Reviews of The Time of Huan Nan, For Alice, When This is All Over, and Gold Boy
The 23rd annual New York Asian Film Festival takes place from July 12 to July 28. For more information, please click here.
Hello again from the Big Apple! Your humble festival correspondant V.N. Pryor has once again returned to his favorite stomping grounds to cover the best and the wildest films from across the Pacific.
I am… (ahem) running a little bit later than usual this year, so what say we skip the preliminaries and get right into it, shall we…?
THE TIME OF HUAN NAN
One of the delightful side benefits of taking part in the New York Asian Film Festival is that not only are you frequently entertained, you’re also learning. For instance, despite attending for a decades worth of festival screenings, I was today years old when I learned that China has a ban on time travel movies.
According to the Media Authorities who decide such things, it is considered “disrespectful to history”. I am loathe to investigate exactly how this all works, what with deadlines and all, but seeing as how this is literally what Leading Lee’s The Time of Huan Nan is about… it would appear there are exceptions.
And I get it; if my country had made a movie this enjoyable, I wouldn’t want to ban it either.
Though it only scores a passing reference in the film itself, Back To The Future is a very clear touchpoint, with our protagonist YaoHua Chen (Hsia Teng Hung) accidentally traveling back in time and befriending his father BaoDing (played by Edison Song as a youth and by Cheng-Ju Shan as an old man), potentially threatening his own existence in the process. But the secret to the movies success is just how little it cares about the ins and outs of cause and effect compared to how much it cares about its own characters.
I cannot think of a movie so utterly disinterested in its own setup, and the implications therein. Lee strives to do the bare minimum to set up the situation, and within fifteen minutes we’ve already traveled back in time. In twenty minutes, our protagonists have all met and bonded, and we just spend the next hour luxuriating in their company, kicking the plot ball down the road for as long as humanly possible before hitting us where it hurts.
Once he’s traveled back in time from 2022 to 1991 (the mechanics of which being decidedly irrelevant but given clever visual represented by a cassette player motif) YaoHua finds that the young, undeniably hot BaoDing cuts an entirely different figure from the cantakerous old man slowly succumbing to dementia he left behind in the future. Accidentally adopting the identity of one YounHuei (a name Young BaoDing is familiar with and immediately suspicious of), he quickly finds himself adopted into BaoDings’ inseparable friend group, consisting of undeniably hot athlete Anjian (Chu Meng Hsuan) and undeniably hot rich girl Kangming Yu (Wang Yu Ping, radiant and wistful). And it isn’t long before YaoHua realizes that BaoDing and Anjian share a camaraderie that… might lead to question how YaoHua is around to do any time traveling in the first place.
Ehh, no need to be coy about it: Time of Huan Nan is a gay time travel romance, one that very clearly has to end in tragedy for someone. The 1990s was not a banner year for the LGBT community, and YaoDing’s very existence seems to very much point towards an inevitable unhappy ending. And… well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.
Watch this space.
It’s a solid premise, and deftfully executed. And yet… not quite in the way you might expect. But the movie isn’t going to address any of that until as late as possible, the better to focus on this utterly unique four way friendship. For, as much as one might think the drama rests on the shoulders of BaoDing and Anjian’s thwarted, potentially doomed love, the movie is never stronger than when all four of them are interacting.
Don’t get me wrong, when they pair off together (there is, perhaps inevitably, a romantic subplot that develops between YaoDing and KangMing), they’re quite lovely and touching. But the chemistry and the interplay when all four are onscreen together is incredible.
Never seen anything like it; it’s a hell of a trick, really.
The film shifts into a different gear around the hour mark, where secret loves are outed and difficult choices have to be made, and while all that is extremely well-done, it lacks the intoxicating playfulness of those earlier sections. Still, these are champagne problems for a film to have. Even if the second half isn’t as strong as the first, the whole has too much going for it to complain. It’s an early festival highlight.
FOR ALICE
If one wanted to lodge a complaint about Chow Kam Wing’s For Alice, one could say that it’s hardly an original film. There is nothing in this film that even the most casual of moviegoers hasn’t seen before. But that’s why ‘unoriginal’ tends to be a useless metric in terms of deciphering a films’ quality. Have you seen all of this before? Probably. Have you seen it done this well? Probably not for a very long time.
As far as story goes, you could fit the events of this film on the back of a postage stamp: elderly Chen Shuang (Tai Bo), recently released from prison, gradually insinuates himself into the life of semi-troubled teen Alice (Kuku So). With a less-than-comfortable home life, Alice quickly takes to Shuang, all while being unaware this friendly, reserved man is really the father she never knew. There is, of course, a friend who wants to get Shuang back in the game, and a narrative reason that may just force his hand. But much like The Time of Huan Nan saw their setup as the roadwork they needed to get out of the way in order to focus on their real interest, For Alice spends exactly as much time as it needs to on the plot movers and not a second longer. That guy who wants Shuang for one last job? He gets roughly five minutes of screen time, chopped up into three early scenes, and once Shuang turns down his pitch, doesn’t show up again until he’s absolutely necessary to resolve the plot.
Instead, the movie just langours in the instant bond between Alice and Shuang, mostly eschewing melodrama in lieu of watching two endearing characters explore a connection. Their dynamic is so suffused with warmth that it barely even matters that so much of this built on very familiar bones. The outstanding performances by Bo and So, and their easy chemistry more than compensate.
Shuang and Alice are the show here, but I would like to give a shout-out to David Siu as Raymond, Alice’s obligatory creep of a stepfather. Siu gets to play his stock baddie role in three different modes: hissably smarmy and disgusting in his solo scenes with So, goofily mock suave in his dealings with his (equally obligatory) mistress, and quietly and hilariously toadying in a scene where Shuang poses as a potential customer. Most films would be happy giving just the one dimension, but the writing, and Siu’s performance, elevate a potentially unpleasant necessity into something equal parts fun and distressing. In fact, everyone in the small yet impressively utilaized cast puts in good work here, with the exception of poor Amanda Lee, who goes in a little too big in her scenes as Alice’s negligent mother.
In the end, For Alice is a movie that takes a stale premise and pumps life into it. No question, this is no one’s first time at this particular rodeo. But the sprightly, tender execution makes it almost feel brand new. And that ain’t nothin’
WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER
Given the worldwide emotional and psychological impact, it’s not surprising that filmmakers are driven to tell tales of the pandemic; there are so few events with such a profound reach. And there is no event I can think of that has led to more stultifying works. Turns out when it comes to the most dramatic thing to happen this century, most artists have a really hard time making a film that truly resonates.
Luckily, Kevin Maguya’s When This Is All Over isn’t a film; it’s a trip.
(Seriously, that his onscreen credit: “A Kevin Maguya Trip”)
Given all that, it probably will not shock you to learn that drugs are a significant factor in his fil… err, trip, and how it all plays out. But what might be surprising is that it manages to work so well while focusing on a moneyed manchild and the sort of intensely obnoxious Zoomer rich kids we’ve been well-trained to despise. To its credit, the film seems aware that they suck, but has a generosity of spirit that lets the viewer decide how much grace it wishes to extend them. And in its protagonist, holds out hope that positive change is indeed possible.
There’s something almost something unnerving about the pure openness of Juan Karlos’ face in the lead role; if he is not in fact a shy tween magically Zoltar-ed into the body of an adult than this is a deeply impressive performance. Known to those few who even acknowledge his existence as simply The Guy, Karlos drifts through lockdown life in a vaguely unsatisfied stupor, selling weed mostly to pass the time and quietly desperate to get to America to reunite with his expatriate mom. It’s an inward, highly reactive performance, and its to Karlos credit that he holds the screen so well while playing someone so nakedly uncomfortable in their own skin. But as good as he is at portraying a sort of stunted haziness masking a bone-deep melancholy, his is only the second best performance in the film. The best performance belongs to Jorybell Agoto as Rosemarie, the apartments receptionist, admin officer and rooftop caretaker. Agoto has one of the most singular, expressive faces I’ve seen in quite some time, conveying five conflicting emotions at any given moment. It’s not a particularly deep role and she’s not given all that much to do, but what she is given, she knocks right out of the park. You can see why The Guy is smitten, and perhaps even more surprisingly, she makes the viewer see what she sees in him, as well.
The plot itself is predicatably slight, as The Guy befriends a group of spoiled, bored peers and eventually must choose sides in the class war. And it is, in some ways, a big ask to try and get us to sympathize with a sad rich boy; even when things escalate to a point where he’s at risk for losing his apartment, it’s made explicit that his mother will just get him an even nicer one. But there’s just so a low-key hangout vibe to the movie that just spending time with these characters, the majority of whom aren’t even particularly likable (Aaron Maniego in particular radiates aggressively punchable energy as a gleefully bitchy party boy) that it’s easy to just
And we are rewarded for out investment with a most unexpected denoument, a drug-fueled reckoning akin to ending Dude Where’s My Car with the final reel of 2001: A Space Odyessy.
Overstating things a bit? Perhaps a little; some of the hallucinations are a bit Freud 101. But it all culminates in an absolutely gorgeous bit of animation that makes it easy to forgive the imperfections. Ralph Oliva is the art director, and his work is hugely impressive. Mileage may vary on how it lands as an emotional capper but it’s such an unexpected and yet completely natural left turn that you at least have to appreciate the effort.
Not enough movies end in Ego Death, and that’s a real shame.
GOLD BOY
It should be clear by now that the first few films I watched for this years’ festival were warm and open hearted affairs, with a deep affection for their characters. And were all the more effective for it.
But let’s face it, sometimes you just want to run with the monsters.
Gold Boy has got you covered, and then some.
A twisty little psychological thriller that’s almost gleeful in its depravity, the film starts with the swift and unceremonious murder of two adorable, loving senior citizens and only gets more messed up from there.
Noboru (Okada Masaki), the unequivocal killer in question, has committed these murders in the service of taking over his wife’s father’s company. And he’s so convincing in his crocodile tears when the police question him that if someone walked in late they might almost be able to, however briefly, convince themselves that he’s genuinely innocent.
Meanwhile, we have Asahi (Hamura Jinsei), a young boy who finds himself involved with Hiroshi (Maede Youji) and Natsuki (Hoshino Anna), a pair of stepsiblings on the run after possibly killing Hiroshi’s abusive father. Asahi, a soft-spoken young child of divorce with a… comprably complicated home life, he takes them in despite his seeming discomfort with their violent actions, and Natsuki’s rueful insistence that she’s a born killer.
It is not immediately clear how these two threads connect, but there’s a grin inducing in the split second before the audience realizes what’s about to happen.
Twenty minutes in, we’re off to the races.
It would be poor form to spoil the myriad of baroque curveballs and cruel inevitabilities that occur over the following ninety minutes, but suffice to say, the opening murders are far from the last, and nothing is what it seems. Except when it is; Noboru is definitely a killer.
The gradual unfolding of the truth, and the sinister web our various malcontents spin around themselves, plays out with a sort of stately yet breathless pulpish glee; it’s not surprising that it’s an adaptation of a novel, Zi Jinchen’s The Gone Child. It is, perhaps, even less surprising that that same novel spawned a 12- episode Chinese streaming series called The Bad Kids. Certainly, this film contains enough incident to fill out a full season of television. Though perhaps spending a bit more time establishing the convoluted relationship dynamics that tie various factions together wouldn’t go amiss, screenwriter Takahito Minato’s script does an excellent job of distilling what must have been a wildly involved novel into an adroitly paced pitch black thriller with an equally dark, deftly deployed sense of humor. At times, you can almost envision director Kaneko Shusuke cackling behind the camera. I cackled, too.
And that’s a wrap on this first entry of this years’ NYAFF! Tune in next time for psycho killers, questionable housing practices, and the inexplicable abomination some men call… Granny Prostitutes.
