New York Asian Film Festival 2023: GAGA, #MANHOLE & GLORIOUS ASHES

One of the highlights of my personal festival calendar, the New York Asian Film Festival provides movie lovers in the tri-state area with a great opportunity to see films across a wide range of genres from the Asian continent and the diaspora. This year’s edition of the festival — presented by the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center — includes work from established filmmakers and exciting new cinematic voices from Hong Kong, Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Singapore, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Read on for my thoughts on a fascinating family drama from Taiwan, an over-the-top (but nonetheless very entertaining) thriller from Japan, and an intriguing tone poem from Vietnam.

Gaga (Laha Mebow)

The latest feature from Taiwanese Atayal director Laha Mebow, who has the distinction of being the first female Taiwanese indigenous film director and TV producer, Gaga is a delightful film that chronicles a year in the life of one Atayal family following a granddaughter’s return from studying abroad. By providing a showcase for a unique culture while also being incredibly entertaining, it’s the kind of film that exemplifies what makes the NYAFF such a standout festival.

Blurring the lines between documentary and fictional narrative, Gaga (Atayal for tribal laws) opens with members of the tribe giving visitors an informative tour of their village. Patriarch Hayung (Wilang Noming) has devoted his entire life to preserving Atayal culture – but his sudden passing triggers a series of events that will irrevocably alter his family.

Granddaughter Ali (Ali Batu), who has just returned from school in New Zealand, is soon revealed to be pregnant; when the father, her college boyfriend, arrives for a visit, he has no idea that Ali’s family is plotting their marriage. Many of the most hilarious scenes in Gaga involve this poor young man being coerced into participating in betrothal ceremonies and trying traditional Atayal food while having no idea what is actually going on—a clash of cultures he tries to navigate good-naturedly, with mixed results.

Meanwhile, Ali’s father, Pasang (Wilang Lalin) decides to run for mayor despite the misgivings of many other members of the family, including his younger brother, Silan (Gaky Baunky). In order for underdog Pasang to have a fair shot against the incumbent, the family takes financial risks and engages in schemes of questionable legality that have the potential to backfire in a big way. All the while, matriarch Yameng (Kagaw Piling) attempts to hold the family together despite her grief over losing her beloved husband.

Winner of two Golden Horse Film Awards (Best Director for Laha and Best Supporting Actress for Kagaw), Gaga adeptly seesaws between comedy and tragedy while showing us how even a seemingly shattered family can find a way to come together again. Moments of incredible beauty, such as the family witnessing the first snow in a very long time, are juxtaposed against those of great pain, such as Silan sabotaging his own crops in frustration over losing his land. The cast, made up of predominantly amateur actors, lends a remarkable authenticity to proceedings, infusing their characters with such vibrant personalities that it’s all too easy to become deeply invested in what happens to them. It’s an altogether enjoyable movie that deserves to be sought out by international audiences.

#Manhole (Kazuyoshi Kumakiri)

On the eve of his marriage to his boss’s daughter, star real estate salesman Kawamura (Yuto Nakajima) parties a little too hard — so hard that somehow finds himself at the bottom of a manhole with no idea where he is or how he got there. His leg is injured, the ladder out is broken, and the driving rain threatens to drown him before he can escape. With the GPS on his phone backfiring and the only person answering his calls a bitter ex-girlfriend, Kawamura turns to the Internet (specifically, a Twitter stand-in dubbed Pecker) to plead for rescue.

Creating a persona called Manhole Girl — people are more likely to want to help girls, he reasons — he alerts the social network to his plight and watches as netizens try to pinpoint his location and guess who might have done this to him. The results showcase the Internet community at its best (people using Kawamura’s cell phone video footage to help identify landmarks around him) and its worst (a would-be savior going to the home of one of Kawamura’s work rivals and brutalizing him in an attempt to obtain justice for Manhole Girl). This kind of mob mentality inevitably causes innocent people to be slandered as criminals, while the narcissistic obsession with attention fed by social media leads an aspiring “ViewTuber” to chronicle his (failed) rescue mission in a selfish bid for Internet stardom.

What sounds like a pretty straightforward thriller-slash-cautionary tale about the dark side of social media takes an abrupt turn in the latter part of the film as the audience learns more about Kawamura and why someone would go out of their way to drug him and throw him in the bottom of a manhole. (There have to be easier ways to get back at someone, right?) The twist is absolutely outrageous and may lose some audience members who have so far been on the edge of their seats watching Kawamura’s desperate predicament unfold. As for me, while it did threaten to snap my already stretched-to-the-limit suspension of disbelief, it also didn’t make me any less invested in the outcome of #Manhole; if anything, the twist made me all the more desirous to see exactly how director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri and writer Michitaka Okada planned on tying everything up.

Needless to say, #Manhole is a film rife with tension and terror; the scenes of Kawamura at the bottom of the manhole (which, to be fair, comprise the majority of the film) are guaranteed to trigger your sense of claustrophobia. Nakajima is solid in the role of Kawamura — handsome enough to make you automatically want to root for him, but still somehow “off” enough for you to perhaps wonder whether someone had a very good reason for wanting to get revenge on him in this way. (After all, the film lets us know pretty quickly that he’s a reformed playboy who has left a trail of broken hearts in his wake.) It’s not a brilliant film by any means, but I can’t say I wasn’t utterly engaged by it from beginning to end.

Glorious Ashes (Bui Thac Chuyên)

The first film in over a decade from director Bui Thac Chuyên, Glorious Ashes follows the intertwined lives of three women in the Mekong Delta. Based on short stories by Ngoc Tú Nguyen, the film provides a bleak and yet undeniably beautiful look at how women suffer, struggle, and yet still somehow manage to survive under the massive weight of the patriarchy. As in Gaga, the amount of specific cultural detail included in every frame of Glorious Ashes is fascinating and often makes one feel as though one is watching an ethnographic documentary about the people who live and love along the South Vietnam coast.

At the wedding celebration of Nhan (Phuong Anh Dao) and Tam (Quang Tuan), Duong (Cong Hoang Le) attempts to forget his unrequited love for the bride in a sexual dalliance with Hau (Bao Ngoc Doling Juliet) before heading back out to his job as a fisherman in a remote tower of sorts off the coast of Vietnam. However, Duong is summoned back to their village with surprising news: Hau is pregnant, so he has to marry her. Their marriage is a troubled one; Duong spends as much time away from home, alone in his tower, as humanly possible, while Hau attempts to raise their daughter on her own while learning how to be a good housewife from Nhan, whom she knows her husband still loves.

Meanwhile, Nhan and Tam seem blissfully happy — that is, until a sudden tragedy turns Tam into an obsessive pyromaniac, repeatedly burning down their home only for Nhan to rebuild it over and over again. Additional drama arises when a man convicted of rape returns to the village following his prison sentence; he holes up with a monk and spends his time devoutly reading prayers over and over again in search of forgiveness for his past deeds. However, the victim of his past crime, Loan (Hanh Thuy Ngo Pham), soon discovers he has returned and becomes obsessed with him, even moving into the monk’s home to watch this man attempt to reinvent himself.

All three women in Glorious Ashes struggle to overcome the substantial pain they’ve been subjected to by men, albeit in incredibly different ways. It’s all gorgeously captured by cinematographer K’Linh Nguyen, from the haunting solitude of Duong’s outpost in the sea to the roaring flames of Tam’s obsessive burning of his home. The contrast between water and fire is ever-present in Glorious Ashes, with the two unfortunate husbands at the heart of the film channeling their grief and disappointment into these two opposing elements while their wives struggle to bring them back to earth.

The 2023 New York Asian Film Festival runs from July 14-30 at Film at Lincoln Center in New York, with a special weekend of screenings July 21-23 at the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Learn more about this year’s lineup and purchase tickets here.