Happily Ever After Plus Linda^3 & The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

I watched my second film at Viz Cinema/New People. I enjoyed Happily Ever After (2007) much better than Battle League Horumô. Sadly, New People isn't introducing many new people to J-Pop cinema. Seven people were in the audience for Battle League Horumô and only four people (including me) saw Happily Ever After on the Tuesday night (7 PM) screening I went to.

The film isn't great by any standards. It starts off silly and veers towards melodrama but provides a nice vehicle for actress Miki Nakatani. Opposite her is the capable actor Hiroshi Abe who I recently saw in Still Walking as the put upon surviving son.

Happily Ever After centers around the long-suffering Yukie Morita. She is suffering because her loutish boyfriend doesn't work, is frequently drunk and has a tendency to flip over the dinner table at the slightest provocation. Her downstairs neighbor (Maki Carousel) counts how often the table is flipped as well as how often they have sex (table flips far outnumber coitus).

Why does Yukie put up with his behavior with a cheerful demeanor and never a complaint? The movie explains it through her backstory - Yukie's father was a convicted bank robber so she was ostracized at school. After graduation, she went to Tokyo to start anew...she started streetwalking and a heroin addiction. For some reason, gangster Isao Hayama (Abe) took a liking to her. Why? I'm not sure what he saw in a strung out whore who mocks his declarations of love but he saw something. After hallucinating that a chicken is pecking her, Yukie slits her own throat but her life is saved when Hayama rushes her to the hospital. Upon release from the hospital, Hayama and Yukie leave to start a new life. Hayama is missing his pinkie finger which is shorthand for saying he has left the Yakuza.

After some undefined period of time, that is where the film begins. Hayama doesn't know how to do anything except be a Yakuza gangster and he's bored, frustrated and resentful about his situation. Yukie tries to ease his pain by being the best wife possible (even though they aren't married). She waitresses at a restaurant to support them and makes dinner every night which he more often than not, overturns when something bothers him.

This description sounds very serious and downbeat but the film is mostly a comedy. Hayama's outbursts and behavior played for laughs and Yukie's boss fruitlessly pines for her (to the point of exclusively visiting a massage parlor to see another woman named Yukie). And of course, it has a happy ending with even an unusual bi-racial couple thrown in for good measure.

Happily Ever After is an entertaining enough film. Apparently, based on a manga series, the film may or may not have captured the spirit of the graphic novels.



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In December, New People is screening two films that I have seen and enjoyed.

From December 4 to 10, Linda Linda Linda (2005) is screening. I enjoyed the teenage comedy about an all-girl band performing at their high school's spring festival. The film featured a strong performance by Korean actress Doo-na Bae. I saw it at the 2006 SFIAAFF.

On December 15 & 16, New People screens The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) - an anime whose title says it all. The film, which I saw at the 2007 SFIAAFF, was unusually poignant for an anime (which I am typically not a fan of). I can still recall the scene(s) where she is riding her bicycle down a steep hill to a fateful train crossing.

Taking Inventory as of March 28

I went 8-0 in March; I saw eight films and would recommend all of them. I saw seven at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) and The Rules of the Game.

SFIAAFF:
Summer Palace; Chinese with subtitles; (2006)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time; Japanese with subtitles; (2006)
Mistress of Spices with Aishwarya Rai; (2005)
Shanghai Kiss with Kelly Hu; (2007)
Pavement Buttlerfly with Anna May Wong, directed by Richard Eichberg; Silent film; (1929)
King and the Clown; Korean with subtitles; (2005)
Hollywood Chinese; documentary directed by Arthur Dong; (2007)

Non-Festival Film:
The Rules of the Game directed by Jean Renoir; French with subtitles; (1939)

I saw all eight films at the Castro Theater.

A few tidbits. Mistress of Spices was directed by Paul Mayeda Berges, the husband of Gurinder Chadha (the director of Bend it Like Beckham). They met at a previous SFIAAFF (I can't recall the year). It may have been the year that Bend it Like Beckham played at SFIAAFF.

Also, Mistress of Spices was filmed near where I used to work. In the film, the stunning Aishwarya Rai plays a mystical woman that runs a spice shop. The shop's exterior is on Washington St. (between 7th & 8th Streets) in the area called Old Oakland. If you can't quite place it, Washington is parallel & one block over from Broadway. The most prominent landmark in the area is the Marriott on Broadway between 10th & 11th. I used to work at 9th and Washington. I saw my old office window in one shot (2nd floor, 3rd window from the corner, along Washington).

Hannibal Chew was in two of the SFIAAFF films that I saw. James Hong played the alcoholic father in Shanghai Kiss. He was also a talking head in Hollywood Chinese. Jason Wiener went to see Big Trouble in Little China in which Hong plays the main villain. I would have liked to have seen that movie on the big screen but it didn't start until 11 PM.

I am still without a computer. I'm writing this via an internet cafe that my gym provides to its members. Hopefully, I'll be up & running this week. There was quite a delay in getting my laptop fixed. First, I futzed around with it for a few days hoping I could reinstall the OS. Then it took Geek Squad a week to tell me that my hard drive was toast and nothing could be recovered. Finally, it took a week for me to decide on a desktop or a laptop (I was busy with other things). I decided to go cheap & stick with my XP laptop. I want to wait for the Vista bugs to be worked out.

I don't think I'll see anymore movies this month. I'm busy planning a banquet on Saturday.

Down but not Out

My computer crashed so I don't have access to the internet at home. It's at the repair shop now. I hope they can recover the hard drive. It wouldn't boot up because it couldn't read the hard drive.

In addtion, I started a new job on March 5 so I was very busy in the weeks leading up to that trying to get some stuff done.

New job notwithstanding, it's been rough on me the last few weeks - the car was leaking brake fluid and that cost $900 to repair (new pads also), the computer crashed (no cost yet), I may have to buy a new computer if the old one can't be repaired (I don't want to switch to Vista yet because a lot of software and peripherals aren't working on Vista), I'm organizing a banquet for my professional society, I feel overwhelmed at my new job, and I haven't had time to go to the movies (much less write about them).

I'd like to see Black Snake Moan. In addition, the Castro is showing Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939). The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival starts Thursday (March 15) and I haven't bought any tickets. I've barely been able to peruse the program guide. One film that looked interesting is the Japanamine The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006).