As ever, Fantasia’s Retro lineup offered a wealth of riches this year, from the familiar titles to the utterly unexpected. First and foremost is, of course, the run of Hong Kong classics screened, mostly on 35mm, in partnership with The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office. A Chinese Ghost Story II was perhaps the most anticipated of the lot, coming after the first film screened at last year’s festival (rumors are that the third may be featured next year). It certainly lived up to the hype, as it reunites the team that made the first one and ups the ante in fantastical imagination and moody filmmaking. It rarely reaches the blissful heights of the original, particularly as the romance is somewhat sidelined, but it makes up for it through stupendous creature effects and other exciting weirdness. For instance, at one point the characters are flying through the air standing on swords like they’re flying carpets — it’s a brilliant sequence. The way that the films of King Hu came to influence filmmakers like Tony Ching Siu-Tung, as both points of impossible reverence and as jumping off points for magical transformation, is one of cinema’s greatest stories of aesthetic inheritance.
Also screened was The Avenging Eagle, a more straightforward demonstration of Shaw Brothers wuxia excellence, and apparently a favorite of Quentin Tarantino. The action and fight choreography are, as you’d expect, of the highest caliber, with thoughtful wirework and seemingly superhuman agility around every corner (it’s also one of the funnier films I’ve seen from the studio). What impressed most, though, was the proto-heroic bloodshed and brotherly/frenemy-bond at the film’s core, where there is not simply a common enemy but a stronger, more complex connection between the two leads. Driven by vengeance and a desire to leave violence behind once and for all, it’s a routine story that is, as usual, euphorically elevated by its execution and its performers. It comes to feel like a self-aware and knowing transition film for Shaw, with precise direction by Sun Chung that, at the admitted risk of oversimplifying, seems to pull from Chang Cheh while reaching out to John Woo, a blending of styles that is profoundly fun to watch unfold.
The biggest surprise for this festivalgoer, however, was Killer Constable, which will be featured in Arrow Video’s upcoming Shawscope Volume Three collection. This is the story of Chief Constable Leng Tian-Ying, played by Chen Kuan-Tai, who imbues the character with the ruthlessness required of a true antihero. He is commanded by his Empress to find treasure that has been stolen from the royal palace, and to deal with the culprits however he sees fit. Director Kuei Chih-Hung is best-known for his exploitation-horror films, most notably The Boxer’s Omen, and while those sensibilities are certainly present here, especially through the cruelty of our protagonist, there is an undeniable beauty imbued within the film’s swordplay and whooshing stylization, as though Kuei, with arguably his only true wuxia film, intended to leave his indelible mark on the genre with extra panache. It’s difficult to watch at times, but as this gorgeous new restoration proves, you won’t want to look away.
Beyond the Hong Kong offerings, though, many treats awaited Fantasia viewers, including another all-time antihero in Frank Mansfield, played by Warren Oates, as the titular Cockfighter. Directed by Monte Hellman and generally understood as a sister film to his Two-Lane Blacktop, the ambition here may initially seem smaller, but this troubling film is the focus of Kier-La Janisse’s new years-in-the-making book, Cockfighter: A Fable of Failure, for a reason (the screening, which took place 50 years to the very day since the film’s original release, doubled as a launch event for the book). Notorious for the many lengthy scenes of actual cockfighting, as we cringe at real chickens being bloodied and killed, we are likewise witness to one man’s all-consuming obsession which appears to defy explanation, as he encounters not only the downfalls of gambling but the alienation of ambition — and all for an inhumane game of little value. This apparent fatalism is played straight and underhanded by Hellman and Oates, whose character is largely silent by choice, which offers the film an odd, off-putting tenor in juxtaposition with the animal cruelty at hand. Frank, it seems, can find some meaning within this void, and we are invited to search for it, too.
Also celebrated this year was Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, a somewhat middling low-budget Canadian horror film from 1997 that is nevertheless noted for presaging things like the Saw franchise or even the Escape Room films. While it makes the absolute most of its one set (the cube), the extreme nihilism in the film’s DNA feels very of its late-’90s moment, as characters repeatedly decry the pointlessness of action or making a difference in the world, because the pointlessness is the point — the system will keep working because it has to, and because everyone is the problem, no one is. This commentary isn’t off-base necessarily, and certainly captures — in parallel with the cruel hopelessness of its horrifying premise, natch — a structure of feeling for the West at the time. Unfortunately, the film itself is a bit of a chore to look at and sit through, and the ideas, once spoken directly and aloud, fall by the wayside, leaving the viewer feeling similarly defeated.
Finally, fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Shin Godzilla had the chance to see one of director Hideaki Anno’s lesser-seen projects, 1998’s Love & Pop, his first live-action film and a stunning moment of handheld digital experimentation. Telling the story of a group of teenage girls who participate in “compensated dating” with older men for money, Anno barely lets you get a moment to take everything in. The camera is constantly being placed in unusual places, and the editing is rapid and relentless, a deep kineticism that reflects a restlessness for Anno and for Japanese culture as it, too, faced the end of the millennium. What is the meaning of human connection at a moment like this, when, as an odd businessman puts it to our lead, Hiromi (Asumi Miwa), toward the film’s end: “Your very existence has great value to someone.” While the film is also full of funny and tender moments, what lingers is the emptiness at the core of commodification, as marketplaces for intimacy run amok in a world of capitalist ennui, and we’re left wondering what that leaves for us. Anno, never content to settle for anything less, presents all this to us through sheer formal anxiety, fidgets and ruptures that never stop until the crash.
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