Asian racquet sports double feature

I was going to possibly choose Lurker as the second half of my double feature at the cinema on Wednesday, since I've heard great things about it and I don't know that I'll have access to it through rental or steaming before my ranking deadline next month. 

But then I thought, why pass up an opportunity for an Asian-themed double feature, especially since my rankings are light on foreign language films? And because it might spur me to write a post on this blog, which I have been neglecting lately?

See the first movie was Park Chan-wook's latest, No Other Choice, which is one of a couple movies I've seen at advanced screenings that won't be coming out in Australia until January, when I will be quite busy trying to cram in all my other "must haves" before my list closes. It's a bit of a black comic riff on Parasite, and I think I'd be saying that even if the directors of both films weren't Korean. 

And besides, Elizabeth Lo's Chinese documentary Mistress Dispeller was starting 20 minutes earlier.

I knew both movies were from Asia, but I didn't realize they would both feature racquet sports -- and that they would both spell the word "racquet" differently in their English translations.

Tennis is a very small part of No Other Choice. It's a pastime enjoyed by the wife of the main character, one she decides to give up when he loses his job and their family falls on hard times. It isn't integral to the plot, but it comes up enough in conversation that her hopeful husband talks about buying her a new "racket" when he gets back up on his feet.

In Mistress Dispeller, a documentary about a woman who helps break up extramarital affairs, the couple she's trying to save are badminton aficionados. We see them playing this multiple times, and at one point someone talks about the correct way to hold the "racquet."

I'd say "racquet" is correct, yet I'm sure for many years in my life I thought it was "racket." 

Though looking at it just now, I'm not so sure. AI tells me that "racket" is the "older spelling, preferred in American English." Which would have been why I wrote it that way for so long. "Racquet," AI explains, is preferred in other countries. 

But I'm pretty sure I would have stopped writing "racquet" long before I moved to Australia. See, "racket" already means something else. It wouldn't be the first word to be spelled the same way and have two different meanings, but "racquet" clearly tells you what it's talking about without any ambiguity. I mean, a "tennis racket" could technically be a corrupt enterprise around the sport of tennis -- you know, point shaving or something. 

Both movies in this double feature also got 3.5 stars from me, which qualifies as a mild disappointment. (It's funny how I've come to think of this is a "disappointing" rating, when some people would use it as a signifier of great affection.)

This is actually a step up for Park, since his last film, Decision to Leave, was such a disappointment to me that I could not even give it a positive star rating (2.5). I've never seen another Elizabeth Lo movie, but I guess I hoped this one would blow my mind. I did really like it, but I spent entirely too much time questioning how someone makes a documentary about a cheating husband and his mistress, with tons of footage of them, without them understanding that this documentary is about someone trying to break them up. 

So I guess I won't be raising a racket for either of them when I review them (har har).