3.6--
NIGHT IS SHORT, WALK
ON GIRL, Dir. Masaaki
Yuasa
[reviewed
by Oslavi Linares]
Enter the nightlife of summer Kyoto, a place of
endless bars, legendary substances, secret societies,
used book fairs, and other festivities cruised by
the happy-go-lucky heroine known as “the girl with
black hair” and her relentless but wacky suitor,
Sempai. As Sempai trails behind her through the
night, seeking the courage or luck to declare his
love, they encounter a wide cast of colourful characters
and crowds: the mischievous god of used books, a
villainous but solitary loan shark, a romantic student
vowing to never change his underpants for love,
an evasive guerrilla theatre troupe, a crossdressing
and fascistic student director, a single dad-erotic
print collector, a dubious second-hand samurai vendor,
old and young drunks, and many more socialites from
all walks of life all comically portrayed from frame
one. With a character design that is both realist
and iconic, Night
is Short, Walk on Girl is funny whether still
or moving, morphing according to the situation and
status of the cast. A single still character pose
is enough evoke laughter, as so do the absurd vehicles
or rubbery constructions. Kyoto’s design is equally
evocative, drawn with 2D patterns and textures that
really play with the flatness and depth typical
of Japanese anime. This flatness pays tribute to
older media like woodblock prints, picture scrolls,
the animation of UPA and evokes previous Yuasa works
like Mindgame and the series Tatami
Galaxy. This last was written by the same author,
Makoto Ueda, but Yuasa’s adaptation of Night
is Short not only gives life to the comedic
romance but fuses it with Ueda’s idiosyncratic approach
to animation, adding music, additional plots, and
a flexible use of animated space that is not shy
to simplify or exaggerate when the situation calls
for. A labyrinthic but well paced story, Night
is Short, Walk on Girl’s comfortably strings
its chapters without playing favourites, building
on previous narrative developments, and using its
very stylized graphic quality to narrate. Unsurprisingly,
it garnered Best Feature award at this year’s Ottawa
International Animation Film Festival.
3.3
--
TORREY PINES, Dir.
Clyde Petersen
[reviewed
by Oslavi Linares]
Winner of the Honorable Mention in this year's 2017
OIAFF feature competition, Torrey
Pines shows, not tells, an indie road movie
and a tale of a queer childhood, rendered through
handmade cut-outs and zero dialogue. The plot is
debutant director Clyde Petersen's childhood during
1993, growing up as a non-conforming girl in California,
dealing with gender issues and her mom's mental
instability. Initially raised by his smoker grandmother,
Petersen and his mom eventually embark on a cross
country road-trip to New York. Through his passenger
seat, nearby TVs, or Petersen's imagination the
viewer encounters different elements of Americana
and pop culture, from Star Trek to Whitney Houston,
from grunge rock to redneck confederates. But while
the film's discourses on gender, family problems,
and US culture are of interest by themselves; the
story's construction grants it much of its uniqueness.
Torrey Pines uses almost no spoken dialogue (the
exception a closing scene) to convey its characters'
conversations: pantomime, facial expressions, guttural
sounds and animated picture bubbles do most of the
work. Its narrative also owes to its particular
style: cut out stop-motion animation blending two-dimensional
and three-dimensional puppets, and which evoke children's
illustrations by their geometrical simplicity. According
to Petersen, both aspects, lack of dialogue and
cut outs, were because, "I just wanted to make a
film that could go around the world without a language
barrier and that many people could see it that didn't
have to speak English . . . I like quiet films,
to use my eyes to understand what's going on without
being told."
Inspired by filmmaker John Waters, this coming-of-age
tale was the labour of three years, the director
mentioned that the film was made by, ". . . just
two animators (myself I did most of it), then Chris
Looney would help me when I got tired. And then
we had seven interns . . . each worked one day a
week . . . building puppets and sets and designing
stuff. Me and Chris did all the animation . . .
It took a year and a half of animation [out of three
years], everyday."
To animate his childhood, Petersen relied on a single
Canon Rebel camera shooting a multiplane composition
and the software Dragonframe. The film's budget
was around 30,000 US dollars, much of which was
crowdsourced through the Kickstarter website. "I
just launched a Kickstarter [campaign] and did it
over a month . . . people could pay 25 dollars to
be in the movie and that Whitney Houston scene is
all patrons. They sent in photos and we made them
puppets. So, everyone in the movie supported the
film."
The resulting feature was not only indie in style
and production but also in distribution. Rather
than waiting for the festival season, Torrey
Pines' release resembles its own road-trip or
that of Petersen's band. "We premiered last October
with a live score, with a choir and rock-band playing
all the music, in Seattle. And then we went on a
whole north American tour, 60 shows, kind of punk
rock style, DIY, houses museums, art galleries.
Just went for it, because we didn't want to wait
for a film festival to pick it up . . . Why wait,
just worked three years on it, just fucking go.
We are all independent musicians . . . "
"And now it's in film festivals, so it's a year
later, we went on a European tour also and now it's
been getting picked up, by film festivals. So, I'm
so glad we didn't wait because it would have sat
there for a year."
"The next place it's going is Oslo and Copenhagen
. . .and then it will be at Cucalorus Film Festival
in North Carolina . . . I would love to get some
distribution for it, [but] can't really control
that either, just distributing myself until something
happens."
As for the film's ending, Petersen says that, "There's
a lot of questions I left unanswered but I felt
good. I wanted it to be mysterious and weird."
3.0
--
MY DOG'S JINJIN AND AKIDA, Dir.
Jong-duck Cho
[reviewed
by Oslavi Linares]
If one asks what My
Dog's Jinjin and Akida is about, one might as
well ask what is being a child about? Although its
characters are drawn with soft lines, gentle warm
colours, and friendly round shapes the film's plot
is simple but serious in tone, and the animation
works along and in contrast to it. Far from a children's
story it is a realistic depiction of a dysfunctional
family through the still innocent eyes of the filmmaker's
infant alter-ego. Jaeyoung is the son of a drunk
fish seller and a devote catholic mother, he shares
his household with his sister Jeong-min and their
dogs Jinjin and Akida. While his father drunkenness
strains the family, the situation worsens because
of the man's favouritism of the dogs over his children.
Jealous of Jinjin and Akida and weary of their aggressiveness,
Jaeyoung sets them loose, only to find his troubles
multiplied. In an interview with Arts and Opinion,
director Jong-duck Cho's spoke more about his feature
debut, which came after five years of personal work,
two years writing the script and three producing
the feature.
ARTS & OPINION: What inspired the film?
JONG-DUCK CHO: I wanted to make a story about family
but was also inspired by the childhood film My
Life as a Dog (1985) and What's Eating
Gilbert Grape (1993) from Swedish filmmaker
Lasse Hallström.
A
& O: Why did you choose to deal with family problems
in the film? JONG-DUCK CHO: Family problems are
important for me as a topic, and the one I know
best. I also wanted to make an animation which was
realistic.
A
& O: Why did you choose the film's graphic style,
its visual aspect?
JONG-DUCK
CHO: I love drawn and painted images, and animation
with a painterly quality. But also, I wanted to
bring the nostalgia, the tmosphere at the time [the
80s] and making this kind of drawing and animation
is the best for that.
A
& O: Was it difficult to fund this feature?
JONG-DUCK
CHO: During the film's production I got funding
from the Korean Academy of Film Arts, which offered
money for the production costs, but not during the
writing, when I worked a part-time job. A
& O: Where else has My Dogs Jinjin and Akida
been shown?
JONG-DUCK
CHO: At Zagreb (World Festival of Animated Film
Zagreb, Croatia) and Bucheon (Bucheon International
Animation Festival n South Korea).
A
& O: Any future projects?
JONG-DUCK
CHO: I am working as a storyboard artist in an animation
company. Though I enjoy traditional methods I am
learning modern techniques like CGI 3D. I am looking
for any other inspiration and stories to make, if
I find the right one I'll make it into a film.
3.0
-- I'LL
JUST LIVE IN BANDO, Yongsun
Lee
[reviewed
by Oslavi Linares]
With its cartoonish but everyday aesthetic, I'll
Just Live in Bando offers a contemporary satire
on Korean (and arguably modern) society. The premise
is a simple one: frustrated with his job as a part-time
acting instructor, Jun-Koo has to decide between
an offer as a permanent professor or try his luck
auditioning for a promising role. His dilemma exacerbates
due to his son's accident, his wife's impulsive
purchase of an apartment, his daughter's future
education, an unreliable benefactor, and his involvement
in a sexual scandal. Jun-Koo's desperate attempts
are rendered through simple character designs that
make strategic use of lines to emphasize the character's
shifting moods, as well as other over-dramatic tropes
such as teary eyes, soap-opera music, and camera
movements. Indeed, the camera-like framing infuse
the at-times slow animation with a live-action realism.
This mix of animation and video techniques also
applies to the appearance of actual cell-phone screens,
devices which in themselves constantly disrupt the
course of the plot, much like in real life. Indeed,
for all it's over-the-top jokes, director Youngsun
Lee's debut feature film is partly autobiographical.
Lee himself is a part-time instructor and according
to him Jun-Koo's situation mirrors that of many
part-time academics paid approximately a fifth of
what their permanent colleagues earn. Even through
part of the making of I'll Just Live in Bando Lee
was working part-time; however, the director got
some funding for the production of the film and
he declares that, "for this kind of film the first
support we can consider about is national [public
funding] support, but in this case it was not a
support for long feature film but . . . for short
films because it's an animation for adults and this
is not a very famous or popular genre in Korea .
. . So it was difficult to get more support." Nevertheless,
the director mentions that thanks to his job as
a teacher he, "was helped by his students and he
could use the computers and materials from the university."
As for inspiration, Lee favours Japanese and US
animation comedy and stories about families. "[He]
already had some round and cute style for his characters
but [also] wanted to make some kind of Korean version
of the Simpsons and sit-coms . . . [He] was specially
inspired by the American comedian Louis C. K." Visually,
"for the design of the characters he referred to
the Japanese cartoon [Hôhokekyo tonari no] Yamada-kun
(Isao Takahata, 1999), which also has round and
cute characters and a family story."
Despite his character's misfortunes, the film offers
a moral since, "In Korea, to make a living we have
to abandon so many things in society and that is
a sad point, and this film shows that in any case,
the dream can work somehow."
3.0--
LU OVER THE WALL,
Dir. Masaaki Yuasa
[reviewed
by Oslavi Linares]
Lu Over the Wall offers another example of Masaaki
Yuasa’s crazy animation style: cartoonish or stylized
line drawn characters, an animated camera that dives
through dimensional imagery, and flat textures with
painterly qualities. These techniques are used comically
to tell the story of Kai, a teenager in the small
fishing town of Hinashi, where career prospects
are limited to fishing or tourism, and where legends
of mermaids haunt the waters. Kai’s apathic life
is disrupted when his music attracts Lu, the mermaid.
Together they join his friends’ rock band and accidentally
spark national fascination and a clash between land
and sea. An energetic film full of fantastic creatures,
absurd events, and youth romance, this coming of
age comedy nevertheless lacks much in its plot.
The story reaches its climax without much other
than a collection of jokes and an increase in mermaid
powers. Kai’s own change from an introvert to a
content young man is somewhat irrelevant to his
relationship with Lu. Nothing is really at risk,
and the return to the status quo leaves a taste
of poignancy after all the dancing and singing has
taken place. Nevertheless, the film’s animation
is noteworthy and a must-watch for Yuasa fans, as
it retains his animation style. It recalls Studio
Ghibli’s Ponyo
(2008) and My Neighbor Totoro (1988), and
falls more in line with their type of younger audiences,
unlike the wittier more adult tone of Yuasa’s Night
is Short, Walk on Girl also screened at this
year’s OIAFF.
