Film: Johnnie To's YESTERDAY ONCE MORE

Love can be a cat-and-mouse game, especially when the two involved are jewelry thieves like the couple in Yesterday Once More.
The best part of a good relationship is the playful cat-and-mouse game that comes out of one person trying to one-up the other in expressions of love. You see the flowers they’ve given you and raise them a dinner and nice bauble. I’m reminded of a Precious Moments figurine that I saw once that showed a little boy with his arms outstretched. On the base was written “I love you this much!”
It’s how we fill up that imaginary space between the hands, whether it be with gifts or actual events, that sometimes expresses what every word in the human language cannot.
In Johnnie To’s Yesterday Once More, we meet Mr. and Mrs. T, (House of Flying Daggers' Andy Lau and Infernal Affairs’ Sammi Cheng) who are wealthy, married jewel thieves who have just completed another successful heist. On a yacht they playfully quarrel as the diamonds are split between them. But Mrs. T’s reaction to ‘an even split’ changes the game to Mr. T and he bluntly suggests a divorce, climbs to another yacht and drives away, the loot forgotten.
Jump ahead two years, and we find an ex- Mrs. T being wooed by a powerful playboy (Carl Ng) who even dances atop a table in an effort to give her happiness. He offers her his hand in marriage, but she prefers one of his mother’s expensive family heirlooms and plans to steal it, love not being the true object of this expected union. But Mr. T has read of his ex’s engagement and steals the heirloom out from under her. This was not an act of jealousy, however. The theft was for purposes that appear to be far greater than Mrs. T imagines they are.
What unfolds is a delicious romantic crime caper that crosses the taught passion of The Thomas Crown Affair with the bubbly, socialite fun of an episode of Hart to Hart.
Jaunty saxophone and tinkling pianos keys fill the soundtrack with a fun vibe that matches the relationship at hand. When the T’s (that letter is the only allusion the film gives us to their real name, by the way) meet up again, we see a spark that can’t be denied. Lau and Cheng show us a couple that have no reason to be apart especially since their shared kleptomania is one more common interest than most married couples can claim.
Lau is all smiles and smart charm, playing a delicate game with Cheng that’s as attractive as a lover hiding a surprise behind his back. Cheng herself is beautiful, smart and obnoxious, which is just right for a woman whose child-like pouts reveal a smile that sparkles like the jewels she swoons over. She knows her relationship is more precious than the necklace but has so many doubts about being in love that the heirloom seems like an easier deal than a husband.
As they say, diamonds are forever.
The things we do for love and how we fill that immeasurable void between our arms are what give Yesterday a resonance that exceeds the yachts, diamonds, flowing wines and fast cars that cover the screen. Sometimes objects are the only way people know how to say “I love you,” and this film is one big gift with a quiet declaration of love hidden inside the box.
Take a loved one to see it if you get a chance, as I fear a U.S. remake is on the horizon — seeing that instead would feel like buying a lover a second-hand necklace to apologize for forgetting a grand anniversary.

Directed by
Johnnie To Kei-Fung
2004/Hong Kong/99 min.
English subtitles

Film: Daniel Gordon's A STATE OF MIND

Thousands gather to practice routines for the massive North Korean celebration Mass Games. The film A State of Mind chronicles the festival.
Over the last 50 years, the communist state of North Korea has been putting together an eye-popping, people-filled spectacular called the Mass Games.
Utilizing more than 80,000 gymnasts and countless others with technical verve and ability, the Mass Games is as extravagant as a Super Bowl halftime show. But it is filled with participants who bring dedication, class, honor and a little spilled blood to the set.
The gymnasts and mosaic board-flippers spin, leap, kick and explode in a series of colorful, human controlled moving seas, waving flags, synchronized patterns and, most importantly, living examples of loyalty and devotion to North Korea, communism and their great leader Kim Jon Il.
While watching Daniel Gordon’s BBC documentary, A State of Mind, I was reminded of how little I actually knew about North Korea. Two fingers on my hand represent the knowledge of the country— Kim Jon Il and frightening nuclear capabilities — I carried into the film.
It is perhaps this blind spot that made the film intriguing and frightening to me in equal measures. Gordon’s cameras were allowed unprecedented access to film in North Korea.
The crew included translators and access to sacred public areas.
Gordon focuses his lens on the story of two young gymnasts, Pak Hyon Sun and Kim Song Yon. Both are devoted schoolgirls who seem to exhibit the perfect adolescent life under the General’s reign. At school they learn about the predicted assault by the United States on their soil, hone their English (as both a tool and as a weapon), and spend 80 percent of their time in the Mass Games club where they, and just about every other nimble student, perfect their gymnastic skills in the hopes that they will be good enough to be asked to perform in the “socialist realism extravaganza.”
We watch both girls through multiple practices (all done on concrete and with no regard to aches and pains) where the smiling girls learn that they succeed “as individualism disappears and group power develops.” Every synchronized leap and flip is another link in the chain of self-reliance.
These movements are also another step away from the unwanted imperialism of the United States and those who oppose the perfect communist state.
These lessons spill over into the girls’ home life as well. We watch as family time becomes a time to help each other, learn about each other and build a unit so tight that it can be used as a defense for their state. When electricity goes out nightly for hours at a time (North Korea, despite seeming like a show-off still struggles economically), curses toward the United States are heard as excuses for the way things remain and a reason for everyone to work harder to overcome them. The previous actions of the United Stares are what drive North Koreans toward beautiful perfection and love for their leader and home.
It was this sudden lesson that tinged the wonder of watching thousands of people coming together for one amazing artistic expression.
It was a bitter pill full of fear for what a million united minds could be capable of, especially when anger and resentment are the bubbling at the core.
A State of Mind shows us a place changed by the past, happy with their present time, and prepared for the negative expectations of what is to come.
The Mass Games put an exquisite mask on to a face that has been long awaiting a proper unveiling.
Yet it remains to be seen if the scars that the mask has been hiding are being worn with pride or with reflection to those who may have caused them.

Directed by Daniel Gordon
2004/N. Korea/93 min.
Korean with English Subtitles