Innehållsförteckning för No. 191 från Metro

Although it begins with an epigraph from the New Testament, The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, 2016) has a sanguinary mindset that hews closer to the Old, with a tale of abject suffering torn straight from the Book of Job. The quote comes from Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke, in which the risen Jesus, appearing to his startled disciples days after his crucifixion, assures them that he is not an apparition: ‘Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’1 Resurrection also features in the film that follows, but of a rather less fortuitous kind – a supernatural plague afflicting the rural enclave of Gokseong (the English translation of which gives…

In 1903, nearly seventy years before the Stonewall riots changed the course of queer history, New York City police raided the Ariston Baths. Twenty-six men were arrested; of these, twelve were charged with sodomy and seven were eventually imprisoned for up to twenty years.1 Four centuries prior, authorities in Florence made a mass push against homosexual activity, with records showing that forty-four men engaging in such acts at baths were convicted from 1492 to 1494.2 These are just a couple of recorded historical instances in which bathhouses were something of a link between the gay community, hidden as it was, and mainstream society, purely in the sense that the latter acknowledged – through subjugation – that such a community even existed. Bathhouses have long straddled the line between the traditional…

In the microcosm of this tiny corner pub, the exhaustion and performance of that default, defensive mode of women’s lived experience forms the basis of the film’s subtle assessment of the gender politics of small-town life. Zooming into an abstract landscape of raw umber, burnt sienna and coal-grey on Google Maps, three yellow highway lines finally make themselves clear. The town of Coolgardie, Western Australia – population: 1000 – appears in an immaculate grid at the juncture of the Great Eastern and Coolgardie-Esperance highways. We are at the unmarked tri-border of the Wangkathaa, Kalaamaya and Malpa Indigenous nations.1 On the main strip is a Caltex, an IGA X-Press and, on the corner, the Denver City Hotel. A former gold-rush town, Coolgardie is more than 500 kilometres east of Perth and…

In a scene midway through the documentary Tickled (2016), filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve visit Richard Ivey1 in Florida as he sets up a tickle shoot. Ivey makes videos of people being tickled for his fetish website, and is happy to demonstrate his work to the filmmakers. A young, fit and willing man is strapped into a custom-made chair, his ankles belted down and his wrists tied with his arms reaching above his head. As Ivey tickles the man, we see a slow-motion close-up of the latter’s face, which is lit with glee. He is clearly relishing the experience. Ivey, though, is not the prize that Farrier and Reeve are after. He is, instead, a signpost along the way, a friendly informant. Whom they seek is the shady character…

COMEDY IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER LIZ GIUFFRE Comedy is an often underappreciated, but highly adaptable, genre. From at least Aristotle’s time onwards, each new medium and format has accommodated comedy as an essential mechanism by which artists and commentators can explore issues of the day as well as larger questions about the human condition. Australian comedy has always punched well above its weight. The country has relatively few resources and fewer formal accolades that support the genre, yet some of our proudest cultural moments have been provided by works that have made us laugh. The state of local current affairs was never the same after Frontline; the state of sports commentary, never as serious as when Roy and HG took to the Festival of the Boot or The Dream.…

 The temptation to classify Girl Asleep (Rosemary Myers, 2015) as some kind of Australian Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is a difficult one to suppress. Aesthetically, the film is undeniably influenced by the latter’s director, Wes Anderson, something the filmmakers themselves are quick to draw attention to.1 Symmetrical shots are frequent, and there is a bold, clearly defined colour palette present throughout. The plot centres on a young girl orbited by a series of eccentric characters; the costumes are striking, and the atmosphere, whimsical. To continue the comparison beyond the aesthetic, however, would do a disservice to the strange, uniquely Australian beast that is Girl Asleep. The debut film by veteran theatre-makers Myers, who directed, and Matthew Whittet, who wrote the script, combines the best aspects of their storytelling experiences with the…

Following the raw realism of his debut, Xiao Wu (1997), Jia Zhang-Ke has slowly morphed from an insurgent member of China’s Sixth Generation1 of filmmakers and into something of an elder statesman of his national cinema, working with increasingly lavish budgets and occasional state support. He has also wielded his aesthetic influence over a younger generation of screen artists, who have eagerly synthesised his formal signatures and documentarian’s eye for a changing China. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Jia has himself directly encouraged and enabled such mimicry. In 2010, he established the ‘Wings Project’ through his company Xstream Pictures, which, to date, has produced seven films by young directors.2 The latest to join these ranks is Zhang Hanyi, whose debut feature, Life After Life (2016), premiered at…

Wednesday, May 9 (2015) begins in the midst of quiet desperation. Vahid Jalilvand’s debut feature opens with a montage of people, waiting. On their faces we see a range of emotions – pain, patience, frustration – but all are united by a shared need. We won’t learn until later in the film’s trifurcated narrative what brings these people to the streets of Tehran, why they are waiting so anxiously, why so many of them are clutching newspapers. But we already understand the primal expression of need: the need to be heard, the need to be helped, the need for something more. The Iranian film’s trio of interlinked stories centre on three individuals, each with distinct needs. The first chapter, taking place on the titular Wednesday, tells the tale of Leila…

When Alvin Purple was released in 1973, I was glad that it proved popular but never, for a moment, thought it was of any other significance. Since then, several writers, including Catharine Lumby, caused me to rethink my snobbish perspective on the film. Now Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ insightful essay gives further grounds for reappraisal, placing the film in the dual contexts of ‘then’ and ‘now’, and providing persuasive arguments for considering this lighthearted comic piece as a commentary on changing sexual and gender mores, and as a phenomenon of the Australian film revival. It’s easy to forget how largely dormant the local film industry had been up until the early 1970s, and Alvin Purple’s popularity should make us try to understand the basis of this. The current essay makes a serious…

‘I don’t care if there are some people who think Embedded is pornography … at the core of this film is a celebration of sex and sensuality within a political context. It’s about celebrating life in a world of death.’STEPHEN SEWELL Renowned for penning the AFI Award–winning screenplay for intense social drama The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998) and for his script-editing duties on Andrew Dominik’s critically acclaimed crime classic, Chopper (2000), playwright-turned-filmmaker Stephen Sewell wanted to raise the bar with his directorial film debut, Embedded (2016). This erotically charged chamber piece concerns Madaline and Frank (played by real-life couple Laura Gordon and Nick Barkla), two complete strangers embroiled in a truth-or-dare scenario in the claustrophobic confines of a hotel room. I speak to Sewell about the sociopolitical ideas behind his…

Park Chan-wook is renowned for his visual invention. The Korean director – born in Seoul in 1963 – grew up going to galleries with his architect-father, and his brother was a budding painter from an early age.1 It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Park’s films ‘painterly’: his compositions carefully framed, shot on anamorphic lenses, and employing chiaroscuro lighting effects. But ‘painterly’, as it’s usually applied to directors, suggests static frames, stilled landscapes. And, vivid as Park’s palette may be, his films never sit still. They’re visual feasts blessed with a sense of motion, his camera forever moving: gliding and exploring the ornate spaces it is shooting, and the bodies of the figures therein, moving in close and pulling away, even turning upside down. He’s not a realist but a…

‘All men must die, but death can vary in its significance,’ declares a ponytailed man (Shide Nyima) in the opening monologue of Tharlo (Pema Tseden, 2015). These words are not his own; the passage is one he learned decades ago, as a nine-year-old schoolboy, and now, he recites it to local police officer Chief Dorje (Tashi) – while holding and feeding a lamb at the same time. Specifically, he’s quoting ‘Serve the People’, dated 8 September 1944, from Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book, which, in turn, references the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian. In his life as a shepherd tending to the village’s flock and striving to carve out a simple existence imbued with meaning, he has taken the words to heart, but he’s also trapped by several layers…

Uncovering the powerful allure of art as it intersects with people’s lives is Rohan Spong’s specialty. Further to this, he is dedicated – as evidenced by his documentary film-making – to sharing stories that are not often depicted on screen. As the director of the acclaimed T Is for Teacher (2009) and the award-winning All the Way Through Evening (2011), Spong has already shone light on experiences otherwise given little attention in mainstream culture. In Winter at Westbeth (2015), Spong captures the sparkling effervescence of a downtown Manhattan that is often portrayed in film as either dark and gritty, or on the periphery of the New York scene. This latter perception arose as the changing rental market shifted many creatives off the main island, causing the widespread displacement of artists…