If you took a random poll asking people to name the most mysterious place on Earth the answers you’d receive would be fairly widespread. Some would say The North Pole, others Madagascar, and Robert Fure would reply with a woman’s g-spot. But surely someone, somewhere would answer correctly.

And that correct answer lay beneath the surface of the Earth’s oceans.

Hollywood is well aware of this fact and has explored and exploited our fear of the unknown in films both great and small, from The Abyss to Sphere, with stops at all levels of quality in between. Two such movies released in 1989, Deepstar Six and Leviathan, bypassed subtlety and any real sense of mystery in favor of creature feature thrills, chills and at least a modicum of fun. Both are worth watching on late night cable, but Leviathan is the better of the two thanks in large part to the presence of Peter Weller.

And now twenty two years later South Korea has jumped into the bloody pool with Sector 7, but unlike the films above its efforts to (intentionally) entertain come up dry.

A deep sea diver off the coast of Korea in 1985 stands on the ocean floor checking a drill pipe for damage, but he finds himself distracted by a gaggle of small, luminous creatures swimming around his head. Before he can say “holy tiny Abyss ripoffs!” the ground beneath his feet begins to rumble and collapse beneath him. Almost three decades later we fly over and into an oil mining platform in an area called sector 7, and all hell is breaking loose. One of the drills has spring a leak, and in a scene played and paced like the most dramatic and serious thing that could ever happen on an oil rig the men run around and grimace in an effort to stem the tide. Cha Hae-joon (Ha Ji-won), the hot but aggressively bull headed woman on the crew jumps into action and saves the day.

Then gives a forceful thumbs up to show that it’s all going to be okay.

Except it isn’t, because soon people start turning up dead, and while a human culprit is suspected at first it quickly becomes clear that they’re facing something far worse. An angry sea creature resembling a Lovecraftian walrus has boarded the platform intent on destroying everyone. What is this monster, and where did it come from? And why is no one paying attention to the creepy little guy who was just bitten on the face by one of those little glowing animals?

I’m genetically predisposed to give a pass to movies starring attractive women, and Ha definitely fits the bill. She’s cute as hell, spunky and does a fine job in the over the top heroine role, but the movie is so bad in just about every other area that not even a beautiful and capable Asian actress is enough to save it. Yeah, it’s that bad.

The special effects are one of the film’s earliest and biggest downfalls which is never a good thing in an action/sci-fi/horror film. The oil platform itself is represented via CGI or some obvious stage background, and a motorcycle race (?) early on (that you know will play a big part later on) looks less realistic than any scene in Speed Racer. Korea’s finest monster moment remains The Host, but the one here manages to be the film’s most effective visual effect even if the creature design seems a bit odd. It’s hard to feel threatened by something flopping around on its front flippers.

The movie also suffers from a screenplay that pays homage to other genre films at the expense of doing anything original. Cha is the stereotypical female lead following the Alien mold, the creature’s origin is revealed to be due to man’s hubris and greed and there’s even a scene where a handful of characters compare scars a la the one from Jaws. The characters themselves are cheap caricatures that fit the hero, bad guy, and expendable roles, and just about all of the actors seem to be competing as to who can overact the most. And the third act? The entire third act? One overly long and drawn out battle that alternates between fights and running for what seems like a full hour… only to end with unearned and desperate melodrama.

Sector 7 has some unintentionally entertaining moments, but the handful of laughs you’ll get from the overly expressive performances and ridiculously fake motorcycle race can’t make up for the lack of thrills, scares and scenes of interest. Several of the key players here, both in front of and behind the camera, also worked on the Korean disaster pic Tidal Wave. That film mixed special effects and melodrama to a far more entertaining result. Skip this one and rent that instead.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

A man and a woman sit before a judge discussing the dissolution of their marriage. Simin wants to move out of the country with her husband and daughter in tow, but Nader refuses as he needs to stay and care for his ill and elderly father. She can go, he says, but she cannot take their daughter. The judge agrees, and the two are dismissed back to the turmoil of their private lives.

This simple setup could be the start of any number of familiar dramas in most countries around the globe, but Simin and Nader are a modern day Iranian couple which puts an unusual and rarely seen spin on the story that follows. What starts as a straight forward tale of one couple’s split becomes an exploration into the many divisions in their life. The separation between them is simply the first step into the gap between parent and child, male and female, right and wrong, and truth and fiction.

A Separation is a mesmerizing journey into the everyday, but it’s an everyday that has remained foreign to much of the Western world.

Nader (Peyman Maadi) is forced to seek outside help with watching his daughter and father while he’s away at work, but a woman named Razieh (Sareh Bayet) unexpectedly reports the next morning. Her husband was unavailable, but because they need the money she has come in his place unbeknownst to him. Her secret is due to the strict religious and cultural rules that forbid a woman from being alone with a man who isn’t her family, and that situation is stressed even further when Nader’s father wets himself and Razieh reluctantly helps to bathe him.

The turning point comes when Nader returns from work to find his father tied to the bed in a precarious position and Razieh is nowhere to be found. She returns shortly thereafter and the two engage in a fight of words, accusations and possibly a shove that sends her falling down the stairs.

What follows is a he said/she said situation where both parties play fast and loose with the facts for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the old man in the bed. Tensions and charges escalate to a point where the law is once again invited into their lives, but this time the outcome in the court of public and social opinion may be the more punishing and damning one.

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s previous film, About Elly, offered a surprising, suspenseful and exhilarating look at a disappearance in modern day Iran, and he repeats that success with A Separation. The mystery here is of a far more domestic nature, but the drama that flows from it is equally engrossing and captivating. Farhadi’s style is direct and without much in the way of excessive flourishes, but it holds the attention masterfully all the same. If I recall correctly this film doesn’t even feature a score to inform the audience when and how to feel and react.

Instead it’s all in the performances of the three leads. Maadi commands the screen as a respectable man feeling pressure on all sides but who never wavers in his love for his daughter and father. He’s a good man in a bad situation, and it’s complicated by the ways and mores of Iranian culture. Bayet’s turn as the possibly wronged woman is equally strong as she embodies both victim and subtle manipulator for reasons of her own. And Leila Hatami brings conviction and doubt to the role of Simin as she’s tasked with taking sides between the man she still loves who’s currently preventing her from taking their daughter and a fellow woman he may have wronged.

As stated above, the core of the story could play out anywhere, but the nuances and distinctions brought to it by way of its Iranian setting add layers that would never be found in a Hollywood rendition. The lines between the sexes are far less blurred than we’re used to while the separation between right and wrong becomes far murkier when clouded by the customs and beliefs of a modern day non secular society. There are surprising twists and turns to be found here, but the film is far more of a character piece than a mystery.

This is not the Iran that the nightly news has turned into a land of evil and inhumanity. These characters are people who love and feel anger and regret. They’re simultaneously familiar and new, and their experiences are entertaining, educational and ultimately eye opening. And if it takes the power of cinema to lessen the separation between our culture and theirs that can only be a good thing.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

The doors of Norway’s Bastoy Residential School remained open from 1900 to 1953, and in that half century hundreds of wayward boys called it home. They found themselves there for crimes big and small, but the goal was the same for all of them. Find the “honorable, humble, useful, Christian boy” inside the criminal, and then return them to society. But while this small chunk of rock adrift just south of Oslo was a home it was never meant to feel like one.

A biting cold pervaded the place, inside and out, and it was as prevalent as the rigid discipline, hard labor and overall oppressiveness that was the school’s daily routine. And as inescapable as the island itself.

King of Devil’s Island is based on the true story of a student uprising that occurred at Bastoy in 1915. An incident triggered by sexual abuse but fueled by pent-up rage led to the boys overthrowing their guardians and rioting until a unit of the Norwegian army arrived to quell the situation. The film is an affecting drama that mostly overcomes a familiar story with strong acting by Stellan Skarsgard and others, atmospheric cinematography and a core message of integrity and solidarity.

“Make sure they learn the rules.”

Two new boys arrive by boat in the fall of 1915. Erling (Benjamin Helstad) is rumored to have killed someone, and his face bears the bloodied bruising of police brutality. Ivar (Magnus Langlete) is a skinny and weak willed boy, timid and easily frightened, whose crime is unknown but one can’t imagine as anything more than petty or mistaken. They’re rechristened C19 and C5, respectively, before being stripped and paraded in the nude past their new neighbors and on to their dorm.

The harsh conditions of their open-ended stay at Bastoy are immediately visible in the frozen sea that surrounds them and in the eyes of the other boys. The island’s governor, Bestyreren (Skarsgard), lords over the place with his unhappy wife at his side, but while his intentions are noble his methods stretch the boundaries of the word. Isolation, caning and forced exertion are a few of the official tactics, but Bestyreren’s right-hand man, house father Brathen (Kristoffer Joner), has one more that he keep secret.

Erling feels a certain protectiveness over Ivar, but he has little interest in anyone else. His only goal is escape, but when his behavior catches the eye of a model student due to be released any day now a challenging but oddly rewarding friendship develops. Olav (Trond Nilssen), aka C1, is the student leader on the verge of freedom, but while the truth can sometimes set you free it can also seal your fate.

The film follows these three boys and the others as they interact and learn to deal with their lot in life until that no longer remains an option. We’ve seen dozens of prison-set films before where prisoners are presented in somewhat compassionate light so that we cheer their inevitable uprising and bid for escape, and King of Devil’s Island does little new with the premise aside from setting and historical basis. But that familiarity is the film’s only real weakness.

The characters come to us as enigmas. Their past lives are left unspoken at Bastoy and are therefore unknown to the viewers. Has Erling actually killed someone? We only see him and the others in the here and now as they’re driven to find conformity and friendship in what appears to be the coldest damn place on Earth.

Of course Norway isn’t anywhere near the cold of Antarctica (the actual coldest place on Earth), but director Marius Holst and cinematographer John Andreas Andersen have crafted a place that looks and feels as cold and foreboding as no other. The boys’ breath is visible at night in their beds, and the wind bites at their faces throughout the day. The bitter cold is paired with and against the shots of the darkly beautiful island and crashing sea, and you’ve never seen such a starkly gorgeous vision of hell.

The visuals reach their peak in scenes that bring to life Erling’s repeated tale of life aboard a whaling vessel. We see large mammals cresting the waves, bloodied and taut harpoons impaled in their sides, and we know that some creatures will fight to survive in even the most dire situations. Erling, Olav and the others find strength in the stories, and through them they find a bond with each other.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

The title of this post is pretty self explanatory, so no introduction is really needed here. But… I do feel compelled to point out the same thing I point out every year. Nailing foreign releases down to a particular year isn’t an exact science. Obviously every film has an actual date of initial release, but most foreign titles don’t hit our shores until the following year, if at all. I try to go by original release date whenever possible though which means some of my choices have yet to be screened in the US outside of film festivals and import DVDs.

That said, here’s a list of my eleven favorite foreign films for 2011 in alphabetical order. (Be sure to check out my lists from 2010, 2009 and 2008 too.)

And because I know someone will ask, yes, I did see Certified Copy.

The Artist (France)

A silent movie star (Jean Dujardin) meets and falls for a young starlet just as her talkies start making his silent films obsolete. Writer/director Michel Hazanavicius has crafted a loving homage to the early days of cinema with wit, creativity and charm to spare. The story is a simple one and while it’s far from the best film of the year (that some people are touting) it’s still a sweet and fun piece of entertainment made with dedication and love. Hazanavicius commits to his subject so The Artist is almost exclusively dialogue free and instead is accompanied by a lush and lively score from Ludovic Bource.

The Flowers of War (China)

The city of Nanking, China has fallen to the Japanese, and a morally bankrupt American (Christian Bale) is all that stands between the barbarian invaders and a group of Chinese schoolgirls. Zhang Yimou moves his eye for action and art a bit closer to the present day with this powerful look at what happens when mankind’s most vile nature comes face to face with its kindest. The film is visually stunning as it moves between intense battles, emotionally devastating scenes that wrench the heart and moments of true beauty found in faces, fabrics and architecture.

Haunters (South Korea)

A young man with the ability to control other people’s minds uses it for malicious and selfish purposes, but when he finally meets the only person capable of resisting his control the two enter into a psychic battle that leaves carnage and destruction in their wake. I count myself as a fan of Unbreakable, but folks who loved that film’s plot while hating the pacing should seek out this Korean gem. It’s a a dark and twisted battle of wills filled with solid action and suspense as well as some deliciously wicked laughs and visually exciting set pieces.

Headhunters (Norway)

Roger Brown is a successful corporate headhunter with a beautiful wife, house and life, but he also moonlights as an art thief. His double life catches up to him though when he’s caught red handed, and winds up neck deep in murder, deceit and fecal matter. This adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s novel is fantastically entertaining in regard to its suspense, action and dark comedy, but the main draw is Aksel Hennie’s lead performance. Brown is a cocky and smug son of a bitch early on, but as he falls further and further into the rabbit hole he becomes a sympathetic character who viewers want to see succeed and survive the mess he’s gotten himself into.

The Kid With a Bike (Belgium)

Cyril’s (Thomas Doret) father gives up one day and leaves him at an orphanage, but the boy refuses to accept this hard truth and instead makes efforts to find him. A local hairdresser (Cécile de France) begins to foster Cyril on weekends, but unresolved issues with his dad and the influence of a local thug threaten to permanently derail his adolescence. There’s no way to make this synopsis exciting, but I promise you the film is an emotionally suspenseful must-see that warms and wrenches your heart in equal measure. Doret gives an award-worthy performance as a boy determined to keep standing no matter what. His enthusiasm and excitement are infectious, and you can’t help but fall for him even as his actions tempt fate.

The global recession we currently find ourselves in has many causes, but one of the more obvious ones has to do with the machinations and maneuverings of the men and women who work in the financial market. Movies like the recent Margin Call and Wall Street sequel used this environment for fast paced financial drama (with varying success), but that’s not the only genre the crisis can intrude upon.

Perhaps there’s a bit of romance and a few laughs to be found amidst the greed, depression, and suffering too.

That was apparently the hope anyway with the new French film, My Piece of the Pie, but the end results are anything but humorous or romantic. They’re not even all that dramatic. Hell, the ending isn’t even an ending.

“If I ever live with a woman again, I want you with me every day. You’ll be my woman interpreter.”

Steve (Gilles Lellouche) is a London-based financial wunderkind whose latest legal smash-n-grab involved a factory in a small coastal town in France, and he’s rewarded with a cushy promotion running a new hedge fund in Paris. He watches the TV news with near disinterest as they report on the massive layoffs at the factory and the near suicide of one of its employees. France (Karin Viard) is that near-suicide, and once she recovers she heads to Paris for training in the housekeeper field and gets a job at Steve’s new condo.

Neither of the two know about their common grounds, and thus begins an odd relationship that promises both connection and conflict. So far so good, and even if their meet up is a bit contrived far worse coincidences have graced the screen in the name of romance, comedy and drama.

The problem with the scenario here though is that neither of these people are very likeable, and that never changes. Steve is a self-involved prick who would rather spend time in front of his computer screens than with his son from a failed relationship. He’s cruel to those around him even going so far as to force himself upon a woman who he’s treated to a luxurious weekend getaway. Perhaps it’s meant to be seen as an aggressive seduction, but it looks like date rape to these eyes. That’s a long road for any character to come back from, and sexual assault aside it takes the film a full hour before he begins showing the slightest hint of humanity. Too little too late doesn’t even scratch the surface here. Lellouche, who also stars in the adrenaline filled Point Blank, does a fine enough job with the role, but the character rarely does anything to encourage affection or interest.

France isn’t mean-spirited or greedy, but she’s clearly got issues including a selfish streak evident in her suicide attempt which would have left her three daughters behind. It’s never touched on again either which presents an invisible wall between her character and the audience’s concern. More damaging though is Viard’s performance as she often feels like she’s acting in a completely different movie. She plays the comedic moments so ridiculously broad that the tones clash with the attempts at drama surrounding her “funny” Russian accent and goofy faces.

Writer/director Cédric Klapisch had a commercial and critical hit in 2002 with L’Auberge Espagnole (and has/is following it up with two sequels), but where that film made good use of the characters in a story that weaved naturally between drama and comedy this one fails to do the same.

The film’s third act attempts to raise the stakes in a way that seems at first to be expected before taking a sharp left turn in an entirely new direction. It’s nonsensical but exciting nonetheless for the boldness on display, and you can’t help but wonder how Klapisch will pull it off… until you realize he has no such plans. Viewers can fill in the blanks as to what comes next even to the point of redeeming the film, but that’s not their job. It’s the filmmaker’s.

There’s a kernel of a good and intriguing story at work here in its attempt to use the grand drama of the recession as a backdrop for a character piece with two divergent souls. Once the film commits to the coincidence of the two meeting it should have allowed itself to hit the other expected beats as well. Give viewers the blow-up, the change of heart, the redemption… give the viewer something that qualifies as real character growth. My Piece of the Pie does none of that and instead squanders an intriguing setup and two potentially interesting characters. Forget coming back for seconds, this piece of pie is barely worth the first bite.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Sion Sono’s films have never really been aimed at a wide audience, but few directors are as capable as he is of making the ugliest things beautiful. Case in point is his latest film, Guilty of Romance.

Izumi is the docile wife of a successful romance novelist who saves all of his energy and emotion for his books and readers. Her entire life is in service to him as her daily duties include making sure his shoes are ready for him at the door and his meals are ready for him at dinnertime. She’s also expected to compliment his naked body even though he’s never interested in sharing it with her in any meaningful way.

Seriously, the scene where he shows her his penis, fishing for reassuring words, and then tells her she can touch it if she wants is just awkward and painful to watch.

But when she steps out of her normal life to get a job and find her own worth she discovers a deviance she never expected… both outside her home and inside herself. She meets Mitsuko, a professor by day who moonlights as a prostitute, and the two of them descend into a very dark hole together.

And that’s not a euphemism.

Okay, maybe it is.

The third rail of Sono’s film in addition to the housewife and the prostitute is a grisly murder discovered at the beginning of the film. A woman has been dismembered and her identifying features have been removed. Even more distressing though is that the remaining parts have been incorporated into two grisly mannequin-themed tableaus (like the one seen above). The identity of the dead woman as well as of her killer is a mystery teased throughout the film, but the focus is on Izumi and (to a lesser degree) Mitsuko.

Izumi starts and ends her new life as a sausage girl, a description that goes from precise to tawdry fairly quickly. A woman approaches her and offers her a modeling job that starts legitimate but soon turns hardcore pornographic. But while Izumi should be horrified, and admittedly she looks the victim at first, she instead finds liberation and satisfaction in the attention and sexual shenanigans. She celebrates in her ability to receive and give orgasmic joy, and returning each night to the role of subservient housewife becomes more and more difficult.

Her nocturnal adventures become equally arduous as she follows Mitsuko’s lead into some dark and disturbing places. She’s essentially on a quest to find her own happiness, her true self, but it may be a destination destined to elude her. The film references Franz Kafka’s novel, The Castle, on multiple occasions, which seems to allude that Izumi’s pursuit of an identity may be a fruitless one. It’s a grim observation for an incredibly bleak film.

Guilty of Romance has a few hurdles that average movie-goers will probably be unable or unwilling to cross, but fans of Sono’s previous films will once again find much to love here. He captures the darkness within us all (and the pitch blackness within some) and forces it into the light to reveal twisted layers beneath the most ordinary of surfaces, and he does so through images both horrific and grotesquely beautiful. He also creates a visually stimulating world of light, dark and myriad colors between, all presented in a very visible sense. There are some beautiful shots to be found here even as the contents of the frame disturb and disgust.

The film is fairly unrelenting though in the sense that barely a single character is presented without major dysfunction or negative underpinning. The female detective is the closest to being someone the viewers can identify with, but she exists as little more than a pair of eyes to show us the grisly crime scenes. It’s worth noting that this is the international cut which clocks in twenty minutes shorter than the Japanese one, and that the missing footage is reportedly focused more on the detective’s character. Sono has officially signed off on both versions, so make of that what you will.

Cold Fish, for all of its peccadilloes, remains one of Sono’s most accessible films thanks in large part to its pacing and somewhat traditional plot structure (relatively speaking). Guilty of Romance is more of a return to form in that it’s a slow burn that gets progressively darker as the minutes tick by, and unfortunately it’s not nearly as satisfying for it. Still, if you’re in the mood for something bleak but beautiful you’d be hard pressed finding a more suitable film than this.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

In honor of The Muppets and our ongoing Muppet coverage this week’s Foreign Objects is sticking with the puppet theme in our own special way. But the Muppets are an American sensation, so while they’ve traveled the world they’ve always done so in American movies. Non-Muppet puppet movies are few and far between, and most of them are still US productions (Team America: World Police, Puppet Master, Let My Puppets Come) with only a handful of foreign titles like Legend of the Sacred Stone and Kooky.

But I couldn’t find either of those.

So we’ll be taking a look at Peter Jackson’s 1989 release from New Zealand, Meet the Feebles. It’s like The Muppets, but with more sex, drugs, murder and sticky white fluids…

Today’s Peter Jackson is a far cry from the Peter Jackson of twenty years ago. Now he makes movies with immense budgets, casts and canvases, but a couple decades ago he was chainsawing his way through an alien’s head and out its ass and chopping up zombies with a lawn mower. He also had a slight weight fluctuation.

And in between Bad Taste and Dead Alive (both incredibly fun and gory films) he took time out to make a puppet movie.

The Feebles are a troupe of performers who stage a musical/variety show with singing, dancing and more, and as Meet the Feebles opens they’re finishing up their title number with energy and style. Heidi the Hippo is the show’s star alongside Harry the Rabbit, Sid the Elephant, Wynyard the Frog, Daisy the Cow and others. The non-performers include Bletch the Walrus (who also manages the show and is Heidi’s lover), Trevor the Rat, Samantha the Cat, Arfur the Worm and a fly reporter who’s constantly on the lookout for salacious scoops about the stars.

What could possibly be so salacious about a group of puppets? For starters, Sid has been accused of fathering an illegitimate child with a chicken, Harry’s promiscuous ways have led to a possible life-threatening STD, Wynard is addicted to smack and prone to Vietnam flashbacks, and Trevor is shooting S&M movies in the basement. Oh, and Bletch is stuffing a pussy that doesn’t belong to Heidi. (He’s screwing Samantha.)

Into this menagerie of sin comes Robert the Hedgehog, a shy young singer hoping to join the Feebles. While trying to find his way to stardom he catches a glimpse of Lucille the Poodle and falls instantly in love.But can such innocence survive in a world filled with drug addiction, pornography, disease, jealousy, madness and inter-species fornication?

Much like the aardvark character pictured above Meet the Feebles really only works in spurts. The initial shock of it all wears out pretty quick as Jackson and friends hit viewers with a non-stop succession of unexpected puppet behaviors with some bits being more successful than others. Almost all of them feel like they run on too long though. The film as a whole would have worked better as a short as the multiple side stories never really amount to much more than a few laughs and a couple “holy hell” exclamations.

The main story-lines though, the Robert/Lucille and Heidi/Bletch relationships, work well and come to a pretty spectacular conclusion when Heidi not only discovers Bletch’s infidelity but acts on it. It’s definitely the kind of thing Miss Piggy would do if pushed to the edge. Or not.

Meet the Feebles is worth a watch for fans of off the wall and over the top antics, especially when those antics involve felt, fluids and machine guns. It can be a slow slog at times, mostly around the middle, but by the time Sebastian the Fox starts singing “Sodomy” you’ll be smiling and enjoying the kinds of mayhem and carnage that the Muppets can only dream about. Although they’d probably do so in the form of nightmares…

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Chhaya and Arvind are living a borderline middle-class life in modern day India, but circumstances are sliding them lower. Arvind (Alekh Sangal) can’t catch a break at his job managing a construction crew where he’s consistently pressured by his boss to speed things up and do more with less. Sitting across from the balding man with the crude 9/11 sculpture on his desk Arvind is forced to swallow his pride and accept the mistreatment if he wants to hang on to his job. Chhaya (Rasika Dugal) meanwhile spends her days at home doing chores, shopping for groceries, and falling quickly and quietly into depression.

At least until an accident of questionable intervention leads her to find a sculpture of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, that “even God couldn’t make more beautiful.” The statue sits in a young boy’s shop where he claims to be the sculptor and sets a very high price for it, but the financial cost doesn’t phase her. She becomes convinced that her and her husband need the sculpture to make everything better, to make everything right, and to give her another chance at having children.

Her desire becomes an obsession, and soon the better life they were hoping for begins slipping through their fingers faster than they could have imagined. The result is an engaging and beautifully rendered drama about the dangers of compulsion and the lengths we’ll go to be happy.

“How many times have I told you not to piss the stones off?”

Kshay, or Corrode, presents American audiences with a world that’s both familiar and foreign. Chhaya and Arvind are far from destitute, but they still live a month to month existence. While clearly in love with each other there’s a growing divide between them as he works in the rational world to make things right and she falls prey to the potentially irrational desire to bring a life-size sculpture into their small apartment in order to solve all of their problems. Her blossoming madness is given dangerous room to grow when he heads out of town on a business trip meant to save their future, and the statue’s power over her leads to some dangerously rash and tragic decisions.

It’s easy to see hints of early David Lynch and Darren Aronofsky in writer/director Karan Gour’s debut although it never quite reaches the extremes of either. Gour and cinematographer Abhinay Khoparzi’s black and white film is crisp and natural-looking, but shadows and other less material pockets of darkness slowly grow in power alongside Chhaya’s obsession. They also use some interesting dream sequences, POV shots and camera tricks to convey the mix of madness and divinity including an early shot through Lakshmi’s eyes as “she” seemingly wills Chhaya into the shop. The possibility that there may be a larger hand at work early on is a tantalizing suggestion in regard to the all-consuming obsession that follows and the eventual outcome.

Gour and Khoparzi accomplish quite a bit on a shoestring budget, but the film’s greatest strength is Dugal’s performance as the slowly disintegrating Chhaya. She anchors the film physically as she’s in most scenes but also emotionally. Her struggle with their situation, her focused descent into madness, and her revelations regarding motherhood all ring powerfully true. “It’s from all this dullness that she gets her beauty,” Cchaya says at one point in reference to the unfinished sculpture of Lakshmi, but she could just as easily have been talking about herself.

While most of the film works there is one narrative move towards the end that just doesn’t feel right or natural. Arvind’s character is well established throughout for his grounded actions and reactions, but he’s allowed a major misstep that seems disingenuous and there solely for dramatic punch. That said, the scenes still find suspense and drama even if they do ring false, and it’s not nearly enough of a problem to waylay the film’s successes.

Kshay offers a sad and affecting reality countered with an atmosphere that hints at a deeper madness, all of it presented with stark but often stunning black and white images and a beautiful string-based score. A third act misstep prevents it from being a complete success, but it still manages to impress (and depress) on a miniscule budget. Foreign cinema fans will want to seek this one out as not only is it atypical to what most Americans expect from an Indian movie, but it’s also an eerie and disquieting film that’s both well made and beautifully acted.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

China in the early twentieth century is a land of strife, starvation and feuding warlords. Hao Jie (Andy Lau) is one of the strongest and most ruthless among them, even going so far as to kill an enemy within the walls of the sacred Shaolin temple. Together with his right-hand man, Tsao Man (Nicholas Tse), he murders and maims his way across the country with impunity. But his greed reaches its limit when bloodthirsty ambition combined with an act of betrayal destroys his family and leaves him for dead.

Wounded and emotionally devastated, Hao takes refuge with the only people that will have him… the Shaolin monks.

He can’t hide from his past forever though, and soon the new man he claims to be is forced to face the world of bloodshed he once called his own. Joining Hao in the fight are the honorable, ass-kicking monks and a wise-cracking cook (Jackie Chan), but will they be enough to defeat the new warlord hellbent on their destruction?

Shaolin is the latest film to tell a tale of China’s legendary monks, and it’s easily one of the best. The most well known until now was probably Jet Li’s The Shaolin Temple, but while the two are arguably comparable in the action department this new incarnation trumps them all when it comes to the drama and character work. It’s rare to find an all-out action film where consequences, heartbreak and redemption are handled with the same effort and care afforded to the fights and stunt work.

Lau is a big reason for the film’s success as he brings acting ability along with capable fight skills. His body double steps in for some of the more extreme and impressive action, but while Lau still manages to do enough to impress he makes up for that gap with an alternately bad-ass and heartfelt performance.

Supporting performers are equally enjoyable including Jackie Chan’s turn as the cook who first befriends Hao. The role highlights what makes Chan a star by focusing on his charisma, shadowed sadness, and still impressive ability to make combat both playful and entertaining. Wu Jing plays one of the monks, and while he doesn’t get a fight anywhere near the awesomeness of his alley brawl with Donnie Yen in SPL he still manages to win fans with his moves and smile. Fan Bingbing’s role as Hao’s wife is even smaller, but it’s impossible to look away from her stunningly beautiful eyes when she’s on screen.

Director Benny Chan has been making films for over two decades, and while he’s always been hit or miss the last ten years have seen a steady stream of solidly entertaining action flicks. At least until last year when he released the godawful City Under Siege. The Aaron Kwok-starrer was bad enough to almost wipe out any goodwill earned by his previous films, but now with Shaolin Chan looks to be back on his game in a big way.

Shaolin is epic action that does just about everything right. The fight scenes, both big and small, are fierce and beautifully shot by action director Cory Yuen. The performances are strong and charismatic across the board from lead characters on down to the little girl portraying Lao’s daughter. And the story manages to weave in emotion, warmth and morality without ever feeling maudlin or getting in the way of the ass-kickery.

The Upside: Fantastic action in both hand to hand fights and larger set-pieces; real heart and drama at the core of the characters; Fan Bingbing is almost as talented as she is gorgeous

The Downside: Shockingly, the real bad guys are the white foreigners; Lau’s body double is occasionally too obvious; the horses look to have had it pretty rough

Shaolin is currently in limited theatrical release. It will also be available on Blu-ray/DVD in the UK starting September 12th from CineAsia.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

It shouldn’t have to be this way, but the summer movie-going season is generally known far more for big, bombastic spectacles than for smart, affecting character-based films. That’s not a knock on blockbusters as there were actually quite a few good ones in theaters the past few months, but it’s more an unfortunate commentary on how the smaller films are often lost in the shuffle of May to July if they’re even released at all. But August is the month where explosions and CGI slowly give way to dialogue and character, and it’s here where an intimate look at life, death, and defying expectations just might find the audience it deserves.

Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) has had enough. She’s only eleven years old, but she’s already had her fill of life’s absurdities thanks to a family that annoys far more than they enrich. Her mother (Anne Brochet) is happily celebrating ten years of therapy (and the subsequent stream of anti-depressants), her father (Wladimir Yordanoff) moves seamlessly between being flustered and disinterested, and her older sister (Sarah Lepicard) is doing her best to make her little sister’s life miserable.

The building’s concierge/janitor, Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko), is a frumpy-looking woman who has very little patience for the bullshit emanating from her wealthy tenants. She’s a tool to them and nothing more, and while they most likely wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup she’s actually harboring a rich interior life that she shares with no one. She finds an odd friendship with Paloma, and with the young girl’s encouragement she may just find a lot more.

“I’ve made my mind up. At the end of the year, the day I turn twelve, on June 16th next, in 165 days, I’ll kill myself.”

Paloma has her mind set on suicide and is counting down the days until she’ll swallow dozens of pills pilfered from her mother over the past couple months. She’s filming it all on a hand me down 8mm camera to record life’s mundane travesties and document her reasons. It’s more of an intellectual reaction to the world around her than an emotional one. A dinner party sees her sitting alone and quiet surrounded by chatty adults, and when she does chime in to correct one of them her dad sends her to her room. She’s simply bored by those around her, but as her end approaches she truly meets Renée for the first time and the two find mutual inspiration in each other.

The third player here is a newcomer to the building named Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He takes an immediate liking to Paloma and Renée, but his romantic attention towards the latter is an unfamiliar feeling for the woman. Even if she did recognize it can she possibly deserve it? The expectation here would be for Paloma to transform the poorly dressed grump into a new woman to aid in her new romance, but this is not a film interested in delivering the expected relationships.

Director Mona Achache wrote the script from the bestselling novel by Muriel Barbery, and she’s managed to maintain character depth across all three lead roles while still keeping a breezy and engaging pace. The story’s setup implies a certain denouement for the characters, but the film avoids the expected and forges a fresh trail through some very human terrain. Her film’s tone and atmosphere are matched with a delightful score from Gabriel Yared. It’s playful but fills the ears with energy and emotion when necessary.

All of the actors deliver capable performances, but it’s Guillermic and Balasko who shine in their oddball roles. Balasko finds her character’s balance between a prickly exterior and a soft, hopeful heart, and Guillermic is equally as good at displaying an intellect and awareness of a future she wants no part of. Her face is pale and serious, but her wild mane of blonde her belies the child within. She observes the world as unfair, as when her mother greets Renée at the door before rushing out and closing it behind her. “Don’t let the cat out,” Paloma narrates over her filming. “Don’t let the janitor in.” But she also childishly mimes hari-kari, jumping to her death, and sudden heart failure as practice for the inevitable. Her imagination is forefront in her play, her art, and in a small number of drawings that find a life of their own, and Guillermic makes you believe this young girl fully capable of it all.

The Hedgehog is a sweet and humorous tale that finds love and hope in the unexpected while still taking time to comment on the gap between classes. Strong acting, a light directorial touch, a whimsical score, and a message about friendship and love make this a film worth seeking out and embracing. You’re never too old or too young to find purpose in life… you just have to be willing to knock on the right door.

The Upside: Fantastic performances from Garance Le Guillermic and Josiane Balasko; humorous and affecting; story winds up in some unexpected places

The Downside: Some viewers may take issue with the ending and deem it unnecessary

The Hedgehog opens in limited theatrical release on August 19th.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima) isn’t quite leading the life she always wanted in Tokyo. She’s been there for five years and like clockwork is on both her fifth job and fifth boyfriend… neither of which she’s all that thrilled about. The job sees her walked over by her male bosses and abused by little kids, and her private life finds her playing second fiddle to her boyfriend’s daughter, Kayoko (Kira Aihara). Her co-workers tell her to leave Kenichi (Masashi Endo), but she thinks she doesn’t really deserve any better. “We’re both lower-middles,” she says. How can she possibly hope for more?

Clearly, Sayako is no bundle of sunshine.

She gets a call from home letting her know that her father is gravely ill and she’s needed to help with the family business, a freshwater clam packing company. Her impulse is to say no as she left home for a reason, but she reluctantly lets Kenichi talk her into returning home with both him and his rude daughter in tow. Once there she goes to work trying to keep the factory afloat in her father’s absence, but it won’t be easy. If her door-mat attitude wasn’t bad enough she’s also forced to confront townspeople she offended, deal with her boyfriend’s wandering eye, and accept the guilt of her last words to her father those many years ago.

“This watermelon grew from your poo!”

If Sawako Decides were a traditional film (or an American one) Sawako would return home and learn to triumph over all of the adversity in her path as well as find a wonderful boyfriend. It opens after all with her getting a colonic irrigation to literally cleanse herself of all the shit she’s holding inside. It’s both symbolic and incidental as it isn’t her first time with a hose up her butt. But writer/director Yuya Ishii has no interest in catering to tradition. His primary interest appears to be providing a rare and honest look at life, love, and expectations.

And it starts with a lead character that most of us would leave in the rear view mirror without a second thought.

Sawako is a grump and a pushover, and she has no plans on changing that attitude anytime soon. She’s also incredibly docile, something that comes from believing she doesn’t deserve better from her job, boyfriend, and life in general. Standing up for herself and to someone else are not options. So when a factory worker, technically Sawako’s employee, calls her out as a liar all she can do is apologize to the woman. The family home has no plumbing so she has to take a bucket filled with waste out to the wetland behind the house and ladle it into the wet earth. She’s told others can do the work, but she believes it’s her task.

But it’s while doing work like this that the real Sawako begins to poke through. She finds a singular flower growing in the shit-filled swamp and tries to give it to father. It doesn’t go as planned, but it’s a tender moment offering a glimpse of the woman, and daughter, that she so badly wants to be. More randomly sweet scenes help make this initially unlikeable character into someone that the audience eventually warms up to, but the film remains stalwart and true to its particular premise.

The propelling force behind the film is Mitsushima’s performance as the publicly meek and privately inebriated Sawako. She pops open multiple beers throughout the film, and they’re quickly identified as the sole source of comfort she allows herself. Mitsushima brings innocence and a barely contained irritation to the role that makes her appear far more human than many films manage with their leading ladies.

Sawako Decides is an unlikely slow-burn of a film in that it’s peppered with small, humorous touches, and it ends as calmly as it begins. Well, aside from the musical number…

The Upside: Hikari Mitsushima is adorable even as her character frustrates; script is sweet and lightly funny at times; positive message about staying true to yourself

The Downside: Slow character build; end message/moral is unusual and may not be positive enough for some

Sawako Decides is currently playing in UK theaters.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

What do you call a zombie movie without zombies? The smart-asses among you will say 28 Days Later, but that at least had killer humans acting like zombies… no, I’m referring more to the idea and atmosphere of a zombie movie but without the actual brain-munching undead. What you’d have is the new, blackly comic, Argentinian thriller, Phase 7.

Coco (Daniel Hendler) and his very pregnant wife Pipi (Jazmín Stuart) are shopping and bickering with love when the other customers around them start panicking and rushing the store. It’s a peripheral panic though as the couple barely notices the frenetic nature of their fellow city dwellers. At least not until they return home and see news that a global virus has spread to epidemic level and has finally reached their home of Buenos Aires. A quick trip down to the lobby late at night sees a neighbor being wheeled out and a plastic barrier going up… the building has been quarantined and the residents are trapped within.

“We are sixteen people and one maid.”

Expectations at this point, largely informed by the excellent [Rec] films from Spain, dictate that the building’s residents soon start facing off against the blood-thirsty infected, but Phase 7 is more interested in subverting those expectations than it it is in meeting them. We get to know Coco and Pipi through their banter during the isolation, and we quickly come to care for them. As time progresses though fear, confusion, and illness begin to saturate the building, and Coco soon discovers that if they don’t fall victim to the virus they may just get their head blown off by a trigger-happy neighbor.

It’s in these neighborly interactions that we meet the oddball residents including the mysteriously well-prepared Horacio (José “Yayo” Guridi) who takes an interest in the couple and he and Coco begin exploring the building’s floors and apartments. Some residents take kindly to their curiosity, but others don’t, and soon a shotgun-wielding octogenarian is roaming the halls with a restrained paranoia and a pocket full of ammunition. The action and antics that follow are filled with suspense, bloody deaths, and more than a little physical comedy, and just about all of it works beautifully.

The cast makes the most of their characters without ever resorting to horror movie clichés or stereotypes. Stuart’s pregnant wife spends much of the film oblivious to the goings on around her and her husband’s bloody involvement, but she keeps the character at the forefront through personality and affection. Hendler is loads of fun as a guy who just wants to be left alone but continuously finds himself reluctantly drawn into the breach. Guridi is equally entertaining as the man who knows too much about what may or not be happening.

Special attention is due to the lively and playful score from Guillermo Guareschi that exists as a solid ode to John Carpenter while also being it’s own entertaining creation. It’s filled with fun, energetic pieces that help propel the action and tone of the film between moments both serious and silly.

Writer/director Nicolás Goldbart makes a very self-assured and entertaining debut here and manages a solid balance of violence and comedy. His direction shows a willingness to take things slow when necessary for the characters and a lack of fear when it comes to the trickier mash-up of tones. The script’s only real  questionable point is an unnecessary and dated jab and President Bush’s New World Order speech that continues to encourage conspiracy theorists the world over. The excess time given to it feels a little politicized and it doesn’t quite gel with the rest of the film. Still, it’s just one small part of an otherwise fun, surprising, and occasionally bloody whole.

The Upside: Good mix of the serious and the humorous; character driven build-up to the action; score is a lively and fun ode to John Carpenter

The Downside: No big set-piece; George Bush’s New World Order speech is dated and unnecessary; may not be meaty enough for viewers expecting something akin to [Rec]

Phase 7 is in limited theatrical release at participating AMC Theaters

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Remember the MPAA’s much ballyhooed new rating for adult themed/non-porn films back in 1990? NC-17 stood for ‘No children under 17″ and was meant for films too aggressively naughty or thematically mature for kids and teens to even glimpse. One of the earliest films to receive the rating was Belgium’s caustic and satiric faux-documentary, Man Bites Dog (1992). It features a camera crew following a serial killer day to day as he does what he does best… kill, rape, and disembowel innocent people. It’s a brilliant film that manages to subvert both documentaries and serial killer films in one bloody swathe.

Vampires is not rated NC-17, but then again pretty much nothing is these days. (A Serbian Film most likely won’t play in a theater with that rating, and Blue Valentine successfully appealed down to an R.) But it bears a few other similarities with with the film starting with its country of origin, Belgium. It’s also done in the style of a documentary, but the serial killer is traded in for a family of vampires who introduce the filmmakers to their modern-day bloodsucking ways.

It doesn’t have the same bite as that earlier film, but it’s violent, darkly comic, and damn good.

“The truth is Elizabeth can’t stop herself from eating children. As for me, when they’re older, I can’t stop myself from making love to them. But they never want to stay.”

The film opens with the statement that three years ago the filmmakers were invited to film an insider’s view of Belgium’s vampire community. That initial footage survived, but the cameraman didn’t. A second attempt comes to the same bloody conclusion, but the third time’s the charm when a family invites the filmmakers into their home and lives. And promises not to eat them. Georges Saint-Germain (Carlo Ferrante) is the head of the household along with his wife Bertha (Vera Van Dooren), and together they have two children including a son named Samson (Pierre Lognay) and a daughter named Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet).

George is a professional about it all, Bertha is giddy and easily excitable, and Samson loves everything that comes with his vampiric state, but the eternally teenage Grace is a very unhappy indeed. She files her teeth but they keep growing back, she applies fake tans, she thinks her mom hates her, and she’s constantly trying to kill herself. The task should be easy enough, but Grace is determined to die like a human so she tries hanging, drowning, self-immolation and more without success. The family also have a pair of vampires named Elizabeth (Selma Alaoui) and Bienvenu (Batiste Sornin) living in the cramped basement where they’re forced to sleep in stand-up coffins.

The couple in the basement are forced to live there because childless vampires aren’t allowed to own property. What, you’ve never heard that part of the vampire code before? It’s details like that help make Vampires a constantly interesting film. You’ll also learn about special vampire night schools where they go to learn to laugh by watching horror films, the rules forbidding humans at the dinner table unless of course they’re what’s for dinner, and the free-spirited attitude towards sex they share with no risk of pregnancy or disease.

Co-writer/director Vincent Lannoo fills his film with a mix of vampire “facts” both traditional and new, but they’re not the only things to hold the viewer’s interest. The script (co-written by Frédérique Broos) also keeps things moving with a strong sense of dark humor throughout including references to The Meat, a live ex-prostitute they keep in the solarium (and occasionally the freezer) who feeds them each night. Grace’s teenage melodrama is met by a mother who constantly refers to her as ugly, and while incredibly charming, Samson resembles nothing more than Diedrich Bader’s Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies as he stumbles goofily through life (or death).

Like the previously mentioned Man Bites Dog however this is not a film with a fair amount of violence and terror. It’s far from gory, but there are bites and attacks that often come without warning and serve as a reminder that a dinner invite from a vampire should be given a serious second thought. Lannoo also shoots a nighttime assault on a home that manages to exhilarate and terrify through it’s green night vision tint, and it’s a scene that would fit in well in an actual balls out horror film.

Vampires is slightly uneven though as the humor seems far more prevalent in the opening half than in the final forty-five minutes. It’s still engaging past that point but it does so less with laughs and more with plot. But is that’s hardly a criticism. The movie is funny, dark, and constantly engaging… and when’s the last time any two of those things could be said about a vampire movie?

The Upside: Blackly comic; bloody at times; effective and refreshing take on the bland subject of vampires; night-vision assault is frighteningly well done

The Downside: Edits betray single camera documentary premise; much of the humor is front-loaded to first half

Vampires is currently available on VOD from IFC.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

This week’s film comes from director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch, Nightwatch), and it shows us that white people are violent and racist bastards no matter the language. An educated man named Johannes moves his family back to his small hometown and finds trouble when a local immigrant is targeted by townspeople out for revenge. The dark-skinned, Bosnian refugee is falsely accused of killing a kindly old woman, and when the angry, Danish citizens come looking for justice Johannes puts the lives of his family and himself at risk by taking the man into his home for protection. Bornedal’s film is part thriller and part social commentary as it explores the motivations of people both good and bad. And the razor thin line between the two…

“It begins way out here in the sticks… where the road only leads forward and backwards. For here, the world is simple.”

A young mother named Pernille (Lene Nystrøm) interrupts a fight between her two children and turns it into a lesson on morality, sadness, and evil. She says there are no evil people, only those who are sad and don’t have love in their lives. The kids argue that Osama Bin Laden sure does smile a lot for someone supposedly so sad… and she sends them off to brush their teeth. Her husband Johannes (Lasse Rimmer) is a successful attorney who moved the family back to his home town to enjoy the peace and tranquility of rural living, and in addition to making decisions that will come back to bite him in the ass he’s also of the belief that all conflicts can be resolved through dialogue.

But when his brother Lars (Jens Andersen) accidentally runs over the wife of the town’s big boss, an ex-military man named Ingvar (Mogens Pederson), the intentionally cruel finger of blame is pointed at a Bosnian refugee named Alain (Bojan Navojec). Lars and Ingvar work the townsfolk into an inebriated mob of reactionary racists that head out after Alain for revenge. Johannes shelters Alain because it’s the right thing to do and because law and order must be maintained, but that changes when the locals begin to assault his home and his family.

The concept of newcomers forced to square off against locals is nothing new and usually comes in one of two varieties. At its most base you have films like Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes where the conflict between the civilized and uncivilized exists purely as visceral entertainment, but the other end of the spectrum features films designed as commentary as much on the visitors as it is on the ignorant and violent locals. Straw Dogs fits this second type and is the film that comes closest to Bornedal’s latest in theme, tone, and intent.

The mob’s alcohol and racist-fueled actions are easy targets, but the film also touches on Denmark as a nation overflowing with immigrants and a populace that has grown weary and fearful of these new neighbors. Their fear is more than a touch xenophobic, but there’s also the harsh reality of unemployment and a burdened public support system that weighs on their minds. Not that any of that excuses their actions, but Bornedal provides it as a context often missing from films of this nature.

Johannes’ behavior though is the crux of the film. He’s a good man, but there’s no denying he sees himself as better than the riff-raff that populates much of the town. He holds his career, his family, and his head well above many of those around him, but when the situation escalates he’s forced to descend to their more animalistic level… and he likes it. His new found embrace of all things manly will not end well for those around him, especially when he finds his priorities as malleable as the truth.

Deliver Us From Evil makes no excuses for the actions of its antagonists, but it’s still interested in exploring the motivations of all involved. From the knee-jerk reactions and mob mentality of the film’s obvious bad guys to the misguided and ill-advised “heroics” by Johannes, the film’s final stance is that the real world sits uncomfortably between the ideal definitions of right and wrong. That and the fact that white men are total pricks.

The Upside: Strong morality play; finely crafted slow build towards an inferno; soft and somber score underlines the weight of it all; Andersen gives a very strong performance as a very weak man; unpredictable

The Downside: End choices may be difficult to accept and/or understand

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

There are few genre character-types as tired and overdone as the vampire. They’re rarely scary, usually uninteresting, and often terribly predictable. They’ve become so mundane and commonplace that any attempt to shake up the norm automatically raises a film’s value and may help offset other issues. 30 Days Of Night for example trades the sexy, vampiric allure for some truly effective and horrific monsters. Daybreakers adds a unique, sci-fi twist that made vamps the normal citizens and humans the ones hiding in the dark. Let the Right One In is a coming of age tale that happens to feature a vampire. We Are the Night isn’t quite up to the standards of that Swedish chiller, but it’s definitely as good or better than the other two.

The film opens on a passenger jet high in the night sky as the camera tracks from the blood-soaked cockpit back through an equally messy passenger cabin before coming to rest on three well-dressed, smiling women. Engorged on their energy drink of choice they knock out the fuselage door and leap from the plane…

They cross paths with a street thief named Lena (Karoline Herfurth) and take her under their wing when the trio’s de facto leader, Louise (Nina Hoss), falls for her hard and bites her even harder. Lena’s indoctrination into the family brings her on a wild ride through a world of wealthy excess, emotional conflict, and the thirst for human blood, but with Berlin’s finest hot on their trail can these fanged fugitives survive to see another sunrise?

“We eat, drink, sniff coke, and fuck as much as we like. But we never get fat, pregnant, or hooked.”

That quote is an edgier, dirtier take on The Lost Boys‘ “Sleep all day, party all night, it’s fun to be a vampire” tagline, and it sums up the first two thirds of the film fairly well. After the stellar mid-air opening we’re treated to a well choreographed foot chase and an initiation for Lena that’s quite a bit harsher than the foggy bridge jump Jason Patric had to endure in Joel Schumacher’s film. They essentially toss her in a room with an abusive rapist and force her to confront her bloodlust. Once her powers are awakened she embraces them fully and learns to enjoy the extra strength, wall-walking ability, and high-stakes thievery the women thrive upon.

The film proceeds to explore the lives and lifestyles of the the four women in the quieter moments between the action and manages to say a lot about each by saying as little as possible. Louise’s attraction towards Lena is clear in her eyes and smile while Lena herself is torn between this ancient seductress and the young police detective who previously caught her stealing. Nora (Anna Fischer) is a pixie-ish wild girl intent on soaking up all the physical rewards her powers can afford her while at the same time terrified of the damage those abilities could do to someone she cares for. Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich) meanwhile eschews modern fashions in favor of a wardrobe more at home in the roaring twenties which is when she was turned. It’s more than the outfits of the time that she misses however as her silence and obvious sadness hints at the family she was forced to leave behind.

Traditional vampire tropes are played with, but it’s the fresh ideas that appeal here. The vamps are sexy without being exploited and are clearly in control of their situation. And the explanation given for the lack of male vampires is a doozy that makes me wish it was accompanied by flashbacks. The film definitely has heart, something lacking in most vampire movies, but it still manages to pack a visceral and stylish punch.

Director Dennis Gansel walks a thin line between showcasing his characters’ remaining humanity and highlighting the kick-ass shenanigans their abilities lead to, but he slides a bit heavy towards the latter for the film’s third act. It races ahead focuses purely on the element of action at the expense of logic and character. The film is no less entertaining for it, but the women get a bit lost amidst the gunfire and mayhem.

We Are the Night fits comfortably into the mold of non-traditional vampire movies, and while its ‘girl power’ message and stylish action aesthetic can’t compensate fully for its few faults it still manages to be a highly watchable and entertaining addition to the genre. I’d say it’s the best German vampire film since Nosferatu… but they’re the only two I know.

We Are the Night is currently available on VOD.

The Upside: Puts a feminine, action-fueled spin on vampires; several cool scenes including opening; characters exhibit real emotional traits and behavior; explanation for absence of male vampires is great; sexy female vampires, duh

The Downside: The two leads exhibit less character depth than the two supporting vamps; third act gets a bit lost in action for the sake of action; no nudity aside from some hairy guys in the shower!

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

A staple of comic book superhero movies is the origin story, and even though Hollywood is convinced audiences like seeing the same damn ones over and over (cough Spider Man Superman cough) it’s always refreshing to see new and original creations onscreen. One of the best (and most under-appreciated) is M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. The film is a methodically paced exploration of both the hero and villain roles and features some powerful yet quiet scenes of the two men coming to terms with who and what they are. (The scene with Bruce Willis at the breakfast table silently acknowledging to his son his new found heroic nature remains one of Shyamalan’s greatest achievements.) Now imagine that same kind of fresh and creative take on the subject but infused with brutality, hope, and some stellar action and suspense scenes…

A little boy with a prosthetic leg and a bandage over his eyes stumbles through the rain. He falls and tries to remove the fabric, but his mom abruptly grabs his hand and tells him he has to wear it at all times. The boy’s father arrives and begins to berate them both, taunting them that “Wrapping him up won’t make him human.” And then he begins to physically beat the woman. The boy’s tiny hands begin to clench and shake, he lifts one up to his face, and he removes the blindfold. The man stands, exits the house, and walks backwards through the rain until he’s in the middle of the street… where he proceeds to slowly but forcefully snap his own neck. Overcome by guilt, fear, and love the mother tries to choke the life out of the boy, but he fights back and is soon heading out into the world alone, angry, and cursed with the ability to control peoples minds.

Say hello to Cho-in… super-villain.

Twenty years later Cho-in (Kang Dong-won) lives in a high-rise apartment and wants for nothing thanks to his ability to control anyone’s mind. Nothing that is except normal human contact. At the other end of the moral spectrum sits Lim Kyu-nam (Ko Soo) who has had a fairly average life by comparison until he’s hit by a bus and loses his job. His brief spate of bad luck seems to turn around when he gets a managerial job at a pawn shop, at least until Cho-in targets the pawn shop for a routine cash grab.

He uses his powers to basically “freeze” everyone in the office while he directs the boss to retrieve money from the safe, but something odd happens during the super-powered robbery… Lim starts to move. It seems he’s immune to Cho-in’s power, but when he attempts to stop the psychic bad guy Cho-in forces the others in the room to attack him resulting in his boss’ death. And just like that, the two men become mortal enemies.

The rest of the film is a series of face-offs between the two as Lim tries to bring the psychic madman to justice while Cho-in cuts a swath of murder through the city trying simultaneously to escape capture and punish the do-gooder for meddling. Their clashes are often violent, occasionally touching, and always taken seriously. Not to say the movie isn’t fun, because it is. Lim’s friends are foreigners, one from Ghana and one from Turkey, and the three share a strong and believable relationship. “You pay taxes right?” asks one of them after learning that Lim is set on capturing the killer. “Do you know why? So other people can take care of this for you!”

Lim himself is charming in the way he moves from aimless goof to man with a purpose as evident in his repeated exclamations that he’s “Manager Lim!” Ko balances the role’s need for both innocence and heroics well, and he is a solid foil for Kang’s murderous mutant. Kang’s turn here is equally impressive, and while his character isn’t shy about his evil actions the memory of that abused and abandoned little boy is rarely gone completely from his eyes. He’s on a great streak between Secret Reunion, Woochi, and this, and I expect solid and varied performances from him for many years to come.

In addition to two compelling performances and a storyline that builds subtly to a fantastic ending, the movie also benefits from a lively score that adds to scenes of suspense as well as it does to more energetic action bits. And there are some beautifully configured scenes here including an effectively creepy setup where Cho-in sends a mob of zombies after the three friends and another where he takes control of dozens of pedestrians in a multi-tiered courtyard… and then makes them start leaping to their deaths. His power may be useless against Lim, but it’s incredibly effective against Lim’s conscience. “All you have to do is die to save them all,” he tells the would be hero.

Something that may not work for everyone is the film’s extremely high body count, especially as most of the murdered are cops. Seriously, a lot of people are killed fairly casually in this movie. That in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but the constant loss of life can be emotionally draining and may actually be a bit overdone. Another area that may bother some viewers is the lack of detail when it comes to the “how” behind the superhuman abilities. It’s never explained, but is that really a problem? Most heroes and villains with super powers not of the man-made variety are simply born with or develop them over time, and this is no different.

Haunters is the directorial debut of Kim Min-suk whose only previous film credit is as co-writer of Kim Jee-woon’s fantastically entertaining kimchi western, The Good the Bad the Weird. That’s not a bad place to start a film career, and he brings that same sense of solid pacing between spectacular action pieces to his new film. His script is about a constantly evolving battle of wills between the two men and their ideologies, and as a director he pairs that smart and creative writing with strong action, suspense, and scenes of real beauty and darkness. Plus, and this just may the most important part, the movie is damn entertaining and makes for a great double feature with Unbreakable.

Haunters is available on DVD and Blu-ray from YesAsia.

The Upside: Chilling opening scene; fantastic origin story; score is lively, energetic, and dramatic; great use of comic-book themes without obvious comic-book caricatures; several very cool set-pieces; strong dueling lead performances

The Downside: May be too much death (I know, it’s a stretch); no explanations of abilities; attempts at humor and melodrama don’t always succeed; title is bland and misleading (although better than the generic alternate, Psychic)

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives proved to be a divisive film in its commercial release following its surprise Palme d’Or win at last year’s Cannes. On the one hand, the strange film’s recognition exhibited a triumphant glimmer of hope for international art cinema in a world economy that hasn’t exactly been making room for ‘difficult’ art. On the other, for many the film has itself proved to be an alienating experience and was written off as a pretentious exercise that exemplifies the worst tendencies of art cinema.

While I found Uncle Boonmee to be a bizarre, wonderful, and ultimately entrancing journey very much worth taking, I do (to a degree) understand and sympathize with the film’s divisive reaction. There has been an ongoing debate about an aesthetic trend in international arthouse cinema known as “slow cinema.” Filmmakers from all over the world – Alexander Sokurov, Kim ki-Duk, Carlos Reygadas, Bela Tarr, and Weerasethakul himself, to name but a few – have (often following in the footsteps of Andrei Tarkovsky) made films of deliberate pace to various ends, especially those filmmakers who have a revisited thematic preoccupation with nature. While the slow aesthetic is still an affront to cinematic convention, in international arthouse terms it can be seen as a means of access and a shrewd economic move – an easily identifiable signifier of arthouse status that gives otherwise overlooked films, filmmakers, and countries a cinematic voice and a way to get into festivals.

While underrepresented nations getting to place their cinematic stamp visibly for the rest of the world to see is arguably never a bad thing, what has arisen from the slow cinema debate is speculation over whether some emergent slow filmmakers are employing the aesthetic “sincerely.” Such a debate has become especially present with particular films and filmmakers for whom the reasoning behind the still-rare aesthetic choice is unclear. For Weerasthetakul, a filmmaker for whom “meaning” and “intent” is often ambiguous throughout all his work, a lack of clarity in the eyes of many makes Uncle Boonmee come across as a moniker of high style without corresponding substance.

I respectfully disagree.

On the surface, Uncle Boonmee is about the final days of the terminally ill title character and how he comes to close his life. Boonmee is visited by ghosts and strange anthropomorphic spirits who are vessels for his loved ones who have already moved on. The film is so comprehensively occupied by spiritual themes of reincarnation that each creature we encounter – from a normal bull to strange “monkey ghosts” to a particularly talkative fish – that we quickly become trained to look at every creature as reasonably suspect; everything appears to be quite more than meets the eye. The film’s lyrically sparse opening scene establishes the world (and pacing) of Uncle Boonmee perfectly, as Weerasethakul’s patient camera is captivated by a bull who gets momentarily lost and while being observed by a striking, mysterious red-eyed country ghost.

Despite the film’s title, the various episodes that veer off what can only inaccurately be called the film’s “main plot” are never explicitly situated as Boonmee’s “past lives,” primarily because Weerasethakul’s distant camera is never firmly situated in the parameters Boonmee’s subjectivity: we sees ghosts not necessarily because he sees them, but because everybody can. The ambiguity of how these episodes are situated within the larger narrative (one involving a particularly memorable mystical encounter between a prince and the aforementioned talking fish) both add to the film’s layers of interest and depth (was Boonmee the bull or the monkey ghost at the film’s beginning, or was he neither?) while at the same time provide no routes for an easy or clear answer to the film’s many curious, esoteric mysteries that may not even be mysteries at all.

Weerasethakul is operating here in a specific liminal space between experimental artwork and arthouse filmmaking. Uncle Boonmee is a rather strange choice for the Palme d’Or as it’s not an autonomous film, but one part of a multifaceted, multimedia art installation project. One can’t help but feel that there are pathways to more fully understanding Uncle Boonmee elsewhere in Weerasethakul’s non-cinema-specific work, but these would undoubtedly lead to more ambigiuities wrapped up in more truly beautiful and visionary artistic frameworks. I’m not sure that I want easy answers or explanations for Uncle Boonmee, least of all because I’m not entirely certain the movie is asking any direct questions. Sometimes films are works of inexplicable expression, and sometimes ambiguity is just ambiguity. Sometimes it’s best to take the advice of Mr. Park from A Serious Man and simply “accept the mystery.” Some will and some won’t depending on their taste and expectations.

I don’t pretend to understand Uncle Boonmee, but it is a gorgeous, meditative film from one of contemporary arthouse cinema’s most challenging, unique, and original artists. When confronted with a film unlike any you’ve ever seen, it’s difficult to find the appropriate means by which to evaluate it.

Knowledge of Weerasethakul’s other art projects or previous films is by no means essential to experience Uncle Boonmee (no matter how much one engages with his work, there are still moments of his films that defy explanation), but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Any problems I had with Uncle Boonmee weren’t exactly problems per se, but were simply alterations in his mode of expression that defy his previous work. Uncle Boonmee is arguably Weerasethakul’s “most accessible” film, but for fans of his work (like myself), it’s quite surprising. He abandons the binary narrative structure that framed his last three features in favor of an episodic approach, he used 16mm film instead of the lustrous and layered 35mm that he used for his previous (and best) film Syndromes and a Century (2007), and his employment of popular music here is decidedly different and, in my opinion, less engaging.

So while Uncle Boonmee may be an introduction to Weerasethakul’s work for many, as a devotee of his work it was quite disorienting.  As a result, while I was completely engrossed in many of Uncle Boonmee’s episodes, others broke the immersed engagement that slow cinema typically (and uniquely) allows in ways that no other film does. Nonetheless, Uncle Boonmee is a hypnotic film that is unlike anything you’ll see in this or any other year, and the fact that Weerasethakul is clearly continuing to challenge and explore only gives this already promising director even more promise.

On the Upside: Poetic and beautiful, it raises the standard on what constitutes a unique and original film.

On the Downside: Most will find this and Weerasethakul’s other films frustratingly inaccessible.

On the Side: If you’re interested in any of Weerasethakul’s previous work, I highly recommend Syndromes and a Century, which is a brilliant film and the director’s best to date.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Gimmick movies come in all shapes and sizes, and one of the newest types is the single-take feature. This used to be impossible due to camera and film limitations, but digital video has opened a whole new world to filmmakers looking to challenge themselves and reward audiences. Single-take films are exactly that, films shot entirely in one, continuous, uninterrupted take, and some recent examples include Russian Ark and PVC-1. (The British horror film Cut uses a single-take for all but its first five minutes.)

The latest film to earn as much attention for the technique as it does for the art is the Uruguayan horror movie The Silent House. It’s about a father and his teen daughter tasked with spending the night in a rural house that they’re cleaning up and repairing for rental. They settle in for the night, but when she hears noises upstairs he heads up to investigate, screams, and then falls silent. She goes in search of her father and soon discovers there are worse things than being an orphan…

“A story based on real events.”

The Silent House is reportedly based on a true story from the 1940s, but while the core of the story seems plausible the film layers in enough elements of a highly imaginative nature to warrant taking that opening text with a grain of Uruguayan salt. Laura wanders the house cautiously taking notice of shelves covered with animal skulls and a wall plastered with Polaroid pictures. She finds her father bound, bloodied, and unconscious, but also draws the attention of a mysterious man roaming the halls with a large knife. The bulk of the movie is her working her way throughout the house trying to stay one step ahead of him until she can escape.

And then there’s that little girl who seems to appear out of thin air.

This is a mildly effective horror thriller that manages to find a fair amount of tension from the simple concept of a scared young woman wandering a creepy as hell house in the dark. We’ve seen these scenes before… the screen lit solely by camera flashes, the figure behind her that only we can see, her hiding and halting her breath as the killer moves mere feet away. But even though they lack originality they’re still presented well enough to ratchet up the fear.

If only the character didn’t constantly leave her back exposed to rooms, doorways, and other dark cul de sacs. Over and over again. (Not that anything comes of it. (Or does it. (Boo!)))

And the single-take effort, while technically impressive, adds nothing to the experience aside from unavoidable downbeats in the suspense and action. Where a normal movie would move a character across space and time via cuts and edits here we have to watch Laura take each and every step. We know the bad guy won’t be popping out from every corner each and every time so these stretches lose some of the edge that’s been created previously.

And then there’s the third act revelations. Discussing them inches into spoiler territory, so suffice to say they pose some problems.

The Silent House features a handful of solid jump scares and eerie shots, but the single-take camera work and third act revelations unintentionally deflate much of the dread. Still, genre fans will want to give it a watch instead of waiting for the already filmed US remake.

The Silent House will be available On Demand starting May 11th.

The Upside: Some definite creepiness and effective jump scares

The Downside: Third act revelations leave much to be desired, not to mention several questions unanswered; single take means plenty of slowdowns while main character moves from point A to B

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

The personalities of runners always seem to run the gamut. On the one hand, regular exercise and fitness is a sign of stability, a display of having chosen the “right” priorities to care for one’s own body. On the other hand, running can become an obsession and a compulsion for a variety of reasons, and can become the vice of somebody with the personality of an addict. The strange relationship between compulsive personalities and physical fitness is at the heart of Benjamin Heisenberg’s Austrian thriller The Robber, an engrossing and complex yet economically straightforward character-driven thriller about a marathon runner who has an addiction to robbing banks.

We first meet Johann Rettenberger (Andreus Lust) jogging in a tight square around a small yard, and quickly realize that he’s in prison. As soon as he’s called back inside and is directed to his cell, he continues running on the small treadmill right next to his bed. It’s one of those simple openings that says so much through doing so little, and this characterizes much of The Robber, a film with a deceiving simplicity that makes it all the more compelling.

Rettenberger is released from jail for good behavior and a promise that he will switch his life to the straight and narrow, but he inevitably returns back to his old habits. His incredible running ability gives him a particular skill at the craft of bank robbing. His riches are typically rather miniscule, and he never seems to desire wealth or excessive spending, so the reward for him is clearly the thrill of it all. It’s a thrill that we experience firsthand. Heisenberg lets the action play out in real time, without any added action movie bells and whistles of intrusive nondiegetic music or changes in film speed, and Rettenberger’s clear “fitness” for the role (so to speak) make the bank robbing sequences credible and convincing – and, thus, all the more thrilling – despite how incredible they are (it’s worth noting here that the film is based on a novel by Martin Prinz, which was based on the true story of Austrian runner/robber Johann Kastenberger).

Rettenberger starts a relationship with a social worker, Erika (Franziska Weisz), and she ignites a spark in him that finds fulfillment outside of his compulsion. Of course, a movie like this can only really go in one direction from there, but that conventionality doesn’t make it any less thrilling. The entire third act of the film is devoted to one incredible extended chase sequence in which barely a single word is spoken. The events are spectacular, but Heisenberg keeps them believable.

Lust plays Rettenberger as almost entirely removed. A quiet, simple man, he matches the overall tone of the film. We aren’t afforded any psychological explanation of his compulsion, but this unnecessary justification would have cheapened an interesting character. Also, compulsions have no rationale, so we as audiences shouldn’t need explanation either. All this makes for some interesting ambiguity, but an ambiguity that never interferes with the film’s straightforward storytelling style. As such, it’s unclear whether or not Rettenberger is obsessed with both running and robbing banks, or that he’s simply preoccupied with running so that he can better feed his strange addiction. Either way, you’ve never seen a bank robber like this before.

Perhaps my one caveat with The Robber is that the exceptional but realistic robberies stand in start contrast to other unrealistic elements of the film’s plot. Is unclear as to why the forces of law and order aren’t instructed to prepare for the release of a skilled bank robber at the film’s beginning, and why – between Rettenberger’s parole and the pattern of robberies that take place – he isn’t implicated immediately. However, in the bigger picture, The Robber makes for a thrilling character study in which character and action are one in the same. Between the astute but restrained direction and Rettenberger’s quiet performance of a simple individual with a complex problem, The Robber is a feat and an accomplishment on many levels.

The Good Side: A taught thriller with incredible bank robbing and escape sequences helmed by a skilled director with a nuanced performance at its center.

The Bad Side: Some narrative challenges to suspended disbelief.

On the Side: The film has already been optioned for a Hollywood remake starring Andrew Garfield. See this version.

Check out the trailer for The Robber, which opens this weekend in limited release, below:

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

Watch enough foreign language movies and you’re bound to develop some (usually incorrect) perception of that particular country’s citizens. Korean people are more likely to kick you than they are to smile. French folks will cheat on each other at the drop of a pastry. There are no schools for acting in Thailand. You get the idea. Japanese films are no different and in fact offer up more than one assumption about the culture. And no, they don’t all have to do with lactation or the enticing aroma of girls’ underwear.

Some are about the overwhelming fear that Japanese society appears to have towards its own children. The youth of the nation are alternately dangerous to others (Battle Royale) or to themselves (Suicide Club), but the one constant is the complete lack of connection or understanding the adults have for their teenage counterparts.

It’s an intriguing idea and one writer/director Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls) has decided to embrace with his latest movie, Confessions. His film is far more subtle than those mentioned above, but no less dangerous or dark, and he melds it seamlessly with another popular theme in Asian cinema…

“This is my revenge.”

Miss Moriguchi (Takako Matsu) stands before an unruly classroom and announces that this will be her last day as their teacher. Celebration erupts from some students, stunned silence from others, but she continues to speak in the same calm manner as she explains her motivation. These children are selfish, callous, and cruel towards each other with no regard for what’s right and wrong, and their out of control behavior has now claimed a life. It seems Moriguchi’s four-year-old daughter died recently, and while it was ruled an accident she believes otherwise. She claims it was murder… and the killers, identified only as Student A and B, are sitting in that very classroom.

The teacher ends her monologue with the confession that she’s already exacted her revenge on the guilty parties in the form of HIV-infected blood injected into their recently emptied milk cartons. A perfect short film could end right there, but Nakashima is just getting started. Moriguchi’s action sets in motion a devastating chain of events as the teens become convinced they know the culprits’ identities and the suspects begin their own downward spirals as a result of the attention. The film shifts perspective as others begin to offer confessions of their own regarding the details of the little girl’s death and other malicious thoughts and actions.

Nakashima’s film is a fairly brutal indictment of a youth culture that feels alternately entitled, depressed, and occasionally sociopathic. The students consistently point the finger of blame at teachers, parents, and classmates, at everyone but themselves it seems. Compassion and individuality are in short supply in their ranks, but lest you think this is simply an attack on the younger generation the adults on display don’t come off all that much better. In addition to the one grasping at revenge against two thirteen-year-olds, there are parents who abandon their children or smother them with concern, teachers who blind themselves to reality in an effort to be accepted by their wards, and an adult society in general that has passed laws making it impossible to truly hold youth offenders accountable.

The dark and disturbing themes of the film are matched with an almost universally tinted blue/gray filter that depresses the mood even further. There are brief escapes into the sunlit world, but most of the action plays out in a world drowned of warmth. Adding to the stylish and dream-like quality are numerous slow-motion shots and an ethereal score that collectively serve to lull viewers in with a subdued beauty and calm even as any hope for happiness and redemption slowly suffocate beneath the weight of it all. It’s like strangling kittens with muted rainbows.

This was Japan’s Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language film last year, but before that Nakashima was best known for the bright one-two punch of Kamikaze Girls and Memories Of Matsuka. Both films share a visual style reminiscent of an explosion at a Crayola factory, and while Matsuka goes to some very dark places it does so behind a multi-colored sheen of light, perceived happiness, and musical numbers. Aside from being filmed with style and grace there’s no such attempt at a facade with Confessions. This is the darkest film of the director’s career, but in many ways it’s also his most stunning and beautiful.

Confessions is a soul-crushing slowburn of a film that offers up ruthless observations on the cruel ties between victims and bullies, the grief-stricken and the guilty, and the emotional morass between blame and responsibility. On a brighter note, it’s a daydream turned nightmare that digs into your heart like a slow-motion stabbing. See how I lied about the brighter note? The film does offer a brief sliver of hope for humanity (depending on your your own level of optimism), but as one character fears aloud his actions and their consequences just might signify “the sound of something important disappearing forever.”

The Upside: Sharply written revenge tale; incredibly stylish and beautifully shot; engaging story that rewards even after the killers’ identities are revealed; fantastic ending; wonderfully disturbing

The Downside: Methodical pacing and overt style will not appeal to some viewers

Buy Confessions on Blu-ray from YesAsia

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!