VIFF '10 Review: Shion Sono An Exiting New Discovery; 'Cold Fish' Bleak, Bloody, Bold

For this writer, 2010 has been a stellar year at the movies and it's almost entirely thanks to arthouse and foreign cinema. So, yeah, the recent output from Hollwood has been uninspired even more than normal (except for the obvious successes: "Toy Story 3," "Inception," 'Scott Pilgrim', "The Social Network"), but instead of bitching about it, the best idea is to look elsewhere. In the process, director discoveries are often made, and it's one of the most exciting parts of cinephilia.

Shion Sono, from Japan, is one such filmmaker. Thanks to an all-region DVD player (the film is available on Region 2; hopefully it gets a proper release here), I accessed his brilliant four-hour upskirt photography epic "Love Exposure." Sono packs so much meaty subject matter into the film -- love, lust, greed, family, loss, regret, fate, religion -- and breaks it up in chapters as it introduces the key players. If that run time worries you, fear not, there's not an ounce of fat in the film; seriously, it would be worse if it lost anything.

"Love Exposure" is the cure for anyone bored with the empty, over-the-top gore-fests like "Versus," "Tokyo Gore Police" and "Machine Girl" that have gained some level of cult status, but offer little else of interest besides repetitive limb chopping, arterial sprays and a pseudo-transgressive bent.

It's a complicated film to summarize: convoluted and melodramatic, the story is ostensibly about Yu, a deeply confused boy who loses his mother at an early age, and his father who, struggling to cope with the tragedy, becomes a devout Catholic priest. Yu wants to reach his dad, but can't lure his attention away from his new found calling. So he begins inventing sins to confess to his father, but he sees through the lies. Yu sets out to commit real sins, and finds his path leading towards theft, fighting and panty-shot photography. Only thing is, he's really good being a pervert, quickly recognized by his new friends as the best at the "art form." All this happens in the first hour, essentially a prologue. Pretty sure this film wins the award for longest time before the opening credits roll, beating out 'Eternal Sunshine' by a long shot.

The film is daring in its style and storytelling. Sono is uninterested in anything resembling mainstream, but that's not to say the film isn't entertaining because it's smart, thrilling, funny as hell; the kind of thing that, if you need a cinematic shot in the arm, will work as the antidote to "normal movies." 'Exposure' is stylish and violent, but will not wear your patience because Sono's such a visceral, uncompromising filmmaker (apparently he wanted to release the film in a six-hour cut, was then forced to cut it down to two, and eventually compromised back to four after that cut was deemed an incomprehensible mess). As a storyteller, Sono seems interested in characters on the fringe, but he really loves them, or at least empathizes with them all. "Love Exposure" is ultimately about the consequences of our actions, among many other things; it firmly asserts there's a reason for people being the way they are, and we should take the time to understand those reasons, even if you find them weird. That's a philosophy I can get behind.

Wouldn't you know it, four months after falling in love with the first film I'd seen from Sono, he's got a new title at Vancouver. "Cold Fish" shows the writer/director still interested in manipulation, religious iconography, weak-willed fathers, dead mothers and horribly cartoonish, hateful stepwives amongst all the blood-letting. Shamoto, an owner of a tropical fish shop, is struggling to find pleasure in his life. He's in a loveless marriage with his stepwife. Her effort in preparing a family meal says it all: she throws a bunch of processed food in the microwave. His teenage daughter is at a difficult age, unmoved by his attempts at reaching her, and never hangs around the house for long.

Shamoto (Mitsuru Fukikoshi gives a transformative, phenomenal performance) then meets Murata (former comedian Denden, also lights out, having a lot of fun in a terrifying role), a business rival with his own much more successful tropical fish shop. At first seeming like a nice guy who wants to help Shamoto and his family move up in the world, Murata offers a job at his shop to the daughter (he curiously has a lot of good-looking young girls working there), and quickly weasels his way in the family's life. The story kicks in when it's revealed that Murata is a serial killer and gangster, and along with his crazy wife, enjoys being a nasty sonofabitch who's very good at disposing of dead bodies.

What Sono does so well, at least in "Cold Fish" and "Love Exposure," is show the reasons behind everything the characters do. He is incapable of making a stock character; even if they seem one-note (like both of the wife characters) they're revealed eventually to be as complex as any living, breathing human being. When Shamoto's life begins spiraling out of his control as he gets sucked further along in to Murata's brutal wake, the film becomes horrific, but even more comedic.

Just when the film looks like it may spiral out of control (things get really, really messed up), Sono, like any good storyteller, pulls out a doozy of a scene and firmly places the audience back in his palm. You can never know where the story is going -- so rare these days -- but boy does it ever end memorably, in gore and viscera, as our hero, once a restrained, feeble man, becomes a monster himself. "Cold Fish" is bold, bleak and intense, but also thrilling. In short, nobody is making movies quite like this. [A-]

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VIFF '10 Review: 'Barney's Version' Is Oscar-Baity Yet Goes Through The Motions

A quick glance at the career of Richard J. Lewis tells a lot about his approach to "Barney's Version," an adaptation of revered Canadian author Mordecai Richler's prize-winning last novel. He's something of a TV journeyman, having directed episodes for more than a dozen series, and he seemed to have found a good fit for his style in "CSI," helming some 49 episodes from 2000 through 2006. However, his latest project, 'Version' was the opening gala selection at VIFF, a wise and somewhat obvious choice since it's a Canadian production and comes with a level of Oscar-bait, mainstream-appeal prestige.

It's a crowd-pleaser, through and through, and also a manipulative, weepy film. Lewis isn't afraid to tug at the heart strings, too often content with going the easy route to make the audience cry. Where it, and star Paul Giamatti, shines, is in the comedy. It's often quite funny and breezy, whisking through its main character's life in the rote style of a biopic. We get all the big moments with none of the nuance. That's not to say it's a bad film, just one this writer can't drum up all that much excitement for. Lewis' aspirations are high; he wants us to really feel something, to be moved, but when stacked against other big Oscar contenders released already this year ("The Social Network," "Toy Story 3" and "Inception" for example) his talents seem better suited to the standard TV fare.

But it would be unfair to withhold the fact that this film played like gangbusters at the screening. The overall mood of the packed house was almost overwhelmingly positive. They laughed, they cried and all that other good stuff. Those looking for more artful, interesting (read: something fresh) fare will likely at best find the film to be an adequate piece of entertainment, with some great performances.


Barney Panofsky (Giamatti, by no means stretching here, but he knows this kind of lovable schlub inside and out, and delivers) is the subject of the film. He's a character, described in the VIFF synopsis of the film, as a "romantic, politically incorrect and fearlessly blunt creature subject to his impulses," and while this is true, and makes for some solid drama and comedy, I imagine he must have seemed more original on the page.

The film plays as a set of extended flashbacks, kicked off with the release of a book by a police officer who's convinced Barney shot and killed his best friend, a free spirit writer played by Scott Speedman (his shit-eating grin and natural charm is perfectly suited to the character, easily the best work he's ever done). So right away, the film is treading in Oscar bait cliches: bookended structure, an older character looking back on his life with regrets and actors aging onscreen with unconvincing makeup. The murder subplot is never handled all that well, at times feeling as if Lewis forgot all about it, but he does pay off the "mystery" in the conclusion, though it's a fairly obvious ripoff of the prologue sequence in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia."
The rest of the film jumps back and forth through Barney's three marriages (Minnie Driver, as his second wife, will drive you crazy), leading up to another annoying goddamn cliche that would be wrong to spoil here. Suffice to say, a certain disease comes in to play for a major character, designed to procure maximum tear dropping. Barney is not that likable of a guy, but this late reveal comes off as a lazy technique to make us forget all the bad things he did, and all the people he's wronged. At first the film seems brave and willing to give us a complex human being of a main character, but all that is put aside in the sentimental finale. We're sure it's a moving part of the book (which the kindly gentleman sitting next to this writer said was "fantastic"), but onscreen it feels trite.

In the end, it's a success, but not one to inspire fervent affection. Look for the awesome cameo by David Cronenberg as a TV director (ironic that Lewis is directing a film and casts Canada's best filmmaker as a TV guy). Other things to appreciate: it's lovingly shot on location in Montreal, hockey is a major part of Barney's life (it's a great sport), an onion is used successfully as a reoccurring motif, and Dustin Hoffman, as Barney's father, is delightful. And Paul Giamatti; how I love thee, let me count the ways. It's easy to see why he took this lead role as it's perfectly suited to him, if not a little bit been-there-done-that. Though the hairy-backed actor carries the film on his shoulders, the director seemed too comfortable going through the motions. [C+]

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