A young insect buff from Hokkaido captures a Papilio memnon butterfly, which is not supposed to be present in that area. The larva of a Papilio memnon sticks to someone in Nagasaki and sets out on a journey to the east. As the larva travels to Hagi, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Osaka, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and Tokyo, various loves and human dramas unfold.
Category: Arthouse
Durian Durian is a two-part film split between Mongkok’s Portland Street in Hong Kong and the north-eastern border region of mainland China. Ah Fan, the young girl from Little Cheung, lives in the former with her poor family, originally from Shenzhen, who illegally overstayed their three month visas to scrape together an income washing dishes and selling cigarettes. Fan meets Yan, a prostitute from the mainland, in a laneway behind Portland Street. They become friends after Yan’s pimp is assaulted in front of Fan by an assailant wielding that most dangerous of weapons, a heavy, sharply spiney-skinned durian fruit. Yan returns to the north-east to invest what she has earned after her three month Hong Kong visa expires.
While clashes between demonstrators and police are raging in the streets of Tokyo, a young man takes refuge at his policeman brother’s house. The two brothers soon come to blows, but the intervention of the policeman’s wife leads to the death of her husband by his own gun. The young man and the wife cover up the murder by making it look like a suicide. They become lovers and flee north into the Tohoku area, as if they were being pursued by the ghost of the murdered husband, their sexual passion and the pulse of the changing times.
An English singer travels around the Greek countryside. He meets a strange creature, part man part fox, and together they start looking for Danilo Treles, a legendary musician from Andalusia. Tornes’ craziest film wears its heart on its sleeve, starting with the title, which could conceivably allude to a Spanish surname but even the director himself could not deny the direct reference to the Greek language (Treles translates into madness).
Neighbourhood children play a game: one of the kids dances in the centre of the circle while the others shower him or her with compliments. A little girl, Inga, who lives with her single mother, is friendly and honest. She usually receives a lot of compliments and is therefore considered a beauty. Everything changes when a new boy moves into the neighbourhood. Being rude, he does not fit in and soon earns himself the nickname Mute. He does not like Inga’s freckles and calls her ugly. Mute’s words hurt Inga deeply and she sets out to look for attraction.
The pop-star leads from Hou’s first feature, Cute Girl, are reunited in the director’s follow-up, a brisk work of bubble-gum romance that begins to experiment with the rules of the genre. This time, Taiwanese singing sensation Feng Fei-fei plays Hsing-hui, a trendy photographer visiting a seaside village in Penghu with her successful boss/fiancé. When she happens upon a flute-playing medic blinded in an ambulance crash (Kenny Bee), sparks fly, songs are sung, and she’s left with the tough decision of who to say “I do” to. Despite the eye-rolling premise, Hou infuses the film with enough formal ingenuity (long takes, telephoto lenses, on-location shooting) that a case can be made for its auteurial significance.
Jan is a young assistant professor in chemistry and a workaholic, whose entire life is dedicated to study and advancement to full professorship. Anna is an unsuccesful science writer who turns to Jan for advice and human compassion in a critical moment of mental confusion and nervous exhaustion. Jan, absorbed with his career, remains immune to Anna’s clumsy efforts to pierce his defences. Affrayed by her ultimate plea for an embrace, he escapes to his own quarters. In the end Anna makes an unsuccesful suicide attempt and he visits her in the hospital.
CONVERSATIONS WITH A CUPBOARD MAN is a strange yet compelling film about loneliness and isolation, and their effects. Charles is not a particularly fragile boy, but his mother guards him jealously, keeping him away from school and other children. She feeds him, washes him, and is his only companion. For the first 20 of his life, he stays in their small apartment, and spends most of his time in an attic closet. One day, his mother meets a man. Suddenly, Charles becomes an impediment to her new life, and so she sets him free. To Charles, who has never bought anything in a store, taken a bus, or even talked to a stranger, his new-found freedom is bewildering and frightening.