STRANGE CIRCUS

 It is time to review another Sion Sono film, and this time I have chosen his 2005 film “Strange Circus”, a film that is extreme to the fullest filled with sex, madness, incest, revenge and of course a circus.  It is also a bloody good film too.

Let me start by mentioning that “Strange Circus” deals with a lot of disturbing things so those who are easily offended should probably stop reading now.  The film is about a young girl named Mitsuko who suffers horribly at the hand of her father, who is also the principal of the school she attends.  Sadly Mitsuko is regularly raped and molested by her father, but along with that, he disturbingly locks the young girl in a cello case which has a special hole in it so she is forced to watch her father and mother, Sayuri, have sex.  So regular is the abuse that Mitsuko has to start to believe that she is her mother and that she is enjoying the rape, just to endure the pain she is really going through.  One day in a moment that should have saved the young girl, Sayuri walks in on her husband and daughter.  In an instant her mind snaps at the horror she has just witnessed, but instead of helping Mitsuko, she becomes upset and jealous of her daughter and from this day on she too starts abusing the girl, but in a physical manner, constantly beating on her when she is upset with her.  During one of these fights, this time over a lost earring, Mitsuko accidently pushes her mother which causes her to fall down some stairs.  She hits her head and ends up dying from the blow.  Traumatized by the guilt, Mitsuko believes that it is her duty to take her mother’s place in the world and continues to accept the abuse of her father.  However once her grades start dramatically falling at school, it is like it is finally too much for her and Mitsuko decides to jump from the roof of the school in an attempt to take her own life.  However such is her luck, that she survives the fall but ends up paralyzed from the hips down.  What has this girl done to deserve such a life?

It is actually this point in the film that it takes a drastic shift as we find out that what we are watching is actually the work of a famous writer named Taeko, and this is her latest story.  She is met by her publishers as they see how she is going with her new manuscript as her deadline is coming up within a couple of weeks.  She is nearly finished, but the company decides to give Taeko an assistant, Yuji, to make sure she delivers by the due date.  After noticing that Taeko is in a wheelchair herself, and looking into her story in more depth, Yuji begins to wonder if what she is writing is autobiographical.  Is Taeko actually Mitsuko all grown up?  Yuji decides to find out once and for all but is he prepared for the answer he is going to get? 

Of all of the films that I have watched so far from director Sion Sono, “Strange Circus” is the most successful in achieving what it originally sets out to do.  It is a film that all at once disturbs us, makes us think, and even entertains us.  The circus of the title is literally the circus of the mind, as right at the start of the film, the ringleader looks directly at the camera and invites us on stage, thus giving us a look inside the mind of this sad and abused little girl (or is it?).  The film is basically separated into thirds, and the first third where we are witness to the atrocities put upon this young girl is thankfully treated very seriously and does not wink at the audience at all.  As such this part of the film is probably the strongest portion of the film.  It is incredibly disturbing as it is about a young girl being sexually abused by her father and about how this abuse infects her mind, so it is never going to be an easy watch.  Depending on how this material was handled there was a chance that the subject matter could be used for exploitative purposes but thankfully Sono respects his characters (and actors) and handles the material very realistically.  Speaking of the actors, Sono is able to get around putting his young child actor into any disturbing situations by the using the plot device where Mitsuko sees herself as her mother during the abuse.  As such whenever these scenes are taking place, Masumi Miyazaki (who plays Sayuri, the mother) fills the role of Mitsuko.  Visually this segment of the film is quite amazing as when we are in the mind of the girl, a lot of the images we are witness to are very surreal and more like representations of what has happened rather than exactly what is happening.  The colour red is used extensively (maybe a little predictably) with the blood painted walls of the school being a standout.

When we realize that what we have just witnessed is actually just a story that a famous author, Taeko, is writing, we are then thrown into the real world and visually the film becomes a little subdued.  Again Masumi Miyazaki plays the role of Taeko, which helps in the confusion of identities within the film, and in this section Sono let’s her go a little bit closer to the edge of madness as it is obvious right from the get-go that something is amiss with the novelist.  It is here that I should commend Miyazaki for her performance(s) in the film because within the three roles she plays she is able to create three amazing and quite different characters.  Throughout the film she is taken to a number of dark places that must have been hard to perform, but she does so admirably giving them a weight and seriousness to them.  She also has a lot of fun with the role of Taeko who, like I just mentioned, may not be all there.  It is within this section that the insane qualities that we have come to know from a Sion Sono film begin to rear their heads.  

Another performance that I have to mention is that of Issei Ishida who plays the quiet and shy assistant Yuji.  He really gives a brilliantly nuanced performance and it is probably my favourite from any Sion Sono film.  Without giving away anything that happens in the final third of the film, what I will say is that Yuji’s character goes through quite the transformation before the film’s end where he is no longer the meek, shy and timid character he appears at the beginning.  Ishida makes both extremes of Yuji’s character seem so believable, although I do think he was more comfortable within the role when he is the shy assistant (looking like he has just walked out of a J-Pop band).  While I always complain that Sono lets his actors overact, if there was one person who could be accused of this in “Strange Circus” it is Ishida.  He is right on the edge, so close to going over it in terms of overacting, but personally I think he does a brilliant job of staying on the right side.

If you think that the film starts to go a little insane in the second third, well hold onto your set, because it goes bat-shit crazy for the finale, as true identities are revealed and revenge is sought.  While this is the kind of stuff you expect from a Sono film, it is actually this third that brings the quality of the film down a little.  Do not get me wrong, it is incredibly entertaining, but it starts to work with the lowest common denominator in terms of gore and horror.  It starts to be less about the mind and more about blood.  Like I said, very entertaining but a little cliché despite how insane it all is.  There are also some incredibly poor and cheap looking special effects that really take you out of the film in this section, they just are not believable at all, in fact I was surprised at just how poor they were.  It is within this section that the visual splendor kicks off again, with the colour red being highlighted once more (mainly from the huge amounts of blood being spilt).

“Strange Circus” brings to mind two other filmmakers and their work, David Lynch and Takashi Miike.  While Sono is always being compared to countrymen Miike, “Strange Circus” is actually the first film that I thought truly resembled Miike’s style especially visually and editorially (there is a scene at the end that almost seems like a direct lift from Miike’s “Ichi The Killer”).   The similarities to Lynch have to do with his obsession with the mind and how it can hide something horrible a person has done or been done to them, in an attempt to continue to live a normal life.  This is ultimately what “Strange Circus” looks at, the life-long damage to a person (both physically and mentally) after being regularly abused.  While on the outside everything may look fine, within it could be a whole different story.  Another director that I was regularly thinking about while watching “Strange Circus” was Pedro Almodovar.  While the film is nowhere near as polished as his films, the melodramatic elements of the plot where similar, as well as the fact that I felt that Sono truly loved these demented characters he had created in a way that Almodovar himself does in his own films.

Overall, I was mightily impressed by “Strange Circus”.  I was happy to see that it tackled the themes of incest and sexual abuse very seriously, while also telling the insane story of an erotic novelist.  The film does end up becoming incredibly bloody but for those who like their cinema to be of the dark variety, I do not hesitate to recommend Sion Sono’s “Strange Circus”.  It is a great film that if not for a few hiccups near the finale, would have almost been a classic.

4 Stars.

HEADSHOT

Back around the time of 2003, during the release of his film “Last Life In The Universe”, director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang was riding the wave of international popularity.  I am sure that it is no coincidence that this recognition came due to the fact that he was working with master cinematographer Christopher Doyle on the film, which meant that “Last Life In The Universe” was always going to get more coverage than his previous films.  It was in fact the Doyle connection that introduced me to the world of Ratanaruang’s cinema, and I am so glad that these two artists did collaborate, for if they hadn’t I may not have become familiar with one of the greatest and most unique artists working in cinema today.  However after the working collaboration between the pair ended (they made one more feature, “Invisible Waves”, and a short, “Twelve Twenty” together), Ratanaruang’s films suddenly became much harder to see.  This was incredibly frustrating because the quality of the films did not drop at all (both the subsequent “Ploy” and “Nymph” are amazing films), but for some reason English language distributors did not pick up these films, and still today, there are no English-friendly releases for them.  As such, less has been written and discussed about them.  What is the point of this paragraph?  Nothing really except to point out that “Headshot” is often described as a return-to-form for Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, which I believe to be a false statement because I feel he was never out of form to begin with.  Thankfully “Headshot” has been picked up by international distributors so the film will be out there and seen, and yet somewhat ironically, this is the first film of Pen-Ek’s since 2001’s “Mon-Rak Transistor” that I have not seen on the big screen (but I am hoping it will screen at this year’s MIFF to rectify that).

“Headshot” is described by Ratanaruang himself as a “Buddhist film noir”.  It is a film that is told in a non-linear fashion with scenes from the past and present blending in a fluid way that the viewer is never once confused as to what exactly is going on.  The film is about a policeman called Tul, who after bringing down a politician’s son in a massive drug raid and then subsequently refusing to take a life changing bribe to make the crime go away, is set up for a murder he did not commit.  As a result of this set-up, Tul ends up going to jail for a lesser crime, and while there he reads a book by a doctor calling himself “The Demon”.  The book is about how he believes that evil exists in everybody and for some reason Tul finds himself drawn to the book enough to write a letter to the author.  Surprisingly, the doctor visits him in prison and explains to him that he is in a group that organizes assassinations on the criminals of the world, criminals who believe themselves to be above the law and think that they can get away with anything.  The doctor than says that he believes that Tul would be a perfect assassin for his organization and offers him a position.  Tul rejects this initial offer but later when he has done his time and is out of prison, he ends up joining the group for reasons I will not divulge here.  One day, while disguised as a monk and on the job to assassinate a corrupt politician, he is shot in the back of the head and is then in a coma for three months.  After he awakes, he realizes that he is suffering from a rare condition where he now literally sees everything upside down.  This is not at all good for a hitman because he just is not used to seeing the world like this, and as such he now has to look at things more closely and significantly, which includes himself as he begins to realize just how far off the path in life he has gone.  The more inward he looks, the more he is disturbed by what he has become, and he decides to leave this life of killing and to try and save his soul by becoming a monk for real.  However that is easier said than done with people looking for him and trying to kill him.

This is a film with so many twists and turns in it, that I have left out a great number of plot details (and characters) so as to not ruin the experience.  Also, as I mentioned before, the film is non-linear, so what I have described above does not all happen in a straight line.  The film is also quite dense with so much going on for its entire running time.  When I was explaining the whole film to my wife the other night, she was stunned that the film only went for an hour and forty minutes, because after everything that I mentioned she was sure it would’ve been closer to two and a half hours.  While I dispute the claim that this is a return-to-form for Ratanaruang, it is a return to the type of crime film he was making earlier in his career (with films like “Fun Bar Karoake” and “6ixtynin9”), yet it is infused with the spirituality of his later films.  I believe this is the first time that Pen-Ek has done an adaptation of someone else’s work, in this case a novel by Win Lyovarin entitled “Rain Falling Up The Sky”, and yet the whole thing feels like it could only have come from Pen-Ek himself, it just has the atmosphere present in all of his films.

What is interesting about “Headshot” is the way Rataranuang has handled the material because you would assume that most directors would use the whole “seeing the world upside down” gimmick as the backbone of the film, and exploit the situation visually.  While we do get Tul’s point of view shots every now and then, Rataranuang and his cinematographer Chankit Chamnivikaipong do not go to the well too often, they are more interested in the internal struggle that Tul is going through as opposed to the way he views the external world.  Actually this is a good thing too because the shots that we do see from upside down are so disorientating it would have been a hard slog watching if the technique was overused.  I must admit that I have always wanted Christopher Doyle and Rataranuang to make another film together, but if that is not to be, I’m glad his cinematographer of choice is Chamnivikaipong (he has been cinematographer on all of Pen-Ek’s films minus the Doyle ones).  He really does fantastic work and he continues to get better and better each film.  Chamnivikaipong appears to have found a real confidence since “Ploy” and he always makes visually interesting films.  I was particularly impressed by the set piece in the forest in the pouring rain.  He makes it look so beautiful while still getting the point across that visibility is almost nil.

The man chosen for the lead role of Tul was Nopachai Chaiyanam, who previously had a role in Rataranuang’s “Nymph”.  In that film, he really wasn’t given that much to do but did bring a presence with him however in “Headshot” he is almost in every scene.  The range of emotions he has to process throughout the film is amazing and it is his performance that holds the film together.  This is not a happy man and someone who is fighting an internal battle to find some peace within, so while a lot of the film is a physical battle, it is equally a mental battle too, which Chaiyanam is able to express via limited dialogue.  He also equips himself nicely in the physical states making it fully believable that he was a cop and is now a tough hitman.

The two girls in the film both make an impression also, but personally I loved Sirin Horwang as Rin, a girl that Tul takes hostage during one of his escapes.  She just had this attitude towards the world that I loved.  Yes, she was taken hostage, but it felt like she didn’t give a damn and was in control the whole time.  It helped that she also looked amazing especially in the scene in the forest that I mentioned above.  Chanokporn Sayoungkal, who plays Joy, is also very attractive but I felt she wasn’t as strong in the acting department as she could have been, as she appeared to only have one expression.

Compared to the last few films from Pen-Ek, “Headshot” is quite plot heavy, and yet those of you that go into the film thinking that this will be an action film will leave disappointed because the film works more as a drama with splashes of violence and action spread throughout.  Amazingly, with the amount of plot that is within the film, it is still presented in Pen-Ek’s usual style which is more about the visuals and mood as opposed to dialogue.  The whole Buddhist angle is worked well into the film, and it really does become more of a spiritual journey as the film goes on.  However with Buddhism really focusing heavily on karma, does a hitman really have a chance in today’s world?  A special mention must be made about Patamanadda Yukol’s editing which is truly outstanding.  As I mentioned earlier, he has created a beautiful fluid style, so while we may see images well before their meaning is fully explained to us, it never becomes confusing or overwhelming.  That is not to say that you do not have to pay attention, because you do, as scenes you think may be happening in the present can be from the past, but if you are focused while watching the film, you will never have a problem distinguishing them.

Overall, I was a big fan of Pen-Ek Rataranuang’s hitman thriller “Headshot”, it appears that the man just does not make bad films (ok, let’s pretend that “Invisible Waves” didn’t happen).  While this new film is considerably more plot heavy than his recent fare, it still has the same visual style and atmosphere of those mood pieces.  The film has a great leading performance from Nopachai Chaiyanam and it has been impeccably edited.  I wholeheartedly recommend “Headshot” and it is great to see Rataranuang continuing his streak of great and interesting films.  As usual I look forward to what is to come next from this exciting director.

4 Stars.

EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS

Over the next month or two, I plan to go through the oeuvre of Japanese director Sion Sono (aka Shion Sono).  Sono is a director who currently has quite a reputation for making bloody, violent and disturbing films that often have him compared to his countryman Takashi Miike.  Both directors seem attracted to the bizarre and the perverse, and both have the ability to work at a good pace, so you never have to wait too long for a new film from each director.  From a personal standpoint, I am still not sure whether or not I consider Sono to be a great filmmaker, which is the main reason for this little project.  If you look through this blog, you will see that I have already reviewed two of his recent features with mixed opinions (I thought “Cold Fish” was inspired, while “Guilty Of Romance” was a disappointment).  Previous to these I had already seen “Suicide Circle, which was the film that put Sono on the map, due in no small part to its very confronting opening scene.  The first film I decided to check out for this self-made retrospective was “Exte: Hair Extensions” which was made in 2007 and is about killer hair extensions (I know what you are thinking, not that tired old cliché again).  So was it any good?  Let’s take a look and see.

During a routine search of a shipping container full of human hair, which is being readied to be made into hair extensions, two custom officers stumble across the body of a human corpse inside.  After an autopsy, the coroner explains to the officers that the girl had been killed for her internal organs (as well as one of her eyes), to be sold on the black market, and that her body had been filled with her own hair.  A worker at the morgue, Yamazaki, who is more than a little bizarre as well as having a fetish for hair, soon realizes that the hair on the corpse is still growing and at an incredible rate.  Seeing an opportunity, the man steals the body from the morgue and takes her home where he uses the corpse’s hair to create new and quite beautiful hair extensions.  Meanwhile, in another part of the city, we find Yuko, an apprentice hair-dresser who is living with her best friend Yuki, an amateur dancer.  Yuko is currently preparing for a big hairdressing exam that is coming up, when her horrible sister dumps her daughter, Mami, on Yuko’s doorstep, explaining (via letter) that Yuko can now look after the young girl.  Suddenly, Yuko’s perfect world is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of her young niece.  Without being able to get in contact with her sister, she must look after Mami, all while continuing to go to work and study for her exam.  Things get more serious when Yuko notices all of the bruises on Mami’s body and understands that her sister, Kiyomi, has been abusing the girl.  While all this is going on, Yamazaki has visited the Gilles De Rais salon, where Yuko works, and offered the workers free samples of his new hair extensions, so confident he is of their quality.  When the hair-dressers start using these extensions strange things begin to happen to the wearer as the hair takes control of them and kills each of them.

The idea of killer hair extensions is obviously a ridiculous one, and luckily Sono knows this, and to battle this problem “Exte: Hair Extensions” is presented as a horror comedy.  That is not to say that moments in the film are not treated seriously, because the whole subplot of Mami’s abuse is handled with extreme seriousness by both the filmmakers and the actors.  Personally these dramatic moments I felt were the strongest of the film and held the most resonance.  It is heartbreaking seeing the bruises and scars on this young girl and in the way she reacts towards other human beings.  She is always afraid of being beaten and is so timid and apologetic for everything she does.  It is then quite beautiful seeing Mami come out of her shell and trusting Yuko, after all of the kindness she grants the young girl, and this creates an anchor for the audience while watching the film, it gives us something and someone to care about when the horror kicks in.

In regards to the horror scenes, these are not handled as seriously, but as I’ve already mentioned, how can they be, we are talking about killer hair extensions.  Instead Sono delivers these scenes with a tongue firmly planted in his cheek.  They are rarely terrifying, but visually they are quite something to behold.  While most of the effects are of the computer generated variety, they are all done extremely well with scenes of the killer hair appearing from open wounds or human orifices being particularly gruesome.  One scene where a girl is pulling a single strand of hair from underneath her eyeball had me on the edge of my seat.  The only problem with the horror is the connection between the victims and the rage-filled corpse that is controlling the hair.  While we learn the reason why she is so angry, we are never given any reason as to why she attacks the people she does and more importantly we are never given any proper explanation as to why she stops at the end, why she is suddenly at peace.  This is something that I feel that is important because without it, the reality of the situation suffers.  The film needs to have its own rules and once explaining them must then abide by these rules.  However here I feel the motive of the “ghost” is muddled and needed further explanation.

Something that I mentioned in both of my other reviews of Sion Sono films is the fact that he has problem with letting members of his cast overact.  He again falls into this trap here with Ren Ohsugi’s performance as Yamazaki.  He lets Ohsugi go so far over the top that it borders on ridiculousness.  Granted his character is rooted more in the comedy section of the film, but for me it just did not work at all, and it took me out of the film whenever he was on screen.  The early scenes at the morgue I thought he was genuinely creepy, but after he steals the corpse and wears that stupid wig, not to mention singing that insane hair song, well he feels like he has walked out of a completely different film.  This may be a personal preference because I am not a huge fan of comedy in my horror (unless it is of the darkest quality), and I have read a lot of people’s opinions who think Ren Ohsugi’s performance is the highlight of “Exte: Hair Extensions”.  While not suffering quite as bad, I also felt that Tsugami’s work in the role of Kiyomi, Yuko’s selfish and abusive sister, was also not grounded enough in reality and bordered on caricature.  As opposed to Yamazaki, the character of Kiyomi exists in the scenes that are handled the most realistically, where we are witness to the little girl’s abuse, and I believe if Tsugami had toned down her performance just a little, these scenes of true horror would have been much more disturbing.

At the other end of the acting spectrum is Chiaki Kuriyama’s truly wonderful performance as Yuki.  She is everything that the character needs as she is bubbly and fun in a naïve and innocent way, but when the child abuse drama is revealed she is able to pull off the necessary weight needed to give it the respect that it deserves. As the film goes on, we also find out that Yuki is carrying with her the guilt of an action she committed in the past, and again Kuriyama delivers the goods in these scenes. It is this performance that grounds the whole film in reality while everything around her is basically insane.  Another thing in her favour is that Chiaki Kuriyama just has a lovely screen presence, you cannot help but love her, and as I have mentioned many times before, this can only help a horror film when you actually care for the characters you are following.

Overall, there is much to like about “Exte: Hair Extensions”, but it also has its flaws.  While the film is definitely worth watching for Chiaki Kuriyama’s thespian abilities, once again I feel that director Sion Sono has let one of his actors go too far over the top to the detriment of the film.  Sono has created some outstanding visual images with regards to the hair horror scenes, however I never found these scenes to be scary, although it can be argued that they are played more for laughs anyway.  Although the film is often described as a horror / comedy, serious themes and issues are addressed within in regards to child abuse, and it is during these scenes that the film shines at its brightest.  Personally, I thought “Exte: Hair Extensions” was a great way to start my Sion Sono retrospective and as such recommend it and I now look forward to what comes next.  Oh, and I have to briefly mention the final kill in the film, which is ridiculous to the extreme……….only in Japan.

3 Stars.