Favorite Movie #87: Right Now, Wrong Then (2015)

Part of My Favorite Things: 100+ of my Favorite Movies Ever

Right Now, Wrong Then (2015), dir. Hong Sang-soo, starring Jung Jae-young and Kim Minhee

Have you ever been in a scenario, romantic or otherwise, where it was going well and then suddenly it turned sour? Then afterwards, you imagine how the same scenario would have played out if you just did something differently? It is absolutely my greatest vice to play what-ifs: to think about things that happened in the past, reconfigure the events, and perhaps change a few missteps, perceived or otherwise, until the right outcome happens. It’s a useless fantasy to dwell on the past for temporary comfort, and to think of what I could have done differently to make scenes right. Movies are often fantastic places to escape your troubles and project them onscreen. After all, movies can be described as an art of editing: cutting scenes, moving them around and rearranging them, and putting them together to make a scene work. Like a movie then, I have memories that I replay over and over, ever slightly tweaking them or rearranging them to get an outcome I desire. It’s a fleeting feeling, but nonetheless a comfort. Many of the movies on this list are my form of escapes and are often attached to a special memory, whether good or painful. This movie is the only one that dwells on the idea of what-ifs fully and the bittersweet melancholy that comes with playing that game.

Right Now, Wrong Then is Hong Sang-soo’s 17th film, his eighth of the decade. Hong is a prolific director who makes the same type of film that revolves around chance encounters between strangers, old friends, or old lovers. Oftentimes, his movies play the same scene again and again, while making slight adjustments that reverberate in other characters’ behaviors and actions. I think I’ve seen 11 of his 26 feature films and although most of them are similar, only a few of them resonate with me. Of all his films, this is his absolute loveliest. The movie is split in two, the first part is subtitled “Right Then, Wrong Now.” The film focuses on a movie director, Ham Chun-su (Jung Jae-young, standing in for Hong), who arrives a day early in Suwon for a screening and Q&A for his movie. At a beautiful shrine, he encounters Hee-jung (Kim Min-hee), an aspiring artist and sparks a conversation with her. They then go get coffee, continuing their friendly conversation before Hee-jung takes Chun-su to her studio. There, Chun-su watches her paint and offers some very flowery comments about her paintings. Hee-jung is visibly elated. After complimenting her paintings, the duo then gets sushi and soju, getting shitfaced (a staple of Hong films) while flirting with each other, before they head out to a birthday party for Hee-jung’s friend. That’s where shit hits the fan as Hee-jung’s friends openly call out Chun-su for his womanizing ways, his marriage and kids, and even the compliments that Chun-su paid Hee-jung on her paintings, which he has said in interviews before. This immediately deflates Hee-jung, who excuses herself to rest her head in a separate room. Chun-su tries to approach her, but she only rebuffs him and asks him to leave.

The first hour is an absolute delight. Hong is an incredible writer of conversations, capturing the awkwardness, the banality, and then the magical spark that lights up a budding relationship. During their first encounter at the temple, Hee-jung is so meek and shy, trying to avoid going beyond the polite chitchat with the stranger and sucking on her banana milk. Chun-su, on the other hand, is a little pushy, and since he’s narrating, we know he’s been spying on her earlier. It comes across as a little needy, but once he says his name, Hee-jung recognizes it and this thaws the ice between them a bit. From there, Chun-su asks her on a coffee break. This coffee date feels super natural: there’s an inherent tension between the two of them and Hong captures this brilliantly by panning from one person to the other during the conversation. We don’t really see how one is reacting to the other during the discussion until the camera moves onto them. Thus, it injects a little mystery in the scene: what are these two thinking? How are they calculating what to say and when to say it? It also is fundamentally different from the scene earlier where we see both characters split apart by the expanse of the shot, and yet we can see how their bodies and their faces react simultaneously to what the other character is saying. When we hit the art gallery, we focus on the director observing Hee-jung and offering some platitudes that can come across as empty-headed compliments were they targeted towards a more confident artist. But for Hee-jung, they come across as boost of confidence coming from a renowned artist, even though they’re talking about different mediums. Me being a pessimist listens to Chun-su’s comments and immediately thinks that he’s bullshitting. But because Hee-jung enjoys them so much, and Kim Min-hee radiates such warmth, it’s hard to remain a negative Nancy in the face of such grace.

Then the film cuts to the loveliest drunken date scene ever committed to film. Two things: a) I love watching people eat food in movies and I love sushi so watching people chow down on this is amazing! b) I’ve definitely been in drinking situations like this but I can only hope to look as blissed out as these two are when I’m shitfaced (knowing my history, probably can rule that out). Chun-su and Hee-jung flirting uninterruptedly (by either an edit or otherwise) is an absolute delight because you can practically smell the alcohol in the air and feel the warmth of these people’s faces, yet the chemistry between them seem so genuine and affectionate. These two trade lovely anecdotes and even get personal. The honesty pouring out of them is so intoxicating.

That’s why it’s absolutely earth-shattering to hear how phony Chun-su is from Hee-jung’s friends in the next scene. Being a famous director certainly got Hee-jung’s attention, but his fame also means his personal business is out there, including the fact that he’s married, a renowned womanizer, and has used the same compliments that he showered Hee-jung earlier to other people before. Watching Kim Min-hee’s face fall apart quietly is a thing of beauty. You can see her slump a little, the joy of the day fading away quickly. Again, who cannot relate to a scene like that? It’s like a page out of my sad diary.

This hour alone would have made for an excellent short-ish film, and one that feels complete. Yet Hong’s movies are never that simple. The next hour, subtitled “Wrong Then, Right Now” re-imagines the whole day like some sort of wish fulfillment. Whose wish, we don’t know (I want to think its hers, given how less naive she comes across here). Whereas the first hour had a splendid beginning, and a sucky ending, as the subtitle implies, this second hour has a rough beginning, and a surprisingly great ending. The movie starts again from the temple, although now it’s a different angle. Hee-jung is less open to conversation than earlier and Chun-su definitely comes across even pushier (verging on creepy, I think) by trying to spark a conversation with her. As he introduces himself as the film director, she lets her guard down a little although she’s even more cautious about getting coffee with him, going as far as to question him peeking into her plastic bags (that bit was funny). The coffee/tea date goes well, and in this version the camera has kept its distance the whole time, capturing simultaneous reactions and energies that were previously hidden. When they head to the studio, we now focus more on Hee-jung painting, watching her calibrate and think through what she’s going to do next to the image. Here, Chun-su offers a more nuanced take on her painting–passing judgment on her work and implying a lot more about her personal life than he should have any right to when you’re meeting someone for the first time. Hee-jung is noticeably upset, going as far as to scream at him for his infelicity. The tension in this scene is palpable–a bracing break from what we had expected. A smoke break clears the air a bit and the next thing you know they’re getting sushi and soju.

Like the first version, this drunken scene is spectacular in a different way. Whereas the first version feels more like a real first date, where people put up walls and don’t reveal personal details, especially unsavory ones, this second version seems like the kind of date everyone would want: all cards on the table, show your true selves. Here, Chun-su gets honest about being married, and having kids, and acknowledges his history of womanizing. Even the earlier argument over her painting leads to a sweet and honest discussion about Hee-jung’s lack of friends and the sadness that seem to emanate from her. It’s a more tender scene than the first version, and surprisingly funny as Chun-su tries to take a ring out to give Hee-jung. The night then shifts to Hee-jung’s friends’ party where Chun-su is met with kinder thoughts by her friends, even in comparison to his reputation. While Hee-jung goes to rest her head, Chun-su, who has now become drunk, starts stripping to the horror of Hee-jung’s friends. Hee-jung and Chun-su then leave together, with Chun-su walking Hee-jung home sweetly, and Hee-jung finding out about Chun-su stripdown utterly hilarious. The night ends super well, with Hee-jung kissing Chun-su on the cheek.

What I absolutely love about this movie, beyond the richness of its dialogue and the loveliest drinking scenes in history, is that underneath its diptych structure is a real engagement with honesty and how and when we learn information makes a difference in our reaction. In both versions, Hee-jung finds out that Chun-su is a womanizer, who is married with kids. Yet Hee-jung is more receptive about it in the second one than the first. Crucially, in the first version, she happens upon the truth from her friends, while the second comes straight from Chun-su. It doesn’t necessarily make what Chun-su is doing now better, but it certainly feels less painful to hear the truth from the source rather than second-hand, making Hee-jung less of a fool, especially since the confession came to her in private conversation than in a more public forum. The movie also engages with the notion of genuineness, about sharing how we truly feel rather than avoiding the mess of a possible confrontation. Chun-su’s empty compliments in the first version may have won Hee-jung over then, but it also led to Hee-jung’s feelings of betrayal at the end, whereas in the second version, Chun-su’s more nuanced critique led to a bruising confrontation which later facilitated a more open dialogue between the two. When the movie finished, however, I can’t help but to feel a tinge of sadness, knowing that the second version that we end on is a dream–the what-if scenario, instead of the actual reality for this two. It still ends with both of them going their separate ways, but it feels a tad melancholy in relation to the first one. After all, in both versions, they don’t go on to form a new relationship, but this one had a feeling of potential. Even the snow falling on the ground makes it all very wistful–like a distant cold memory.

Favorite Movies #88: Bridesmaids (2011) and The Heat (2013)

Part of My Favorite Things: 100+ of my Favorite Movies Ever

Bridesmaids (2011), dir. Paul Feig, starring Kirsten Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, and Chris O’Dowd

The Heat (2013), dir. Paul Feig, starring Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demian Bichir, Marlon Wayans, and Michael Rappaport

In an episode of 30 Rock, one of the most amazing comedy shows of the last 20 years, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) tries to prove to Tracy and others at TGS that women can be funny by reprising her two-women Piven-nominated (ha!) stage show Maroney and Lemon, where she and Jenna play a doctor and a little girl to the delight of the audience, including Tracy. At the end of their skit, Tracy applauds Liz, praising the idea of Liz playing a “lady doctor” as very funny indeed, adding that if a guy played that role, the audience would take his advice seriously. Liz is taken aback of course, since that was entirely not the point of the sketch. Even Jenna admits she only did this sketch to appear old in order to win an endorsement gig for a geriatric assistance chair. The sketch is hilarious but also a biting jab at Hollywood which can feel so against the idea of women-led comedies at the box office. It was a clever sketch, and 30 Rock over the course of seven years, have mined this accepted fact about the treatment of women in Hollywood for funny jokes. In the last decade, there’s certainly more consciousness about giving more women a chance to lead comedies. This decade produced two of my favorites, care of director Paul Feig.

When the trailer for Bridesmaids dropped before the summer of 2011, I remembered a lot of people dismissing it as a blatant rip-off of the similarly themed The Hungover. That movie reveled in gross-out bro-ish humor based on funny scenarios while foregoing any sense of story. It’s a very funny movie, but unfortunately it all evaporates after the credits roll in. On the other hand, Bridesmaids is fundamentally a character-based film that lavishes attention to its characters’ backstories. Annie, a former cakeshop owner, is living through a rut, working at a jewelry store, rooming with some ghastly people (an early film role for Rebel Wilson), and hooking up with a handsome jerk (Jon Hamm, fulfilling his comic destiny). Her best friend, Lilian (Maya Rudolph), gets engaged and suddenly she’s thrust into the role of Maid of Honor, alongside other bridesmaids, the rich and fabulous Helen (Rose Byrne, immaculate), Megan (Melissa McCarthy, in an Oscar-nominated star-is-born performance), over-it housewife Rita (Wendi McLendon Covey), and earnest naive newlywed Becca (Ellie Kemper). Each character is funny in their own right, and the movie invests time in each character to build them up and add comic detail to explain their behavior. Of this loaded cast, the clear standout for me is Kirsten Wiig. Wiig is a comedic delight–she can articulate with just her face the various stages of rock bottom, romantically, financially, and socially. Her facial expressions as she faces off against Helen, trying to one-up her in front of Lilian are expert comic stuff. But even more than the facial expressions, Wiig anchors her jokes with deep feeling, filling in the in-between moments with despondency or insecurity. Her spectacular meltdown at Lillian’s bridal shower was equally funny and sad as Wiig’s Annie sees her lifelong friendship slipping away.

This climactic moment encapsulates what I love about Bridesmaids. Bridesmaids is genuinely fun for me because these characters are all relatable. Now in my late twenties, the characters’ challenges hit even harder, when you watch friends all go on with their lives, making moves like getting married, forming families, or leading successful lives. Sometimes, I can’t help but look at my own life and feel insecure about getting left behind. The movie portrays this personal crisis so well. I think the trailer sold it as a “girls can be just as bawdy as guys” movie, as if it has something to prove. And sure, this movie definitely dips into that potty humor (literally), which as crass as it is–is hilarious. But the film also upends expectations that it will just be a rip-off earlier films like The Hangover. Instead, it comes closer to something like Knocked Up or The 40 Year Old Virgin where humor organically springs from the drama of day-to-day life. Who can’t relate to Annie’s palpable fear that she is losing Lilian’s friendship, the one stable thing in her life? Who doesn’t wish that they were more like Megan, whose self confidence is inspiring, as is her love of pets–all because she was bullied in high school? Who can’t help feeling bad for Helen, who despite being wealthy and slim, is hiding her insecurities under the perfect image. How often do we see female friendships and relationships get portrayed onscreen that goes beyond the superficial? On top of all of this, the movie pairs Annie with a regular guy (Chris O’Dowd) who is charming and wholesome without being unattainable. That grocery store meeting and the car radar scene? What a joy to watch! I’m a big sucker for scenes like that where character quirks take over scenes that are seemingly minor that sneaks up on you and ultimately end up being deeply moving. Bridesmaids excels at those scenes: whether it’s Helen’s step-children brushing Helen off or Megan biting Annie’s ass, they tell us so much about our characters’ inner lives while still being hilarious.

Two years after Bridesmaids, Paul Feig makes another funny hit movie starring two women, this time with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, while broadening the buddy cop genre beyond its traditional male actors. Both actresses were at the peak of their careers in 2013: McCarthy, who was hilarious and Oscar-nominated in Bridesmaids, became an unexpected box office draw earlier in the year with Identity Theft. Bullock, meanwhile, won an Oscar for 2009’s The Blind Side, has just returned to the screen to her comic roots. Later in the same year, she’d star in an even bigger smash movie, Gravity, for which she would again be nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars. Both actresses are genuinely funny and The Heat plays to their strengths that we’ve seen before. Bullock is FBI Agent Ashburn, a type-A,  super competent agent who frustrates her colleagues with her cocky attitude; and McCarthy is Det. Mullins is a brash member of the Boston PD who intimidates her colleagues with her…well, scary persona. Crucial to both Ashburn and Mullins is their competency at their jobs and this freaks out every man in the room with them. Underneath each character though is a softer side that would be hackneyed in lesser hands. Ashburn is an orphan and her intense careerist has basically left her isolated. Meanwhile, Mullins put one of her brothers away in jail, thereby estranging her from her family.

The Heat is pretty special to me because it’s one of the movies I reviewed for my college paper. I absolutely loved sitting in those press chairs, with my name on the paper–I felt special. It also helps that the movie is uproariously fun and hilarious. There’s a lot of scenes that I still cackle thinking about: Mullins chasing an erstwhile drug pusher and throwing a watermelon at him, earning an accusation of being racist; the scene at the bar where Ashburn awkwardly seduces their target, and Mullins just manhandling girls away like she was throwing rags; the hilarious off-color (ha!) remarks about a blowhard  albino DEA agent; And Ashburn sticking a knife in her knee to keep a ruse going. It’s a hilarious movie that oftentimes rely on character-based humor. For instance, I loved watching Sandra Bullock strut into the Boston PD so confidently, only she doesn’t know where to go. Also loved seeing McCarthy turn down a suitor. She’s also so vulgar, but she delivers her lines with such joy and precision and it’s an absolute joy to watch.

The more I think about the movie, the more I see it as a neat allegory about Hollywood’s treatment of women. Both Ashburn and Mullins are extremely competent and yet people around them treat them with disdain or fear, by script design. Both Ashburn and Mullins satirically embody the stereotypes that Hollywood executives (or really business folks) dictate about women: Ashburn is so hypercompetent that she emasculates men and therefore must be single and a catlady; Mullins is a large disheveled woman, that she must be lacking in sexuality. Ashburn and Mullins also clash with each other until they grow to actually like each other. Yet again and again, the script expands on each character’s supposed flaws and turns them on their head: Ashburn is hypercompetent but she’s also clumsy and socially awkward; Mullins may be aggressive but she also has a huge sexual energy. I also love the bond they develop over the course of the movie–a very sweet relationship that ends the movie on a perfect comic note.

Both Bridesmaids and The Heat are proof that women are hilarious and can be bawdy like the men that has dominated the genre. I absolutely adore the cast of these movies and I can’t imagine living without thinking about Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy getting drunk together; Kirsten Wiig’s panic attack on a plane or her attack on a cookie. Both movies are hilarious and endlessly rewatchable.

Favorite Movie #89: You’re Next (2011)

Part of My Favorite Things: 100+ of my Favorite Movies Ever

You’re Next (2011), dir. Adamn Wingard, starring Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, A.J. Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Barbara Crampton, and Rob Moran

I’m not a big horror movie fan. I often feel frustrated watching these movies where people do very stupid or irrational things when faced with the supernatural or a rampaging lunatic. How many times have you or anyone you know screamed at the screen because someone is about to go down a dark hallway with no flashlight?  I also get upset watching people trip on a rock or themselves (and I definitely trip on myself so…) but instead of getting up and running, they stop, turn and face the monster and just scream. Admittedly, most horror and slasher movies are meant to be stupid-fun, where the joy is found in watching people get killed in creative ways. The peak of these creative deaths of course is the Final Destination series, which I found so terribly enjoyable: terrible because I absolutely loved watching those awful one-dimensional girls in Final Destination 3 burn alive in tanning booths, or that beefed up jerk getting smashed lifting weights, or the douchey guy slipping on his noodle and getting smashed by a ladder, and I don’t know if I like what that says about me or any audience who enjoy these. Of course, these movies thrive on these contradictions–they’re self-aware enough to know their appeal and that people enjoy watching the ludicrous situations they portray that happen maybe 0.009% of the time in the real world. So watching these movies always made me queasy. Thankfully, most of them are derivative enough that they evaporate a day or two from my memory after watching them.

When I first saw You’re Next on Netflix after randomly landing on it during one weekend in college, I had no expectations beyond its predictability. People will be killed off one at a time, and our heroes will maybe all die too. I was geared up for a sugar high, crashing immediately after. To my immense surprise, the movie threw us a major curveball. The movie starts off with out typical setup: a group of relatives gather together in a vacation house, including Erin (Sharni Vinson) who is dating Crispian, a member of this very wealthy family. Suddenly, the family is attacked by crossbow bolts, instantly killing one member and injuring the other. A garrote wire takes the life of another sibling and the whole family is thrown into chaos. One by one, the wealthy family’s members start getting killed by unknown assailants who are donning animal masks and equipped with analog weapons like crossbows and axes (It’s more fun to watch people run around with these kind of weapons than guns!). Up until Erin’s boyfriend leaves the house to look for help, the movie followed the distinctly familiar pattern of slasher movies like Final Destination. Ergo we watch as our little mice get killed one by one by our cat. It’s fun and the production values of the movie made for a solid filmgoing experience (thoughtfully cool cinematography and modern twisty music!), but I was mentally preparing to write the whole movie off.

But then we see something unfamiliar happen: one of the mice fights back. When one of the killers try to attack Erin from a window, she fights back and stabs him. While he’s in dispose at the shocking turn of events, Erin races for the drawer to get a weapon, only to have her assailant escape. That was an incredible adrenaline rush and an early sign in the movie of things to come. In retrospect, Erin seemed collected for someone who just watched people get killed earlier. She thinks on her feet (that excellent idea of using chairs to block the arrows), keen on sticking together (she was adamant about everyone staying in rather than leaving), and calm under pressure–all traits that make for a great “Final Girl.” From then on, she starts taking action to combat the other killers, setting up booby traps on all entry ways and finding all weapons that the remaining family members can use. Armed with weapons and her smarts, she is set up to defend the house from the invaders. We see this in action when one of the assailants enter the house and go for Erin. In a spectacular show of intelligence, Erin kicks him in the balls (why do people not do that enough in movies?), and while momentarily off guard, attacks him with a meat pulverizer, bashing his head until he’s dead. This moment was incredible–it’s always a fun surprise to see your heroine pull off a victory in the middle of the movie.

Just as we’ve established that the movie’s Final Girl is going to be formidable, we realize another twist when it’s revealed that two of the family members actually hired the murderers to obtain the inheritance from the wealthy parents. Suddenly, the movie presents its big metaphor about greed and inter-generational wealth. The barbaric way that the movie depicts the death of these wealthy characters, killed by their own family members can be treated like an extended metaphor about the cannibalistic nature of wealth–rich people destroy each other for money, willing to compromise their morals, and their families for their own safety. Not only that, hiring military combat veterans as assassins to do the dirty work may hint at a broader discussion about how wealthy people in America use wars, represented by veterans, in their bid to get rich. Suddenly, watching Erin destroy each of these people in a bid for survival echoes poor people’s attempts at surviving without getting trampled under wealthy people’s bid for more money. Erin’s survivalist background makes even more sense as part of the metaphor-she grew up living with nothing, learning to be prepared for the worst scenario, relying on their self-sufficiency. The same can be said about people who were not born into wealth, they have to survive on their own grit and hard-work. These are pretty big ideas in a movie that seemed like it was designed to be superficial and frivolous. Which makes me more in love with the movie.

Erin pulls off the unthinkable and actually manages to survive and defeat her assailants. In scene after scene, Winegard expertly captures this girl’s brilliance but also her descent into survival-fueled madness. Those close-ups of Erin get increasingly more adrenaline-filled, her resolve palpable and unshakable. I love that the script doesn’t make any of her tasks easy nor does it condescend to her. Erin isn’t 100% invulnerable to terror, as demonstrated by her screaming when the ax hits the door she’s hiding behind. But the point of this movie is that Erin keeps moving on. She gets injured several times, but always gets up and ready to fight with whatever makeshift weapon she has on hand. She’s not afraid to get hurt or fight back. You’re Next is proof that slasher movies need not be dumb or predictable to be enjoyable. It is also proof that a kick-ass heroin is more fun and memorable than a bunch of lousy characters surviving by sheer luck.