Gospodin oformitel (1987)

... aka: Господин оформитель
... aka: Mister Designer
... aka: Mr. Designer

Directed by:
Oleg Teptsov

St. Petersburg, 1908. Renowned artist and designer Platon Andreyevich (Viktor Avilov) seems to have magic fingers as everything he touches turns to gold. He's well-known for designing not only elaborate, artistic stage productions but also putting together store window displays that bring the customers in in droves. He's made a great deal of money doing what he does but he's also so off-the-wall in his approach and ideas that he's just as apt to alienate or even offend. He's sought out to design a jewelry store window. While the owner wants to display as many diamonds as he can, Platon wants to concentrate entirely on a snake bracelet that catches his eye. What he puts together - a morbid display featuring a child in a coffin - isn't to the customer's liking but Platon is so good and so trusted as an artiste that the jeweler (Vadim Lobanov) goes along with it. It ends up being to his own detriment and Platon's reputation takes a hit as a result.

Six years later, a depressed (yet still off-putting, arrogant and pretentious) Platon is living in poverty and squalor as a junkie, and his landlord / flatmate (Ivan Krasko) may have to throw him out and auction off his belongings if he doesn't pull it together soon. But a potential savior, and a much-needed source of income, appears in the form of wealthy, secretive and mysterious Mr. Grilliot (Mikhail Kozakov), who's wanting Platon's design services for his newly-purchased home. The home, located on an island, is mostly empty and Platon will pretty much have free reign to do as he wants. Upon arriving, he learns that it was actually Grilliot's wife, Maria (Anna Demyanenko), who wanted him to do the designing. When Platon meets Maria he finds she's a dead ringer for Anna (also Demyanenko), a sickly 14-year-old girl from the slums who used to do nude modeling for him. In fact, he's fully convinced it's her despite her insisting otherwise.

Platon keeps chipping away at Maria, eventually showing her a picture of his painting of Anna from years earlier so she can no longer deny who she really is. And yet she still stubbornly does. Mr. Grilliot, who refuses to elaborate on what he does for a living, comes to Platon asking about his wife's past. When Platon refuses to answer (and is outright rude), he's fired. Returning home empty-handed, the artist has to choose between his vanity and pride and finishing his job. Otherwise he may end up in debtors prison. When he goes to beg "Maria" for a chance to fulfill his contract, she basically admits she only married Grilliot for his money and says he'll have to talk to her husband to get his job back. But, as good fortune would have it, there's no real need. Platon manages to weasel his way into a poker game with Grilliot and his friends, where he wins a fortune.

Now that he's wealthy again, Platon asks Maria / Anna to leave Grilliot and be with him. He's also overwhelmed by the bizarre urge to strangle her to death. She disappears soon after. Platon tries to find her, only to discover that she may have died back in 1908 from tuberculosis. After all, she does have a death certificate as well as a grave. However, she may also be either a ghost, a mannequin somehow brought to life or a Frankenstein-like creation, as Platon previously scoured through morgues looking for young bodies. For what purpose? Though vague, it may explain why Maria / Anna is still around despite being on record as dead. Platon's entire career has been centered around vainly trying to "create something better than what God has made," so perhaps he's succeeded.

Nearly everything about Mister Designer screams "Debut film from someone fresh out of film school who wants to be taken seriously as an artist." Although I don't know if the director was indeed fresh out of film school when he made this, or even attended film school for that matter, this feels like a calculated attempt to impress utilizing a lot of tried and true "artsy" / "stylish" tricks. One thing that irks me to no end is that the vast majority of new directors eager to prove themselves default to a deliberately confounding narrative and make everything irritatingly vague. I don't mind directors emptying out their bag of visual tricks to show off but, for the love of God, start with a strong script and stop assuming you can stylize your way out of a needlessly confusing narrative.

Where I found this most lacking though was is in its absence of a humanizing central focus. Unless you can relate to the arrogant, self-important lead and intentionally obtuse and thinly-drawn supporting characters, you're not going to be the least bit affected when this attempts to be dramatic or romantic. Scenes meant to give this a bit of emotional depth fall flat simply because you don't really care about any of these people.

Now with all of the above out of the way, I should admit one last thing: I actually LIKED this film. I know it doesn't sound like it but I tend to be tougher on good films that I know could have been great with a better script or a few tweaks here and there. It's far more frustrating than sitting through something that outright sucks. Truly bad films may have a redeeming quality or two but seldom exemplary ones. This one has many.

For starters, it's beautiful to look at and often so creatively directed that you find yourself forgiving, if not entirely forgetting, about the muddled plot and under baked fantasy elements. The director really does have some great visual ideas and impresses with his ability to utilize both light and slow motion to eerie effect. Especially nice is his approach to flashback scenes, which are tinted sepia and slowed down to the point where the the film grain itself seems alive with movement. The texture of these scenes bring to mind the look of a weathered drawing and it's a really cool touch. So here you get a big win with the photography and imaginative presentation. You also get a big win with the art direction and costume design, both of which are great throughout.

But my absolute favorite thing going on here was Sergei Kuryokhin's score. It's heavy on the elegant / classical compositions, but with infusions of progressive rock, metal guitar, New Wave synthesizer and even opera. And it's fuckin' amazing! The score alone helped to boost my rating as I was going to rate it a notch lower until I factored the music into the equation.

Nominated for three Nika Awards (basically the Russian Oscar equivalent) for production design (Natalya Vasilyeva), sound (Aleksandr Gruzdev) and costumes (Larisa Konnikova) and winning for the latter, this was also one of the nominated films at Fantasporto in 1989. It never played theatrically in America to my knowledge and hasn't been given any kind of U.S. home video release, though there was a 2016 DVD from Lenfilm that comes with English subtitles. I've seen the release year listed as 1987, 1988, 1989 and 1990, though multiple sources say this was a December 1988 theatrical release date in Russia so we'll go with that.

★★★

Iodo (1977)

... aka: 이어도
... aka: 異魚島
... aka: I-eodo
... aka: Ieodo Island
... aka: Ieoh Island
... aka: Io Island
... aka: I-ŏto

Directed by:
Ki-young Kim

Contractor Woo-hyun (Jeong-cheol Kim) comes up with the idea for a potentially profitable resort, which he plans on naming Hotel Ieodo, after a sacred island that may or may not actually exist. Ieodo, supposedly the place where the souls of those who've died in the ocean (fishermen, diving girls and sailors) go to find peace, is steeped in local legend and superstition. For starters, some believe you can't even see it unless you're already dead. Others believe that you can see it, but you'll die soon after if you do. Woo-hyun's company organizes a boat trip for employees and the press. Once they let the cat out of the bag about using the name Ieodo for the resort, reporter Nam-suk Chun (Yun-seok Choi) becomes hysterical and demands they turn the boat around. Out of the blue, Chun loudly announces to everyone that Woo-hyun is going to try to kill him. To try to pacify him, Woo-hyun challenges him to a drinking match instead. Whoever passes out loses. But a drunken Woo-hyun awakens to find the reporter nowhere to be found. In fact, he's no longer on the boat at all.

Did Woo-hyun throw him overboard while in a drunken stupor? Did Chun accidentally fall in? Or perhaps commit suicide? Another possibility, if the locals are to be believed, is that something supernatural is going on. The ship's captain even notices strange behavior in both the weather and the weight of the boat, which felt as if it was floating in the air.

Once the boat docks, Woo-hyun finds himself in a prickly situation. He's interrogated by the police, who aren't so convinced of his innocence but have no choice but to let him go as they have no concrete evidence. The newspaper where Chun worked all but implicate him in a murder and don't hesitate to make that known to the public. However, locals from Cheju, the secluded, superstitious and sparsely populated island where Chun was born and raised, believe he was merely doomed to die as a similar fate befell three of his forefathers. The locals believe he's been "taken away" by what they call "the water demon." Convinced Chun took his own life, Woo-hyun sets out on a quest to find out more about him. And, of course, that involves a trip to Cheju, where he gets much more than he bargained for.

Along with Chun's former boss, Yang (Am Park), who senses an interesting story brewing, Woo-hyun travels to Cheju. The two men then go from person to person, finding out bits and pieces about Chun as they go. We get a series of flashbacks with each new person. They're first directed to a rocky, mostly unpopulated area and to a "witch house." There, an older female shaman (Jeong-ja Park) tells them about the destruction of Chun's family. After surviving a boat crash but supposedly laying eyes on Ieodo Island first, the father vanished into thin air right before Chun and his mother's eyes. The mother was then ripped off by an exorcist and committed suicide. However, the exorcist's daughter, who had a crush on Chun, stole the money back to help him escape to the mainland. She was rewarded for her troubles by being tied up on the rocks and left for dead. It appears Chun wasn't a very nice guy.

The next visit is to Choon-kil Ko, a hooligan Chun met while living on the streets of Seoul. After Chun ripped him off, Choon-kil decided to come to the island in hopes of living off the back(s) of one or more of the hard-working diving girls. And that he has, except he's made most of his money functioning as a hired stud for all of the island's lonely women and widows. Since island custom has it that the females are to remain on Cheju while any male born there is sent to live on the mainland as soon as possible or else face the water demon, Choon-kil has found a lot of vulnerable and desperate ladies to take advantage of. After failing to create a stable life for himself in the city, Chun returns to the island himself to follow suit.

Yeo-in Park (Mi-hye Kwon), the infertile woman Chun first latched onto upon returning, is the next person the men visit. Doing various experiments on sea shells that he thinks will make him rich, Chun quickly ran through all of Yeo-in's savings. He then forced her to beg other women on the island for a loan. When that didn't work, he beat her and encouraged her to just steal money. Just as things were looking hopeless, a cloaked woman concealing her identity showed up to offer Yeo-in a loan. The stipulations? She's to sign a contract and if the money isn't paid back by a certain time, Chun comes to live with her. After their investment is ruined and Chun is caught having an affair, the old woman shows up to collect what's due and the financially-ruined Yeo-in hasn't seen him since.

By the time all's said and done, what exactly happened to Chun on the boat isn't the only, or even the most important, question that arises. There are others, like how did someone as disreputable and unqualified as Chun end up at Yang's newspaper? And what kind of effect has the increase in pollution and sewage dumping had on the lives of those living on the island? And what gives with the beautiful and mysterious barmaid Min-ja (Hwa-shi Lee), who seems to be on the periphery of everyone else's story and has a few interesting ones of her own? And, lastly, what lengths would the lonely women of Cheju go to get pregnant?

There are a lot of things going on here that instantly bring to mind the Brit classic The Wicker Man (1973). There's the isolated island setting. It deals with a small community who live by their own set of rules and laws, have their own concept of morality and possess unique spiritual beliefs; many of which are informed by their natural surroundings. There are bizarre ocean-front ceremonies and colorfully costumed people marching along the hills and coastline. And it throws an oblivious male protagonist into the middle of everything as he tries to investigate a disappearance / possible death. Only this is darker, slower paced, much more somber and without any humor.

The picturesque location work, striking shot framing and bold, symbolic use of color (mostly blues and reds) all manage to impress. And considering all of the bizarre characters, flashbacks and different plot threads / points of view utilized here, this hard-to-pigeonhole film, which is about equal parts drama, mystery and horror, is pretty impressive in how it weaves everything together by the end. And what an end it is! I'd like to think I've seen just about everything, so it takes a lot to genuinely shock me, but the finale here managed to do just that! It's even more surprising in that this was made by one of Korea's most well-respected, commercially successful and influential directors.

Based on the 1974 novel of the same name by Chung-Joon Lee (adapted by Yu-sang Ha), this was an entry in the 28th Annual Berlin Film Festival yet didn't get wide international distribution. (I'd say the ending had a little something to do with that!). Korean Film Archive / Blue Kino now offer this on Blu-ray with optional English subtitles. Their release comes with a load of extras, but only a few of those (one of two commentary tracks and an interview with the main actress) have English sub options. The second commentary track, several Q&As, a reproduction of the script and other extras are only in Korean.

★★★