"Do You need to be touching my horse?"
So the festival is over. I missed a lot of films I wish I hadn't (A Gun to the Head, the Hunt) but I guess that's always going to happen. Last time, I had just seen The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Since then, I've seen three films: RoboGeisha, Machotaildrop and Harmony Korine's Trashhumpers. They were all really awesome, and thus marking my first Canadian Premiere (Robogeisha). Although I throughly enjoyed all of them, I have to say that Trash humpers stole the show. I felt like I was in a cinema in Barcelona, in the 30s, watching an enraged, insulted and disgusted crowd reel and riot after watching Salivdor Dali's Chien D'or. I'll explain what I mean a little later.
Robo-Geisha is a Japanese horror comedy from director Noboru Iguchi, and holy shit is it funny. But even if I tried to explain to you why it is funny, or told you specific parts that made me laugh, it would some trite. Japanese comedies have an odd relationship to English, as some lines are simply better read than said so to speak. The plot is so absurd and ridiculous that it works. It's about Yoshi and her older sister Kikue who were training in the Geisha house since the death of their parents. They soon have dinner with the wealthy industrialist Kageno and find out that he is building a secret army of robotic Geisha assassins. Soon they are making hits for their male bosses. But when Yoshi is given a target of nice old people, who rally against the Kageno group for stealing their daughters/sisters away, she goes rogue against Kageno. The climax of this film is more ridiculous than you can possibly fathom, and well worth it. Japanese humor around humiliation, cruelty and honorable men doing silly things translate well I think to a western audience. Rent it with some friends, share some laughs.
Machotaildrop is an independent feature from Van city, a film about a world where skaeboarding is much more than a sport, but a higher cultural calling. Directed and written by Corey Adams (co-directored and co-written by Alex Craig), it's a fantastical, surreal and colorful journey. There are at least two major plot lines in this film, one following a young skate boarding Walter's rise to fame in the Machotaildrop house, the other is the story of the Manwolfes, a rabid wild skateboarding gang that roams an abandoned amusement park. The two plots work well with each others, pushing a strong and earnest critique of the corporatism of skateboarding culture, and the insanity of professional sports. My only problem with the film is the lead actor, the kid who plays Walter. He's terrible. Everything else in this film plays this part very well, EXCEPT him. And he is probably (besides the baron) the person who we see the most. I don't know why he got the part, perhaps he's friends with one of the directors or producers, but it was a bad movie. In spite of this, I recommend this movie, it will hold your attention, make you laugh and entertain you.
This brings us to Harmony Korine's latest film, Trash Humpers, Watching this film in a theater as opposed to alone was quite the experience, and I'll tell you why. The first few frames of Trash humpers show three senior citizens, literally fucking garbage bags/bins. Weird? Of course. And the audience reacted accordingly, laughing at the silliness of the images. By the end of the film, there was no laughter. Because, after we had been exposed to some of the most strange, disturbing and confusing scenes in recent cinematic memory, the trash humping simply isn't funny anymore. The film has no plot, there is no story to be told. No character development, no actual character names. The movie is filmed entirely on a camcorder, an old school one that even has the auto-tracking flashing in some parts. The images themselves are haunting, disturbing and will follow you for a while. The dialogue comes in waves of surreal monologues, delivered by bizarre characters in even weirder places. The film is constantly walking the line between harmless vandalism and psychotic violence. The fact that the thing is shoot in video gives you the eerie feeling that this may be real, and though you try and try to convince yourself otherwise, the feeling remains. In this post-modern age Korine has managed to create something truly original. And that alone is enough.
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