Koisenu Futari’s Kazu-kun: One Step Further Into The Amato-normativity Discussion

Poor Wöller, no one ever tells him what's going on lol

I'm convinced, that "Koisenu futari" is an extremely underrated show. The importance of its existence is simply enormous. Not only because of the aroace representation, but also because of how it helps allosexual people see what life and relationships can look like from a completely different perspective. How it teaches them to be more open and accepting of people who are different from them. And how it completely destroys all the patterns of modern film industry, considering that even in children's cartoons there is still, not very big, but usually at least some kind of romantic plotline for the main character. I'm so in love with this drama that I just can't

Watched/read

Feminine and feminist cinema.

House of Hummingbird: the main character, Eunhee, was in eighth grade in 1994, which is to say she – and Kim Bo-ra, the director – are nearly exactly my age. It’s a sensitive, Proustian evocation of a ‘90s South Korean female adolescence, parts of which I relate to (those pagers!), parts of which I knew nothing about (one date chyron I won’t spoiler, that drew gasps from the audience), and parts of which are evergreen (dysfunctional Asian families where the only love languages are verbal abuse and food, and emotional support is non-existent even for favoured first sons). The sporadic outbursts of domestic violence, in particular, are so true to life as to be triggering; it made me think of people IRL to whom I’d only recommend the film with a warning. The actors are all very good but the one I’ll think back to is Kim Sae-byuk, who plays Eunhee’s mysterious yet relatable Chinese tutor and imbues the supporting character with a vast sense of inner life. The camera watches her face and you feel what she’s feeling for this girl, from the other side of the unidirectional gulf that is the Tired Adult™ looking upon an eighth grader much like she once was.

21st Century Girl: a thematic omnibus of short films commissioned from emerging female Japanese filmmakers, each of which has to be about love, gender, or sexuality in some way. One does what one can with the running time: some oblique love stories, some LGBT themes, some in media res snippets of what might eventually end up as feature-lengths with a beginning and an end, lots and lots of photographic montage and manifestos in voiceover. I liked “Your Sheet,” a gender-fluid erotic story that was also the most successful bit of standalone short fiction, and the rom-com concept of “Sex-less Sex-friends.”

Dare to Stop Us: for once I would have liked a Q&A session with the director and writer, because I have questions. The film is a dramatization of the late ‘60s-early ‘70s imperial period of Wakamatsu Studios, the “pink film” (experimentally x-rated, but also raging leftist pink-o) outfit founded by Wakamatsu Koji, an enfant terrible of Japanese cinema who used to be yakuza and purportedly turned to film so he could kill off cops without getting arrested. The main character is Megumi, a hippie girl who joins the studio at the age of 21 and works her way up to first AD within the year, not least due to the other ADs quitting. Megumi comes off as a designated-naif entry-point POV, possibly – I thought – a composite of women who worked for Wakamatsu, and the arc of her story seemed to bend toward surviving (gender-neutral) workplace hazing and becoming a successful indie director in her own right, as Wakamatsu promises when he hires her. Spoilers: she is not a composite! She existed, and what happens to her is gut-wrenching! It’s a rug-pull, honestly, especially since the director Kazuya Shiraishi worked with Wakamatsu and the initial vibe is “feel-good biopic of characters and environment I have huge nostalgic affection for.” In retrospect, one has to conclude he was half making that movie, half interrogating how the guerrilla filmmaking milieu can chew up the people who love it most, and is particularly unforgiving to women even when their bosses and peers aren’t overtly sexist.

(I also have questions about the slickly urbane portrayal of Oshima Nagisa, sitting in a cafe with his sunglasses telling Wakamatsu not to push his pro-Palestinian documentary too hard because the film world is “run by Jews,” because hoo boy was that a Moment.)

Robert Mapplethorpe Embrace 1982

HUNGER (2023) dir. Sitisiri Mongkolsiri

Amores perros (2000)

Dogs shouldn’t have to put up with us.  The characters in Amores perros create a cruel world, or perhaps they think they can only succeed in an illegal manner.  But there are dogs in all of these people’s lives, too.  They come in many forms, but they suffer in similar ways.  Cofi is a rottweiler who has a very “no thoughts head empty” energy during many scenes.  But he is a killer.  In another world Richie is like a toy but suffers because his masters are incompetent.  He gets lost under the ground and maybe dies. Iñárritu understands the experiences of his characters and uses them to great effect.  The dogs in this film are vessels for empathy.  They distill their owners’ existences down to the most powerful truth.  Much blood is spilled but the dogs are constant.  It is a cruel experience for the audience because there is no rest for them; they simply have to survive the film. 

Amores perros represents Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s best and worst instincts.  It has all his talent but also all his worst impulses.  He adopts a narrative structure like the films of Quentin Tarantino or others, a tapestry of characters interweaving.  The camera moves with a hand-controlled panic to pull us into the world. We constantly bump into other narratives, one line intersecting with the other as these characters affect each other in small or large ways.  Minor details in one moment are important in others.  Iñárritu creates a trap for his characters and then has doubts if he wants to engage.  At times he has great power.  It’s exciting and sad.  I too aspire to be a radical liberal turned doggo-tor.  But it’s incredibly hard to watch the scene when all the dogs in our protect die because Cofi only knows one way of life.  Humans destroy the lives of dogs.  I openly cried for the final minutes.  We cannot learn.  We cannot change.  Young people never learn to find healthy outlets for their emotions.  The only way to succeed is to offend and cause suffering.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says ‘Cofi’ or ‘pandejo’.

Grainy TV footage.

Crazy baby toys.

An advertisement for Enchant appears somewhere.

Sick ‘00s beat drops.

A sum of money is named.

BIG DRINK

A part title appears onscreen.

The narrative jumps perspectives.

A scene isn’t abjectly miserable.

Can we stop acting like two people deeply loving each other has to mean they have something romantic or sexual going on? Can we stop talking as if platonic love just can't be that deep? Because that's not true. Platonic love can be just as deep, and sometimes even deeper, than romantic love. What I'm saying is, we need to stop putting romance on this pedestal and act like every other form of love is less important.

ＯＯＣ

One of the most accurate descriptions of Innocent I’ve read - it’s written like a theatre piece or an opera. It’s exaggerated, flamboyant, dramatic, and the characters are merely actors, who are thrown on the stage, whenever they are needed. They all serve a purpose and stand for something the author wants to convey, so nothing about them has to be realistic.

I honestly love it! Whoever wrote this review, thanks, I couldn’t put my finger on it at all, but it’s the perfect comparison!

i just saw perfect days and i don't want a smartphone anymore. like, i genuinely don't want this thing anymore. i'm starting to think about all the times i've missed something beautiful existing in front of me because i felt the need to look down at my screen. how much time have i wasted getting quick hits of dopamine instead of getting true enjoyment from something as simple as the sunshine rippling through the trees? i'm wondering when my appreciation for real beauty met its death by way of an addiction to artificial blue light. there's no surprises or moments of amazement when you're constantly attached to the interwebs.

but i want to be surprised. i want to be amazed. i want to feel life again through my own skin, not another mindless swipe or tap.

Nanami deserved to be happy...🩵🪽