It's been a MIFF of a number of firsts already, and Friday represented one more: my first MIFF documentary.But first, the winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes.
Together, they represented a double feature of Asian movies, one from Japan and one from China.
Let's start with dinner.
I had wanted to go to my favorite dumpling place after leaving work on Friday and walking down toward Elizabeth Street, where the dumpling place is. I call it my favorite dumpling place, but actually, it's the only dumpling place I've been to. I enjoyed my first visit well enough that I saw no reason not to just return to this place every time I needed dumplings. I don't want to sell dumpling places short, but I figured they were more or less of a piece.
Anyway, it seemed like the right way to kick off an Asian double feature.
But I'd been craving a cheeseburger for like a week. On previous occasions where I might have scratched that itch, I was not in range of a place that could deliver me a really good one. But on my walk from Collins Place to Elizabeth Street, I realized I was heading straight for Betty's Burgers, a place my wife and I had discovered within the past 18 months and already been to a couple times -- which is unusual as we don't have that many opportunities to eat out together. Thinking of a Betty's burger and a shake, my eyes actually widened. You usually say that metaphorically, but nope -- I felt them widening. Dumplings would need to wait for another day.
Although it's a popular place, I finished my business at Betty's (fully satisfied) early enough to arrive early at the Comedy Theatre. I don't usually like arriving early at movies -- I'll usually make up reasons to kill time -- but I knew the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Shoplifters, from director Hirokazu Kore-eda, was sold out. I also knew you don't want to arrive at the Comedy Theatre too late if you want a shot at a comfortable seat. And by "comfortable seat," I don't mean any of them are actually comfortable, but their discomfort is minimized if you can sit in a front row, where that discomfort is not exacerbated by a lack of legroom. So in this instance I didn't dilly dally.
Glad I didn't. The line was already wrapped around the corner even at like 6:05 for a 6:30 start. But it's a big theater, so a line wrapped around the corner is not ever as dispiriting as it seems to be. When it's wrapped around the corner and stretched all the way up the block, that's bad, but just wrapped around the corner is manageable.
And indeed I did get a front row seat, off to the left rather than off to the right as I'd been trying to do ever since I discovered the idea watching The Killing of a Sacred Deer in 2017. Most people have not discovered this Comedy Theatre life hack, thinking of the first row as a bad seat no matter where it is. But in this instance, two of the three front row seats were actually marked as reserved, while the other was occupied. I increased my gait a little and got to the equivalent seats on the other side, where two of three were occupied while the one other one was vacant. That seat had my name on it.
Glad I wasn't forced to contort myself into a seat with a seat in front of me, because this was a two-hour movie and I wanted every opportunity not to become distracted like I was last year at this theater watching the way-too-long The Square. I knew Shoplifters had a chance to be a real contender, as Kore-eda directed by #2 movie of 2014, Like Father, Like Son. I also saw and really liked his After the Storm at MIFF 2016.
Shoplifters is in between those two movies in terms of quality, but it's closer to the former than the latter. In other words, it's pretty flipping great. I really have to go back and see the other Kore-eda films I haven't seen, as this guy is a born filmmaker with a generous sense of humanism. I'm not going to include a mini-review here because I've written a full review that will be linked on the right of this page, depending on when you read this. But damn, this guy is good.
I had about 45 minutes to kill between my two movies, and killed almost all of it waiting for one of those inscrutable Chinese smoothies from one of the Chinese smoothie shops that dot the Melbourne downtown. This was my thematic makeup for not going for dumplings, and a way to fill a small hole in my stomach. Unfortunately, I'm a rookie when it comes to these smoothies, so I ordered kind of randomly and wasn't prepared for how long the wait would be in a shop that was brimming with people. By the end I was pacing around nervously, with serious doubts about whether I'd miss the opening of the second movie. As it happens I didn't, but I couldn't finish the entire smoothie before getting to the theater and had to smuggle it in in the inner pocket of my winter jacket.
People's Republic of Desire was the 37th film I've seen at MIFF over the past five years -- and the first documentary, if you can believe it. And that hasn't been for lack of choice; it's just demonstrated a bias in the type of film I seek out at a film festival. But for some reason this film caught my eye and I decided to make it one of my randoms this year -- in other words, one of my comparatively small number of films that were not either from directors I knew or whose buzz had preceded them. (My other two this year were The Night Eats the World and Euthanizer, both of which I've already written about.)
The reason this movie caught my attention was -- well, I suppose because the titillating title prompted me to read the description. Sex is not actually what this movie is about, and if it were I probably wouldn't have done more than read the description. (My wife knows everything I'm seeing and I would feel sheepish about going both to a movie called Climax and this, were it actually about sex.) The actual description interested me enough to put it on my schedule, as the movie is about the booming online streaming industry in China, in which hosts are sponsored by big talent agencies, compete in big competitions, and pull down huge salaries each month from fans throwing money at them in terms of virtual gifts costing real money. And all of this without, in many cases, having discernible talent, or even in some cases having a lot of charisma.
I found the inner workings fascinating in this world we westerners know little about. I suppose the mania over this is in some ways similar to something like American Idol at its peak, except even more people seem to be invested in it, and they're not just paying in the form of the price of an SMS to vote for a particular person. The status of fans with each other has to do with how much they spend on the hosts, and some are proud to boast that they've dropped hundreds of thousands of American dollars in a single month. Director Hao Wu also visualizes this world in an absorbing manner via three-dimensional planes, in which the host is in the background while all sorts of avatars and online gifts dance around in the foreground in an orgy of consumerism, pseudo celebrity and reflected glow.
I'm done with the double features in 2018, although there is a day-night double header, to use a baseball term, coming up on Wednesday. Next up is my Sunday night viewing, Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War.
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