SFIFF '09: Tales of childhood woe

[Craig Phillips spotlights, in his words: "two wholly different but equally memorable tales about poorly raised children, which were the highlights of my first weekend exploring the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival."]

A young man, Eun-Soo, drives on a lonely forest highway while having an argument via cell phone with his girlfriend. This leads to what could serve as the greatest PSA warning about the dangers of talking on a cell phone while driving: his loses control of the car just long enough to swerve and flip over a ditch. In his dazed, bloodied state he wanders into a forest before passing out with a concussion. When Eun-Soo (Jeong-myeong Cheon) wakes, he's pleased to see a young girl -- wearing a little red riding hood, natch -- has found him. She offers to lead the dazed man back to her home, which welcomes him with a sign reading "Home for Happy Children" -- a good indicator that things are just not going to go well here. It's a house not made of gingerbread but seemingly too good to be true... And that's just the first few minutes of director Yim Phil-Sung's (Antarctic Journal) memorably dark fable inspired by, but also transposing, the titular Grimm fairy tale.

The son, Soojeong, seems to have special abilities that may begin to remind you of that famous Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" (remade in the TZ movie), a boy burdened with a gift who wants to get everything he wishes. But the family history as it's slowly revealed will give you a great deal of sympathy for the life he's been cursed with. This "family" of three children of various ages (and you don't know the half of it) turns out to have a few surprising secrets underneath that initial layer of rosy-cheeked friendliness. Eun-soo does everything he can to try to leave the house, to return to his pregnant wife and ailing mother, but all paths away from the house seem to lead right back to it; it's a Bermuda Triangle in the heart of the forest.

The story gets a bit convoluted as it rolls on, rushing through a few too many plot points and explanations, but slowly builds the layers of dread. Eun-soo becomes more protective of the children while also battling against a deacon who'd ended up at the house and seems to cloak his own dark side under a veneer of insincere friendliness.

What the film also has going for it is the look, the lushly colored cinematography and art design are perfectly in tune with the story of a distorted childhood, of being stuck in time and place. The pastiche of creepy kitsch and domestic detritus -- odd bunny paintings (it's the best creepy rabbit movie since Donnie Darko), time warped cartoons, fluffy desserts, children's toys everywhere -- and the variations of forest light and darkness, all of this adds to the feeling of dread that hangs over the film.

It's as if Kore-ada's Nobody Knows took a detour through purgatory before returning to humanity.

It's not fun for the whole family, but it's a pretty memorable work.

IT'S NOT ME, I SWEAR!
Canada, 2008

It's Not Me, I Swear! (C'est pas moi, je le jure!), a French-Canadian film from Philippe Falardeau, the director of the unappreciated Congorama (which screened here at the SFIFF 2 years ago), is based on Bruno Hebert's 1997 novel and its 2000 sequel. It's a disquieting coming of age tale set in 1968, which seems a bit of an obvious watershed year to set a film in, but to its credit the film never pushes this too hard, only uses the political upheaval going on across the world as something to touch fingers with -- and the children depicted here seem in tune with the political zeitgeist. Set in suburban Montreal, IIt's Not Me, I Swear takes place from the skewed point of view of Leon -- played by the unforgettable Antoine L’Écuyer, who seems to have stepped out of an early Truffaut film -- an acutely intelligent ten year old with a delinquent streak (in the most egregious example, he breaks into the wealthy neighbor's house, plays with their stuff and pees on their collection of fur coats).

His parents have a tumultuous relationship, with the mother the epitome of child-enabler -- she even tells Leon the right way to lie ("make sure you keep your story straight") -- before she abruptly abandons them for a Greece in the midst of a socialist upheaval. It seems hard to believe that even as self-centered and soul-searching as she is that, given her tight bond with Leon, and her constant worries over his cries for help, she would abruptly leave him, but, again, since the film is from Leon's point of view we don't know all the angles of her story.

At any rate, you can see why he's a bit messed up (the film could be used in any bad parenting workshop). He tries to hide his pain with increasingly desperate acts and Harold and Maude-ish suicide attempt ploys. He meets his match with Lea (Catherine Faucher), a girl with family problems of her own, suffering with an abusive, drunken uncle. Their budding friendship and subsequent aborted quest to escape, as the two kids help each other try to repair the damaged trail their wayward parents have left them on, forms the main thrust of the story. Leon also finds more comfort in a lonely corn field and in a local bowling alley than he does at home.

The film manages to navigate through subtle shifts in tone, with humor (a bit involving Leon lying about his eyesight is particularly funny) and pain equal partners. What is most heartbreaking is how much pain he causes his poor older brother, who just desperately wants to have a normal family in which everyone is happy.

Even though much of the film sounds, at least on paper, like a lot of other coming of age stories about warped pre-adolescents, like Hansel and Gretel, It's Not Me, I Swear has a unique feel to it, buoyed by the superb cinematography by André Turpin. Turpin, who also shot Congorama and the Genie Award-winning Maelstrom, has a lovely way with color hues, here using slightly blown out lighting that makes the film look like a more crisply shot home movie. And Patrick Watson's music score, augmented by appropriately emo songs, adds to the moodiness.

Falardeau's film ultimately ends up being both shocking and touching in equal measure, with several images near the end you won't soon forget.