The Hunter and the Hunted (油断大敵, Izuru Narushima, 2004)

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The thrill and excitement of being a thief only exist when there’s a great detective around, according to the legendary cat burglar, Nekoda, in Izuru Narushima’s warmhearted crime drama, The Hunter and the Hunted (油断大敵, Yudan Taiteki). The film takes its title from a four-character idiom, a proverb advising that the greatest danger is complacency, which is indeed one of the weapons employed by Neko, nicknamed “the Cat”, as he builds a relationship with the man he hopes will become his greatest adversary. 

Jin (Koji Yakusho) is a widowed single-father coming to the conclusion that his career as a policeman is incompatible with his responsibilities as a parent. Perhaps bearing out the still sexist nature of the early 2000s society, everyone keeps telling him to remarry so that he won’t have to worry about childcare any more, or else find a job that doesn’t require being constantly available in order to work on the criminals’ schedule. The problem is that Jin really likes his job as a thief catcher having transferred from the local police box after his wife passed away from an illness. He really doesn’t want to give it up, but is beginning to feel as if he has no choice. Neko (Akira Emoto) too encourages him to remarry and Jin lets slip that he’s taken a liking to a lady that works at his daughter’s daycare. But though Misaki really likes Makiko (Yui Natsukawa), the thought of her father remarrying causes her to go on a three-day hunger strike. Reluctantly, Jin has to give up on his romantic hopes, though he refuses to do so in terms of his career and in fact goes on to be promoted after receiving a commendation for catching Neko seemingly by chance when he stepped in to fix Misaki’s broken bicycle while Jin was too busy with something else.

It turns out, however, that it wasn’t really by chance at all. Neko has an MO. He essentially allowed Jin to arrest him because he needed medical treatment. Neko’s life of crime means that he can’t enrol on the government health insurance scheme so he can’t afford to go to the hospital where he’d be arrested anyway. Nevertheless, he seems to take a liking to Jin precisely because of his mild-mannered earnestness and tries to teach him how to think like a thief so that when he gets out in 10 years’ time, he’ll be a worthy adversary and their cat and mouse game can truly begin. Having Neko out there gives Jin a concrete reason to stay in the police and polish his skills, while knowing he has Jin to play off gives Neko a sense of purpose in an otherwise aimless life of total freedom. He describes thievery as his calling and claims that as laws are made by humans and a vocation is given by god, he has a right to pursue it that transcends human justice even if Jin scoffs at his sophistry.

Deciding against remarriage, Jin’s main personal relationship outside his daughter becomes that with Neko who is somewhere between friend and adversary. Once Misaki has grown up and tells him that she plans to do humanitarian work abroad after training as a nurse, Jin can’t help but feel betrayed. She prevented him from marrying a woman that he genuinely cared about, but now tells him he should meet the woman the lady from the bakery is trying to set him up with and plans to palm him off on someone else, just as she feared he might do if he married again leaving his new wife care to Misaki and devoting himself to work. But what he realises it that his relationships with Misaki and Neko are basically the same. He has to accept that his daughter has grown up and chosen her own path to follow. It’s time to let her go. Neko, meanwhile, has found his freedom in thievery, and so he will never stop doing it no matter how many times Jin catches him or how many times he escapes. All Neko wants out of life is that they both stay healthy enough to keep playing this game right to the very end so that he can die as a thief having experienced the true joy of battling his nemesis while Jin too enjoys the thrill of the chase as a thief-catcher hot on the trail of a master. Which is to say, no one actually wants to win this game, and what has really come to matter is their extremely co-dependent friendship that transcends the limits of the law.

The Deepest Space in Us (そこにきみはいて, Yasutomo Chikuma, 2025)

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The dress code at Kaori’s office doesn’t seem to be all that formal, but for some reason she alone looks like she’s going to a funeral. As it turns out, there’s a reason for that, but it also reflects the way that her job makes her feel dead inside and how she’s made to feel by a judgemental society that refuses to accept her as she is but punishes and excludes her for living outside of its expected norms and social codes.

Kaori (Momoko Fukuchi) doesn’t usually attend the team’s after work drinking parties, but is dragged along this time only to sit impassively ignoring everyone until a couple of drunk guys press her for her first love story and then ask a series of invasive questions about what kind of guys are her type. There are obviously a lot of assumptions in play here, and their obsessive probing borders on harassment. Kaori eventually gets up and leaves, but is chased by one of the guys who tries to ask her out. She tells him directly that she’s not interested because she doesn’t experience sexual attraction or desire, but that’s like a red flag to a bull for a certain sort of guy and this one laughs in her face after tearing her shirt as she tries to get away. People simply don’t believe her when she tells them, or else they conclude that there’s something wrong her that needs to be cured. She too feels as if she’s “not normal”, and is pressured by a society in which it’s still marriage and children that are the benchmarks of social success for a woman.

That’s one reason she bonds so easily with Takeru (Kanichiro), the lawyer who handled the probate for her estranged late mother’s estate which Kaori declined to inherit. Takeru tells her that he has something he wants to reject too, and it’s true enough that, to begin with, Kaori may be trying to reject her asexuality. She tries to initiate sex with Takeru in order to overcome it, but it isn’t something that either of them can go through with. Though he tells her that he has someone he can’t forget much as he’d like to, Takeru does not disclose that he is gay because of the intense shame he feels about his sexuality. Kaori evidently had a difficult childhood with a mother who was physically abusive towards her and thereafter raised in foster homes, while Takeru’s conservative mother (Mariko Tsutsui) seems to have instilled in him the same anxieties that plague Kaori in expecting him to marry and have children. Takeru’s former lover, Shingo (film director Ryutaro Nakagawa), has married a woman he doesn’t seem to like for convenience’s sake. Ten years after he and Takeru parted, Shingo is now a successful novelist writing populist fare that he secretly hates himself for knowing he’s writing for others and not himself. 

They all, in their way, attempt bury their true selves to achieve social success through heteronormative marriages, but Takeru and Kaori slowly discover that whatever joy they may have found in their mutual decision to overcome their self-loathing in a platonic union, it won’t work. They each at different times end up in the same hotel room with a hookup date staring a black mark on a wall that comes to represent an internal void. Realising that he will not be able to reject his homosexuality nor get over the grief and sense of loss he feels in Shingo’s rejection, Takeru eventually takes his own life. Struggling to understand why, Kaori ends up on a strange road trip with Shingo in which it’s never quite clear whether she fully realises he is Takeru’s former lover, or has already figured everything out and is trying to help him accept himself as a means of atoning for being unable to help Takeru do the same.

Her trip also strangely brings her into contact with a woman from her office who once claimed to hate her, but has now come to apologise while also looking, like Kaori, for some kind of acceptance and recognition. She says that she too hates herself, sure that men are only ever interested in sex and never in her. Eventually making a pass at Kaori, she admits that for some reason she is only able to be honest with her rather than her friends, family, or lovers. Nevertheless, though Kaori rejects her romantic advances, this simple act of unburdening and watching the sunrise together in silence seems to clear the air and grant both women a kind of peace.

Besides her sexual identity, Kaori seems to have a degree of trouble in dealing with people that suggests neurodivergence, but also longs for acceptance and companionship. While processing Takeru’s death and leading Shingo towards an acceptance of himself, she too learns to embrace her authentic identity and refuses to hide or run away from who she really is to please others rather than herself. Holding a mirror up to a repressed society, she achieves a kind of freedom in self-acceptance, which she then begins to extend to Shingo who once admitted that he ran away from love out of fear, and only now has the courage to face himself and the terrible delayed grief of having lost something precious that can never be reclaimed.

The Deepest Space in Us screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Murder on the Last Train (終電車の死美人, Tsuneo Kobayashi, 1955)

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Rather than the hard-boiled tale the title may suggest, Murder on the Last Train (終電車の死美人, Shudensha no Shi Bijin) seems to be one of a number of films made in the early post-war era designed to improve the reputation of the police force. Just as in Bullet Hole Underground, we’re shown several scenes showcasing police technology and depicting detectives as men of science rather than an authoritarian force extracting confessions and pressuring suspects. The film went on to inspire a long-running series of police procedurals, and is shot in the style of a documentary lending an air of realism to its tale of murder, desperation, and spiralling debt.

Yet all the police know in the beginning is that a young woman has been found dead on the last train out of the city at its final stop of Mitaka. Times being what they are, they don’t even know who she is, and have only slim leads to go on such as the possible sighting of a middle-aged man running away across the tracks, though it was dark and raining so no one can be quite sure. Nevertheless, we quickly see the law enforcement machine spring into action. The call centre is alerted and arranges for detectives from the top murder squad to attend the scene. The narrator tells us that they are ready to respond at any time of day or night, and that, like a pack of wolves after their prey, they will not rest until they’ve apprehended the guilty party. The way this and the closing statement are phrased makes it sound a little like the squad is sort of eager for a murder to occur to have something to do, which probably isn’t the intention but does make them seem a little blood thirsty. Especially as one of the policemen we’re introduced to is said to care about nothing other than murder. 

Nevertheless, the narrator introduces us to all of the squad members who each have their quirks from the henpecked husband to the former monk. There’s a running gag that they can’t get anything done at their office because of constant noise outside from advertisements, festivals, and children singing. Despite all of their technological advances, all they can really do to begin with is wander round Mitaka with photos of the victim along with one of a man found inside a locket she was carrying, asking local people if they know them. They can only assume the woman must have lived in Mitaka because she was presumably killed between the previous stop and the train’s final destination, but there are other reasons she may not have alighted earlier. 

The trail eventually leads them to a land broker, Hayakawa (Eijiro Tono), who has a solid alibi but is acting in an incredibly suspicious way. He also turns out to be in mountains of debt, and may have been acting recklessly trying to right himself financially, while a young man he’s acquainted with, Saburo, may have equally been hooked on the idea of living the high life on stolen money. Another man has been embezzling from his company with no real explanation given as to why save possibly trying to get himself into a financial position appropriate for marriage. The implication that this economy is still a crime factory filled with desperate people who do anything they can either to escape their straitened circumstances or protect what they have.

That might be one reason the police, who all seem very nice and, in general, treat suspects and witnesses kindly and with respect, are keen to get away from the idea the murder may have been a random crime perpetrated by someone trying to ease their frustration or strike back against society. People can feel reassured that this young woman’s death can be explained because it means they are in less danger from a threatening world. The policemen are also there to provide that reassurance, suggesting that any crime that occurs will be swept away neatly, without really dwelling on the other implications of a super-powered police force. The narrator explains that most crimes are committed simply, and for simple reasons, which is comforting, in a way, but also not. In any case, the central message is that modern law enforcement is scientific and compassionate, and the police force a well-oiled machine designed to protect all citizens from the threat of crime wherever and whenever it may arise.

Halo (후광, Roh Young-wan, 2025)

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An astrologer delivery driver Min-joon (Choi Gang-hyun) meets tells him that he’s unlikely to achieve his dreams of becoming a film director in Korea. He was born under an unlucky star, destined to be a self-sacrificing figure overshadowed by his toxic family. However, the astrologer points out, the stars look different depending on where you stand, and according to him the best place for Min-joon is the UK, as unlikely as that might seem.

The astrologer doesn’t seem to hold out much hope that he’ll make it, though. He feels sorry for people like Min-joon who have an over-developed sense of responsibility for those around them and are incapable of putting themselves first. They may very well be toxic and dragging him down, but as Min-joon says, they’re still his family. When we first meet them, his parents are having a physical altercation in the police station while his older brother, Min-ha, who has learning difficulties, screams in terror and confusion. It seems that Min-joon’s father has taken to drink and either can’t or doesn’t work. He criticises the state of the nation that reduces people to living like this, but as his wife points out rather than worrying about the country perhaps he could fix the light in the bathroom that’s been broken for months. He asks why he should when it’s not their place anyway, which might explain a few things about the state of the nation.

In any case, Min-joon is surrounded by radio broadcasts about North Korean missiles and various other disasters that lend an additional sense of doom to his monotonous life. Min-joon is honest and hard-working, diligently delivering parcels all day long and taking good care of his van, only to be treated with contempt and a constant stream of problems from his family. He dreams of becoming a film director, but is always frustrated, first by being unable to afford a colour print of his script and pitch for a producer he met through a connection. He shows up in a neat suit ready to discuss his idea, but she immediately shoots him down by saying that no one makes this kind of film any more and he has zero chance of directing anything. She advises working on the set to gain more experience, but those kinds of jobs don’t usually pay very well and Min-joon probably couldn’t afford to take it even if he weren’t hurt and demoralised by the humiliating experience of being so casually dismissed.

That might be why he takes the astrologer’s advice to heart and starts working overtime to save money to move to the UK while sleeping in his van and washing in a local public toilet. He makes the convenience store guy put his buy one get one free sandwiches in separate bags as if ashamed to have him know he’s going to eat them both himself and that that’s his only meal. Even so, his mother asks him to lend them money to buy his brother, the oldest son, a wife from North Korea so he can live a settled family life, seemingly thinking little of Min-joon’s right to do the same. Meanwhile, Min-ha has suspiciously also come into quite a lot of money, and is later arrested for getting involved with a gang running telephone scams. Min-joon thinks Min-ha probably didn’t know or at least fully understand what he was getting into and was exploited by the gang because of his disability but the police won’t listen to him and a lawyer seems to suggest there’s nothing he can do, bearing out the inherent injustice of the contemporary society.

There really is no way out for him. He’s insulted by residents of the snooty apartment blocks he delivers to who don’t like him using their lift, his van gets robbed, and he ends up bumping it too, requiring even more money to repair and now he can’t even sell it to help his brother pay the compensation money for victims of the scam so he can stay out of prison. He repeatedly visits the apartment of a hoarder with a piles of boxes outside her door that she never opens. It’s like he too is trapped in the room surrounded by cardboard with only his family for company. His desperation mounts with frightening intensity until reaching its unavoidable conclusion as he seeks the only kind of escape available to him.

Halo screens in Chicago March 28th as part of the 20th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Girl Who Stole Time (时间之子, Yu Ao & Zhou Tienan, 2025)

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All Qian Xiao (voiced by Liu Xiaoyu) wants to escape her boring island life where time runs slowing to experience the fast-paced life of the city, though her guardian, an older man she describes as an artist who can develop film, is not keen for her to go. Washing up on the island three years previously having lost her memory, Qian Xiao is fascinated by the films they watch in the town square which seem to her modern and exciting while also a means of capturing time and assuring that nothing is ever really forgotten.

But when she’s shipwrecked after accidentally stowing away on a steamship that collides with an ocean liner, she unexpectedly gains the ability to pause time with a small device known to assassin Seventeen (Wang Junkai) as the “time dial”, though she calls it the “shiny gold spinny thing”. Seventeen has been charged with recovering it on behalf of his mysterious boss Mr Zou who has set his minions a challenge declaring the person who brings it to him will be the only one to survive. The ability to pause time is indeed useful in a practical sense in that it allows Qian Xiao to escape her enemies temporarily, flicking a bullet out of the way that otherwise have entered the back of Seventeen’s head.

In other ways, however, it may not always be a good thing and time can never really be turned back but is ever marching forward. It’s not meant to be paused forever. Qian Xiao tries to extend her time in the city by putting it on pause, but then quickly becomes bored. There’s not a lot to do here if everyone’s stood still like a statue and she’s stuck on her own again. The irony is that she’d complained about island life being too slow, but as she grows closer to Seventeen all she wants is string time out for as long as possible. This is also, in someways, a reflection of ageing that young people are often in a hurry to grow up and experience the world, but as you get older time passes more quickly and you begin to feel it running out. Despite having said that you only have one life and there are things you can’t fix no matter how hard you try, she begins trying to find ways to get a second chance and stop time from moving forward.

Mr Zou wanted the dial for the same reason, unable to deal with his own deep-seated grief and hoping to use it to bring back those who he’s lost even if it means a lot of other innocent people might die. Seventeen might not have cared about that before, but has become more human through this adventures with Qian Xiao and can no longer allow him to misuse time in that way. As he says, all things must eventually come to an end and it’s enough to be remembered by those you leave behind. Qian Xiao may have become an immortal being and the master of time, but that also means existing in a perpetual state of loss. Eventually, she will need to learn to let go and treasure what she once had rather than being mired in her grief. 

Films are also, though, a means of stopping time and allowing Qian Xiao to revisit her past. While the film looks back to golden days of Chinese cinema in the glamorous Shanghai of the 1930s though its use of silent film techniques, it also seems to draw inspiration from Western animation such as Disney with its unexpected musical number and Qian Xiao eventually donning a very Cinderella-like ballgown for a romantic waltz for the ages. In its final stretches, however, it is more philosophical in contemplating the nature of time and how it’s spent, the ways in which it is sort of rewound and relived, along with the conviction that there’s no need to be sad when the movie’s over because it was it always about who you watched it with. Less anarchic than some recent Chinese animation, if energetic, the film revels in the elegance of its 1930s setting and derives genuine poignancy from its central love story as the fated lovers find their way back to each other only to part once again.

The Girl Who Stole Time screens in Chicago March 28th as part of the 20th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Last Woman on Earth (지구 최후의 여자, Yeum Moon-kyoung & Lee Jong-min, 2024)

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Wronged by an internationally famous film director, a pair of aspiring filmmakers set their sights on cinematic revenge in Yeum Moon-kyoung and Lee Jong-min’s meta comedy, Last Woman on Earth (지구 최후의 여자, Jigu Choehuui Yeoja). Even so, they find themselves mired in a world of sexism and artistic jealousy ruled over by powerful elites content to feed on their aspiration, chew them up and spit them out only to, on the one hand, insist that exploiting them made them sad, and then on the other barely remember them at all and claim they did nothing wrong.

Hana and Cheol each have painful histories with a Hong Sang-soo like festival darling that have frustrated both their lives and artistic careers. They meet in a film class where they workshop their movies that are also attempts to overcome their trauma. Hana’s is a high-concept sci-fi drama shot like a silent film and peppered with intertitles in which the only woman left on earth after a virus wiped out all the others is imprisoned by men who harvest her eggs and attempt to clone her. Cheol’s is Hollywood gangster noir set in Chicago in 1989 in which he kills an annoying old man who was holding him back. Cheol annoys Hana by pointing out the theme of her film was “misandry”, as if there were something wrong with that, while she points out his film is obviously about his resentment towards a father figure. Even so, Cheol thinks the reason no one likes his script its that it’s too manly, and he could use some female input to help him score points on the grant application, which is how they end up working together.

Their various traumas highlight the problems in the mainstream film industry, even if Cheol’s problem is, in another meta touch, with indie filmmakers who make indie films to show to indie people at indie festivals. After being talked into a nude scene a more famous actress had refused to do, Hana became the talk of the town while her scenes from the movie ended up porn sites. She became a sex symbol, but was shamed out of show business. The only jobs she got offered were erotic movies and all she could do in the end was abandon her old identity. As she reveals in a lengthy musical number, she still wants to make films even though it’s painful and no one wants to seem to letter.

Like her, Cheol sought the approval of a master but feels betrayed by him. Tak stole his screenplay and used it to win awards in Europe without crediting him. Even since then, he’s been determined to become the Ant-Tak by doing what he couldn’t, making a hit popcorn movie that’s nothing more that an good time at the movies. But even Cheol can’t completely abandon the patriarchal mindset, first gender-flipping his revenge drama, then changing gears to make Hana the hero only to suddenly appear as a male character to swoop in and save her from the evil professor, Tak. 

Throughout the runtime, there’s the sense that the world is coming to an end, and of course it is because the world of this film lasts only until the closing credits. Still, they want to make the film anyway, even if there’s no tomorrow and no one will see it, because it’s what they have to do. They start out by making a documentary about Tak, hoping to destroy the Korean film industry by exposing what he’s really like. But Tak doesn’t really take them seriously. He points out he’s not Park Chan-wook or Bong Joon Ho, so no one’s going to watch their film anyway. Though he claims to feel bad about what happened to Hana after he used her for his film, he also says that it’s not his fault because that’s just how things were and everybody did it. Like Cheol, he’s now trying to make a “feminist” film to atone, laying bare the cynicism of these kinds of gestures intended only to whitewash the image of a tainted artist. But films after all “next world” and the way out. You can make one on your own, and it doesn’t really matter if no one sees it. Killing her past trauma, Hana transfers fully into the world of cinema, staying with Cheol to watch the world end as the camera continues rolling on waiting for the next world to enter the frame.

The Last Woman on Earth screens in Chicago March 27th as part of the 20th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Last Blossom (ホウセンカ, Baku Kinoshita, 2025)

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Seen from above, balsam flowers look like an arrangement of leaves, yet when viewed from the side, the pretty flower within becomes visible. It’s an apt metaphor for the “pathetic” life of Minoru (voiced by Junki Tozuka / Kaoru Kobayashi), an elderly gangster apparently drawing close to death all alone in a prison cell except for a talking plant whose voice he is only now able to hear. Created by the team behind the charmingly surreal Odd Taxi, The Last Blossom (ホウセンカ, Honsenka) is an oddly affecting tale in which the hero remains convinced that he can still turn it all around, if only with his final move.

Back in 1986, Minoru had taken in a bar hostess, Nana (Hikari Mitsushima / Yoshiko Miyazaki), who was already pregnant with another man’s child. Emotionally insecure, he could never quite find it within him to tell her that he loved her and their family, and instead began to push her and her son Kensuke away in fear of losing them. Though Nana suggested getting married, he refused saying that he did not wish to bring her into his yakuza life and was worried that it would only cause problems for her if his name was in the papers or he had to go to prison. When he was eventually sentenced to life behind bars, not being married ironically meant that she couldn’t get access to see him, while his applications for parole were always turned down given that he had no one to vouch for him on the outside.

Nevertheless, there are moments of blissful domesticity such as the pair noticing that the ping on the microwave sounds exactly like the bell in the song Stand By Me, which becomes sort of their tune. Yet Minoru’s life is intertwined that of the bubble era, as if his brief years of happiness were a just a bubble that was always destined to burst. During the 1980s, the yakuza was also in a moment of transition and as an underling who feels he owes a debt to his sworn brother Tsutsumi (Hiroki Yasumoto), Minoru is also trapped in another era. Tsutsumi is wary of a young recruit, Wakamatsu (Soma Saito), who is a new yakuza of the corporate age in which the street thugs of the post-war era are slowly becoming legitimate businessmen. Wakamatsu has a good nose for business and has realised that land will be the money spinner of the age, prompting Minoru to engage in a spot of property speculation of his own.

But Tsutsumi is increasingly resentful, knowing that Wakamatsu has supplanted him in the boss’ affections. Old-school yakuza are no longer welcome in a world of boardroom gangsters. It’s clear that Wakamatsu doesn’t like Tsutsumi either, but seems well disposed to Minoru. Ironically all his mannerisms are reminiscent of those of the balsam flower, even down to his slightly sarcastic way of speaking. Nevertheless, Minoru begins to lose himself amid bubble era excess, spending all his time and money on clubs and rarely coming home to Nana and Kensuke. Only when he learns that Kensuke has incurable heart disease and needs a transplant does he begin to step up and assert himself as a father, willing to do whatever it takes to get the money for Kensuke to go to the US for a new heart as the surgery isn’t legally permitted in Japan. 

Minoru has a deep-seated sense of himself as a loser and is always saying that he’s going to turn things around. The irony is that he leaves it so late, but it is indeed with his final move that he gives his life meaning in making clear his feelings for Nana and Kensuke. Maybe it looks like a “pathetic” life when seen from above, but when you look from the side you can the beautiful flower blossoming underneath, a sentiment that could equally stand for Minoru’s quiet nature and buried feelings. Though he allowed himself to be corrupted, starting to drink when he never had before not because he wanted to but because Tsutsumi did, becoming obsessed with work and losing sight of what really mattered to him, he really did manage to turn it around in the end. With a gentle sense of magical realism in the talking plants and occasional moments of surreality, The Last Blossom is a poignant tale of regret and redemption beautifully expressed by the stillness broken by brief explosions of fireworks to be found in Baku Kinoshita’s beautifully simplistic aesthetics. 

The Last Blossom opens in UK cinemas 27th March courtesy of Anime Limited.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©Kazuya Konomoto /The Last Blossom Production Committee

The Lost Alibi (黒い画集　あるサラリーマンの証言, Hiromichi Horikawa, 1960)

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“What did I do to deserve this?” the hero of Hiromichi Horikawa’s The Lost Alibi (黒い画集　あるサラリーマンの証言, Kuroi Gashu: Aru Sarariman no Shogen) ironically asks himself, as if he assumed the answer to be “nothing at all”. Adapted from one of Seicho Matsumoto’s “Black Album” novellas, as in much noir fiction even small transgressions can have drastic consequences and even a step out of line can seriously derail an otherwise ordinary life. Ishino’s (Keiju Kobayashi) dilemma is that he knows if he speaks the truth he may damn himself and ruin the “boring, routine” life he’d built, but if he says nothing another man may pay with his life for a crime he didn’t commit. 

The film’s Japanese title is “testimony of a salaryman,” and that’s really want Ishino is giving in his opening voice over. He explains that he’s a high-ranking executive on a good salary living a fairly successful life working not at the top company in his field but the second best, which he’s fine with. He gets on with his boss precisely because he’s not interested in his job and is even hopeful he could stay on past retirement if he wanted to for that exact reason. But on the other hand, he’s 42 and has 13 years until he’s able to retire. He has no more ambition and his life is essentially on autopilot. All he has to do is stay the course for the next decade or so and everything will be fine.

But when he leaves the office, Ishino doesn’t go straight home as he tells his colleague he will when refusing an invitation, but hangs out in the city drinking and playing pachinko before going to see his mistress, Chieko (Chisako Hara), one of the secretaries working in his office. The affair may be a way of rebelling against his ordinary life or of playing with fire knowing that he could lose everything if his sexual transgression were exposed. Then again, he tells his wife he’s been to the cinema on his own, which in some ways isn’t all that different from having an affair seeing as he’s still skipped out on his domestic responsibilities and left her home alone to look after the children.

The film is mildly critical of this modern salaryman tendency in drawing a direct link between a series of murders of women who were home alone, as if their men had left them vulnerable by vacating the domestic space. Ishino’s wife Kuniko (Chieko Nakakita) even says that she feels a little afraid seeing as she’s home on her own all day while the children are at school and Ishino at work. Ishino suggests they get a dog and in the back of his mind wonders if he should get one for Chieko too. It’s not immediately clear what she is getting out of this affair, though it seems fairly likely that Ishino is paying for her upkeep which is why it’s so easy for him to force her move after they’re unwittingly dragged into the spotlight when the accused man, Sugiyama (Masao Oda), tries to use Ishino as an alibi after bumping into him in the street leaving Chieko’s apartment.

Sugiyama is his neighbour and Ishino only knows him on nodding terms, but he’s immediately worried that he may expose him. After all, he regards this as a low-class area he had no real reason to visit and does not want to have to explain what he was doing there. It doesn’t occur to him that his neighbour may not have wanted to either, if he not been accused of murder. The situation looks quite bad for Sugiyama given that the police have a lot of circumstantial evidence against him, though Ishino alone knows that Sugiyama didn’t do it because he really did see him at a time that makes it difficult to place him at the scene of the crime. But Ishino denies that he was ever there. Those around Ishino seem to condone the idea that he should just keep quiet. He’s under no obligation to help Sugiyama and it’s really nothing to do with him, anyway.

But the irony is that as things spiral out of control even Ishino seems to believe in the absolute power of a confirmatory witness. When he imagines himself talking to the police, the policeman doesn’t believe him because he lied the first time and the information is inconvenient to his case. He tells Ishino that his confession isn’t worth anything without a secondary witness to back it up, meaning he’d have to produce Chieko. It doesn’t really occur to Ishino that if he had told the truth to begin with the police might have been discreet about it. After all, admitting you were with another person whose reputation you do not wish to compromise seems to work well in crime novels. When he finds himself blackmailed by a student living in Chieko’s building, he too tries to get the student’s friend to come as a witness, bizarrely thinking that having someone else there ought to provide security seeing as he could also go to the police and accuse him of extortion if something went wrong never quite thinking that the friend might simply lie just as he did. 

A kind of comparison is indeed being drawn between Ishino and Matsuzaki (Tatsuyoshi Ehara), the student, who is painted as someone with a bad character who has got himself into debt not solely because of his economic circumstances but greed and an irresponsibility with money. Matsuzaki also behaves in an inappropriate way with Chieko in making passive-aggressive romantic overtures and becoming angry when she brushes them off, later basically forcing himself on her having just threatened blackmail. They are each in their way symptoms of post-war moral decline in their intense selfishness. Ishino has achieved the salaryman dream, but now he feels hemmed in by it and empty inside. Matsuzaki, meanwhile, is greedy and amoral, desperate enough to resort to loan sharks and blackmail while chasing the dream that Ishino has already achieved all too easily. 

But the truth is that Ishino had done a lot to deserve this, and got off fairly lightly in the end. A single moral transgression can snowball, and it’s true enough that none of this would have happened if he hadn’t had the affair in the first place. If he’d only told the truth about it, Sugiyama may not have had to go to trial and it would never have come out. If Sugiyama had been executed for this crime, Ishino would be a murderer, and maybe twice over as the person who killed the woman, and maybe several others, may have gone on to kill again until someone finally caught them, if ever. He’s endangered his wife and family, quite literally in physical terms, but also their future and wellbeing given the possibility of his reputation being ruined leading to losing his job while his children would suffer the stigma of his disgrace. He felt conflicted, chased to the brink and even considering suicide knowing his cowardice could condemn Sugiyama to death, but still chose the path of extreme selfishness which seems to be that which defines the post-war era. Even when all’s said and done, he can’t help thinking it’s all a little unfair. All he did was cheat on his wife and lie about it, why is he the one losing everything? But in the end, that’s exactly why. He cheated the salaryman dream, and the retribution was swift. Only too late did he realise the value of his “boring, routine” life of easy comfort in the increasingly compromised post-war society.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Warla (Kevin Z. Alambra, 2025)

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A group of transwomen attempts to turn the tables by kidnapping wealthy foreign businessmen and blackmailing them to fund their surgery, but a newcomer to the group forces them to confront their hypocrisy in turning the violence inflicted on them back on the patriarchal society. Inspired by a real life case, Warla explores the marginalisation of transpeople in a country so imbued with Catholicism and toxic masculinity as the Philippines where all they really have to rely on is each other.

The violence of that society is evident from the very first frames as a body begins to drift into view. Mother Leila has been murdered in a brutal fashion for the crime of existing. Kit-Kat (Lance Reblando), rejected by her conservative father and brother, is cast adrift with no other means of affirming herself. When her father kicks her out, she’s taken in a family of transwomen led by Joice (KaladKaren), but what she didn’t know is that their business model is meeting foreign businessmen on dating apps, kidnapping them, beating them up, and blackmailing them by threatening to tell their wives, families, and employers. In doing so, they’re turning the prejudice they face back on those who rejected them, but as Kit-Kat points out, it’s as if they’ve joined the system rather than beating it. She doesn’t want anything to do with the violence, with ends up partially going along with because it she wants to remain part of the group and has nowhere else to turn.

As Joice points out, having nowhere else to turn is why they’re doing this. There is no social support for them in the Philippines and they struggle to even get casual jobs in fast food restaurants just by virtue of being transpeople. Barbie Ann (Serena Magiliw) has a son from her previous marriage which ended when she decided to embrace her trans identity, but her former wife, Kate (Francesca Dela Cruz), has met someone else and wants to move in with him. Roger (Jel Tarun) is evidently a much more conservative man and is already beginning to distance Kate from Barbie by banning her from the house. When she tries to talk to him on the street, he tells her that she’s filling her son’s head with a lot of nonsense about how people like her are okay which will lead to him getting bullied. He thinks that, as he’s accepted the child and will now be providing for him, he should have a greater say over what he’s taught to think. Barbie’s existence is dangerous precisely because of what she was teaching son, challenging the social order by undercutting the patriarchy.

Ning (Valeria Kurihara), meanwhile, struggles to maintain a relationship because she wants to wait until she’s had her surgery to become intimate. Experiencing extreme dysphoria, she doesn’t want her partner to see the part of herself that she hates, but he gets fed up and leaves her for a cis woman. He tells her that their relationship was always doomed because his father wouldn’t accept her. With his new girlfriend, he can post pictures on social media and doesn’t feel the need to sneak around. Getting the money together to go to Thailand for her surgery becomes an obsession in part so that she can get Lance back, but also so that she will finally feel whole. Barbie also wants the surgery to avoid the kind of violence she inflicts on their victims. Kit-Kat says she isn’t interested in surgery which places her at odds with other members of the group such as Barbie who suggests it’s alright for her because she presents as more obviously feminine and so isn’t subject to the same levels of violence and rejection.

Though they may feel that they’re only playing these men at their own game, they bite off more than they can chew with a short-fused Japanese businessman who talks like a yakuza and flies off the handle with wait staff. Most of the other men gave in quite quickly because of the shame they feel and the fear they have of their transgressions being exposed, but Isamu (Jacky Woo) was like them in that he had nothing left to lose and soon realised he’d been set up. In the end, Joice is forced to make the ultimate maternal gesture to try and save her girls, while Kit-Kat must reckon with where this dark path has taken her. Though she knew that her mother loved her but was unable to stand up to her father’s patriarchal violence, she eventually finds solace in the fact that she can still hold her hand and call her by her true name even if the rest of the world refuses to recognise her.

Warla screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The First Ride (퍼스트 라이드, Nam Dae-joong, 2025)

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According to Tae-jung (Kang Ha-neul), the most hopeless phrase that Koreans say is “next time.” As he grew older and away from his childhood friends, he found himself saying “next time” more often without really thinking about it. But of course, the thing about life is that you always assume there’ll be a “next time”, but that might not necessarily be the case. Perhaps right now is a “last time” and you don’t even know it. The sometime narrator of The First Ride (퍼스트 라이드) tells us right away that this is a”sad story,” but it’s also happy a one about the enduring power of friendship even if you might not be all that close any more.

Tae-jung, Yeon-min (Cha Eun-woo), Do-jin (Kim Young-kwang), and Geum-bok (Kang Young-seok) have been friends since they were six years old, but Yeon-min is moving to New Zealand with his family right after he graduates high school. To mark the occasion, the boys decide to go on a trip and pick Thailand for their destination because Yeon-min’s favourite DJ is going to be playing at a festival. After managing to convince their parents, they finally set off only to be frustrated by an unexpected development that prevents them from travelling. Ten years later, Do-jin has been having a hard time, spending the intervening years in and out of pyshciatric hospital. He nevertheless wants to recreate their teenage trip as soon-to-be 30-year olds. As Yeon-min is unable to come, he decides to take him along with them in the form of a life-size pillow with his face on it, which proves very confusing for the good people of Thailand.

It’s clear that each of the young men has had various struggles in the intervening years. Geum-bok became a tattooist and is still in flight from his mother’s determination that he follow in her footsteps by becoming a Buddhist monk. He ends up going on holiday with his head shaved and wearing monks’ robes hoping for one last hurrah. Tae-jung, meanwhile, is on the way to achieving his dream of becoming president by working as a secretary to an assemblyman who is currently on hunger strike to protest some kind of injustice. Tae-jung’s pure-heated belief in political integrity becomes something of a thorn in the side of his boss who, is of course, not really going so far as to refuse all food, so he’s only too happy to let him go on a once-in-a-lifetime male bonding trip. Tae-jung is also followed by Ok-sim (Han Sun-hwa), who sees herself as his girlfriend, while he seems to be indifferent to her partly because of his own unresolved trauma and fear of making new relationships. But Do-jin who has suffered the most, unable to get over Yeon-min’s absence and looked after Tae-jung and Geum-bok while he struggles with mental health issues including hallucinations and delusions. 

Nevertheless, their time in Thailand is mainly spent on goofy fun which more than once gets them sent to the local jail only to be rescued by an exasperated embassy official (Yoon Kyung-ho) who tries to persuade them to go home early or at least pretend not to be Korean. A baffling plot development in which the gang are kidnapped for illegal organ transplant takes the film in a darker direction though is still mostly played for laughs and acting as a mild caution about the dangers of travel, and most particularly of people who seem nice but might have ulterior motives. It’s only Ok-sim’s messiness that saves the day in the end even if she begins to become slightly fed up with Tae-jung’s continued insensitivity towards her in flirting with other women during their trip. 

But even so, through their shared experiences, the three men begin to overcome some of their shared trauma while reaffirming their friendship. Do-jin comes to accept the truth and is able to begin living a more settled life thanks to the support of his friends in processing his guilt and grief. Though they may not be so close any more, the memory of their childhood friendship becomes a sustaining force for each of them, while they try to maintain their relationship as adults with busy lives. They are, however, much better equipped to that after their strange trip to Thailand despite its continuing absurdity.

Trailer (English subtitles)