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Film: Lilya 4-Ever
Release date: 22nd September 2003
Certificate: 18
Running time: 109 mins
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Starring: Oksana Akinshina, Artyom Bogucharsky, Lyubov Agapova, Liliya Shinkaryova, Elina Benenson
Genre: Crime/Drama
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: Sweden/Denmark
Lilya 4-Ever is the third film from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, and is the story of one girl’s belief that she is destined for happiness within an area of the former Soviet Union where the prospect of prostitution and sex trafficking are forever looming. The narrative of a girl's descent into prostitution may be a clichéd narrative of world cinema but it doesn't stop Lilya 4-Ever from being all the more harrowing.
Opening to the sound of industrial death metal, we are introduced to Lilya (played by Oksana Akinshina), who wanders bruised and disorientated, lost and alone, in a foreign city. Coming across a bridge, she prepares to jump off onto the busy highway below in an act of suicide. Fading to black, the film resumes three months earlier in the former Soviet Union to an impoverished area of Estonia.
Lilya is elated at the prospect of moving to America with her mother and her new ‘boyfriend’. Unfortunately, after a family meeting, it transpires that the mother is to move off to the US without Lilya, who will be left under the care of a cruel and seemingly uncaring aunt. Left on her own, Lilya is forced into coming up with a way to support herself, which comes in the form of prostitution.
Forming a friendship with Volodya, a local boy and son of an abusive alcoholic father, Lilya manages to maintain her composure as she makes enough money to live independently. After forming a relationship with a Swedish gentleman, Lilya is asked to move to Sweden with him. It seems as if her dreams are finally becoming true…
From the harrowing opening sequence, it is clear that Lilya 4-Ever is not going to be an easy film to watch. The film is based on real-life events where 16 year old Danguole Rasalaite jumped off a bridge after being transported from her home in Lithuania to Sweden under the allusion that she was going to have a job, but in reality was pimped out and sexually abused upon a daily basis. She died three days later after jumping, and her story was pieced together by three letters she was carrying at the time.
For director Lukas Moodysson, it marks a startling change. His debut film, Show Me Love, out grossed Titanic at the box office in his native Sweden, and his last picture, Together, was an oddball hippy comedy of sorts with dark satirical undertones. By contrast, Lilya 4-Ever is a fairytale set within a gritty urban area. There are monsters and angels, an evil aunt, a loyal and dependable friend, and even a handsome prince. Lilya is effectively a princess who believes unquestionably in this narrative that her luck is destined to change, dreaming that her prince charming will come and whisk her far away from the misery that surrounds her. It will, of course, lead to her downfall, and the audience knows this, but the film’s predictability only adds to its tragedy.
The more innocent scenes between Lilya and Volodya form the core of the story and feel reminiscent of the character interactions seen in the films of Shane Meadows and Ken Loach. That is, two characters living in impoverishment but still finding happiness in their lives through their friendship. Lilya herself played by Oksana Akinshina can, at times, appear to be a spoiled brat, as she flaunts her success in the faces of friends and neighbours, and you can sometimes forget that she is just a kid.
Next to the Millennium trilogy, however, Lilya 4-Ever illuminates Sweden’s misogynist undercurrents. Less critical, and more an outright condemnation, Moodysson is on the warpath against his native homeland on this front. Sometimes, the film feels as if it is going too far - the film’s Ramstein opening, for example, is a particularly bombastical approach (you may ask why a Swedish film would open to German death metal). Though it does add an element of confusion, you do wonder how Lilya would have any conception of this kind of music.
The ugliest moments of the movie come in the form of a series of montage sequences, in which we witness, from Lilya’s perspective, a parade of older men raping her. The sheer number of men is sickening, the whole experience invasive and completely without passion, like the audience is being raped themselves. It is no understatement to say that these scenes may just be enough to put you off sex for life. Even after the film has finished, these sequences will linger, as you realize that someone somewhere on this planet will be experiencing this horror for real.
Lilya 4-Ever, is not for the faint of heart. Though there are moments of tenderness to balance the unremitting horror and overwhelming sense of hopelessness, the film is very angry, and as Lilya is buoyed on by delusional dreams is to the audience’s own distress. It is certainly a hard film to recommend, as any film that deals with child prostitution will be, but then this is a subject that cannot be left out of minds. CPH
Film: Butterfly Man
Release date: 8th December 2003
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Kaprice Kea
Starring: Stuart Laing, Napakpapha Nakprasitte, Francis Magee, Gavan O'Herlihy, Abigail Good
Genre: Crime/Thriller/Romance
Studio: De Warrenne
Format: DVD
Country: Thailand/UK
This is an English-language release.
Thailand is renowned for being a popular destination for tourists and backpackers, coupling a care free attitude with white sandy beaches and other such scenic locales. However, the country is also known for its sinister reputation in regard to sex tourism, crime and binge drinking culture. For anyone who found Danny Boyle’s 2000 film adaptation of The Beach lacking, they may find something to like with Kaprice Kea’s 2002 film Butterfly Man, a low budget British/Thai thriller that explores the dual nature behind tourism that lies at the heart of South East Asia’s banana pancake trail.
Adam (Stuart Laing) is a British backpacker who arrives to the neon lights of the Khao San Road in Bangkok with his girlfriend Kate (Kirsty Mitchell). The couple’s relationship is in turmoil, and despite Adam agreeing to go on holiday to make amends with his girlfriend, the couple soon split over a heated argument. Going their separate ways, Adam is, like most travellers in a distant land, motivated into seeking new and interesting experiences, and finds himself travelling south to the Gulf of Thailand to the island of Ko Samui.
Upon arriving, Adam is talked into having a Thai massage, which is sold as the most sensual experience the human body can ever receive. After awkwardly visiting a massage parlour, he is introduced to beautiful Thai masseuse Em. Forming an instant bond, Em agrees to show Adam around Ko Samui, teaching him the intricacies and customs of Thai life, and she quickly becomes an object of his affections. Unfortunately, Adam is still confused and angry over the fallout with his girlfriend, and after a night of drinking finds himself engaging with sexual activity with a Thai prostitute. An act he instantly regrets the following morning.
As is the way with karma, things begin to take a turn for the worse for Adam, when he is drugged one night and robbed of all of his money, credit cards and passport. Effectively thrown out onto the streets, and with seemingly no way out; he is forced to take a shady job opportunity with the local crime lords so that he can afford to travel back to Bangkok. He quickly realizes, however, the true nature of his employer’s business, which is occupied with human trafficking, with Em being targeted.
Evolving into a tense thriller, Adam endeavours to hit back at the crime lords, though it soon becomes apparent that nobody on this tropical island paradise is completely innocent...
Upon first impressions, the Butterfly Man certainly feels more attuned with the kind of soft-core erotic thriller from the 1970s and ‘80s, with its low production values and moonlit sex scenes. Incidentally, the movie has been likened to french erotic art house movie Emmanuelle, not least because of its idyllic setting, but also its themes regarding sensuality and guilt free sex. From this perspective, however, you overlook what is in fact an excellently paced thriller, well supported by its cast, and tastefully shot on location in Ko Samui, at once revelling within the scenic locales of sunsets, palm trees and the blue ocean, but also illuminating the seedier side of tourism that lies just below the surface. The low production costs make the movie feel more like a travelogue aesthetically, as Adam, like Richard in The Beach, attempts to find his own measure and distillation of paradise.
The performance from Stuart Laing as Adam carries much of the film. At first, he is a largely unlikable character; brash and angry, seemingly motivated purely by pleasures of the flesh. Fortunately, his character arc forces him to look inward and realise the error of his ways, and once he begins going on the offensive against the criminals, he has the viewer’s complete support - the film is all the more satisfying for it. Played by Thai actress Napakpapha Nakprasitte, Em is an enchanting presence, playing a character aware of the sin and crime that surrounds her, a mode of life that profits on human misery, but is sadly oblivious to the greater threat that lies in waiting.
As in Thailand’s most famous cinematic export, the Ong Bak series, the heart and soul of Thai life is depicted as to be rooted in the small settlements that exist in the rural North of the mainland.
For those who have travelled or about to go travelling around Thailand, the Butterfly Man is essential viewing. For anybody else, it is an involving, well executed thriller that betters The Beach, since it reveals the ways in which the complicated ideology and need for travel can transform and broaden the mind, but also how it can corrupt, not just the tourist, but the native people themselves. CPH
Film: Arsenal
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring: Semyon Svashenko , Amvrosi Buchma, Georgi Khorkov, Dmitri Erdman, Sergey Petrov
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Mr. Bongo
Format: DVD
Country: Soviet Union/Ukraine
First released in 1929, Arsenal, one of Alexander Dovzhenko’s great masterpieces of silent soviet cinema, is being re-released on DVD. Also known as January Uprising in Kiev in 1929 when it was first released in the UK, it is the second movie of Dovzhenko’s Ukraine trilogy, sitting in between 1928s Zvenigora and 1930s Earth. Though originally criticized in Soviet Russia for being counter revolutionary, Arsenal was received better in the West for obvious reasons.
Beginning in 1917, Russia is suffering during the Great War, as Tsar Nicholas II sits in his office largely oblivious to the woes and circumstances of his fellow countrymen.
Returning from the frontline, are a number of defecting soldiers, one of which is the film’s hero Tymish Stoyan (Semyon Svashenko), who is heading back to his native Kiev where he intends to work in the Arsenal factory.
In the lead up to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly elections, which are haphazardly arranged in the wake of the Ukraine/Soviet war, it soon transpires that the city’s Bolsheviks are not being very well represented. Allying themselves with the Soviet forces, the Bolsheviks soon become involved in an armed uprising in one of the city’s munition factories, the famous January Uprising, which gave rise to the Russian Revolution. Stoyan is obviously also involved in the armed uprising, becoming a ‘bulletproof’ revolutionary hero in the film’s famous closing scene...
The film’s narrative can be difficult to follow on first viewing but it is through the Dovzhenko’s montages and imagery that Arsenal is remembered as a compelling piece of Soviet propaganda film making.
The accompanying music throughout the film’s 70 minute duration is provided by a discordant string section which only adds to the malevolent air of revolutionary menace within this historical epic. There are times in which the melodies become sweeping, but generally Igor Belza’s score promotes a genuinely unsettling tone.
The imagery of the movie has similarly lost none of its potency, now faithfully remastered for its DVD release. Early sections when a woman beats her children and a man beats his horse whilst the Tsar writes letters in his cushy office do well to define the suffering of the people at the lower end of the social spectrum. Meanwhile, a following sequence set upon the frontlines where a soldier falls prey to German laughing gas is frantically disturbing. Importantly, as a movie that is supposed to glorify the armed uprising of a Bolshevik movement, Arsenal’s representation of war and violence is one of disdain. Accompanied with shots of smiling corpses, Arsenal presents you with an array of images that are guaranteed to stick within your imagination.
The film can also be appreciated allegorically, a sequence involving a runaway train implies the unstoppable movement towards revolution - its subsequent crash may perhaps represent the inherent danger of such great social transition. Yet, with Tymish Stoyan emerging undamaged from the wreckage, the film finds its heroic protagonist worthy of the Soviet Union.
Stoyan himself is a brooding presence, a distinguished brow accenting his unblinking steely eagle eyed gaze. For all the horrors that happen around him, all the executions, he remains an enigmatic hero. In the final scene, in which he comes to literally portray the undying Bolshevik spirit, his muted screams for death as he bares his chest to the barrels of several enemy rifles provides much food for thought that will linger long after the credits finish rolling.
For newcomers, Arsenal is a very difficult watch, an overpowering score, a series of imposing black-and-white faces and distorted facial expressions perhaps echo the socio-political purposes of the film. For fans of this specific genre, however, the re-release of Arsenal is worthy of experiencing all over again. For anyone else, history students or those who are just curious in silent cinema, Dovzhenko’s masterfully creates mesmerizing and often disturbing shots that are rife with complexity and are essentially timeless. CPH
Film: Ajami
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 121 mins
Director: Scandar Copti & Yaron Shani
Starring: Fouad Habash, Nisrine Rihan, Elias Saba, Youssef Sahwani, Abu George Shibli
Genre: Crime/Drama
Studio: Momentum
Format: DVD
Country: Germany/Israel
Gaining the special mention Camera d’Or prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Ajami is a complex multi-character crime thriller that focuses upon the Israeli/Palestinian conflict located within one of Tel Aviv’s poorest neighborhoods. Directed by Yarin Shani and Scandar Copti, the former a Jewish Israeli and the latter a Christian Israeli Arab who also stars, Ajami is most importantly a film that has been made by both sides of the conflict.
Ajami is the name of the neighbourhood of Jaffa in which the movie takes place. In the beginning of the film, a local boy is shot dead in the street in a drive by shooting. It quickly transpires, however, that the shooting was a case of mistaken identity. The hit men were supposed to kill 19-year-old Omar in order to reconcile an on-going family feud, which has seen death and injury on both sides.
Refusing to run away, fearing for the life of himself and his family, Omar seeks help from Abu Elias, the local crime lord who runs the restaurant he works in. After attending a Bendouin court session, Omar is required to pay a large sum of money to settle the feud with the rival Abul-Zel family. Needing to make money quickly Omar is forced into a life of crime and drug dealing. It doesn’t help that Omar is also in love with Abu Elias’s daughter, Hadir, a Christian Arab.
Omar isn’t the only one with problems; Malek, an illegal immigrant who also works in the restaurant, is desperately in need of money to pay for his mother’s bone marrow transplant. Even the restaurant’s head chef, Binj, who appears to lead a more profitable and successful life, suffers as a result of his brother’s involvement with crime.
On the other side of the conflict, Jewish cop Dando is trying to find his missing brother whilst attempting to do his duty in an increasingly brutal fashion…
Echoing a narrative form inherited from Quentin Tarantino, Ajami’s story unfolds throughout the course of five interlocking chapters, which play out in unchronological fashion from a variety of alternative perspectives.
In a similar fashion to how The Wire defined the city of Baltimore by illustrating the social divisions between the criminals and the authorities, Ajami attempts to do the same within Jaffa. Whilst all characters are motivated by basic and understandable human behaviour, their situation within Ajami and all its conflicting social boundaries make resolution all the more difficult. Daily life is permeated by destructive racial prejudices, and the prevalence of money only pushes the impoverished into illegal activity cementing the age old vicious cycle - despair and violence only breeding more despair and violence. Whilst no character appears completely heatless, it is Abu Elias, the one character who exists in a position of power that truly comes across as unsympathetic, effectively serving as a tax man - initially appearing approachable in a time of crisis until he announces that a greater amount of money is needed.
Most of the actors and actresses have never acted before, but it never really shows or affects the film’s believability. Shahir Kabaha as Omar centres the whole movie - he is essentially just a kid but one who has to take action as the man of the family. The directors are quick to focus on the good social interactions between characters, between families and friends, with family being a dominant theme throughout the film at the centre for the conflict. For all Dando’s negligible behaviour as a cop, he is rectified by one sequence in which he bathes his infant daughter. This is the scary part; on the surface all these people seem like decent human beings but all it takes is a scratch of the surface to illuminate all the social complications. This is evident in one particular scene in which an initially civil discussion between a Jewish and Arab neighbour quickly turns to violence, and results in a dead body.
The non-linear way in which Ajami progresses, is a very intelligent way of both informing and misleading the audience. Based on the plot as they see it, audiences are bound to make their own assumptions and predictions based on their own prejudices or at least their previous experiences from watching other movies from the same genre. It is only until the credits roll, do we gain the full understanding of events and we can finally make our own conclusions.
Given its setting and the insights it provides, Ajami is a very important film, aside from the fact that it is also a brilliantly executed thriller that keeps the audience guessing right up until the end. CPH
Film: The Host
Release date: 21st May 2007
Certificate: 15
Running time: 120 mins
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Starring: Song Kang-ho, Byeon Hie-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Ko Ah-sung
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Horror/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: South Korea
The monster movie has become fashionable recently, after years spent wandering the doldrums, thanks largely due to Roland Emmerich’s 1998 god-awful Godzilla remake. Whilst the SyFy channel still gleefully holds the torch of incomprehensibly stupid B-movies starring giant killer sharks of some mutation, monsters in mainstream cinema have been undergoing something of a renaissance. 2007s Cloverfield took the Blair Witch formula and dressed it up in post 9/11 imagery as a gigantic largely unseen creature ran amok in Manhattan. Most recently, first time director Gareth Edwards has been wowing critics with Monsters, an art house road movie set along the US/Mexican which just so happens to feature leviathan space aliens. Predating both of these films, however, is The Host, a South Korean production released in 2006, which blended a modern sense of realism to the age old monster movie concept with a crushingly macabre sense of humour and, most crucially, a highly emotional dramatic core.
Opening in a mortuary within a US Army camp based within Seoul, an American scientist recklessly orders his Korean assistant to drain hundreds of bottles of toxic formaldehyde down a sink on the basis that the bottles are dusty. After much hesitation, the assistant obliges, and the chemicals are disposed of without a care for the effects it could have upon the local ecosystem of the Han River. Sure enough, six years later, strange sightings are reported around the river surrounding the Wonhyo Bridge, which connects the Northern and Southern districts of Seoul.
Located on the river bank, Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) helps run his father’s refreshment stand. Living on the premises, Gang-du is lazy and greedy, helping himself to the odd squid leg or two, but he is redeemed somewhat by his earnest devotion to his daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-seong). Gang-du is perhaps overshadowed by his much talented sister, Nam-Joo (Bae Doona), a professional archer, but is at least on a par with his brother, Nan-il (Park Hae-il) an alcoholic, unfulfilled college graduate.
What seems like a normal day quickly descends into horror, as the monster makes its first public appearance, running amok along the river bank and swallowing people whole. Gang-du is witness to the whole ordeal, and has the courage (or sheer stupidity) to confront the monster. Unfortunately, the monster grabs Hyun-seo with its tail and quickly escapes from the area. Soon after, the whole area is cordoned off by the authorities, with all citizens ordered to evacuate. After the remaining family meet up at the evacuation centre, mourning the apparent death of Hyun-seo, they are whisked away by the containment authorities after Gang-du openly admits to having direct contact with the creature.
Meanwhile, we are taken away to the monster’s lair, located in the sewers, where we learn that Hyun-seo is still very much alive, though not for long; it is made apparent that she is being saved for a later dinner. In this moment, she is able to use her mobile phone to contact her father who remains confined within quarantine.
What ensues is a quest, where the family is forced to put aside their personal flaws and work together to find Hyun-seo before the monster has the chance to eat her, whilst also avoiding the government forces of the state, who, of course, are the real monsters of the movie...
The Host contains a dose of socio-political commentary. At first, the dumping of formaldehyde into the Han River could be written off with a mere chuckle, as old monster movie cliché, but it is in fact a fairly accurate account of real events that occurred in 2000. The use of Agent Yellow, a chemical weapon used to fight the monster is a reference to Agent Orange, which was used widely in Vietnam as well as Korea in the 1960s that led to thousands of children born with severe birth defects.
There is obviously an Anti-American sentiment running throughout the movie, and the filmmakers are clearly criticizing the South Korean government for being overly tied up with US relations rather than focusing on the interests of the people. This is, however, a rather heavy-handed synopsis of the movie, and it is clear that the movie doesn’t take itself this seriously. During the monster’s first attack, an American tourist heroically enters the fray as you would expect from any Hollywood action star, but he is quickly guzzled up by the monster, a demonstration of the sly sense of humour that is working throughout the course of the film.
Above all, The Host, realizes that people are flawed, and fully capable of moments of crushing stupidity. Much of the movie is driven forward by moments of stupidity or hesitation. Nothing demonstrates this more than the character of Gang-du, a blonde peroxide haired idiot of Homer Simpson proportions. Even when he has lost his daughter, he still finds time to doze off or think about his stomach. Whilst events are specifically and malevolently designed to test and torture Gang-du to the limits, the strength of the movie is in making you root for him and a resolution for this, his dysfunctional family.
The film does have a habit of being incongruous, and sometimes this is intentional - the first reveal of the monster, for example, as it comes bounding towards Gang-du along the riverside in broad daylight. It offers stark and brutal realism; this is how you’d expect people to react upon first sighting of a amphibious monster, and as the scene ends with Gang-du watching the monster from across the river casually eating people alive, it is straight up horror; the likes which other movies couldn’t hope to replicate. Other scenes, however, seem to slide from one tonal extreme to the other. The scene in which the family congregate and mourn the loss of Hyun-seo, is at first emotionally rousing as the sister offers her bronze medal in her memory, but it quickly becomes farcical the further the characters go into bereavement, literally rolling around in a heap bawling their eyes out, cursing one another. It is as if the filmmakers are slapping the audience in the face, telling them to wise up, because it’s only a movie. On the other hand, these moments of tonal imperfection give the first viewing a sense of randomness - you think you have the movie sussed, but, at the same time, the characters could let you down, and everything could be in vain.
During the hype preceding the release of Cloverfield, it was widely speculated that the movie was going to be an American remake of The Host. Luckily, it wasn’t. The Host remains a hidden gem in Korean cinema, as well as the entire pantheon of monster movies in general. A well executed oddball tale of one family’s fight against the state and a giant mutated newt. CPH
