Two big film festivals took place in September, Venice Film Festival and Busan International Film Festival. Here are a couple of reviews from both.
From Busan
Japanese director Tetsuya Mariko’s Dear Stranger is a story of the past afflicting the present. A professional Asian couple, he is a professor, she is a puppeteer, living in New York City juggle careers with family. Kenji and Jane’s emotionally boxed in existence implodes when a former relationship catches up with the pair in the most anguishing way.
Starring global super star Hidetoshi Nishijima and Gwei Lun Mei, Dear Stranger keeps trying for a set up yet never delivering. Directing his own screenplay, Mariko’s grip came across as unassured with some scenes feeling more like filling space than a plot movement. At 135 minutes, the pace moves from low energy to low energy in the face of high anxiety.
Nishijima and Mei fail to click, rather the two are more mechanical as if they had just read their lines before the word “action”. Gwei had the most run of the mill dialogue playing a wife and mother under pressure from all sides to become a stay-at-home mom. Hidetoshi comes across as sluggish, as if half in, half out of the role.
The drawn out disconnect of the film became tedious.
Dear Stranger was filmed in English premiered at the Busan International Film Festival.
From Venice
Mexican director David Pablos decided graphic is better than illusionary. From the start of On the Road (En el camino) there is no room for the imagination, only the brutal. Veneno, played by newcomer Victor Miguel, is a truck stop hustler always looking for his next ride. After being abandoned by a client, the young guy for rent meets grungy yet handsome truck driver Muneco, performed with a dingy, yet mellow manliness by Osvaldo Sanchez.
What unfolds is a road movie drama of drugs, sexual tension wrapped in a mysterious back story of violent human trafficking, blood and murder. Veneno is not just drifting.
As a graduate of Escuela Nacional de Artes Cinematograficas UNAM, Pablo plays into his strength, camera work. Cinematographer Ximena Amann camera captures the somber colors of a hopeless world and its inhabitants.
Given the ingredients, the film fells to elicit sympathy for the tough lives on the screen. The premise goes to the edge of the road, then stays there. The build ups are more ideas for a screenplay than for the final shotting script. Pablos’ screenplay plot points feel divided at the expense of the whole.
A 93 minute broody, dark mood piece without an emotional stake is the problem.
On the Road premiered at the Venice Film Festival.