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petroniaWell, it's official. Bullet Time has been re-absorbed into the collective unconsciousness of Asian entertainment. Like wire-fu and blood spouting from the necks of decapitated samurai, it's become part of the repertoire, and we will now pause to allow the Wachowskis to shed a wibbly tear of joy.
[pause]
Back to movie review. XD Going by Google, Resurrection of the Little Match Girl cost circa 10 million $US, which makes it a financial whale by S.Korean standards but cheap 'n' cheery set beside comparable Hollywoodian oeuvres, like a Sanrio knock-off in non-approved acid colours. Flopped in its homeland, apparently. Unsurprising: it runs through the paces of summer popcorn flick, but is mainstream-pleasing only in a very scattershot way. The FantAsia audience was all appreciative laughter and applause, though, as well they should have been. Arcade FPS-savvy and looking for a headtrip? Amateur of the post-modern delights of Lain, dot hack and so forth? Movie's for you.
(I intend to dissect these films in reasonable depth. Chances are some of you are going to see them eventually, though, if you haven't already, so spoilers beyond the usual film review synopsis sort of thing will be behind a cut.)
Stage 1 is Asian Indie, with a slant toward Alienated Pop-Cult-Soaked Youth. The main character, Ju, is your archetypal hapless l0ser d0rk, a take-out delivery boy who wants to be a professional gamer like his obnoxious best buddy, and has a real thing for the cute cash register chick at the local arcade. She doesn't give him the time of day. He fantasizes about going postal and machine-gunning down entire offices to the mellifluous strains of the S.E.S. chestnut "Dreams Come True" (kindly uploaded by Ced before I could). And so it goes, until l0serb0i has an inevitable Boogiepop Moment, and spots Sun-Tzu's chaos-system butterfly fluttering past on the night breeze. It's followed by Little Match Girl herself, a shivering waif from whom the bemused Ju buys a plastic lighter - because just as inevitably, she's the spitting image of his mad crush Hee Mi.
(As well she should be, because Little Match Girl is Everyman's Desire: the Rose Bride and more besides. The Cyberpunk Utena subtext of her character arc is by far the most interesting part of the movie.)
A phone number is printed on the lighter. Hee Mi's? In real life it may be (see the film to get a feel for how this is conveyed, I'm not going to make it out to be linearly comprehensible when it's not). But when Ju calls he gets an automated voice that signs him up for the Resurrection of Little Match Girl game, run by a singularly menacing (and Engrish-speaking) entity called the System, which could be anything from a ruthless multinational to a secret society to a Wintermute-like AI, and what do you care? The goals of the game are simple. Little Match Girl must die of hunger and exposure, ref Hans Christian Andersen. To that end, prevent her from selling her lighters to anyone. Also, make her fall in love with you first, so that her last thought will be of you - and you'll be allowed to retire to a paradisiacal world-after-death together.
...Perfect send-up of the manipulative cruelty inherent in lovesim, ainnit?
After this we're in full-blown Stage 2, aka Is It MMORPG Or Is It Life?. This is the part that really made the geek audience howl, as gaming conventions are stolen from every likely source and the director displays a knack for lighthearted kinetic action that I'd never have expected, given the last film of his I caught at FantAsia (Lies, an experimental and character-centric SM erotico-drama that ran seriously afoul of Korean censors). Gangsters, gaudily-dressed punks, mysterious Zen mentors and MGS-style commandos crawl out of the woodwork. Every time the incrementally-less-hapless Ju encounters a new character, his/her blurb pops up in an arcade-style window: "Fishcake. Runs a food stall and is also an undercover arms dealer [read: Weapons Shop as long as you have the GP]. Protegé of Leaf Falls In Autumn." (My personal favorite: "Lara. As in Croft, except she's a lesbian." Not to mention possessor of serious Wire-Fu and Motorcycle Stuntswomanship.) Ju shoots a yakuza in the noggin, he levels up. He steals a machine gun from a fallen comrade - instant sick attack percentage! None of this is original in absolute terms, but it's put together in such a way as to guarantee a good time to the connoisseur.
Through it all Little Match Girl wanders, bathetically offering her lighters and rebuffed by all and sundry. (The most subtly elegant homage of the film may be the actress, who resembles Generic Nomura-Era Squaresoft Heroine as closely as humanly possible. She looks and behaves like Yuna on Quaaludes.) Groups of rival players kidnap her from one another, never quite gaining a clear advantage. It transpires that she did once have a true love - the popstar Juno, played by someone who looks familiar enough to be a real Kpop gasoo, and who at any rate is literally the most beautiful boy in the world - who was accordingly eliminated so the game might continue, because Match Girl's exploitation-cinema destiny is to sniff the butane from her lighters and die happy. That's her thousand swords. It wouldn't do for her to actually sell any lighters, or to be otherwise saved.
Clever pantaloons in the audience will have noted that Match Girl has sold a lighter, to Ju. This, it turns out, is because Ju isn't a properly registered player at all. He's a virus, a wild card in the Game, and his presence throws the entire System out of whack. For one, he saves Match Girl from dying on the street. She repays the favour by stealing his Uzi and going on to commit "countless acts of indiscriminate murder," basically gunning down anyone who refuses to buy her lighters or gets in her way. Revenge Of Rose Bride! Match Girl becomes a televised celebrity à la Natural Born Killers, the System captures her in order to reinstall that pesky corrupted code, and Our L0ser Hero must liberate her from enemy HQ - with a bit of help from the wise old hacker who built the Game in the first place.
And the film segues thusly into an extended virtual-reality action sequence. Apart from the element of camp whimsy with which the proceedings are infused (the Ultimate Weapon of the Game is a triggerless blue plastic gun in the form of a cartoon fish, reverentially titled The Mackerel), Stage 3 Full-Blown Matrix Rip-Off is the weakest part of the film. Mostly because after the first ninety minutes, we certainly don't expect the filmmaker to start taking it all seriously, for the love of Johnny Mnemonic. And if there's one cyberpunk mythology that does indeed take itself seriously, it's the Matrix...
I won't spoiler the finale, which tips once again into gnomic Azn-indie-flick surrealism, because it's multiple at any rate. There is a Bad Ending, and a Good Ending, and several Game Overs scattered over the course of the movie, which is a conceit I last encountered in Otogirisou (and which I can't remember seeing in any Western game-to-film adaptations, oddly). The theses they present regarding the respective nature of Reality and the Game differ, but that's the entire point, isn't it?
Also according to Google: I note with utter lack of surprise that if you live in Korea, you can download RotLMG as an actual java mobile phone game. Mow down enemy chibis while keeping Match Girl from snorting too much butane! Beats Snake any day of the week! Thus proving once again that only Westerners find living in a puddle of Post-Modernism to be worthy of remark. It's not networked for multi-play, but I figure that's a matter of time.
[pause]
Back to movie review. XD Going by Google, Resurrection of the Little Match Girl cost circa 10 million $US, which makes it a financial whale by S.Korean standards but cheap 'n' cheery set beside comparable Hollywoodian oeuvres, like a Sanrio knock-off in non-approved acid colours. Flopped in its homeland, apparently. Unsurprising: it runs through the paces of summer popcorn flick, but is mainstream-pleasing only in a very scattershot way. The FantAsia audience was all appreciative laughter and applause, though, as well they should have been. Arcade FPS-savvy and looking for a headtrip? Amateur of the post-modern delights of Lain, dot hack and so forth? Movie's for you.
(I intend to dissect these films in reasonable depth. Chances are some of you are going to see them eventually, though, if you haven't already, so spoilers beyond the usual film review synopsis sort of thing will be behind a cut.)
Stage 1 is Asian Indie, with a slant toward Alienated Pop-Cult-Soaked Youth. The main character, Ju, is your archetypal hapless l0ser d0rk, a take-out delivery boy who wants to be a professional gamer like his obnoxious best buddy, and has a real thing for the cute cash register chick at the local arcade. She doesn't give him the time of day. He fantasizes about going postal and machine-gunning down entire offices to the mellifluous strains of the S.E.S. chestnut "Dreams Come True" (kindly uploaded by Ced before I could). And so it goes, until l0serb0i has an inevitable Boogiepop Moment, and spots Sun-Tzu's chaos-system butterfly fluttering past on the night breeze. It's followed by Little Match Girl herself, a shivering waif from whom the bemused Ju buys a plastic lighter - because just as inevitably, she's the spitting image of his mad crush Hee Mi.
(As well she should be, because Little Match Girl is Everyman's Desire: the Rose Bride and more besides. The Cyberpunk Utena subtext of her character arc is by far the most interesting part of the movie.)
A phone number is printed on the lighter. Hee Mi's? In real life it may be (see the film to get a feel for how this is conveyed, I'm not going to make it out to be linearly comprehensible when it's not). But when Ju calls he gets an automated voice that signs him up for the Resurrection of Little Match Girl game, run by a singularly menacing (and Engrish-speaking) entity called the System, which could be anything from a ruthless multinational to a secret society to a Wintermute-like AI, and what do you care? The goals of the game are simple. Little Match Girl must die of hunger and exposure, ref Hans Christian Andersen. To that end, prevent her from selling her lighters to anyone. Also, make her fall in love with you first, so that her last thought will be of you - and you'll be allowed to retire to a paradisiacal world-after-death together.
...Perfect send-up of the manipulative cruelty inherent in lovesim, ainnit?
After this we're in full-blown Stage 2, aka Is It MMORPG Or Is It Life?. This is the part that really made the geek audience howl, as gaming conventions are stolen from every likely source and the director displays a knack for lighthearted kinetic action that I'd never have expected, given the last film of his I caught at FantAsia (Lies, an experimental and character-centric SM erotico-drama that ran seriously afoul of Korean censors). Gangsters, gaudily-dressed punks, mysterious Zen mentors and MGS-style commandos crawl out of the woodwork. Every time the incrementally-less-hapless Ju encounters a new character, his/her blurb pops up in an arcade-style window: "Fishcake. Runs a food stall and is also an undercover arms dealer [read: Weapons Shop as long as you have the GP]. Protegé of Leaf Falls In Autumn." (My personal favorite: "Lara. As in Croft, except she's a lesbian." Not to mention possessor of serious Wire-Fu and Motorcycle Stuntswomanship.) Ju shoots a yakuza in the noggin, he levels up. He steals a machine gun from a fallen comrade - instant sick attack percentage! None of this is original in absolute terms, but it's put together in such a way as to guarantee a good time to the connoisseur.
Through it all Little Match Girl wanders, bathetically offering her lighters and rebuffed by all and sundry. (The most subtly elegant homage of the film may be the actress, who resembles Generic Nomura-Era Squaresoft Heroine as closely as humanly possible. She looks and behaves like Yuna on Quaaludes.) Groups of rival players kidnap her from one another, never quite gaining a clear advantage. It transpires that she did once have a true love - the popstar Juno, played by someone who looks familiar enough to be a real Kpop gasoo, and who at any rate is literally the most beautiful boy in the world - who was accordingly eliminated so the game might continue, because Match Girl's exploitation-cinema destiny is to sniff the butane from her lighters and die happy. That's her thousand swords. It wouldn't do for her to actually sell any lighters, or to be otherwise saved.
Clever pantaloons in the audience will have noted that Match Girl has sold a lighter, to Ju. This, it turns out, is because Ju isn't a properly registered player at all. He's a virus, a wild card in the Game, and his presence throws the entire System out of whack. For one, he saves Match Girl from dying on the street. She repays the favour by stealing his Uzi and going on to commit "countless acts of indiscriminate murder," basically gunning down anyone who refuses to buy her lighters or gets in her way. Revenge Of Rose Bride! Match Girl becomes a televised celebrity à la Natural Born Killers, the System captures her in order to reinstall that pesky corrupted code, and Our L0ser Hero must liberate her from enemy HQ - with a bit of help from the wise old hacker who built the Game in the first place.
And the film segues thusly into an extended virtual-reality action sequence. Apart from the element of camp whimsy with which the proceedings are infused (the Ultimate Weapon of the Game is a triggerless blue plastic gun in the form of a cartoon fish, reverentially titled The Mackerel), Stage 3 Full-Blown Matrix Rip-Off is the weakest part of the film. Mostly because after the first ninety minutes, we certainly don't expect the filmmaker to start taking it all seriously, for the love of Johnny Mnemonic. And if there's one cyberpunk mythology that does indeed take itself seriously, it's the Matrix...
I won't spoiler the finale, which tips once again into gnomic Azn-indie-flick surrealism, because it's multiple at any rate. There is a Bad Ending, and a Good Ending, and several Game Overs scattered over the course of the movie, which is a conceit I last encountered in Otogirisou (and which I can't remember seeing in any Western game-to-film adaptations, oddly). The theses they present regarding the respective nature of Reality and the Game differ, but that's the entire point, isn't it?
Also according to Google: I note with utter lack of surprise that if you live in Korea, you can download RotLMG as an actual java mobile phone game. Mow down enemy chibis while keeping Match Girl from snorting too much butane! Beats Snake any day of the week! Thus proving once again that only Westerners find living in a puddle of Post-Modernism to be worthy of remark. It's not networked for multi-play, but I figure that's a matter of time.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-18 05:10 pm (UTC)What's a gasoo?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-19 08:03 am (UTC)(I know how to say hello and goodbye and such in Korean, but that's about it. And I don't know how to write the phrases, because I learnt them from movies.)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-19 06:28 pm (UTC)I suck at romanising Korean, so I would be the wrong one to ask. I can only write Korean words in hangul. And even, shaky. My parents wrote me a graduation card in Korean and Spanish, father and mother respectively, and I had to read the Spanish because anything beyond "See, Dick run. Run, Dick, run!" is beyond me. And even that would be stretching it. XD Mother is trilingual--am not secretly biracial.