Yes, I know "odd" is a very subjective term... But I think its use is justified in all these movies.

1.
The Third Wife
2018, Ash Mayfair

The Plot: We're in Viet Nam, and it's the 19th century. When May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My) becomes the third wife of landowner Hung (Le Vu Long), she is the same age as one of his daughters -- namely, 14. (Mayfair was born in Ho Chi Minh City, and her great-grandmother underwent such a marriage at the age of 13; the film-maker was subsequently told many similar stories about other families.) Hung's first two wives are Xuan (Mai Thu Huong), and Ha (Tran Nu Yen Khe). Xuan has given birth to two daughters, and therefore holds a lower status than Ha, who is the mother of a son. Both of them mentor May, not unkindly, but everyone is aware that she has been drafted in to remedy the lack of boy children in the family. May is heartbroken, therefore, when her first baby turns out to be a girl. The overall message of the movie is really clear: It is not great being a woman. At the end, we see May wondering about poisoning her daughter (what life will she have anyway?); and we see one of the daughters cutting off her hair (in a symbolic attempt to reject womanhood).

Pluses: It's beautifully -- really beautifully -- filmed. And the picture it presents is a nuanced one. (Some fault this approach, and want something a bit more black-and-white, but to me, nuance is strength.) On the one hand, Hung might have strange tastes, but he is not egregiously cruel. The women are kind to each other. Female sexuality is acknowledged and presented (I'm not sure how realistic this is, but it could be -- Southeast Asian communities were generally not prudish until colonialism rolled over them). On the other hand, this is very much a gilded prison. Women are housekeepers and potential bearers of children; in any other capacity, they are non-persons. And there's one horrible little cameo that really rams home this point. Hung's oldest son is having an affair with Xuan. He is so besotted that he cannot go through with the marriage that has been arranged for him, and wants to return his new young wife to her family. That's a terrible disgrace for the young woman, of course, who is roundly blamed by her father, and told she has to stay where she is, wanted or not. So she commits suicide. Throughout we are shown the silkworms from which the family derives part of its obviously substantial income. And we all know what happens to silkworms...

Minuses: There was a LOT of argy-bargy in Viet Nam over the casting of a 13-year-old to play the part of May, since the role involves sexually explicit scenes. After just four days in cinemas, the production team announced it would cease screening there. The scenes in question are all very sensitively done, but still -- maybe the critics have a point... Mayfair is adamant that the backlash happened because the film was getting too much traction -- "the sexism we are criticising in the film is still deeply entrenched", and there's a marked gender imbalance in Viet Nam, she says -- but even so, when you're making a film that spears the objectification of women, you have to be really, really careful to not appear to be doing something similar yourself.


Viet Nam, 2006

2.
Asako I & II
2018, Ryusuke Hamaguchi

The plot: Asako (Erika Karata), who lives in Osaka, falls in love with a free-spirited and unpredictable young man called Baku (Mashahiro Higashide). One morning, Baku goes missing. He comes back, and promises Asako he always WILL come back. But then he disappears again, and it seems as though he has gone for good. Two years later, in Tokyo, Asako meets someone called Ryohei, who looks incredibly like Baku (the same actor plays both parts). Asako is a little spooked by the resemblance (and fails to mention it to Ryohei), but they succeed in building a relationship. Five years later, the two of them are living happily together, with a really nice cat called Jintan. But suddenly Baku is back. He's a successful actor/model now. And at his invitation, Asako leaves everything, and follows him. Then she realizes she has made a dumb mistake, and decides to return to Ryohei, who -- understandably -- is more than a little put out. The film ends with the couple standing next to each other looking out onto the rain and the river. Ryohei has said he doesn't trust her. And yet there they both stand. I hope Jintan will be OK...

Pluses: It's an interesting exploration of the nature of attraction. What sparks it? And what sustains it? The Japanese title is Whether Asleep or Awake, which is usefully ambiguous. Which version of Asako, with which partner, is "asleep", and which "awake"? As Peter Bradshaw puts it: "[The movie] is an arresting metaphor for a certain phenomenon: settling. Asako wanted sexy love-god Baku, but settled for dependable, reliable Ryohei in the idealised romantic image she carries around. And in fact it is Ryohei who is entitled to consider himself as having the supernaturally ideal life: he’s extremely handsome, as well as being nice. But that is not how these things work. We all carry around with us a high school or college memory of heartbreak, and thus preserve around that culprit -- always accessible in these social media times -- a false romantic cachet. This is an amusing essay in amorous delusion."

Minuses: Asako doesn't come across (in either of her manifestations) as very likeable. You sympathize when she is let down by Baku, but you really feel she's not playing fair with Ryohei, who has no idea of the resemblance that has sparked her interest in him, and the ramifications that might have. You're not even sure whether she really loves Ryohei, or just uses him as a kind of placeholder... And there's really not enough of the cat...



3.
Woman Is the Future of Man
2004, Hong Sang-soo

The plot: It's a cold and snowy morning in Seoul. Two old friends reunite after a long period of separation. They are Lee Mun-ho (Yoo Ji-tae), who is a university art teacher, and Kim Hyeon-gon (Kim Tae-woo), a graduate from a US film school, yet to make it big in the world of movies. Kim, before his departure for the US, dated Park Seon-hwa (Sung Hyun-ah), and Lee also had a relationship with her during Hyeon-gon's absence. They decide to go and visit her in Bucheon, where they've heard she is running a bar. They're both sleazeballs, to be honest. Both use the most hackneyed lines to try to hook up with the young woman serving in the cafe where they first meet. Pre-US, Kim deals with Park's rape in a way that is nothing short of nauseating. And Lee embarks on a totally inappropriate relationship with one of his students (cheating on his wife -- whom we never meet -- in the process). So we can already predict that no-one will really benefit from this reunion (even though Park, now a much more self-reliant and proactive character, is well equipped to take care of herself).

Pluses: It's thought-provoking...

Minuses: According to Derek Elley, "newcomers to Hong’s movies ... may wonder what in bejeezus the movie is all about". Yeah, I can identify with that... And I have to agree with Rhythm Zaveri, too: "It is hard to make a feature without any likeable or redeemable characters but Hong Sang-soo manages to do just that with Woman is the Future of Man." Personally, I ended the film hoping that Kim would never be allowed to inflict his weird personality on the world in the shape of a movie, and fervently wishing that Lee, far from being granted the tenure he craves, would be dismissed... (Elley also explains the enigmatic title, which apparently "comes from a line by 20th-century French poet/novelist Louis Aragon that Hong has admitted is more a catchy title than a description of the movie. Per helmer, the future is an abstract concept and unknowable; thus, the future of man is nothing; and thus, woman represents nothing." OK... Well, that's certainly borne out by the attitudes of the scumbag male protagonists.)



4.
Compartment No. 6
2021, Juho Kuosmanen

The plot: It's Russia; it's the late 1990s. Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a Finnish student, who came to Moscow to learn the language. Interested in history and archaeology, she has been planning a trip to see the Murmansk petroglyphs with her girlfriend, Irina (Dinara Drukarova). Said girlfriend, a professor, is older and more sophisticated (as well as being more pretentious and a little cruel, as we see from the party scene with which the film opens). When Irina announces she's now too busy to go to Murmansk (and we suspect she's also tiring of her Finnish partner), Laura decides to continue alone. Sharing her railway compartment, on this long, long, long journey north, is Lyokha (Yuri Borisov), a Russian miner. Drunk, loud, obnoxious, and sexist, he's every train-traveller's idea of a nightmare. And Laura reacts just as I would -- by being ultra-snooty, and then trying to get away. But any visions of abandoning the trip and returning to Moscow are scuppered by a phone call to a coldly indifferent Irina, who now very definitely seems to have other fish to fry. And as the journey continues, both Laura and Lokha stop projecting their stereotypical images, start to dismantle the barriers, and learn to see and relate to each other as human beings. Lyokha turns out to be vulnerable, companionable, and helpful. (By contrast, the Finn who joins them briefly in their compartment is self-obsessed and light-fingered.) Glenn Kenny puts it quite well: "The movie’s perspective on two lost souls finding each other is considerate and compassionate and has its feet on the ground... It’s about something alluded to in the movie’s party scene, during the quotation game. An observation that when you’re running away, it doesn’t matter where you’re running to as much as it matters where you’re running from."

Pluses: I loved the filming. Kuosmanen does such creative things with dots and splodges... I really liked the way you knew you were never heading for a conventional romantic destination, but rather to a much more interesting place. I loved that I could understand Laura's learner-Russian... And the film went down well in Russia, according to Kuosmanen: "They were amazed that a foreign film-maker could so sympathetically represent Russia and Russians. Because Russians keep getting told by paranoid nationalists about Russophobia and that all foreigners are a threat." So maybe it did its little bit for world peace as well.

Minuses: It would have been nice to know a little more about Ljoha. What made him as he was at the beginning? What was it that he was running from? Minor quibble, though. This was a really good movie.