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[REVIEWS
> SASAYAKI & OUR LADY OF THE ASSASSINS]
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| 09/13/2001 |
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| "Sasayaki"
& "Our Lady of the Assassins": A perverse high
school tale and a chicken hawk's delight. Take your pick. |
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Reviewed by Quentin Lee
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| From the eyes of American moviegoers, foreign
and independent films have always been lumped together
in a marketing chunk. We can see this notable conflation
in something like "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon"
which is in fact a big-budget U.S. Studio financed offshore
investment being marketed as an independent film. The
truth of the matter is, Independent Film is pretty much
an American phenomenon. In the U.S., everything not financed
by the major studios are considered independent. In other
parts of the world, most films are financed by studios
like Canal+ or Golden Harvest or TV stations. There are
truly very few independent foreign films in the same light
of American independent films. But even for these foreign
studio-financed films, they are viewed as independent
films here because they have the same kind of market share
with that of American independent films, of a smaller
and distinctive audience. |
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| INDIERAG is founded to discover the truly smaller indie
films, but we are still open to reviewing other films,
such as certain foreign films, that play the indie film
circuit here and have certain content and theme that make
them transgressive or different than your average studio
fares. |
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| This week, two films in the theaters, "Sasayaki"
and "Our Lady of the Assassins" both fall into
this foreign/indie category. |
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| "Sasayaki", a first film from Japanese director
Akihiko Shiota, is a perverse high school tale about Takuya,
a cute Japanese high school boy, who becomes obsessed
with Satsuki, his Kendo partner and classmate, to the
point of fetishistic love. Takuya and Satsuki start going
out. When Satsuki finds out that Takuya has recorded her
peeing in his bathroom, she breaks up with him. Takuya
becomes increasingly obsessive with Satsuki and follows
her everywhere, even when she's on a date with another
boy. When Satsuki realizes that it is impossible to get
rid of Takuya, she accepts Takuya as her "slave"
and embarks on a dark and fetishistic codependent relationship
of a new level. |
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| Kenji
Mizuhashi and Tsugumi plays the star-crossed lovers
Takuya and Satsuki in "Sasayaki" |
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| While the film is perverse, darkly comical and erotic
at parts, it is also excessively slow. There is that first
art movie feeling to it where the director makes sure
that you know he's making an artistic character driven
film. It's definitely a promising debut film, but I do
hope that Shiota's second feature will be more fun and
exciting. "Sasayaki" is a well-made film, but
it's a little slight for its elaborate self-seriousness.
If you're into Japanese high school stuff like me, you
should definitely check it out. |
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| On the opposite spectrum of "Sasayaki," "Our
Lady of the Assassins" is a beautifully-crafted and
mature film from a Hollywood veteran Barbet Schroeder.
"Our Lady" marks Schroeder's return to a non-English
language (and definitely more independent filmmaking)
territory after such studio pictures as "Reversal
of Fortune" and "Single White Female." |
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Older
man (Germán Jaramillo) and Young Boy (Anderson
Ballesteros)
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"Our Lady of the Assassins" tells the somewhat
tragic love story of a writer (played by Germán Jaramillo)
who returns to his hometown Medellín, Colombia, "to
die." Medellín is now the number one drug
capital of the world plagued by assassinations, murders,
kidnappings and gang wars. The writer meets Alexis,
a teenage boy around 15 or 16 I'd say, in a gay brothel-type
place and develops a relationship with Alexis, who's
pretty much a gangbanger/killer. While the writer and
Alexis fall in love with each other, Alexis gets shot
by a rival gang. The writer is despondent, but ends
up meeting another boy who looks like Alexis. He starts
having a relationship with the second boy a la "Vertigo"
only to find out that (**SPOILER
WARNING**) the second boy is in fact the
one who assassinated his former lover.
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| "It's such a dirty old man fantasy," said
my friend who was walking out of the theater with me.
"I don't buy that some young boy would really fall
in love with him. Not to mention that most older man are
not a movie star like the one who plays the writer." |
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| "But that's not the point of the film," I
said, "I really enjoyed it because the film is sad
and melancholic, and it's about a profound sense of loss
and sadness done in exceptional taste." |
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| In retrospect, there is a little chicken hawk fantasy
there. But beyond that, "Our Lady of the Assassins"
is a beautifully made, except for a couple of over-the-top
dream vignettes. I'm also especially impressed with the
acting of the two young boys, the writer's love interests,
who are real life Medellín boys that the director
found literally on the street. Their acting blends seamlessly
with Jaramillo's who is an experienced and trained actor.
I do experience a transcendent romance and passion in
an unlikely relationship between an older man and a young
boy, which is what makes Schroeder's filmmaking powerful. |
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To the least, both "Sasayaki" and
"Our Lady of the Assassins" show us a slice
of life that mainstream Hollywood fares do not, which
in itself is part of the independent spirit..jpg) |
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