Julia Slaughter

Posts Tagged ‘Foreign’

This post contains spoilers, so if you think you might watch this Korean subtitled movie you might want to stop reading. If you’re like I am and knowing some of the plot doesn’t ruin the movie experience for you or if you just doubt you’ll ever want to watch it, feel free to read to your heart’s content. I’ll let you know when the spoiler is coming…

The first foreign, subtitled movie I had ever seen was Raise the Red Lantern – I loved it. Don’t misunderstand me, the story isn’t exactly a cheerful one but I loved that glimpse into 1920 China. It was a world that I had never seen before, a world I couldn’t even imagine and I was hooked. However, at the time it wasn’t quite an easy thing to get your hands on foreign films, you kind of had to take what you could get but now things are different.

I belong to Netflix, I love it. I was a bad movie renter, often getting stuck with late fees because it seems that nothing can entice my friends into making appealing plans like me walking out of the video store with a movie or two in my hand. Netflix fixed all of that and not only did they remove any concern about late fees but they opened a world of foreign films to me so I could find everything that my favorite Chinese director (Zhang Yimou), my favorite actress (Gong Li), and my favorite actor (Takeshi Kaneshiro) – I devoured those movies. After that I struck out on my own and checked out other foreign films, sometimes I would browse through and find something that seemed interesting and other times I would make selections based on what Netflix has recommended for me.

I was badly burned by Netflix recommendations once. I had some Chinese movie that I hadn’t watched at home and my Pastor mentioned his cable was out and he was movieless. I told him that I had a few at home I could lend him until the cable guy came around the next day or so. I did preface all of this with the comment that I hadn’t watched any of the movies yet and they were Netflix recommendations. When he brought me back the movies the next day he gave me the oddest look. In retrospect, he was probably trying to determine WHAT I had watched to get that particular movie recommended to me. I’ve forgotten the name of the movie but it was about a girl whose family made their fortune on Opium, she falls in love with a scoundrel and has “relations” with her cousin to try to become a more suitable match for the scoundrel. I can’t tell you how confused I was by the movie, and how embarrassed I was that I had lent it to my pastor! Apparently once you are interested in anything that falls into the Foreign film genre, Netflix recommends anything Foreign to you. A lesson learned the hard way.

I’ve since licked my wounds, and gone back to watching Foreign films from Netflix, however I’ve learned another valuable lesson – one that I had forgotten but Netflix was so kind to remind me. I don’t really think that the people who write the movie descriptions for the Foreign movies ever actually watch the movies, I once selected a Chinese “comedy” that ends when a character tragically gets hit by a bus! (The first fifteen minutes or so were quite funny.)

This is the description that Netflix gave me about the movie :

Sisters Jin and Bin must fend for themselves when their mother abruptly packs her things, leaving the girls in the care of their alcoholic aunt  without a word as to when she’ll return. In a tale of innocence lost, the sisters try to make sense of their mother’s absence. But in the meantime, 6-year-old Jin will be forced to mature far beyond her tender years.

But after further investigation I discovered a more accurate description:

When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, six-year-old Jin and her younger sister, Bin, are left to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother’s promise to return when it is full, the two young girls are forced to acclimate to changes in their family life. Counting the days, and the coins, the two bright-eyed young girls eagerly anticipate their mother’s homecoming. But when the bank fills up, and with their mother still not back, Big Aunt decides that she can no longer tend to the children. Taken to live on their grandparent’s farm, it is here that Jin comes to learn the importance of family bonds in this beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking second feature from So Yong Kim.

!!This is where the spoilers come in so you might want to skip this and come back and see me later!!

I watched this entire movie with my seat back in its upright position and my tray table locked, braced and ready for impact. The children acting in the movie are beautiful and endearing, they tugged on my heart strings and I wanted desperately to protect them.  However, here’s the thing there was really no one to protect them from a negligent mother who drops out of the movie almost immediately, an Aunt who is not an alcoholic though she is certainly not kind, but at the end of the movie just as I was braced for it to get worse – it did something unexpected, it got better.

The girls get sent to live with their grandparents and the movie ends with a sweet hopeful song. I released my breath when the credits started, I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath but I was. I just knew the tragedy was waiting to strike and instead the girls seem in a much better place than they ever where with their aunt or mother.

Oh Netflix, you’ve got to do better than this on these foreign movies – you’re going to give me a stroke!

TREELESS MOUNTAIN: Movie Trailer – Watch more amazing videos here