90% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Are interested by the trailer; Want to watch an engaging and interesting arthouse romance drama film; Enjoy being a bit puzzled, confused and unsettled throughout a movie; Don't mind really long and drawn-out lesbian sex scenes
I went to the Sydney Film Festival for the first time ever last night! I'm still in the middle of exams, so I know I shouldn't have gone, but all it took was for me to be bored of studying and for Michael to show me the amazing trailer for the film. Once I saw the trailer, I knew I needed to see the film. I love trailers that entice you without giving away much of the plot, and plus the use of the song Red Sex by Vessel is simply perfection.
Adapted from the novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, the film is set during the 1930s Japanese occupation of Korea, where conman Count Fujiwara hires a born and raised pickpocket, Sook-Hee, to become the handmaiden of the rich Lady Hideko. Sook-Hee is instructed to convince Hideko to marry the Count so that he can inherit her wealth. However, things become less clear-cut when Sook-Hee and Hideko start to fall in love.
Of course, I didn't know any of this since all my knowledge of the film was through the trailer (in other words, I had almost zero prior knowledge), but I think the trailer does a pretty great job at setting the mood for the film. The film is a bit unsettling, there's a lot of mystery to it, and erotica is a major focal point of the film. What did surprise me, though, was how funny the film was. The directing was really great as the film was able to go from serious to hilarious really smoothly and naturally, many times throughout. Sometimes it was the camera angle, sometimes it was the music and tempo of the scene, sometimes it was just the dialogue, and sometimes it was the actors pulling it off so well.
Haivng said that though, this film progressively gets more and more unsettling. Part One is more or less a simple con job, Part Two's exploration into the erotica genre becomes darker and more uncomfortable, and the end of Part Three is extremely unsettling. I think this was a pretty good move on the director's part, as Part Two became the bridge for the very different tones of Part One and Three. He makes us get used to the unsettling nature of the story during Part Two, but we're not too comfortable, and end up completely shocked and disgusted by the events in Part Three.
I know I'm being quite vague about the actual plot events, and that's deliberate. In fact, there is a plot twist in each of the three sections of the film, so it's difficult to be more specific. However, it is these plot twists that make me a bit uncertain as to how I feel about the overall film.
On one hand, I really enjoyed the first plot twist and the explanation behind it. I love it when you see the same event but from multiple perspectives, and this is a major element of the film, so that was done really well. However, as more and more plot twists start to unravel, the film keeps doing this. Over and over again. And while it is interesting to see this, it does drag out the film for quite a bit. The film has a runtime of nearly 2.5 hours, and it seems to drag on for quite a bit during the second half of the movie.
Weirdly enough, the second half of the movie also seems to rush through important explanations of things as you are left to speculate about what exactly was going on. It wasn't so much speculating on plot holes, but I think the audience just got too used to having everything elaborately explained to them that the ending came as quite a shock because it suddenly stopped spoon-feeding us.
Of course, this may just have been me getting really tired towards the end of the film. It was a 9:15pm screening and since I'm 1) a grandma who likes to be in bed by 11pm, and 2) someone who struggles a lot with paying attention for extended periods of time, it was quite a struggle focusing on all the Korean and Japanese subtitles for so long. However, when I discussed it with others after, others were a bit confused too.
But let's talk about the most... interesting parts of the film... the lesbian sex scenes. Yup, this is one of the focal points of the film, and while I have no issues with it, I must say that some of these scenes dragged on for QUITE SOME TIME. Apparently this director likes exploring female sexuality, and while it was a necessary plot point to the film, honestly most of the sex scenes could have been a minute or two shorter. Also, as I stated, the film does that thing where they revisit a scene but from different perspectives/camera angles and they did that on one sex scene so I was like, "Is this really necessary? We've seen the exact same thing occur already", but then the second portrayal of that scene just elaborated and extended the scene for a very long time. This really did not help with the long run time, but it did help with the overall mood of being uncomfortable, especially in a theatre full of quiet audience members. Some of it was quite funny though, for example hearing naive and innocent thoughts of the characters as they had sex was hilarious.
So in the end this was a really interesting film. It was quite unique in that it kept making you question what you had seen before, as it would continually reveal more plot twists and more different perspectives. It's not a film for everyone, and it's quite long, but it's a pretty good drama if your interests have been piqued by the trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment