Tag (2015) Isn't The Movie You Think it is.

The vilification of women, the punishable aggression inflicted upon them, the voyeuristic lens that peeks at their panties every time a gale sweeps up schoolgirls' skirts- Tag (2015) should have been made in poor taste, considering Japanese auteur Sion Sono's vita of films dedicated to the sexploitation of women (Love Exposure, The Virgin Psychics).

But it wasn't. Instead, Tag became a vision of modern cinema and a compelling study in gender roles. All in its scant 90 minutes of surrealistic dream sequences that'd leave you bewildered, yet, strangely, wanting for more.

Set in small town Japan, the film's unusual happenings unravels with a thriller when two school buses (packed with laughing high schoolgirls looking as sunburst as an ad from Sovil Titus) gets sliced into half by a mysterious gust of wind. Saved by coincidence, the timid lone survivor, Mitsuko (played charmingly by Austrian-Japanese actress Reina Triendl), begins a race for her life from a series of attackers.

Part of Sono's third release of six films he scheduled for 2015,  Tag trails behind the teen-survival genre he's been made famous by. But where the plot thickens, as it veers away from the campy destruction of entire high school of females, is at the vein of the movie: an element of gender oppression.

As Mitsuko jumps from one paranormal encounter with bazuka-wielding teachers to another with a bovine bride, her idenity travels inter-dimensionally with her. From the ingenue she is, to the conflicted bride Keiko (Mariko Shinoda), to the marathoner Izumi (Erina Mano), the all-female cast prevalent in two-thirds of the movie- until we fall into the rabbit hole of a male-dominated dystopia toward the end- pounds at a tough fact of life often overlooked: its characters are running away from a rite of passage society has prescribed, from adolescence to adulthood.

That said, Tag subverts as it delights. The movie, adapted from Yusuke Yamada's 2001 novel, was initially premised upon the tag-you're-it idea, that anyone who shares a similar surname dies. But Sono was resolute to render his movie different from other adaptations. Cinematically, the movie pans across beautiful landscapes all shot by drones. The scenes are a vision as it softens the gore and breaks away from the offbeat pace Sono's built into the surrealistic movie he'd already paved from start. Despite the violence, the scenes still feel as soft as the film's recurring goose-down pillow.

Orchestrating the movie to sublime effect is also its film score. It matches the revealing scene when Mitsuko confronts the true enemy of her fictitious drama: men; particularly, men who fetishizes the Japanese schoolgirl culture enough to create the insufferable reality we find ourselves trapped in. And by the film's close, the music falls away into post-rock group Mono's beautiful soundtrack, a tireless melody of downtempo guitar and bass.

Perhaps, what's even stranger than fiction- a cinematic experience I reserve for astounding films- was the lump I swallowed at the back of my throat after a movie as cerebral, as violent, and as offsetting as Tag. While modern day directors strike the iron of feminism while it's hot topic to avert the male gaze, Sion Sono's awe-inspiring work brings it back in the most visceral, most grotesque, and most beautiful way possible. He wasn't turning away from a problem, he was staring right into its dispassionate, ugly face.

Below, its official trailer and (yes!) full movie.

Incestuous Thai Movie My Bromance Explores Boyhood Troubles.

Thai movies are tearjerkers. And when they're as controversial as a homosexual relationship between two adolescents, they're usually a home run for its sappy plot. In 2007, Love of Siam was a telling case of two boys, for instance. It was a boy-meets-boy premise buttressed with a coming-of-age story to conflict with the inevitable kith and kin confrontation.

Today, however, a coming of age genre demands more from the audience to believe that it's artistically honest, and not an exploitation of its problems. Tastefully, film makers must accept that, though, the taboo is always appealing, self-empowerment has become more bearable to watch than its characters' depreciation. My Bromance, a 2014 Thai romantic drama, has decided to shock with the latter, spinning the sappy genre on its head with incestuous overtones.

The 1 hour 58 minutes film, directed by Nitchapoom Chaianun, is set in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It begins with a hot-blooded, tempestuous Golf played by Teerapat Lohanan, a bully of a stepbrother to the softer, effeminate Bank, his film counterpart and star-of-the-moment Pongsatorn Sripinta, who's starred this year in another gay drama, titled Red Wine in The Dark Night. Like the latter's thriller, dabbling themes of homosexuality into the strange turned the film's kindred spirit of two brothers into a bizarre romance- kissing, hand-holding brotherly love, to say the least. Of course, nothing ends well with a drama thickened this much by ingenues' lust for love.

Notably, Chaianun was careful not to steer this hefty genre into its one-dimensional circuit. The problems of family and self acceptance remains, but Golf and Bank's relationship turmoil was rooted in personal woes. A problematic Golf, whose father deprives him of attention, is tamed by a more patient, albeit fatherless Bank, who too, has a fair share of issues that mirrors the former's insecurities. As if by happenstance, the two finding each other could only point toward the larger theme of love. That it wasn't pre-mediated, the foolhardy idea of love was instantly felt.

Chaianun was also strategic to remove the film from the currency of technology to highlight his characters' naivety, underscoring the film's sexual blur between his characters. Golf was less of a keyboard warrior than a true hobbyist of plastic toy fixtures, as seen colouring his figurines throughout the film, only be reciprocated by Bank at the end. Moreover, its expression as a totemic symbol was also introduced in the film as an everlasting promise: Rings were exchanged to the seal the protagonists' romance, whether as siblings borne out of circumstance or star-crossed lovers doomed to fall apart. Everything, to wit, was done to strip the notion of love to its fleeting substance.

However, that's not to discount the movie of its pitfalls. With common-sense-defying narrative and poor characterization, My Bromance quickly became beguiling halfway. The denouement was flawed with an expected death, and complete with a lackluster voiceover at the end, which felt like a farce. The film, conflicted to what's been aimed as youth-quaking love, began to move toward the dramatic territories of adult tragedy. Calculate that with its cliches- self-sacrifice, loss, and total acceptance- My Bromance didn't survive a satisfying ending.

8 years after Love of Siam broke water works in theaters, Thai movies that have stuck to its tried-and-true formula of LGBT complexities still work, somehow. Made more by the fact that in 2015, when modern romantic films rush to encapsulate the digital age in its themes, watching a dissimilar movie only made its genre all the more nostalgic and refreshing.