Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.

Have you ever been on a date that doesn’t turn out quite the way you expected? What if you’re in a relationship that requires accommodation… but only on one side? This week I’m looking at two movies – both dramas — about people asked to completely change their lifestyles due to an unexpected aspect of their relationship.

Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪)

Wri/Dir: Hosoda Mamoru

Hana is a university student who sees a guy hanging around campus. There’s a definite attraction. But there’s something…. unusual about the guy. Not his looks, not his attitude, nothing like that…Turns out he’s descended from the now-extinct Japanese timber wolf! And every so often he slips back into wolfdom and goes out hunting.

But Hana says, OK, he’s a wolf, but, hey, I can handle that. They move in together and have two kids – Yuki and Ame, named after the snow and the rain. But then Hana is left alone to take care of them with no husband. And then… she discovers that both her kids regularly turn into baby wolves and back again! Yuki is wild, runs around, chases cats and howls to the moon. Her little brother Ame is more withdrawn. Hana doesn’t know what to do, and her neighbours accuse her of secretly having a dog in her pet-free apartment building. So she flees off to the countryside with her kids, where she thinks she can raise them on a farm without any interference from nosey neighbours.

This animated Japanese feature – playing at the ReelAsian Film Festival – is a cool story about the domestic life and coming of age of two werewolf kids, Yuki and Ame, and their devoted mother. What it’s not is a horror movie about werewolves. And that’s OK with me.

It’s also about urbanites moving back to the land, adjusting to life in an area where there are no young families, only elderly farmers still holding on to their patch of land.

Can poor Hana take care of two wolfish kids and try to run a farm with no experience? Can the kids learn to interact with other people without revealing their other lives? (Yuki demands to let her go to school – she promises not to turn into a wolf at school.) And as Yuki and Ame grow older, will they choose to live as humans, as wolves, or somewhere in between?

Wolf Children is a neat look at family life, non-conformity, and the socialization of wild girls and boys within the strict Japanese social system.

Unconditional

Dir: Bryn Higgins

Kristen and Owen are twin teenagers in England who take care of their poor, bedridden mum. Lonely, blond bro Owen (Harry McIntire) says he doesn’t really care what he wears – jeans, trainers and toques with earflaps are good enough for him. He just wants friends – there’s no one to go to the pub with him. But raven-haired sis Kristen is furious she doesn’t have enough money to buy new clothes, so she borrows some cash from a local loan shark, Liam (Christian Cooke). She likes Liam, and he seems to like her, too.

But one day, when Kristen’s not around, Liam takes him for a spin in his car and then to a pub to play snooker. Owen is thrilled to have someone pay attention to him for once. And after more drinks at Liam’s swank flat, he asks Owen if he wants to see something funny, something good for a laugh. The “laugh” turns out to be dressing in women’s clothing, complete with makeup and a dark wig. Liam has all the stuff put away in his closet. Hmmm… OK, I get it. Liam is transsexual, right?

Nope – that’s not it at all.

So Owen puts on the stuff and… whoa, he makes a very pretty woman! And Liam – who is straight – says he wants to be lovers, but with Kristen, not with Owen.

Liam is a guy who is only turned on by cross-dressers. So you have this strange situation. Shy Owen wants to be the centre of attention. He loves being the object of affection from a good-looking older, rich and successful guy – but Owen has no gender issues. He’s just a bloke. Meanwhile Liam wants Owen to disappear so he can date “Kristen” – not the sister, but the neo-sister. That’s the one he’s attracted to. And if Owen so much as shows his real face or takes off his wig Liam flies into a rage. He has “anger issues” you see. He says he adores his girlfriend but wants nothing to do with this Owen character who keeps popping up at all the wrong times. He demands “unconditional love” – but the accommodations are all on Owen’s side, not his. Then there’s sister Kristen (Madeleine Clark) who started the whole thing – she thought Liam was into her. And who’s taking care of poor Mum?

Unconditional (playing at the Rendezvous with Madness film festival) is an interesting, quirky movie. I just want to point out it’s not a psychological thriller — though there are some scary moments – and certainly not a rom-com. It’s a psychological drama about a troubled guy with unusual ideas, and his lover who is forced, against his better judgement, into a difficult situation. I enjoyed the movie, with its good, convincing acting (especially Henry McIntire) and unusual plot.

But you can’t stop thinking — aren’t there enough willing cross-dressers out there so that Liam could have a happy life? Why does he have to force it on an impressionable 17 year old? Or does Owen actually like it, he just doesn’t want it all the time? Hmmm… In any case, it’s a strange but interesting movie.

The animated feature Wolf Children is playing downtown this weekend at Toronto’s ReelAsian Film Festival; the festival continues next week in Richmond Hill. Go to reelasian.com for times and details. And you can see Unconditional at Rendezvous with Madness a festival about movies about addiction and mental health issues. It’s opening tonight at the TIFF Bell Lighbox and continues all week through next weekend.

And don’t miss the excellent, award-winning documentary The World Before Her about the contrasting lives of two young women in India – a westernized model and a Hindu fundamentalist militant! – which opens at the Bloor next week. (I interviewed the Canadian director, Nisha Pahuja at HotDocs last spring.)

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .