“Honeyjoon”
Chelsea Christer goes from documentary (“Bleeding Audio”) to fiction with her short “Out For Delivery.” It’s a dark comedy which follows a woman whose desire to achieve death with dignity falls considerably short of her efforts.
That woman is Joanna, who wants an early demise for understandable reasons. She has two months left before she suffers complete organ failure. Nothing current medical science can offer will ensure she won’t live her last days painfully and miserably. Rather than have the last days of her life be ones of continual suffering, she opts to exercise her rights under the state’s death with dignity law. But even as Joanna’s life clock ticks towards the end, she’ll experience even now the consequences of the gap between a law’s promise and the reality of seeing that law’s delivery.
The ways those shortcomings play out provides the gallows humor of Christer’s short. The film’s title, for example, references the means by which Joanna will supposedly receive the needed drugs for her procedure. The film’s script never feels like it’s wedging jokes into the story. What happens to the film’s protagonist never seems as if it’s coming at her expense. Instead, it’s a grimly funny way for the viewer to deal with the soul-crushing sense of the universe’s indifference to humans’ individual fates.
Had what happened to Joanna occurred to somebody who knows they have many months or years of life in their future, these events would be annoying at best. As she’s painfully aware given her stress over the proverbial ticking clock, her willingness to give grace becomes an unaffordable luxury.
Ironically, it’s with the James Johnson Funeral Home driver that Joanna finds what the death with dignity law fails to provide. Still, as the credits roll, couldn’t the driver have saved himself a little hassle?
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James Choi’s drama “Before The Call” revolves around a conundrum. Why would a Korean-American who’s spent at least his formative years in the United States return to Korea to enlist in that country’s military?
Admittedly in this story, there’s a need for the South Korean Army to have more soldiers. In the film’s opening minutes, the viewer learns that there are rising tensions with North Korea and some foreign crises which have sparked South Korean concerns about foreign entanglements. It could be argued that early 20-ish Korean-American Jinwoo didn’t personally need to return to Seoul to enlist in the Korean military. Yet he’s chosen to do so, and Choi’s film follows him on the day before he’s about to risk life and limb for a country that’s not his current residence.
Why Jinwoo has chosen to take this radical act is never directly spelled out in the film. Instead, Choi has chosen to let the film’s viewer observe Jinwoo’s last day of freedom to find clues to the answer. This film does not offer grand emotional speeches to explain Jinwoo’s character. Instead, letters home from the film’s protagonist help hint at his later uncertainty. The director respects the viewer enough to not spoonfeed them the answers.
Jinwoo’s activities over this day can be summed up very quickly. They are: breakfast and dinner with his father, lunch with old childhood friend Minji, and a game of pool with a peer who’s already done his military service. Bedtime will be followed by Minji’s driving Jinwoo to the military recruitment station. Otherwise, there are many shots of the protagonist’s random wandering through Seoul’s streets.
While the conversations Jinwoo has over the course of the day never touch directly on his motivations for deliberately risking his life, there are some reasons that can be ruled out. Jinwoo doesn’t appear to be either an idealist or a nationalist. If this writer were to hazard a guess, it would be to say that the film’s protagonist seeks an affirmation of his masculinity that American culture does not afford him. American cultural examples of masculinity generally don’t include Asian males in the A-list. Jinwoo, the film says, grew up in America at a time when his Korean male peers performed their military service. So for the film’s protagonist, joining the Korean military could be a chance to deal with his FOMO regarding a “formative” masculine experience.
Childhood friend Minji provides an interesting foil for Jinwoo. Whereas the film’s protagonist wants to play a traditional male role of warrior, she’s rejected retrograde expectations regarding women’s roles in Korean society. Interestingly, when Jinwoo writes from the battlefield, his letters are sent to Minji. Equally importantly, what he says in these letters display his lack of certainty, a failure to display male egotistical self-assurance.
Choi never judges the wisdom or folly of Jinwoo’s decision. But there’s a bitter irony voiced by the protagonist’s veteran peer. It’s publicly rationalized that military service aids the country’s fight for freedom. Yet such service is in defense of a society with huge social restrictions on what actions a person can take individually.
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Jacque Rabie’s documentary short “Hyodo’s Paradise” might make the careless viewer think the film’s central subject is an object of pity. Though he doesn’t lead a prosperous life where he has a large social circle, the viewer instead walks away with a sense of respect for the titular Hyodo.
The full name of Rabie’s subject is Hyodo Yoshitaka. He lives in Yashio, a small Japanese town 20 miles north of Tokyo. This 49-year-old going on 50 runs an unusual establishment that’s the paradise referred to in the film’s title. The name of that establishment, the Adult Museum (the place’s name in English) houses a collection of hundreds of sex dolls. They include a nurse doll and a silicon sex doll with movable limbs and fake pubic hair.
In a way, Hyodo’s sex doll collection might be called an adult extension of his childhood fascination with cyborgs and robots. The first sex doll he obtained was one found in a dumpster. Four years later, he bought his first humanoid sex toy. Owning sex dolls to Hyodo is not a source of embarrassment. To him, the dolls he displays serve as tools to make concrete the dioramas of his mind. The viewer sees examples of this in such posed scenarios as occupants of a totaled car and soldiers in wartime.
The visual power of those scenarios is not a mistake. His photos of such natural phenomena as flowing rivers and blooming flowers show that he does have an eye for strong visual imagery.
Hyodo’s relationship with his sex dolls is also neither furtive nor shameful. Yes, he’s had intercourse with these human-shaped sex toys, but the post-coital cleanup is not something he enjoys. In his younger days, he treated these specialized dolls as wives; age has caused him to recast the sex dolls as daughters. Alpha male dominance plays no part in Hyodo’s interactions with the sex toys. His responsibility to make sure the sex dolls stay in good condition makes him more of a servant to them than anything else.
The old stereotype that someone like Yoshitaka has sex dolls because he can’t hack a relationship with a real woman has only a nubbin of truth when applied to him. Hyodo’s open about his negative opinion of flesh and blood women (e.g. women are liars). Yet he also admits to badly treating the woman to whom he lost his virginity.
Ironically, a lot of women visit Hyodo’s Adult Museum. He doesn’t go into the reasons why they visit. His main concern is keeping the museum open as long as possible. The pituitary cancer that he has could metastasize at any time. But Hyodo has no regrets as he’s done most of everything he ever wanted out of life. Also, living as long as he has despite suffering multiple illnesses makes him grateful for every moment he can still draw breath.
What ultimately satisfies the viewer is seeing the implicit degree of trust between filmmaker and subject. A sequence where a stone drunk Hyodo is walking down the nighttime streets of Yashio with an inflated sex doll could have been cut to mock the film’s protagonist a la an embarrassing YouTube video. In Rabie’s hands, the moment demonstrates the filmmaker’s acceptance of this unique individual and his candor for the camera.
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One of S.F. IndieFest’s Closing Night films is a comedy which mixes the Azores, Iran’s “Woman Life Freedom” movement, and a grief anniversary. The film in question is Lillian T. Mehrel’s “Honeyjoon,” an audience award winner at both the Tribeca and Mill Valley Film Festivals. Mehrel’s film was partly financed by SFFILM and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
The story and its conflict arises out of the clashing needs between a mother and daughter vacationing in the Azores. As 20-ish June’s covert masturbation scene in the opening minutes suggests, she’s there to have fun in paradise and hopefully make out with a hot guy. Middle-aged Lela, on the other hand, is primarily there to mark the 1-year anniversary of her husband’s death by revisiting one of his favorite spots in the world. Add into the mix the fact that both mother and child are Persian and have differing ideas regarding the practical bounds of sexual freedom for women. The result is for them a frequently awkward vacation experience.
The obvious question of why June doesn’t simply get a separate room or at least a separate bed is answered by the fact that Lela had paid for the trip. Getting separate facilities involves paying way more than June could implicitly afford. The daughter may have to share a bed with her mother. But that doesn’t mean June’s comfortable giving Lela a chest hug from behind when they’re stuck sharing a bed together.
But to be fair to June, Lela definitely has trouble accepting her daughter as a sexually mature woman. There are little politely passive-aggressive tells such as the mother’s reaction to June’s displaying a little too much bare shoulder for a photograph. Lela’s reaction to the sight of her daughter publicly wearing a bikini would probably be to say that it was designed by someone who wanted to see how little female flesh could be concealed without breaking local obscenity laws. Ironically, the big “Woman Life Freedom” fan girl in the family happens to be Lela.
Hunky tour guide/surfer Joao winds up drawing out both women’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Lela’s questions to Joao impress him with their intelligence, especially when compared to the other women he’s had conversations with on tours. June’s messy eating of a melting ice cream on a stick and her passive-aggressive refusal to use a napkin is less rebellion than childish petulance.
Neither mother nor daughter wind up being completely right. June’s obsession with fun and sex seems like an avoidance of acknowledging the more uncomfortable realities of her late father’s life. Lela’s discomfort with her daughter’s open sexuality projects her own anxieties regarding the emotional needs of her middle-aged body.
It turns out that one of the dead man’s last wishes involved the end of friction between mother and daughter. Mehrel shows how that last wish gets granted with a wonderfully wordless sequence that won’t be spoiled here. The film’s use of home movie footage as bookends provides “Honeyjoon”’s perfect coda.
(“Out For Delivery” is now available for streaming online.
(“Before The Call” screens at 6:30 PM on February 9, 2026 and is also available for streaming online.
(“Hyodo’s Paradise” is now available for streaming online.
(“Honeyjoon” screens at 6:30 PM on February 12, 2026 and is available to stream online.
(All theatrical screenings take place at the Roxie Theater (3117-16th Street, SF). Online streams are available through https://watch.eventive.org/sfindie2026 .)
