Darkness of the Sea, Shadow of the Moon (1989)

Director: Tetsu Dezaki

Screenplay: Koichi Mizuide and Sōji Yoshikawa

Voice Cast: Mayumi Shō as Lumi Kobayakawa; Rei Sakuma as Luka Kobayakawa; Toshihiko Seki as Katsuyuki Tohma; Ryusei Nakao as Mr. Kobayakawa; Seiko Nakano as Mrs. Kobayakawa; Tesshō Genda as Doctor Kaibara

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / An 1000 Anime Crossover

"I had never heard of Darkness of the Sea... until searching for horror anime, but this three part OVA is tantalising when you begin it. It is a shoujo story, a story of young women which combines romance against horror and over-the-top melodrama, all directed by Tetsu Dezaki, Osamu Dezaki's brother who can be credited for helming They Were Eleven (1986), a great sci-fi story from a legendary female manga author Moto Hagio, but also Mad Bull 34 (1990-2), the infamous and at times difficult to watch Kazuo Koike tale about New York City cops with all the ridiculous clichés and distortions you could imagine. Darkness of the Sea... starts off over the top in its own way when twin sisters Rumi and Ruki, already in a romantic triangle over Touma, the popular boy at school, go on an all-girl's trip to the coast with their school. Tragically, during a storm, they find a secret grave mass in the caves, and with everyone baring the sisters being killed by a strange air to the underground environment..."

This was a fascinating discovery - a horror work for a female audience which however does not shy away from being lurid and has an additional melodramatic edge to its premise, of one twin sister now wishing to kill the other with her unnatural abilities, which is compelling. Tragically obscure to even see, and with fair warning, tragically without a proper ending, I would hope, if unlikely, a version of Darkness of the Sea, Shadow of the Moon can be preserved. Also, if I could snap my fingers and make a work being readapted, Darkness of the Sea... is a perfect candidate for a modern anime re-adaptation with a full ending, even if an original one, and allowing the virtues this straight-to-video production still had shine further.

For the full review, follow the blog link HERE.

Bird of Paradise (1932)

 

Director: King Vidor

Screenplay: Wells Root, Wanda Tuchock and Leonard Praskins

Based on a stage play by Richard Walton Tully

Cast: Dolores del Río as Luana; Joel McCrea as Johnny Baker; John Halliday as Mac; Richard "Skeets" Gallagher as Chester; Bert Roach as Hector; Lon Chaney Jr. as Thornton; Wade Boteler as Skipper Johnson; Reginald Simpson as O'Fallon

Ephemeral Waves

 

"What do they call this place?"

"Probably one of the Virgin Islands"

"Heaven forbid."

Immediately from the gate, pointing out that Bird of Paradise is offensive and politically incorrect - as a pre-Hollywood Code film where natives of a Pacific island are defamed superstitious and exotic, sacrificing maidens to volcanoes, compared to the white male protagonist - is obvious, but a waste of a review if that was the only thing to spend a review writing about. That should be something we should be already be aware of, and to have to repeat that as the basis of a review is in itself a sad state of affairs. Context should already support a viewer in realising this is from a different era be it the attitudes spoken of in terms of the "native" characters we see portrayed and that, with establishing shots taken in Hawaii, the lead female lead despite being a maiden from the Pacific Ocean islands is being played by an actress not from the region, Mexican actress Dolores del Río.

What Bird of Paradise is now is a cultural artefact, one which for many would be difficult to appreciate, or have to clench through its problems, but I came into with fascination as a text alien to the modern day. It is of the old Hollywood of pure fantasy, a construct depicting a Pacific island of the mind, the kind of haze dream which, camp nowadays, would have fed the brains of the likes of avant-garde filmmaker Jack Smith, and perverted with overt phallic plants by Bertrand Mandico for The Wild Boys (2017). Its racism, and the complex web it ends up in for a tale of a white sailor Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea) falling in love with del Rio's native girl Luana, is a reminder that even a decade is a time ago, so the early ninety thirties is itself a time before with a lot of attitudes that have to be tackled head on. The film states it is set in the early thirties in dialogue, but you could swear it was turn of the century, the islanders the stereotype of the naive exotic "others", the white sailors teasing them with ice in the water which confuses them, and offering items from the first world like smoking pipes as trinkets as one would to children. It would be easy to just bury a film like this, probably not the worst film likely to exist from this era in terms of depictions, but that would be an unwillingness to look at ourselves and see our bias.

It also has a farcical edge, surrounding a notion in the plot of virgins being sacrificed to volcanoes. The entire volcano sacrifice concept is one that led me to wonder mid-viewing, as the film will eventually hinge around Luana, the tribal chief daughter, being there to sacrifice to appease the volcano God, whether it is something which is actually happened in one obscure tribe or likely a pure construct of colonially bias pulp. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin pastiched in The Forbidden Room (2015) among countless influences, which is where this idea only exists for me, and this is likely one of the first (if any) sources for this fancy as a plot device then anything remotely practical as a practice.  

Again, I find myself with idea that merely saying that this film is merely offensive and not to watch is a worthless act to do for a review, even if I have to return to this over and over. I would hope you, the reader, if you are to feel uncomfortable with the content I will warn you about would just avoid the film - of white leads looking down on the natives, with some of the extras cast for authenticity, a romance with a native girl that eroticises her and shows her as a simple figure among figures backwards in their violent superstitions. If you were to still watch the film, my imagined reader, and be offended it would be obvious why. However, the film exists and, just from the volcano subplot, what Bird of Paradise is as content deserves to still be prodded with curiosity as much with these concerns in mind.

What Bird of Paradise definitely is camp melodrama, emphasised by the fact that even the sailors, despite Joel McCrea with his manly leading man appearance being the centre of attention, alongside beingcomedic foils are frankly flamboyant in a couple themselves. This is a film of exaggeration, not that dissimilar (but with more political issues) to the fifties tiki hut lounge music movement of exotica. With an uncredited Busby Berkeley choreographing the "native" dance sequence in the middle, this is Hollywood's extravagance in both its glory and bad taste too. It is emphasised knowing this film contextually has many importance sub currents to it in terms of American cinema's history. From RKO Studios, which would grow in stature over the thirties and forties just from King Kong in 1933, this is produced by David Selznick, in a brief period with RKO before a future including the legendary Gone with the Wind (1939) among his projects. King Vidor, a figure behind a fascinating film like The Crowd (1928), is here as is the fact that this is a sound production. Moving from the silent era Vidor worked in, to a period where actors were pushed aside when their voices now became a factor to consider, and the technology for sound having to be negotiated around practically just beforehand, Bird of Paradise from its exotic score to the dialogue stands out knowing just before sound was alien.

Then there is the fact this is a pre-Code film, a period sadly not easy to access still outside of the United States. Suffice to say, even if former post-master general Will Hays had already being brought into Hollywood at this point to clean up the cinema, there was a period in the early thirties where a lot of adult and edgy content for the time was still flagrantly around. Baring its problematic ethnographic content, Bird of Paradise is tame in the modern day, but it is still surprising for an underwater sequence where clearly, whilst blurred in the image, a female stand-in for Dolores del Río is very naked. Or that del Rio herself eventually wears above the waist only a strategically place garland which leaves nothing to the imagination. Or that, in contrast, McCrea's body is eroticised too, in a scene where coconut milk is seductively drank between them and spills on their figures whilst among of the native foliage.

It is a shame such a film is embedded to its historical context, the artificial reality of the dream factory felt fully here in its lack of subtlety or the exaggeration, where something like a shark randomly causing the natives to flee in their canoes is touched upon with a heightened shock for what is merely a fin gliding through the water and strategic use of pre-shot footage of a real one. Sadly, such an aesthetic is found, in its sincere form, in problematic material. del Rio, whose reputation includes her work back in her homeland of Mexico and the theatre for her full legacy, is frankly stuck with a character unable to grow as, with her childish grasp of English, the character of Luana is the eroticised innocent. Even Joel McCrea, who would make a career in the last half of his career mostly in westerns, is stuck with generic bland white male hero. These films appealed, and they influenced figures that could run with their best virtues even on lowest budgets into phantasmagorical content, but you are stuck with a film which has to cast a Hispanic actress, in a role which ultimately does not give her a lot to do, as an entirely different ethnicity. A film which has to dance a merry dance awkwardly around miscegenation, something Will Hays among his many do-and-don't would have as prohibited in Hollywood cinema but continues here beforehand to be uncomfortable for the ideas of the culture. [Spoilers] The volcano appears for a tragic ending but you can suspect as much of it is loaded even by accident in this mess of the time's attitudes. [Spoilers] I enjoyed this film when it was pure pulp, of whirlpools lovingly rendered in heightened style, or the extravagance of a flying fish swarm with many extras in boats and McCrea hitting them with a tennis racket, but you have to take these moments with the cultural baggage. The difference is I accept this and try to find these aspects to take of interest. That does mean rolling one's eyes a lot and having the kindness to warn others out of concern of their worst aspects.

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Screenplay: Charlie Chaplin

Cast: Marlon Brando as Ogden; Sophia Loren as Natascha; Sydney Chaplin as Harvey; Tippi Hedren as Martha; Patrick Cargill as Hudson; Michael Medwin as John Felix; Oliver Johnston as Clark

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Released in the late Sixties, Charlie Chaplin's last film is that of an exile out of time. Beforehand, the last film he made was back in 1957 with A King in New York, to which ten years later, this final curtain in his career was seen as a notorious ending. I can see the film in this context out of sympathetic, that also at least the attitude to the film, alongside its visible issues, stem from the fact that this was a period of considerable change for Hollywood that would have repercussions for the seventies in American cinema. The weight of expectation would have to have been considered too, as this is not the film of the happy little tramp of yore. He is still, kind and thoughtful, but time has passed and his cinema had aged as well.

Chaplin is of course legendary, still iconic into the modern day from his image, before you even consider the films he made and starred in from the silent era to The Great Dictator (1940), a film itself that was considered controversial to make as, uncomfortably, there was a period before the United States entered the Second World War that Hollywood were even keeping themselves open to marketing films in Nazi Germany. During and after World War II however, things did not go well for the real life Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin. His affair with Joan Barry, an aspiring actress, would lead to a series of trials which would severely harm his public reputation alongside that it would involve a paternity suit. His next film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), an incredibly dark film based on a real subject, was not the highly regarded film in decades after, but a reviled and unsuccessful one as it was a critique of capitalism, and also had Chaplin playing a man who weds and kills off older rich women. Then there were the accusations of being a Communist, on the tip of the Red Scare and McCarthyism that would burn through Hollywood in the fifties but had already had an effect in the late forties, which finally lead to him becoming an exile in 1952 when United States Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked Chaplin's re-entry permit and Chaplin cut his ties to the country when he would only be allowed to re-enter if he submitted to an interviewer concerning his political views and moral behaviour.

His exile led to three films - Limelight (1955), A King in New York, and A Countess from Hong Kong, the last in the sixties and virtually out of place of the times. Based on a real life experience, in which Chaplin met a stateless Russian ballet dancer in the 1920s, the film had existed as far back as the 1930s as a script called Stowaway for his then-wife Paulette Goddard The film feels of an entirely different era in general, even beyond this origin, with the only detail that suggests its actual time being that he can be explicit in discussing that the titular Countess Natascha (Sophia Loren), the child of Russian exiled by the communist revolution to Hong Kong, has had to even become a mistress as a teenager to survive, a detail that might have had to be implied back when Will Hays and his Production Code would have effected Chaplin's American productions.

The production is alien in its nature, alien to the time period it finally came to. Its story feels from the decade before - Marlon Brando as the heir of an oil tycoon's success, hostile to the fact Natascha has snuck into his room and refuses to leave until she can be snuck into the States, before turning into a romance between them. There is an extreme minimalism, where the camera rarely if ever moves and editing it perfunctory or quiet to be polite. The only touch, a charming one, which shows there is still experimentation is Chaplin's obsession with blurring the line between diegetic and non-diegetic music as the score we hear turns out to be music being manipulated or turned off on the radio. Aside from the fact Chaplin helped with the score, so had a bias for it to stand out for the viewer continually, it is a spark of charm in a film where the camera remains static and everything else is put together without fuss.

This is also Chaplin's only colour film, and this opens up the question of what the Sixties was actually like. By 1967, the trend of American cinema changed, leading to some of the biggest vitriol to the film in a year where Bonnie and Clyde (1967) would have a tremendous impact on the landscape alongside later films. The film's aesthetic, when the cruise gets to Hawaii by way of a British production not shot in the United States, is Sixties gaudy chic. As much as we imagine this the time of subversion and psychedelic, I cannot help but think that Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) may have asked an important question of whether the underground artistic movements and films, barring some crossover hits, were having the real grip on the culture or whether we have accidentally presumed it to be. Even in context of this being a film by a man unstuck in time, there was a lot of this especially by the Hawaii scenes, and the rich colours, that evoked exotica and lounge album covers. It shows nothing of what would be considered trendy and "down" with the youth in its story of countesses or this type of comedic slapstick.

One of the film's biggest divisive factors however is the casting a man whose style of acting would influence the films that would be becoming more popular, the biggest issue for any viewer for me personally what you make of Marlon Brando. Brando in a comedic role is such a perplexing difference, and Brando and Chaplin did not get on well in the damndest. Even Sophie Loren was not impressed by the method actor, which made the film much more difficult to work on. Brando's legacy of great roles for me has been tainted by his legacy for being utterly obstinate and a pain to work with - be it asking for less scenes in Superman (1978) despite being paid a great deal of money to star in the production, or the notorious history of The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996), which has its own documentary* just to deal with the nightmare that New Line Pictures production was, but had Brando getting his own way among the many problems that production had, such as demanding that the titular Moreau and God to his created beast people have his lines giving to him over a hidden receiver and having an ice bucket on his head onscreen.

You can argue the film is mainly quaint, but Brando is going to be a huge divisive factor as he is not an actor used to broad romantic roles, but stiff and continually perturbed by what he is dealing with. On one hand, it feels palpable he was not comfortable here, whilst on the other it does work as comedy to see such a self serious and wound-up actor not being able to have peace to take a bath, stuck in dressing gowns or being unable to find clothes for Loren that are not five times her size. Loren in contrast is fully alert and captivating as a lovable figure. Even if the film feels stuffy at times, she alongside a cast full of scene stealers keeps the production afloat. Chaplin for all the holes that can be dented in his own personal life was still a humane individual, and you can see his utter sympathy for this character of Natascha. It helps so much that Loren is a needed energy.

Trust me in saying A Countess from Hong Kong is not a trendy film, at times soaking it in a film with the sentimental emotion of a soft jazz ballad which I was honestly won over even though it is syrupy. The very little use of camera movement, minimal and conventional editing, and its general aesthetic is disappointing in the knowledge of Charlie Chaplin's legacy, fitting what people warn of when it comes to directors' final films, where as older (even elderly) figures their work is entirely changed. This notion is not really true, when figures like Martin Scorsese makes the profane The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) in his seventies, but there is also the fact that, when he makes his cameo, Chaplin is an old man. He will not be able to have done the pratfalls of youth, and I would argue that sentimentality was always there. Even The Great Dictator, which had a significant political message at a profound time, plays its heart on its sleeve in the same way as this final film. The dynamic nature of his early comedic work is the notable change, where this no longer had the dynamic nature of before. A lot of its humour instead is from comic timing and a bit of raciness, actor Patrick Cargill as the valet Hudson stealing scenes when he is roped in to being Loren's hastily arranged husband and finding a thrill to it though there is little chance of anything transpiring. It is a curiosity, in the truest sense, as these are the type of films by legends which show them waver, to be human, to which I feel nothing but a pure fondness whether it is cool to admire nowadays or not. Such signs offer warmth in knowing a human being like me made these films and not an indistinguishable entity.

======

* Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

Love on a Leash (2011)

Director: Fen Tian

Screenplay: Fen Tian

Cast: Jana Camp as Jana; Aneese Khamo as Prince; Gloria Winship Ayon as the Mother; Shane Ayon as the Store Owner; Michaelina Lee as the Friend

[Major Spoilers Throughout]

The cover of this straight-to-DVD film looks ridiculous - a blonde woman hastily put together with a Labrador in a suit, holding a leash in its mouth and extending a paw out. For whatever reason, it's developed a little cult specifically on the film website Letterboxd, the reason why I even learnt of this film in the first place. It's a dumbfounding project, and as the 2010s leaves us it is littered with these oddities, this up there alongside The Evil Within (2017) and Flexing with Monty (2010) in the level of strangeness, but when one was a Getty using his millions to make a film, the other an unfinished psychodrama of perversity and Catholic guilt, Love on a Leash is a very low budget and haphazardly made interpretation of the Princess and the Frog with a dog.

The first question to ask is who director -writer Fen Tian is. There's not a lot on Tian barring the fact her IMDB talks of her having one acting role, a tiny one, in The Joy Luck Club (1993) and that she made one other film beyond her debut, Forbidden Kiss (2012).  The production company Fenix Pictures who made the film is better known for many films of Ulli Lommel, the former Rainer Werner Fassbinder collaborator who became a director but eventually made a lot of straight to DVD horror this is not highly regarded. There's also a suspicion, beyond the many issues and aspects of Love on a Leash to deal with, that there's a cultural barrier at hand with this Chinese-American production. Tales with this idea, of a man who is turned into a dog before the film and can only change if he finds love, do exist in the West, but this type of modern day folklore tale is not commonly adapted in Hollywood films anymore barring a joke, let alone this elaborate and eventually getting into doomed love. A lot of this is just admittedly that, even if the tone found in Chinese cinema can be incredibly jarring in tone shifts for outsiders not used to it, this film is just strange without any real logical reason.

Love on a Leash is also quite a film of tragedy, belying its silly looking DVD cover. Before we even get into that however, you have a roughly put together work, and that's an understatement. A lot of Love on a Leash is a Frankenstein composite of scenes edited together with many improvised scenes surrounding a surprisingly well trained Labrador. It's a mess to be honest, probably one of the most technically disorganised I have seen even from someone who watches many low budget productions struggling against adversity.

There's also the dreadful decision to give the dog the voice, only heard by the viewer, of a chauvinistic arsehole who is meant to be funny. Out of everything in Love on a Leash, I adapted to how technically bad the film eventually but that creative decision to have a guy recording jokes at inappropriate moments is egregious, especially as he is a sexist pig for most of the film. Even when the character softens, and even becomes sympathetic as he learns humility onscreen, the version voiced in the other scenes is only acceptable when he abruptly starts to sing constantly.

Mostly this is egregious because, contrary to the look of the film, Love on a Leash is a depressing film whose tonal films are fascinating, ninety minutes an emotional rollercoaster between the presentation and then the various aspects of the film dramatically. It initially starts as the secondary tale of Jana (Jana Camp), a meek and henpecked young woman, on an incredibly peculiar start, where two tangents with two possible suitors involves two potential separate films, one effectively Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993), when her Chinese co-worker is a gay man wanting a fake marriage to hide his real self from his family, the other a perplexing tale in itself of adoptive families of matriarchal women against forced sterilisation and creepy Oedipal restrictions. That the film discards both, in favour of a plot that's just as perversely compelling, is a sign of this being something very different.

For starters, Jana's story gets dark, even if an attempted suicide by pills is undercut by the talking dog making jokes before and after whilst blundering about. The tone is a huge aspect with the film you need to adapt to even after you accept it's been cobbled together in post production to an extreme, with sound cutting around harshly or nonexistent for added dissonant effect. This is where you have broad stereotypes, like a broad foreign female neighbour trying to get the female lead to be hitched for her mother's sake, only to get bleak. Jana losing her friend, losing contact with her family, only because in spite of eventually a romance where the dog is finally able to turn into a stud Prince Charming, he can only become human at night because he wasn't sincere enough.

All of this is belied by the chaotic tonal shifts. It gets kinky - can a woman love a man who becomes man's best friend in the day, putting on a dog collar on him for sexy photos at some point never explained - and played for slapstick, such as the diner with her boss that goes amiss with her inexplicably falling into the swimming pool and needing canine rescue. Its chaotic keeping up with the film, which unlike many in this however never falls into a slump of predictable storytelling, which is the aspect which redeems this mess in many ways; so much is roughly put together, shots likely stolen and abruptly put together, even David Bowie's China Girl making an audio appearance with a sense it wasn't even paid for. There's always something in terms of a twist or an emotionally shocking plot point that is going to frustrate some viewers, be it all the depressing material where lead actress Jana Camp is continually crying or ridiculous, but is compelling nonetheless.

Production wise, many of the film feels like it was shot on a store bought camera with the most distinct trademark being the prominence of green in production design in Jana's apartment and some low budget computer effects, mainly due to the mysterious magical figure behind the dog's situation found at a duck pond in the park. There's an unexpected rawness to the film, particularly with the locations used in the film that in some cases do deserve credit for being distinct, particularly as there are clear excuses to show Chinese American culture which I am all in favour for, such as a gallery exhibition where memorably the dog is not allowed in to his annoyance.

The other thing Love on a Leash does that few films in this possible possess is to stick to its ambitions. "Bad" cinema, when viewed ironically or not, can have really generic plots, many ultimately bad in the truest sense as they have no convictions for taking risks. Love on a Leash is a rare exception that Fen Tian is playing for a bitter sweet tragedy, where a true love is stuck with a friction that cuts Jana off from her friends and family, with the dog even being run over and dying. I'd never expect a film like this, which is an utter mess, to suddenly warm the heartstrings when, in old age makeup, Jana will meet her true love again in the conclusion. There's clearly a story type here more in common with Asian cinema of the normalcy of the supernatural, which actually has to be applauded for its bravado. That's ultimately, somehow, why I admire Love on a Leash as one of the few films that can overcome such crippling technical flaws, and misguided creative decisions such as bad talking dogs making jokes, to be something honestly rewarding to sit through.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Psychotronic/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Non-Abstract Review: Year of the Nail (2007)

From https://i2.wp.com/newcelluloid.com/wp-content/
uploads/2017/03/ano-una.jpg

a.k.a. Año uña

Director: Jonás Cuarón

Screenplay: Jonás Cuarón

Cast: Eireann Harper as Molly; Diego Cataño as Diego

Synopsis: Told entirely in photographs, of real people and family of the director, Jonás Cuaron tells a fictional story of a young American college student Molly (Eireann Harper) whose encounter with Mexican teenager Diego (Diego Cataño), whilst she is briefly in his country, leaves him smitten for her.

Alfonso Cuarón is a director I don't necessarily take interest in; the director who has done work in his homeland (Y Tu Mamá También (2001)) to the States (Gravity (2013)), a critical darling with the Netflix approved Roma (2018) just an example of someone whose constant praise in the mainstream unfortunately puts me off without actually judging the work. It's an unfair attitude and I will rectify it one day. (Gravity, though, doesn't work for its heavy handed and empty spectacle especially when not seen on a cinema screen). Here though, I finally am round to a film I've wanted to seen for over ten years, his son Jonás Cuarón making films into the current day too. Year of the Nail is told entirely in photos like Chris Marker's La Jette (1962), real documents in photo form, in montage and with voice over.

It has two different beginnings - an American named Molly is stuck in a lost twenties where she is aimless, unsure what to do with her life but going to Mexico twice, once for her studies and then again out of a desire for sightseeing, which mark a comfort for her to escape this dead-end. The second time introduces her to Diego, as she stays at his family home as a guest; Diego is a hormone driven male fourteen year old, obsessed with sex, intrigued to woo the older American girl, constantly dealing with an ingrown toe nail, interestingly where the English title comes from, but also serious issues like family fragmentation and a grandfather becoming stricken with cancer. Using real photos, rather than staged ones, means occasionally a background face is blurred out, and it ends with a tribute to a past relative, a sense the "actors" included actual Cuarón family in their day-to-day lives, turned into fictional characters. Even Molly herself, actress Eireann Harper, was the girlfriend of the director-screenwriter, who took these images between 2004-5 as the introductory text elaborates, a film built from reality that is emphasised just by the fact the camera used switches from monochrome to colour halfway through.

Year of the Nail weave a lot of interest beyond its style, the story interesting in this frankly problematic love story which yet avoids becoming icky in a natural, inevitable way. It plays on conceptions a great deal too - able to understand Spanish, Molly is aware of how she is perceived as an ignorant American, whilst for Diego and his family, preconceptions of Mexicans is also poked at, particularly as he tries to avoid his family (especially his grandmother) embarrassing him in his misguided attempt to flirt with Molly, which considering his idea is to laze about on the beach all the time can be seen as an immediate failure anyway.  

The film doesn't try to sugar-coat the obvious issue, more so ten years on, of an adult woman and a young teenage boy in a potential romance, especially as the character Molly does flirt with the idea of a relationship before, when he finds a way of meeting her in New York City, she sees the issues that have arisen. I do understand the real concern viewers can have with fictional tales which have these premises, but it's as much an unwanted avoidance of that transgressive issue that, in real life, the beginning of sexuality all of us went through after puberty is one that's very uncomfortable to deal with but should be tackled, especially in lieu to how this relates to the adult world and trying to consider the subject with thoughtfulness. The film doesn't step from why its taboo either, without being remotely explicit barring how much profanity and sex talk Diego himself uses especially in voice over. The subject of adult-teenage relationships and the idea that that they can be consensual for participants, even in a merely fictional realm, can now seen much more as too far, but the truth is I'd rather have a film tackle this subject in this particularly case frankly, and carefully, with the necessary complexity needed. Even if the moments of humour and farce may have become more uncomfortable for some in the last ten years.

Altogether, Year of the Nail was a good surprise, a really interesting experiment in limited resources. A lot of drama is surprisingly found even without moment, a greater sense of creativity required to establish a world, needing multiple photos for one scene to exist; even in mind that these images probably existed already before the idea to make a film did, you still had to find a way to connect them together in editing and careful use of the voice over and dialogue recorded over them, to which Jonás Cuarón never oversteps into heavy handedness in drama or the cultural clash that takes place with the main characters. To establish such a world, you have fleshed out experience of places in Mexico and outside of it like Coney Island in New York City in detail, which you rarely get in cinema due to the ease in using a camera has. Knowing real family is involved in the director's work is great, as is that he doesn't flinch away for details, from a hospital corridor to showing the actual neutering of a pet cat in a veterinarians' in lieu to the Diego family cat having the operation.

Jonás Cuaron manages so much in only less than eighty minutes, a fleshed out premise with emotional weight, that it does become a great representation for me of the fascinating underbelly of cinema that'll be uncovered over the next decade particularly for the maligned late 2000s, where one-offs and experiments are gathering dust on DVD copies waiting another evaluation...or in this case actually seeing the film after taking too long as I did.

From https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/
pictures/2008/10/30/anouna460.jpg

Yurikuma Arashi (2015)

From https://kiddtic.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/yuri-kuma-header.jpg

Director: Kunihiko Ikuhara

Screenplay: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Takayo Ikami

(Voice) Cast: Miho Arakawa (as Ginko Yurishiro); Nozomi Yamane (as Kureha Tsubaki); Yoshiko Ikuta (as Ruru Yurigazaki); Ami Koshimizu (as Konomi Yurikawa); Aoi Yūki (as Mitsuko Yurizono); Aya Endo (as Reia Tsubaki); Junichi Suwabe (as Life Sexy); Kazutomi Yamamoto (as Life Beauty); Kikuko Inoue (as Yuri-Ka Hakonaka); Mariya Ise (as Eriko Oniyama); Mitsuki Saiga (as Life Cool);

A 1000 Anime Crossover

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

After Mawaru Penguindrum (2011),  my introduction to Kunihiko Ikuhara with only his reputation to fed off was an immense, rewarding experience in itself over twenty four episodes. With only twelve episodes here, his follow up Yurikuma Arashi is literally about lesbian bears, a fairytale of love between woman and bear woman that has an almost naive, sincere message of tolerance against homophobia, but something you stay for with its pop surreal artistry and exaggerated, light hearted tone even with serious subject matter like peer pressure and finding one's identity.

Whilst not as surreal as Penguindrum, trying to devalue Yurikama as just an "normal" project for Kunihiko Ikuhara  is absurd considering Ikuhara's worldview is fairytale, bright coloured fantasy with an elasticity to the world, metaphor not only standing in for character emotions but becoming the scenery being said characters. He's a director, alongside the creative team and animators that work on this sort of show, who is blatant in his symbolism but manages to get away with it from the elegance of his aesthetic style, a gorgeousness matched with open eccentricity that's emotionally awarding.

For the full review of this series, follow the link to my other blog 1000 Anime HERE. 

From http://i.imgur.com/FYnIfFW.jpg