This neo-fairytale set in Wyoming, USA follows three mischievous children as they embark on an odyssey when their mother asks them to run an errand. On the hunt to obtain her favourite blueberry pie, the children are kidnapped by poachers, battle a witch, outwit a huntsman, befriend a fairy, and bond together to become best friends forever. (rt)
Director: Weston Razooli
spacetime coordinates: close to the year 2000 HK
I am indebted to seeing this movie in a particular context – as part of the Fatal & Fallen – program curated by Jade Barget and Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee at the Bi’bak/Sinema Transtopia in Berlin cinema hosted at the House of Statistics. It was followed by a very funny intervention presentation by Mie Hiramoto (Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at National University of Singapore.)
Fatal & Fallen was first presented at Singapore’s Asian Film Archive in the context of their Re:frame series from September – to October 2021. Here I will post some of their framing of the selection featuring movies from South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong.
So Close is directed by Corey Yuen and starring Shu Qi, Zhao Wei and Karen Mok.
“When a gang of assassins murders their parents, two sisters inherit the family business – a state-of-the-art computer surveillance system. Armed with new skills, the sisters become the most accomplished assassins in Hong Kong. But after killing a wealthy magnate, an undercover detective is suddenly hot on their tail. Loyalties are tested, alliances are questioned and survival becomes the most extreme sport of all. As part of the second wave of the Girls with Guns subgenre, So Close is an updated version of the 1980s films that were built on strong, female leads portrayed with ostensible power. However, the film masquerades female empowerment under the guise of a highly sexualising male gaze. Expressed in definitive Y2K stylisation and featuring quintessential early-2000 gadgets, fashion, and special effects, So Close captures the new millennium’s techno-optimism.” (Sinema Transtopia program page)
What can I add to that? I was a total surprise with the distance of the years to watch this movie. It feels both incredibly cheeky, cringe and fucked up and really dated in many ways (at the time when sexual harassment has been outed as endemic to the very bureau corporate environments the movie is set in), yet still a fun watch. I like how the technological absences play out, and how everything is so gadgety – close to Sianne Ngai’s “Theory of the gimmick”. If we associate gadgets with a Macguyver gendered action cinema here is a welcome reversal. The hackers are Asian and female (and the male US white expert is incredibly clunky and cartoonish), physically and technologically able to stand their own.
The gimmick is everywhere, it has escaped the stores & stalls or the visible Apple or Microsoft brands and it seems to solve almost everything in order to even out the odds in a very unequal world. So Close is a fabulous, sexy (sexist or cisgenger one might say but there is a few surprises at the end), unapologetic movie from the Y2K era in HK (as Elizabeth G Lee mentioned in her intro). After reunification with China, one can feel this whole mad energy and explosive expansive mood. As mentioned by Hie Miramoto, girls with guns are really more than ur usual – wuxia heroine – that still felt a need for a male’s martial arts counterpart Confucian acceptance or inclusion
The movie is brim-full with forgotten gadgets, and imaginary interfaces, including the famous 90s and 2000s electronic dictionaries that were so popular at the time (I also happen to have one) and influenced so much of the later ‘Galapagos effect’ of Chinese homebrewed tech. For me, it puts every Mission Impossible or James Bond to shame. It sometimes feels like it’s just about tech stalls and (soon to be extinct but still exciting) devices fresh off the assembly line anywhere around the world (be it Bucharest Red Dragon or Hong Kong). Please check the fantastic Chaoyang trap substack post intro to that technological wonder in what they call “The Decade of the Electronic Dictionary: 1995-2005. As Emily point out in her quick, electronic dictionaries offered a lot of transgressive possibilities under the guise of ‘educational’ tech.
Finally, another great thing is the way the ‘camera shot’ travels the entire length of the net – the way one has the POW of the impulse or the message or data. Surveillance is not an issue and the more CCTV cameras the better. It also feels an incredible mix of advertising and music video. Every hair swoop and bubble bath shot seems lifted out of an industry ad, yet it all makes sense. You get a the sense these electronic dictionary universe is both an anticipation of the smartphone environment – and an alternative to it.
The Choreography is just amazing, superb as expected. Computers are already at the forefront of cyber attacks – you can ghost yourself or replicate or simulate yourself in the feed. We always have to remember that So Close is far from the current ‘deep fake’ craze yet it anticipates it by a long shot. The satellite communication – ‘eye in the sky’ is both clunky & physical, and always reminds us how dependable we are on this infrastructure that is always present and somehow invisible. There is an interesting alliance (even sexual innuendo) btw the forces of the state (police) and female sister crackers against mostly male corporate transnational structures. All the drama and action makes the men (except of the sexy yet still hapless BF) feel caricatural, bogged down, really superfluous. Even the (man) villains feel overpowered, not really expecting to confront such apt adversaries.
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TimeSpace Warps 