"No it wasn't. It was my blood."

Today I saw a chilling film I have been anticipating, Alan Ball's Towelhead, the story of a teenage girl's sexual victimization through the paradigm of a Middle Eastern living in the suburban landscape of Texas during the Gulf War. The film is adapted from Alicia Erian's novel of the same name. Thirteen year-old Jasira (Summer Bishil) moves in with her Lebanese-American father (Peter Macdissi) after an incident with her mother's boyfriend. In her new life in Texas, Jasira's days are plagued with her father's indifference and constant judgment, racist epithets from her classmates, and inappropriate attention from her redneck neighbor Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart). In her confused search for affection and normalcy, Jasira befriends a concerned neighbor, the pregnant Melina (Toni Collette), and gets involved with an African-American classmate, Thomas (Eugene Jones III).

I grimaced and squirmed uncomfortably throughout the film, feeling the whole time as if anything bad that could happen, would, and worrying that there may be no redemption at the end. On a scale of how much dread I felt in the pit of my stomach, I would place Towelhead higher than Babel, but lower than Dancer in the Dark. For all the horrible things that happened to our female protagonist, I might have thought I was in fact watching a Lars von Trier film, but this film carried Ball's wry perspective on suburbia's seamy underbelly, and was reminiscent of Todd Solondz's Storytelling. More on that later.

The film gives us a look into the psyche of the neglected and sexualized Jasira, as well as the mind of her rapist Mr. Vuoso. In this, and its outsider's satire of middle America, the film aspires to Nabokov's Lolita, and of course Kubrick's iconic adaptation. While more menacing and less comedic than Lolita, Towelhead portrays Jasira as a nymphet exactly as Nabokov describes them. It makes the uncomfortable suggestion that the young girl a) possesses a powerful sexuality, b) knows how to use it, and c) is totally compliant with the urges of her "lover." When Nabokov's Humbert Humbert describes the nymphet, it reads like an insatiable man's description of the perfect meal. When Mr. Vuoso looks at Jasira, and when she looks at him, the same feeling is conveyed.

Bishil's performace is convincing, and would be heartbreaking enough if Jasira were only dealing with humiliation at school, the onset of her first period, and parents that just don't understand, but with the constant onslaught of abuse on a racial and sexual basis, it's that much more affective. Some things which she goes through aren't uncommon experiences for girls her age, though perhaps not frequently portrayed in the media. She discovers masturbation on accident while perusing pornographic magazines found by chance, and she endeavors to understand the new sexual feelings. She wants to wear makeup and shave her legs, but everyone else seems more aware of her particularly advanced body than she does, including her parents. These things could be aspects of a typical coming of age story, but in Jasira's life they are perverted by the ways that grownups treat her.

Jasira's parents, white American Gail (Maria Bello) and Lebanese-American Rifat, have been divorced for seven years, but are equally selfish and controlling. As happens so often in abusive situations, Gail blames her daughter when she is touched inappropriately by Gail's boyfriend, and later seeks closeness with Jasira simply to cure her loneliness. Rifat would rather spend time with his girlfriend Theno than offer Jasira a kind word, and hits her whenever she's done something he deems immoral. Both parents blame Jasira for everything bad that happens, and expect only blind obedience to their dicta, with no exceptions.

Throughout the film, the neighbor Melina is Jasira's only ally, but all she can do is offer support and the promise of a safe haven to Jasira until she is sure that there is an actual threat. As the only character with her head screwed on straight, I was convinced that something horrible was going to happen to her at any moment. Once again Toni Collette shines, as she is always able to bring depth to a simple character (see her role as Kitty in The Hours). Of course, Jasira often views Melina as intrusive, as she doesn't know if anyone should interfere with her relationship with Mr. Vuoso.

Jasira's relationship with Thomas is the most complicated one she has. Jasira is multiracial and her father dates a Greek woman throughout the film, but he forbids her from seeing a black boy. Thomas seems as though he must be older than Jasira, though it is unclear if what he knows about sex is anecdotal or a posteriori. He clearly cares for her, but at the same time his lust is his primary motivation, and he is unsettlingly possessive of her. At the end of the film, after the secret has come out about Mr. Vuoso's actions, Thomas acts as though he's been gypped of Jasira's virginal attachment to him. Jasira clearly enjoys sex with Thomas, and doesn't want to be denied a continued sexual relationship with him just because he's made uncomfortable by her experiences with Mr. Vuoso. It's a confusing situation because we know Jasira shouldn't be having sex at 13, but we don't want Thomas to control Jasira's sex life.

There is nothing wrong with a teenager coming to terms with her new feelings about her own body, and modern feminists champion an adult woman's confident control over her own sex life. However, seeing Jasira aspire to become a nude model after she's been prematurely sexualized against her will is difficult to watch. Particularly when Aaron Eckhart's portrayal of Mr. Vuoso is so animalistic and ravenous. There is a scene when Jasira is staying with Melina and her husband Gil that strikes quickly and is incredibly unsettling. There is a sequence of quick cuts between Gil's line of sight, Jasira's thigh as her skirt rides up, and an ambiguous look on his face. I must have groaned from discomfort at the skillful editing, until it is revealed that Gil's gaze is not sexual at all.

This particular feeling of discomfort is what reminded me of Storytelling. In the "Non-Fiction" segment of the film there is a pervasive theme of racism and classism portrayed between a young boy and his Hispanic housekeeper that was painful for me to watch. It struck me as particularly memorable because I was concurrently aware of how the relationship made me feel, as well as the fact that the filmmaker wanted to elicit strong vehement reactions. It was as though, as a student of film, I felt I should disregard my emotional reaction because I know that the film is actively trying to draw it out, but I was unable to. Compared to, say, the extreme reveal in Oldboy, which didn't bother me as much as the film wanted it to, because the film was less realistic. Apply this to the pedophilia in Towelhead, and this is what I struggled with during my viewing.

In the end, things are left mostly ambiguous. Jasira and her father seem to have reconciled, though there is no dialogue or action dedicated to an actual redemption on Rifat's part. Gail's reaction to the news about Jasira is left out, as well as a conclusion to the question of which parent Jasira would end up living with. Assumedly nothing is different in Jasira's school life, and she will continue a sexual relationship with the lascivious Thomas. Melina is apparently unscathed after a potentially critical accident, and has her baby. And all the while, Mr. Vuoso is out on bail and living at home with his family on the same cul de sac as Jasira. The tone seems uplifting when the credits roll, but I can't help but feel there is more pain in pipeline for Jasira.

I felt this film deserved a deeper exploration than I usually provide, because it brought up so many complicated responses and was very thought-provoking. It was certainly very well-made, though in the end not as important as some of its inspirations which have come before. It brought a new twist to the tropes in Lolita, American Beauty, and some aspects of Six Feet Under, but broke no new ground. Nonetheless, I think it is well worth a watch, thanks to the wonderful performances and the fact that it will certainly spark a discussion.

a grain of sand

Last month I posted a review of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the first film in Korean director Chan-wook Park's vengeance trilogy. You can read that here. SFMV was not a good movie. There were some moments that showed talented composition and cinematography, but the plot(s) and acting were not worthwhile. Thankfully I was able to remain as excited to see Oldboy as I had been for about a year since I first heard about it, and I didn't let SFMV prevent me from watching the second film in the trilogy.

Let me try to organize my thoughts about Oldboy. It is very good, just like everyone says. It is violent and twisted and made me think. And now I'm trying to figure out why I wasn't as haunted by it as many of my friends were. So let me break things down.

(SPOILER ALERT!)

1) Violence. I have certainly heard quite a few people say that Oldboy is the most violent movie they've ever seen. Certainly, it ranks high on my list, but I think the award for that one still goes to The Passion of the Christ. All of the unbelievably gruesome images in Oldboy happen just out of frame (except for the octopus - which was awesome), whereas in Passion we are forced to watch images of flesh being ripped from bone. The attention to detail in the violent imagery was fantastic, though...Dae-su's calloused knuckles were such an amazing reminder of what he'd put himself through while in captivity.

2) Identity. This is, I think, why I was not as disturbed by the film as my friend Evan was, who was watching it for the second time when he watched it with me last night. I was particularly struck by the making and unmaking of the Beast. My reading of the film was that he was Dae-su at the beginning, the Beast by the time his fifteen years of captivity were over, able to transform back into Dae-su after meeting Mi-do, and the Beast again once he found out the secret. Not without having his memory wiped clean of the secret can he be Dae-su again. This reading was reinforced to me by the separation of the two identities by the hypnotist during the epilogue. Evan could not differentiate between Dae-su and the Beast, and so he felt especially disgusted by the events surrounding the man.

3) The villain? Okay, so I definitely understood Woo-jin to be villain in this movie. Certainly he is the antagonist, but I could see how some people could think that Dae-su/Beast is as much of a villain as Woo-jin. However, he is clearly evil because of how his sister's death has tortured him, and by the time the movie begins, his vengeance has overtaken what was once human in him. I had the hardest time understanding Woo-jin over any other character in the movie though, perhaps because his hatred was so extreme that I had to wonder what his personality was like before Soo-ah's death.

4) Style. Park's directing in this movie is so far beyond what he did with SFMV, and I think I was captivated by every scene. The contrasting foregrounds and backgrounds, the balanced wide-angle shots, the colors and the textures - every moment was beautiful. I was especially impressed by the two shots that I felt bookended the movie. After Dae-su's first year of imprisonment, the camera holds on the painting that hangs in his prison cell. A man's crazed face is dripping with blood, and the first lines of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem "Solitude" are painted below his smile, reading, "Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone." The camera then cuts to Dae-su's face, which is grinning, wildly framed by his out-of-control mane, and wide-eyed with dementia. Towards the end of the film, when Dae-su is fighting Woo-jin's bodyguard, his hair covers his blood-covered face, and he grins, the Beast once more.

So, what exactly is Park trying to say about vengeance in this trilogy? Maybe I won't be able to know until after I watch the third film, Lady Vengeance. Until then, I'll keep thinking about it. For now, I'm going to be so glad I didn't let SFMV ruin my expectations for Oldboy, and ruminate on the other amazing bookend to the film, the line, "Even though I'm no more than a beast, don't I, too, have the right to live?" I don't know...

what? why? huhhh?

For months and months, everyone has been telling me how much I need to see Oldboy. I was all set to add it to my Netflix queue, when I realized that director Chan-wook Park had created a sort of stylistic trilogy in 2005, and I wanted to watch them in order. I'm very picky about watching movies or reading books in order if I can, so I waited and waited to watch Oldboy until I had time to watch the first film, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. In fact, I still haven't seen Oldboy, though it is coming next on my queue. Last night I settled in to watch Sympathy, which I was expecting to be a suspenseful gore-fest. What I got was...something else.

I've seen some weird movies, both domestic and foreign. I've seen crazy game shows and other random snippets of things on TV that have thrown me for a loop. And that's not even talking about the internet. Online, there is a whole world of strange that a single person can only scratch the surface of. When I was finished watching Sympathy last night, I turned to my friend Evan and said something which most adequately describes what we had just experienced. "I've seen a video of a Japanese girl in a pleather kitten costume fellating a severed octopus tentacle, and that made more narrative sense than this movie."

(SPOILER ALERT!)

The beginning of Sympathy is promising. The plot and character motivations are set up, and bad things start to happen that cause that perfect sense of suspenseful unease that a viewer is supposed to feel at the beginning of a horror movie, before all the really bad things happen. Our protagonist (?), Ryu, is a deaf-mute factory worker whose sister is in desperate need of a kidney transplant. Since he is the wrong blood type, they are waiting for an organ to become available from a suitable donor. Increasingly panicked that this isn't going to happen, Ryu contacts a black market organ tradeswoman, who says she will find him a kidney in return for one of his own, and 10 million Won. He wakes up naked in an abandoned building, missing a kidney and without any of the money he had saved up. The junkie "surgeon" has escaped the deal and will not be providing a kidney for his sister. A few weeks later, their real doctor informs them that there is finally a match off the donor list. "You still have that 10 million Won saved up, right?"

Ryu's girlfriend Yeong-mi, some sort of political activist (frankly, I never understood her manifesto), encourages him to kidnap Yu-sun, the daughter of Park, who is the president of the company who had fired him for missing too many days at work after his dirty kidney surgery, and use the ransom money to pay for Ryu's sister's surgery. Since they are not bad people, they kidnap her, but they treat her very well, and tell her that they are friends of her father's who are babysitting for a while. This is also the story that Ryu and his girlfriend tell to his sister. For some time they all live together quite happily, waiting for the ransom to go through. While Ryu and Yeong-mi are out getting the briefcase full of money from Park, Ryu's sister finds out that Yu-sun is not a friend's daughter, but a kidnapping victim. (Sidenote: Bo-bae Han, who plays Yu-sun, is possibly the cutest little girl ever. All little kids should wear big glasses to remind me of myself as a little girl!) Distraught, and worried that she is too much of a burden to her brother because of her illness, Ryu's sister kills herself. Whoops. Ryu takes her body to the lake where they played as children, because that is where she wanted to be buried. Of course, he can't leave Yu-sun alone, so she has to come along. Poor thing. Of course, she drowns.

This is when things start getting weeeeeird. I can't even really describe the rest of the movie. The cops get involved. There's a mentally retarded guy who comes out of nowhere and just changes everything up. There's a totally random sex scene, a couple of murderous rampages, and at least two autopsies which Park is a witness to for NO reason whatsoever. Honestly, I have no idea what the message of this movie was supposed to be. Evan was able to gleam some sort of communist sentiment from it, based off of the apparent victory of Yeong-mi's terrorist group above all the other characters, but that was a bit of a stretch.

Really, I don't even know what to say. It was an experience. Some of the scenes were certainly visually appealing, and I am still quite looking forward to Oldboy. But Sympathy wasn't even that gory or frightening. It was just totally confusing. After watching it, Evan and I tried to come up with a list of movies we'd seen that were worse, and when movies like Battlefield Earth and Must Love Dogs are out there, it really throws off the whole curve. More to come when I get to see Oldboy and Lady Vengeance next.

*the movie ends*
Kat: Um...
Evan: For real?
Kat: F'real?
Evan: Fuh reeeal?
Kat: 4Real?
Evan: Was this worse than Serendipity?