The film struck a chord with me back in 2008, so much so that I reviewed it on
my old "Nanchatte" Wordpress Blog back in '08...
Since then my Japanese has become fluent and I have spent some years learning Chinese and tonight watched it one more time, wondering if it would bear repeated viewing after all the changes in my life.
Although, 10 years ago, this film was marked due to the lesbian theme, this film has nothing to do with lesbianism... at all... It makes exactly Zero (no pun intended) statements regarding sexuality and the main characters are totally at ease with their orientations.
No, this is essentially a Cathartic film about trauma and the different ways people deal with it.
One of the leads tries her hardest to remember everything, to hold on to every single sweet moment, few and far between though they were, as if they were her last and most precious possessions. She believes that everything is transient and that existence is only as real as the memories of those involved. Be forgotten and you cease to exist. She surrounds herself with all her positive memories and lives almost in a dream.
The other is the opposite: Stony and cold, she has cut herself off from the pain of her past by forcing herself to forget everything, and plods lifelessly through the present like a rootless tree. For her, only the present has meaning and as soon as something moves into the past, it is left behind. Contradictorily she fills her days and nights with guilt for something she perceived as her fault and as apparent punishment she denies herself any solace that would heal her.
Flashbacks serve to flesh out the pasts and allow us to come to understand why they are the way they are today, one's slow reawakening from a morbid, empty state and another's persistence to never be forgotten.
We learn how guilt can arise from one's actions in times of stress and cause one to blame oneself and how emotional starvation can present itself in a multitude of ways.
As a father in Japan a country which has had more than its fair share of disasters, some of the scenes I found indescribably painful, the scenes where this film depicts loneliness though brief, were some of the most heart wrenching moments I've seen on screen to date and left me in tears for the second time.
As for the acting, the 18 year old Isabella Leong shows remarkable adaptability for this demanding role; She plays a high school pupil, a devoted sister, a substitute mother and a passionate lover with believability and empathy.
Every moment she's on the screen, she captivates and convinces the audience, pulling them into her world.
Rainy manages to pull entirely different heartstrings throughout the film and bares her damaged soul in an extremely convincing fashion.
The one other actress, whom for spoiler reasons I won't mention is really an unsung highlight of the movie... I found myself blubbering like a babe pretty much every single time she was on the screen...
The non-linear storyline flits from present to past in a slightly uneven and disconcerting way. Some scenes appear cut short and hurried, while others appear to linger a little longer than is comfortable. Intentional no doubt, but it does make the rhythm of the film a little difficult to follow.
Despite this slight incoherence and the loss of focus of the jumbled ending, Spider Lilies is without doubt, an intelligent and thought provoking drama. It makes a valiant attempt at uncovering the wide vista of human emotional survival in the face of hardship and succeeds where a lesser film would fail to involve.
p.s. The subtitles on the DVD I rented were OKish but have distinct errors in places.
