Actually I Would Like to Eat My Cake and Have It Too.

It's been a while since I've seen any movies, and I'll be pulling it all from memory but I saw some really, really good ones on the weekend. It all started with wanting to see Hot Fuzz starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of Shaun of the Dead. Again, Edgar Wright directs. This was a film that I looked for while I was in Japan, and couldn't find it obviously because it hasn't been released on video yet. I found that out at the video shop on Friday. I thought I'd go for Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Blind Woman's Curse starring Meiko Kaji who would later star in Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori. No luck, someone had already rented it. There was a new guy working the counter, so I thought I'd let him choose. I asked for anything by Park Chan-uk. He listed off the usual films, and then added Saam gaang yi or Three... Extremes.

"I'll take it!" Now I should have been tipped off by the behaviour of the new clerk, but I guess he wasn't having a good day. He sent me home with Saam gaang, the "sequel" to the movie I had asked for. I also went home with JSA: Joint Security Area. I got through two of the short films in Saam gaang before I realized that I had the wrong video. The shorts on this disc were entertaining, especially the third. The first one is called Memories, a Korean film directed by Kim Ji-woon starring Jeong Bo-seok, and Kim Hye-su as a married couple. I have to say that I couldn't tell what was going on in these short films, so I'll just kind of relate my interpretations. In this one, the wife has gone missing and is seen in a series of flashbacks, which may or may not be contemporary. The husband does not recollect what has happened to his wife, but she is a ghost. She is trying to rejoin her family in their new home, but cannot reach them. You know, ghosts can't use the telephone. The movie goes along with the husband denying that he killed his wife, but that he really wants to remember what happened to her. He then sees a duffel bag (why is it always a duffel bag?) in his living room, and opens it to find the body of his wife. The rest of the film depicts the woman realizing that she is a ghost and the husband perhaps remembering that he killed her in the first place. Nothing really new here.

The second film is a Thai film called The Wheel directed by Nonzee Nimibutr. I have no idea why this film is called The Wheel, because there isn't a single wheel in it anywhere. It's about a group of performers who fight over the puppets they use in their shows. Apparently, these puppets control the performers and cause bad things to happen. Not a lot going on here.

The next day, I called the video shop and told them what had happened and they offered to exchange this disc for the right one. Well, not before I watched the rest of it. I'm glad I did. The third was the best of the three I thought. Written by Teddy Chan, the same guy who directed Wan 9 zhao 5, this movie stars Eric Tsang, yes executive producer Eric Tsang, and follows the story of a single father trying to find his missing son. He suspects his neighbour, a guy who pushes his wife around in a wheelchair because she is dead. But you aren't supposed to know that yet. Anyway, the neighbour had strangled his sick wife and bathes her daily in a mixture of chinese herbs to keep her refreshed. He also talks to her so that her spirit knows that it has not been forgotten. Peter Ho-sun Chan does a great job directing the story. Tsang's character is held captive by the neighbour because he doesn't want anyone to find out about his dead wife, but eventually they do and he gets arrested. By this time, the wife is beginning to return to a healthy life after three years of being looked after daily by her husband when he is suddenly killed in a car accident. The wife does not receive the final care she needs and dies for good in the police morgue. Tsang later reviews video cassettes found in the neighbour's flat only to find that the guy was not crazy, that he himself was brought back to life by his wife several years before. It had been his turn to care for his wife by doing the same thing she had done to him. Now that the husband and wife were permanently dead, their unborn daughter could now join them in the afterlife. I don't remember if Tsang's son is ever found, but it was the ghost of the daughter that lured him away to begin with. This was the best of the three films.

I went back to the video store and exchanged the disc for the one I wanted originally, and came home with three more shorts. Director Fruit Chan was first up. Dumplings stars Miriam Yeung Chin Wah as an aging wife who wants to retain her youth, attract more attention from her husband and have a child. The film also stars Bai Ling. She's famous, I guess. Anyway, the squeamish should read no further. I figured out the plot to this film at about the same time that Bai Ling says she is her own best advertisement. Bai cooks dumplings which have a reputation of helping people stay young. What's the special ingredient? Babies. Yup, babies. How does she get these babies? You don't think she cooks all day, do you? Nope, she finds wayward girls who are in a situation and helps them out. See, she helps them and they help her. Everybody wins. Of course, Bai is no professional and she ends up killing one of the girls I think. She disappears after it is discovered that one of the babies was the product of incest and has created nasty dumplings. Yeung's character is sickened to learn what she has become part of and after discovering that she is now pregnant, she aborts the pregnancy. Now the really fucked up shit happens right here. She continues to eat the dumplings. What? I thought she no longer wanted to have a baby. I might have missed something here because the subtitling was white on white a lot of the time, but it seemed to me that she really didn't care about having a kid and just wanted to stay looking young to satisfy her vanity. Good film, easy plot but it's put me off dumplings for a long time.

The second film is Cut by Park chan-uk, starring Lee Byung-hun, Lim Won-hie, and Kang Hye-jeong. I found this film to be a lot like Takashi Miike's Bijitâ Q, in that it involves a stranger who manipulates a family. In the film, a director is subdued in his own home by an extra who appeared in all of the director's films. The extra has a bit of a problem because he is jealous of the wealthy, virtuous, well-liked director who is a contrast to his own life. The extra somehow feels that the director should be punished for his goodness and has wrangled the director's wife to a piano and has ordered the director to sin by killing a girl who happens to be tied up on the sofa. If he doesn't do it, the extra will cut off the fingers of the piano-playing wife. Eventually, the director attempts to kill the girl and discovers that it is in fact the son of the extra, whom the extra could not kill himself that morning. The wife manages to bite a chunk out of the extra's jugular, only to witness the son swear revenge as his father bleeds out. Again, I missed a lot because of the white on white thing, but it was pretty fucked up. But in Park's style, the viewer is challenged to determine what is right and wrong.

And for a little treat, the third film was directed by none other than Takashi Miike and was called Box. This is the story of a young woman who is haunted by the ghost of her sister, whom she accidentally killed as a child in a circus fire. The twin sisters are contortionists who work in a magic act, but as the magician favours one sister, the other becomes jealous. She locks her sister in a box and unfortunately causes a fire before her sister can be released. The magician reunites with the woman, and tells her that he wanted to do them both and that he liked them equally. At about that time, he grabs a sheet of polyurethane and pulls it over the girl's head. A lot of this is dream sequence and flashbacks and I'm not sure what really happens in the end, but I think the older sister gets buried alive. Some people have suggested that the two sisters are actually siamese twins who dream of being separated, but I'm the type of person to watch a film over and over again to try and analyze everything, or count legs.

JSA: Joint Security Area stars Lee Byung-hun of Cut, Lee Yeong-ae of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and Song Kang-ho also from Lady Vengeance, but perhaps better known for his role in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Lee Yeong-ae, who is allegedly fluent in English, plays a Swiss soldier sent to investigate a double homicide on the Korean border and locate the missing bullet. She's not fluent in English, and it really messed up the flow of the film. Lee Byung-hun plays a South Korean soldier who is saved on a reconnaissance mission by a pair of North Korean soldiers, one of them played by Song Kang-ho. Lee is thankful to the North Koreans and sends them gifts. He develops a friendship with his enemies and establishes a routine of crossing the border and fraternizing. He ropes his new partner into the friendship and the four men carry on like there is no such thing as the DMZ. At some point, the four are discovered by a North Korean officer who has a bit of a Mexican standoff with the southerners. He gets distracted by a stereo, and takes one in the head. The two South Korean soldiers and escape while the second North Korean is also left dead. The film dissects the murder scene from different points of view. The junior South Korean soldier tries to commit suicide, forcing Lee Yeong-ae to decide who tells the better story, Lee Byung-hun or Song Kang-ho. This is part of Park's greatness, he can tell the story like no one else. In the end, Lee Yeong-ae is removed from the case because she is trying to uncover the truth, rather than reinforce the official view. The two former friends turn on each other and Lee Byung-hun is eventually implicated in the death of the North Korean officer and junior soldier. He manages to wrangle the side arm from a South Korean MP and commits suicide in front of Lee Yeong-ae, who has just learned the truth of that night but has promised to deliver a report clearing the South Korean of any wrongdoing. The only soldier to survive the investigation is Song Kang-ho who continues to serve the Republic as a guard in the DMZ. Seven movies for the price of two. Not bad.