VIFF 2020 has a nice selection of very good foreign films as we have come to expect from this quality festival. Here are a few more gems that I have discovered and enjoyed:
Dancing Mary
This film from Japan is one that you might choose to pass by after reading that it is a ghost story. Well, although it is a ghost story with some horror elements, I’m here to tell you that you should give it a watch.
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This film actually, at it’s heart, is a romance and a love story, with some wonderful music, song and dance. There are several endearing characters and a ton of laughs and smiles. Sure, there are ghosts, but the scares are not of the horrific, bloody and gruesome type found in outright horror fare. The colourful collection of ghosts we meet along the way include a dead Yakuza boss, who guides our two main characters on their quest to reunite two dead lovers whose souls won’t be at peace until they have been reunited.
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To finish their journey the dead Yakuza has to fight his way through a throng of other nasty criminal ghosts and this entails an extended ‘chop socky’ fight scene, one versus many, as we have come to expect from the martial arts genre of film. Again here, the violence, like the horror in the film, is more cartoonish than grisly.
This is a fun adventure and a nice break from some of the more serious dramas in the program.
On a totally different note, we have a terrific documentary from Finland.
STILL INTO YOU
Here we visit a half dozen different stories with senior singles and couples, all in their 70’s and 80’s. In a tight 70 minute run time we are touched and moved in this tender documentary on aging, love and loss. We start with a gay couple who struggled through their lives with many pains and difficulties before they finally found one another. These two men are deeply in love and can’t believe their great fortune in finally finding such happiness.
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Another couple, both 80, talk about their sex life. One lady in her early 70’s tells of finding a man 22 years younger than her after her divorce, and how happy they are despite their age differences. Another couple in their 80’s are dealing with her accelerating dementia. One woman of 80 continues to perform as a singer. One woman in her 80’s talks about adjusting to living without her recently deceased husband. Some couples go dancing, others garden, some sing karaoke and several of them have to deal with various health problems, but what they mainly have in common is a joy of living.
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It’s this joie de vivre that shines over everything else in this lovely inspirational little film and I think many, especially some of us older folks, will enjoy seeing the future happiness that can be in our future if we want to let it in.
