If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. Starting with the changing industry landscape around Ben and Miko, “Shortcomings” is also a film about film, without being obtrusively “meta.” Ben talks about having wanted to be the next Eric Rohmer Jonathan Lethem wrote jacket copy likening the book’s style to Rohmer’s.We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. Park and his crew ensure that there’s not a false or neglected detail, and shots with reflecting glass by DP Santiago Gonzalez nod to the great Edward Yang. The film isn’t a shot-by-shot recreation, but some scenes come uncannily close, while feeling as natural as they do in the text. Some have said that Tomine thinks like a filmmaker, and indeed, so much direction is already there on the page: the establishing shots to orient us in the spaces of his scenes, the shot-reverse-shot conversations, tight focus and natural pauses, spare frames to mark the passing of time. It’s ultimately a comedy, though, and just like the book, Park’s film makes us laugh helplessly even as we squirm.įor fans of Tomine’s work, the most mesmerizing thing may be the near-seamless way the book becomes a meticulous storyboard. And bisexuals will feel familiar hurt at the way Ben and Alice treat Ben’s conquest, Sasha, over her sexuality. The gambit fails to please them, thanks to the long shadow of Japanese colonial rule. Alice isn’t out to her religious Korean family, and has Ben pose as her boyfriend on a visit. The social-romantic collision course doesn’t end there, either. It’s an accomplished directing debut for Park, who co-wrote and starred in “ Always Be My Maybe” and appeared in the series “Fresh Off the Boat.” While it’s still Ben’s journey, Park gives them each a well-deserved bow in a coda with Alice’s voice. Raffish Alice and the other women provide welcome respite from Ben’s puerile petulance. The characters are instantly recognizable, and the story remains frank with their foibles. Where “Ghost World” was concerned with its own quirky hipness and “Paris” with undressing its women, Park’s “Shortcomings” feels immediate and personal.įor Bay Area natives of a certain age, the film’s settings, subcultures and music will ring true. Two years ago, Jacques Audiard adapted three of Tomine’s vignettes in “ Paris, 13th District,” injecting a male-led love triangle that diluted the stories’ cohesion and impact - though a writing contribution from Céline Sciamma salvaged one of its storylines. Clowes, Tomine’s friend and mentor, co-wrote the script for the latter film. The best reference points for this one may be Marielle Heller’s wonderful “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (2015), based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s auto-fictional novel of ’70s San Francisco, and Terry Zwigoff’s cult hit “Ghost World” (2001), based on stories from Daniel Clowes’ “Eightball” series. While “comic book movies” might summon to mind big-budget franchise fare, live-action versions of realist graphic novels constitute a healthy subgenre. Reckoning ensues, in its multitextured, unavoidable and finally fruitful glory. There, he’s enraged to discover that Miko is shacking up with a white guy who himself is obsessed with all things Asian. Repeatedly foiled by his own toxicity, he follows his lesbian best friend Alice (reliably winsome Sherry Cola) when she too travels to New York. Miko goes to New York for the summer, supposedly for work, and Ben sets about trying to sleep with a blonde, any blonde, feigning interest in the lives of several prospects. ( Adrian Tomine / Drawn & Quarterly Jon Pack / Sony Pictures Classics)
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