Four friends grow up during the end of the Cultural Revolution in Wang Xiaoshuai’s 11 FLOWERS
11 FLOWERS (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2011)
Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th St., 212-255-2243
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., 212-875-5601
Opens Friday, February 22
firstrunfeatures.com/11flowers
Sixth Generation Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams) reaches back into his childhood in the poignant, autobiographical 11 Flowers. Set in 1975 near the end of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the film is seen through the eyes of eleven-year-old Wang Han (Liu Wenquing), who lives with his family in a poor, remote village in Guizhou province as part of the Third Front movement, in which the nation moved industry inland to protect it from possible Soviet attack. Wang’s father (Wang Jingchun) spends the week away from his wife (Yan Ni), son, and young daughter (Zhao Shiqi), working at an opera house in town. When one of Wang’s teachers, Miss Zhou (Yu Yue), tells Wang that he should get a clean shirt so he can look good as the new class gym leader, his mother at first is mad at him for even asking for such a luxury item but ultimately makes him one. However, while fooling around with his friends, Louse (Zhang Kexuan), Mouse (Zhong Guo Liuxing), and Wei Jun (Lou Yihao), something happens to the shirt, which soon winds up in the hands of a possible murderer (Wang Ziyi) on the run from the police. Based on actual events that happened to him as a child, Wang’s 11 Flowers is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age film, reminiscent of Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me. Wang, who was known as Wang Han when he was a boy, narrates the opening and closing himself, adding yet more personal touches to the tale. Hovering over the work is the specter of the Cultural Revolution; in one moving scene, adults have gathered for a small dinner party, but when one of them starts singing an old favorite tune, Wang’s father quickly changes it to a Mao-endorsed propaganda song for fear of being caught doing something against the government’s wishes. Much like Wang’s father teaches his son how to paint, interpreting reality on canvas, director Wang interprets his childhood reality onscreen in this small gem of a film.
Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo continues his fascinating exploration of cinematic narrative in In Another Country, although this one turns somewhat nasty and tiresome by the end. After being duped in a bad business deal by a family member, an older woman (Youn Yuh-jung) and her daughter, Wonju (Jung Yumi), move to the small seaside town of Mohjang, where the disenchanted Wonju decides to write a screenplay to deal with her frustration. Based on an actual experience she had, she writes three tales in which a French woman named Anne (each played by an English-speaking Isabelle Huppert) comes to the town for different reasons. In the first section, Anne is a prominent filmmaker invited by Korean director Jungsoo (Kwon Hye-hyo), who has a thing for her even though he is about to become a father with his very suspicious wife, Kumhee (Moon So-ri). In the second story, Anne, a woman married to a wealthy CEO, has come to Mohjang to continue her affair with a well-known director, Munsoo (Moon Sung-keun), who is careful that the two are not seen together in public. And in the final part, Anne, whose husband recently left her for a young Korean woman, has arrived in Mohjang with an older friend (Youn), seeking to rediscover herself. In all three stories, Anne searches for a lighthouse, as if that could shine a light on her future, and meets up with a goofy lifeguard (Yu Jun-sang) who offers the possibility of sex, but each Anne reacts in different ways to his advances. Dialogue and scenes repeat, with slight adjustments made based on the different versions of Anne, investigating character, identity, and desire both in film and in real life. Hong wrote the film specifically for Huppert, who is charming and delightful in the first two sections before turning ugly in the third as Anne suddenly becomes annoying, selfish, and irritating, the plot taking hard-to-believe twists that nearly undermine what has gone on before. As he has done in such previous films as 
One of America’s most daring and adventurous filmmakers, California native Paul Thomas Anderson, who has dazzled, amazed, challenged, and confused audiences with such previous gems as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood, has done it again with his latest, The Master. The film is built around the fascinating relationship between Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a WWII vet struggling to fit into the real world after seeing so much violence and death overseas, and the Master (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a cultlike organization known as the Cause that believes in past-life regression and invasive questioning known as Processing to help people deal with personal trauma. The Master essentially adopts Quell, intrigued by his distorted outlook on life, making him a member of the family, which also includes his wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), his son, Val (Jesse Plemons), and his daughter, Elizabeth (Ambyr Childers). Inspired by the real-life tale of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology — and incorporating war stories he was told by Jason Robards on the set of Magnolia, elements from the life of John Steinbeck, and discarded scenes from the script for There Will Be Blood — Anderson crafts a, dare we say, masterful cinematic experience built around a pair of extraordinary performances. Phoenix absolutely inhabits the role of Quell, staggering about with an awkward gait, with impossibly deep lines on his face and eyes that seem to be able to look through lead. Hoffman is his equal as the much cooler and calmer spiritual leader, until he is faced with sudden turmoil. The scenes in which the two men sit across from each other, going through a Processing session, are mesmerizing, the most powerful moments to be found onscreen last year. (Both Phoenix and Hoffman received Oscar nods, along with Adams.) But despite the title, the focus remains on Quell, a lost soul searching for somewhere to belong in a changing postwar America. Anderson’s first film in four years, The Master is a bold, audacious work that is as unsettling as it is exhilarating.
Japanese filmmaker Shohei Imamura blurs the lines between reality and fiction in his cinéma vérité masterpiece, A Man Vanishes. The 1967 black-and-white documentary delves into one of Japan’s annual multitude of missing persons cases, this time investigating the mysterious disappearance of Tadashi Ôshima, a plastics wholesaler who vanished during a business trip. Imamura sends out actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi (The Insect Woman, Intentions of Murder) to conduct interviews with Ôshima’s fiancée, Yoshie Hayakawa, who develops an interest in her inquisitor; Yoshie’s sister, Sayo, who quickly finds herself on the defensive; business associates who talk about Ôshima’s drinking, womanizing, and embezzling from the company; and several people who remember seeing Sayo together with Ôshima, something she adamantly denies despite building evidence. Throughout the 130-minute work, the film references itself as being a film, culminating in Imamura’s pulling the rug out from under viewers and calling everything they’ve seen into question in an unforgettable moment that breaks down the fourth wall and explodes the very nature of truth and cinematic storytelling itself. It also explores individual identity and just how much one really knows those closest to them. Originally supposed to be the first of a twenty-four-part series exploring two dozen missing-persons cases, A Man Vanishes ended up being such a challenging undertaking that it was the only one Imamura made, but what a film it is; it would be more than a decade before he returned to fiction, with 1979’s Vengeance Is Mine, which led the way to a spectacular final two decades that also included The Ballad of Narayama, Eijanaika, Black Rain, The Eel, Dr. Akagi, and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge. The amazing A Man Vanishes is screening February 19 at the IFC Center as part of the Tuesday-night series “Stranger than Fiction,” followed by a Q&A with documentarian Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story, Fighter) and John Walter (How to Draw a Bunny).