When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Mommie Dearest, The Color Purple, Portrait of Hell, & Woman Is the Future of Man

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a Japanese film about a widow who has to find a way to live and support various members of her family. I found it interesting as a look at the life of a hostess in the post-war years, with the men willing to pay ridiculous amounts for companionship. Somehow it's not as disturbing as The Great Happiness Space, but that could just be that I'm a guy. I'd never seen another film by Mikio Naruse or starring Hideko Takamine, but they both do a great job. You really feel the heartbreak of this woman struggling to make ends meet in a terrible

Mommie Dearest has the famous line about coat hangers, stars Faye Dunaway and Diana Scarwid, and is utter trash. At least it doesn't have Bette Davis, so it's far less annoying than What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but it's just mean-spirited. Maybe I just didn't care for the mother or the daughter. Wait, that's not an or. Or a maybe.

The Color Purple was a terrible decision. Spielberg, a Jew from Cincinnati, directing a film that's quintessentially black. As a Jew from Cincinnati, I think it's very clear that picking Spielberg to direct it was a terrible idea. I have no idea what it was like to be a black person in the south in the 30s. And that shot going in to the mailbox was just too much. The constant incest, the beatings, and Whoopi didn't help either. So melodramatic that I'm not at all surprised it didn't win any Oscars. Just goes back to remind me that Titanic did. Which was, and always will be, a travesty.

Portrait of Hell looks like it was filmed entirely on soundstages. And thus has the same sort of feel of all films shot on soundstages: very few shots from below and everything has just this too clean feel. But those same limitations add to the feeling of claustrophobia of people stuck in a foreign land. Also, it continues the mini-theme of parents being overprotective of their daughters. No incestual themes in this one though. Lots of great color, ghosts, and impressiveness. And twistedness. Hubris and greed always seem to get punished pretty darn severely in these type of films. It certainly fits the actual tragic structure very well. It's based on a novel by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who also wrote the stories Rashomon was based on. I like him, and I should buy Jay Rubin's translations of 18 of his stories. Even though I have seven of them already. Jay Rubin is that good. Ooh, and it has an introduction by Haruki Murakami. Hmmm, what else can I buy that would put it over the $25 Amazon limit? 30 Rock Season 1, it is.

Woman Is the Future of Man had almost illegible subtitles. Not as bad as Green Snake (which I still haven't seen), but I had to strain to see them. Tiny little white subtitles are not good. Portrait of Hell had multicolor subtitles (my preference) and were completely legible. And the movie itself was little better. 88 minutes of Koreans having sex with each other, one rape, a couple of blowjobs, a couple of attempted pickups of the same waitress, and a lot of just worthless people. I didn't like it at all. It felt like a pretentious sex comedy without the comedy. And you gotta think that the boorish director probably reflects the director himself. He seems to have a lot of people working in film in his movies. I might try one other of his films, but it's not a very auspicious introduction to Hong Sang-soo.