Fantasia Blog-style Report #3
Meghan Hicks and Maya Merrick
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Miki Satoshi's Instant Swamp satisfies cravings for quirky self-discovery
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Hour's Fantasia bloggers wade through pink-film politics, swamp capers, aimless clones and damned souls
Japanese Pink Film: Gushing Prayer
By Meghan HicksWhen first reading up on the pink eiga films that would be playing at the festival, this one stood out for me. I couldn't resist. It sounded intriguing and kind of gross at the same time. Though, before even entering the theatre, my initial giggly expectations started to change. The original title actually included a subtitle: 15 Year-Old Prostitute, and more, the age of the protagonist was supposed to be 14, but 15 was apparently much easier to swallow. Well, okay then.
Then, upon entering the theatre, the audience was warned that we wouldn't understand the film if we didn't have in-depth knowledge of Japan's political and social landscape in the early '70s. This we found to be very true.
The teenagers in the film speak of sex in economic terms, and have several naked conversations about how they want to "beat" sex in order to conquer adult society. Having sex for pleasure is against their rules, for if you do, then you are no better than the adults around you. They make a pact to only enjoy sex through prostitution - in which case, they win. Or something like that. As it turns out, the film isn't titillating at all, and I'm not sure if it was ever meant to be; after all, the main character, Yasuko, never even cracks a smile - it's much more of an allegorical statement about youth culture in 1970s Japan.
However, this very avant garde, very early-'70s film, is shot in stunning black and white, with
pops of colour here and there that make you fix your eyes on the screen regardless of whether or not you have any idea what's going on. And the plain-looking protagonist is somehow engaging despite her semi-catatonic response to everything around her. Instant Swamp, The Clone Returns Home and Hells, served with a side of fried-chicken sushi
By Maya Merrick
In the spirit of Fantasia, and of trying any and all things at least once, we ordered fried-chicken sushi, eschewing a perfectly good carousel of fishy jewels. It might have been better had the chicken actually been fried, and not, as we discovered, boiled. It definitely would have been better had the chicken been, say, tuna. But we gave it a go. And, yes, sometimes trying something new pays off, as was the case with some of our Fantasia choices. Sometimes, though, it's all fried chicken sushi - intriguing, novel, but ultimately, not quite what we were craving.
First, the good news. Instant Swamp was an exuberant romp through one woman's attempts to keep her life from eroding away, and featured a kappa-hunting fish pole, a shop full of black things and a taste for drinking "Milo sludge," paying off with the titular swamp. Magical without being cloying, and hilarious without being zany, Instant Swamp kept the audience laughing, cheering and applauding whole-heartedly until the end.
Not so with The Clone Returns Home. Though, to be fair, this Wim Wenders executive-produced feature was presented in a quiet, methodical manner. Despite being shot with grace and tenderness, the central conceit (see Say What?! below) wore thin early on, leaving even those of us who like quiet, methodical pictures wondered when the replicated astronauts were going to stop wandering around in the rain and go back to space.
The big disappointment of the week was Hells, a Madhouse adaptation of Sin-Ichi Hiromoto's manga Hell's Angels. Expectations were high for this one - and it started out well. At first, Linne's confusion at being in Hell rather than school was played out hilariously, and Headmaster Helvis' volleyball tournament of damned souls had us all cracking up. But then it turned into something that seemed to have been written by a bunch of people in different rooms - a reworking of the Cain and Abel story figured alongside giant monsters fighting on snowy cliffs, all while the denizens of the underworld fought off other demons (where'd they come from?) with a battle of word balloons... And somehow, something that had started out fun turned into a confusing, unpalatable mish-mash of Japanese and Western cultures - not unlike fried chicken sushi.
Say What?!: Real answers to fake questions (and sometimes fake answers to real questions too)
By Maya Merrick
Q: Dear Say What?!
The Clone Returns Home features something called a "memory backup," which ensures that clones are gifted with the same memories as the source person. Kohei's original traumatic memories shatter the mind of one clone, and manifest physically on the body of another. And somehow, the clones are "born" fully adult. What gives?
Sincerely,
Mnemonically Confused And Prone To Wandering
A: Dear Little Mnemo,
Ah, memory backup. This only works if the mind is, in actual fact, a computer, filled with data that can be downloaded to some sort of data receptacle. Fine for folk who write sci-fi to think about and play with, but so far not something workable in the real world due to one simple thing: the mind is not a computer. The human longing for memory backup goes back yonks, and looking a bit at that could shed some light on the physical manifestation of trauma you're asking about.
The ancient Greeks devised a "memory backup" system known as the Art of Memory, wherein one would treat memories as physical objects in physical space, thereby allowing one to 'walk through' one's memories. This is shown quite artfully in The Clone Returns Home, with at least one equally compelling predecessor in film in Last Year at Marienbad (though many will say that watching someone else's memories on replay is about as thrilling as listening to someone else's dreams.)
The effect of memory on clones (termed "resonance" in The Clone Returns Home) may be loosely related to the idea of morphic resonance - where behaviors are transmitted to subjects that are physically separated. It seems that the ideas of the Art of Memory and of morphic resonance have been dovetailed and made literal in The Clone Returns Home, leaving the clones to deal with the fallout.
Kohei's memories shatter one clone as he would not allow himself to be shattered, and bodily mark another - thereby behaving as symbols of our human need to continue to affect those around us, even once we've died. So these clones could be said to function, figuratively, as a kind of walking undead.
As for the fully adult clones, two words: movie science!
The big disappointment of the week was Hells?! Really? I'd love to see the list of films that Maya Merrick attended during this Fantasia's run because damn if there weren't better contenders than Hells as the big disappointment of the week. Sure Hells ran a bit too long to be effective but c'mon, there were worse culprits in this regard. Can't begin to tell you how many films dragged on or worse, forgot to maintain their own internal narrative. Hells was flawed but it was still flawed genius. If you couldn't keep up with the mad biblical themes being thrown about in Hells then I suggest you stick to tamer stuff like Ice Age 3 which was as flat creatively as I've seen in quite some time. For animé fans Hells was heaven. 'Nuff said.
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Pedro Eggers
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