korea? It becomes increasingly hard to tell as the events depicted become increasingly surreal, temporally dislocated, and downright obscure. The film is extremely frustrating to watch: at first the tone is strikingly original, the script darkly amusing (despite the nightmarish claustrophobia of the situation, and the serious child-abuse subject-matter) and uniformly well-acted by the youthful cast (a sure litmus-test of directorial talent). But the wheels come off the wagon around the halfway stage, and the final act becomes increasingly self-indulgent in its head-scratching loopiness - to the extent that the closing-title mention of a sequel (The Forgotten Child 2: Kap Sang-Soo Is Doomed) seems more like a threat than a promise.

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and thus ends the V'05 report. Goodnight, indeed, Vienna.

Neil Young
reviews written 29th October


or HERE for full A-Z of all films seen and Jigsaw Lounge's Vienna/Viennale overview