Tag Archives: japan society

GLOBUS FILM SERIES — LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: VEGETARIAN

Chae Min-seo stars as a deeply troubled young woman in VEGETARIAN

VEGETARIAN (CHAESIKJUUIJA) (Lim Woo-seong, 2009)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 17, $12, 5:30
Series runs through March 18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” series turns to the subjects of food, sex, and obsession with Lim Woo-seong’s creepy debut, Vegetarian, which caused quite a stir when it played at the Pusan and Sundance Film Festivals. Based on a short story by Han Gang, the psychological drama stars Chae Min-seo as Yeong-hye, a young woman whose dreams lead her to suddenly become a fierce vegetarian, alienating her from her husband, Gil Soo (Kim Young-jae), and her family; a scene in which her father, during his birthday party, tries to force meat into her mouth is particularly unnerving. As Yeong-hye teeters on the edge of sanity, she stirs something deep within her brother-in-law, Cho Min-ho (Kim Hyun-sung), an artist mired in a creative funk. The film slips a bit as it gets more luridly disturbing before returning to the more interesting relationship between Yeong-hye and her older sister, Ji-hye (Kim Yeo-jin), who is desperately trying to save her from permanently losing her mind. Evoking both Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995) and Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book (1996), writer-director Lim sustains a tense mood with the help of cinematographer Kang Chang-bae and composer Jeong Yong-jin, exploring just how far obsession can go. Vegetarian might not be a diatribe about vegetarianism, but it still is likely to put you off your lunch, so eat carefully either before or afterward. Among the other films screening this weekend at Japan Society are Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, Hideo Nakata’s Chaos, Mochizuki Rokuro’s Minazuki, and Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis.

GLOBUS FILM SERIES — LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: TIME / BAD GUY

TIME kicks off a trio of films by Korean director Kim Ki-duk at Japan Society

TIME (SHI GAN) (Kim Ki-duk, 2006)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 10, $12, 3:00
Series runs through March 18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.timethemovie.net

The excellent Japan Society series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which consists of Japanese and Korean films dealing with erotic obsession, continues on March 10 with three works by Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk, beginning at 3:00 with Time. After two years together, See-hee (Seong Hyeon-ah) thinks that her boyfriend, Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo), has lost interest in her. She goes crazy jealous whenever he even so much as takes a peek at another woman, embarrassing him in public time and time again. But when she suddenly disappears, he soon realizes that he can’t live without her. And he won’t necessarily have to; See-hee has taken off to have a plastic surgeon (Kim Sung-min) completely change her face so she can make Ji-woo fall in love with her (now played by Park Ji-yun) all over again, even if he doesn’t know who she really is. But it is a lot harder to change one’s inner psyche than outward physical appearance. Kim, who has made such unusual and compelling films as 3-Iron, The Bow, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring, has crafted yet another fascinating drama that challenges the audience with its unique and unexpected twists and turns, asking intriguing questions rather than doling out simplistic answers. Kim shows the passage of time as a natural enemy to love and romance — but one that can be overcome. “Time travels in divers paces with divers persons,” Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It. And so it does in this difficult yet memorable film.

Kim Ki-duk’s BAD GUY is just plain bad

BAD GUY (NABBEUN NAMJA) (Kim Ki-duk, 2001)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 10, $12, 5:00
Series runs through March 18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.badguythemovie.net

Kim Ki-duk has made a number of excellent films, but Bad Guy is not one of them. Instead, it’s a preposterous, painfully puerile, and deeply misogynistic movie that is insulting from start to finish. Although it’s only a hundred minutes long, it feels like a thousand. Won Seo stars as Sun-hwa, a college girl who gets conned by Han-ki (Cho Je-hyun) into becoming a prostitute to pay off a false debt. He watches her transformation through a two-way mirror while one of his henchmen, Myung-soo (Choi Duk-moon), thinks he has fallen in love with her himself. Lots of sex and violence ensue, most of which makes no sense and is as unbelievable as the premise. The evening concludes at 7:30 with Kim’s 2008 Dream, a tale in which two people’s dreams intersect.

GLOBUS FILM SERIES — LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: VIBRATOR

Rei (Shinobu Terajima) is in desperate need of human connection in tender, moving VIBRATOR

VIBRATOR (Ryūichi Hiroki, 2003)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, March 4, $12, 5:30
Series runs March 2-18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s examination of twisted sex, erotic obsession, and violence focuses on the treatment of those issues in Japanese and Korean cinema, which often have similar narrative structures. On March 4 at 5:30, they will present the unusual road movie Vibrator. Based on the novel by Mari Akasaka, Ryūichi Hiroki’s film is a poetic journey of one woman’s desperate need for connection. Shinobu Terajima (Caterpillar) gives a subtly riveting performance as Rei, a thirty-one-year-old lonely bulimic freelance journalist who hears voices in her head. Shopping in a convenience store for beer and wine, she gets the urge to have a sexual encounter with a stranger, and in walks Okabe (Nao Omori), a younger blond truck driver. After a beautifully shot scene of their love making, Rei asks if she can join him on his travels, and the two set off on a surprisingly tender adventure. Winner of Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Haruhiko Arai), Best Actress (Terajima), and Best Supporting Actor (Omori) at the twenty-fifth Yokohoma Film Festival, Vibrator is a compelling psychological tale of a complex, troubled soul seeking to be touched by another human being. Hiroki ( I Am an S&M Writer, Tokyo Trash Baby) imbues the film with a gentle thoughtfulness that prevents turning the protagonists into clichéd characters; Vibrator is not so much about sexuality or eroticism as it is about the pain and anguish of loneliness. Among the other films screening this weekend at Japan Society are Ryuichi’s M, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll, Lee Yoon-ki’s My Dear Enemy, Shinya Tsukamoto’s A Snake of June, and Koji Wakamatsu’s Petrel Hotel Blue.

GLOBUS FILM SERIES — LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: AIR DOLL

Nozomi (Bae Doona) dreams that there’s more to life in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s AIR DOLL

AIR DOLL (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, March 3, $12, 2:00
Series runs March 2-18
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Over the last twenty years, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has compiled a remarkable resume, directing eight narrative features and four documentaries that investigate such themes as memory and loss. His 2009 film, Air Doll, examines loneliness through the eyes of a blow-up doll come to life. Bae Doona stars as Nozomi, a plastic sex toy owned by Hideo (Itsuji Itao), a restaurant worker who treats her like his wife, telling her about his day, sitting with her at the dinner table, and making love to her at night. But suddenly, one morning, Nozomi achieves consciousness, discovering that she has a heart, and she puts on her French maid costume and goes out into the world, learning about life by wandering through the streets and working in a video store, always returning home before Hideo and pretending to still be the doll. Adapted from a manga by Yoshiie Goda, Air Doll is another beautiful, meditative study from Kore-eda. Nozomi’s wide-eyed innocence at the joys of life comes sweet and slowly, played with a subtle wonderment by South Korean model and actress Bae (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Host). The film does, however, take one nasty turn and is a bit too long, at more than two hours. But it’s still another contemplative gem from the masterful director of Maborosi, Nobody Knows, and Still Walking. Air Doll is screening on March 3 at 2:00 as part of the Japan Society series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” twenty-two films over three weeks from Japan and Korea that examine twisted, obsessive, dangerous, and downright crazy sex and romance.

UNDER THE RADAR: HOT PEPPER, AIR CONDITIONER, AND THE FAREWELL SPEECH

HOT PEPPER . . . examines an office temp’s imminent departure in absurdist ways (photo by Toru Okada)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through January 14, $22
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.undertheradarfestival.com

Built around an office temp’s imminent departure, Toshiki Okada’s Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech is a highly stylized, very funny three-part absurdist comedy that riffs on Japan’s Generation Y culture and office politics. The sixty-five-minute piece is set in Japan Society’s reconfigured gallery space, with a white table and chairs placed in a corner in front of a white backdrop. In the first section, “Hot Pepper,” three temps are on break, discussing where they should hold a farewell party for fellow temp Erika, whose contract at the company has been terminated early despite her fine knowledge of Excel. One at a time, the temps deliver brief monologues, the man insistent on picking a restaurant from the latest issue of Hot Pepper magazine, one of the women obsessed with motsu hot pot, and the other woman confused as to why three temps and not full-timers have been put in charge of the party. As they make their points, they walk around the small set in awkward, carefully choreographed gestural movements, with different-colored lights casting shadows on the walls behind them, their words forming a rhythmic pattern. In the second part, “Air Conditioner,” a pair of full-time workers get into a conversation about the office temperature (a metaphor for the office temps), the woman concerned with how cold it always is. “I mean, 23°C is like, it’s the middle of summer, OK, 23°C is ridiculous, don’t you think?” she says. “I’m seriously totally freezing and like, every day is like this hellish ordeal, the state I’m living in, like, my desk is, where I sit is pretty much right in front of the air conditioner, the air blows right into my face, like on my forehead, like, I’m in the situation all day long where I can’t get any work done at all, I’m miserable, like what am I doing here at work, it’s a really miserable feeling, you know what I’m talking about?” As in the first scene, the employees repeat their assertions over and over, rambling on and on about the same thing, echoing what often happens in a work environment. But whereas they all have very specific points to make, Erika really rambles on in the play’s conclusion, “The Farewell Speech,” in which she gives a wonderfully disjointed good-bye speech to the other workers, words spilling out of her in a stream-of-consciousness eruption of nearly manic proportions. Performed by Okada’s chelfitsch Theater Company (a play on the word “selfish”), which was last at Japan Society in September 2009 with Five Days in March, the show features Taichi Yamagata, Riki Takeda, Mari Ando, Saho Ito, Kei Namba, and Fumie Yokoo as the office workers, an engaging group of very different personalities. Performed in Japanese with English subtitles, the charming Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech continues at Japan Society through January 14 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

UNDER THE RADAR: THE BEE

Hideki Noda’s THE BEE centers on an intense stand-off between a salaryman and an escaped killer (photo by Masahiko Yakou)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through January 15, $25
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.undertheradarfestival.com

On his way home from work, a Tokyo salaryman named Ido is shocked to find that his street has been roped off by the police. Swarmed by the media, Ido soon discovers that his wife and son have been taken hostage by an escaped murderer named Ogoro. Frustrated by the lack of help from the police and the insensitivity of the press, Ido suddenly decides to take matters into his own hands, leading to an intense stand-off in Hideki Noda’s brilliant experimental stage drama The Bee. Based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s short story “Mushiriai” (“Plucking at Each Other”) and set in the summer of 1974, The Bee is a brutal examination of just how far one man will go to save his family. Kathryn Hunter is outstanding as Ido, her small body stuffed into a business suit, her nasally voice an excellent counter to Clive Mendus’s British Detective Inspector Dodoyama, Glyn Pritchard’s stuttering Ogoro, and Noda’s Japanese stripper, Ogoro’s wife. The latter three actors take on multiple roles, often going back and forth in an instant, with Mendus also playing a reporter and a TV chef, Noda playing a reporter as well, and Pritchard also portraying a reporter and Ogoro’s six-year-old son. The early fast pace eventually slows down as Ido heads over the edge, a simple family man who just wanted to come home and celebrate his son’s birthday but instead is mired in a violent psychological battle with a confused criminal amid a media-driven society. A hostage drama reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low and Archie Mayo’s The Petrified Forest, The Bee features unusually choreographed movement, particularly by Hunter; a translucent mirrored backdrop; and, as the audience take their seats, a Japanese version of the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” Vastly entertaining and, ultimately, extremely disturbing, The Bee is running at Japan Society through January 15 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

UNDER THE RADAR

Judith Malina of the Living Theatre and Silvia Calderoni of Motus collaborate on THE PLOT IS THE REVOLUTION, a special Under the Radar presentation on January 9 at La MaMa (photo by End & Dna)

The Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. between East Fourth St. & Astor Pl.
January 4-15, free-$25
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The eighth annual Under the Radar: A Festival Tracking New Theater from Around the World offers another diverse collection of live performances that provide a welcome alternative to conventional theater. Running January 4-15, this year’s fest includes such promising productions as Hideki Noda’s The Bee, an English-language drama at Japan Society about a horrible surprise waiting for a businessman upon returning home from the office; Bambï & Waterwell’s Goodbar, a live concept album reimagining of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, at the Public Theater; Suli Holum & Deborah Stein’s Chimera, about a woman who is her own twin, at HERE; and Stefan Zeromski Theatre’s unique musical take on Bernard-Marie Koltès’s In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, set to live Polish punk rock, at La MaMa. The Public will also be home to the LuEsther Lounge, presenting free live music throughout the festival. Among the other free events are the installation Gob Squad Resource Room at the Goethe-Institut’s Wyoming Building (the Gob Squad Arts Collective will also be presenting the interactive Super Night Shot at the Public); Camille O’Sullivan’s Feel, in which the Irish singer will play a different character for songs by Jacquel Brel, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, David Bowie, and others, at the Public; and the panel discussion “Performance and Context: The Black Box and the White Cube,” January 8 at 1:00 at the Public. In addition, a post-show discussion will follow the January 7 performance of Motus’s Alexis. A Greek Tragedy at La MaMa, a preshow talk will precede the January 8 performance of the Living Word Project’s Word Becomes Flesh at the Public, a panel will follow the January 11 performance of biriken & Ayça Damgaci’s Lick But Don’t Swallow! at La MaMa, chelfitsch’s Toshiki Okada (Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech) will lead a workshop for theater and dance professionals on January 14 at 1:00 at Japan Society, and “Everyone’s a Critic! Exploring the Changing Landscape of Arts Writing” will take place January 15 at 1:00 at the LuEsther Lounge. As always, Under the Radar offers adventurous theatergoers a chance to see a bunch of very different works, from an excellent selection of international companies.