Lady Snowblood: Lovesong of Vengeance, All about Lily Chou-Chou, & Saving Face

Lady Snowblood: Lovesong of Vengeance is the sequel to Lady Snowblood, the quite good revenge film that inspired a lot of Kill Bill, especially the fight between The Bride and O-Ren in the snow. Plus, it's just ridiculous. The sequel is more technically proficient, but it doesn't work nearly as well. The first film worked so well because of the desire for vengeance that drove the plot, and you cared whether the bad guys got it in the end. Of course they did, but in this one, without that important reason for its existence, this film just doesn't come together nearly as well. I don't care about the suppression of revolutionary politics in Japan. Well, not much. But I want some kick ass-blood spurting. I got some of that, but the politics got in the way. I'm just kidding, it's actually quite nice to have some anti-authoritarian film with blood spurts, death from the plague, lots of fires, sword slashing, eye gouging, a shotgun that never needs to be reloaded, gratuitous nudity, and severed limbs. I don't think I saw any decapitations, and there should have been some. I enjoyed it, but it's not a classic like the first film.

All about Lily Chou-Chou starts out with a fairly gorgeous shot of a school boy listening to music on a portable cd player while bits of internet forum posts are intertitled, first in a gibberish of crazy ascii text, and then in Japanese along with English subtitles. This kept going for a while, and then the plot, such as it was, started. It's pretty much about a group of middle school kids, some of whom are obsessed with the fictional pop singer Lily Chou-Chou, and others are anti-social misfits. The main characters are the "cool" kid and the nerd who sort of does whatever the cool kid wants. Including pimping one of his schoolmates and being complicit in another one's rape. It's a pretty messed up film, but the music, mostly Debussy and J-rock-y stuff, is quite good. And there's the long bit about a trip to Okinawa that just seems completely unnecessary. I guess it does give some info on the cool kid's character, but it's quite long. Most of the film is quite beautiful, with great colors, and it's ultimately quite heartbreaking, but it could have used some trimming.

Saving Face is an ethnic romantic comedy. And yet, it's actually funny, and somewhat romantic. Of course, it's about Chinese lesbians in New York, which would be more interesting to me if I was like a lot of other heterosexual men and enjoyed that. There was a topless scene, which I had to rewatch with the director's commentary to see what the hell she had to say about it, because it's a woman who had this personal story she wanted to tell for a while. Because it just seemed completely gratuitous. The director said that she didn't want to just cover them up because that would suggest that she was ashamed by the lesbian sex and would make it more about the phone call received rather than the sex. I think it's actually a good point, and the l-shaped sheet is one of the most ridiculous clichés in history. To make it clear that neither character was ashamed of what they were doing, and that they never would have had sex under the sheets, at least not until the phone call, the nudity wasn't exploitative. Listening to that, I actually appreciated both the commentary and the movie more. It's full of all the clichés you want in a lesbian themed romantic comedy, but it's not nearly as bad as a lot of them.