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Movie Review: Go (Yukisada)

I saw Go as part of the SF International Film Festival. Ahh, the joys of living near an interesting city. This was the story of a teenager born in Japan to Korean parents coming to grips with his place in a society. The opening scenes, full of fast-motion and quick edits and backwards chronology reminded me a lot of Trainspotting. It had that feeling of teenagers that live for the moment, unworried about their future but just becoming aware that maybe they need to pause for a moment and take a closer look. The movie quickly moves from very funny scenes involving the interactions of a lot of the characters to extremely violent scenes, which I think was a very effective way of showing the shock of violence in real life. The main character, who also narrates parts of the movie, keeps insisting it is his love story, but we don't get into that for a while, until he meets a Japanese woman at a party. They start dating right away, and the movie does a great job showing two people getting involved in their first serious relationship and the doubts and attempts to look cool that go along with that. I enjoyed both the main actors, and a lot of the supporting cast, especially his parents and his best friend. Overall, it was a very entertaining movie, even though I thought a lot of the themes weren't particularly profound for where I am right now. Definitely worth seeing, though, even if you have to drive up to SF to see it and the Malaysian restaurant you were going to eat at turns out to be closed on Tuesdays.