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A single mother and her son face the myriad injustices of the modern society with dignity and grace in Yuya Ishii’s quietly seething pandemic-era social drama, A Madder Red (茜色に焼かれる, Akaneiro ni Yakareru). The heroine is constantly asked why she isn’t angrier, those around her confused by her stoical attitude and tendency to simply sigh and say “let’s get through this” rather than railing against the persistent unfairness that defines her life but then she doesn’t have a lot of time for being angry nor would it particularly help her situation or bring about change. All she can do is persevere in the hope that it won’t always be this way, her run of bad luck will end, and she will eventually be permitted to rest.
Ishii opens the film with a 3D model simulation of a traffic accident in which a cyclist is killed by an out of control car on a zebra crossing in an otherwise tranquil residential area. Ryoko’s (Machiko Ono) husband Yoichi (Joe Odagiri) is sent flying and ends up squished like a bug on the windscreen of a vehicle travelling in the other direction. The driver, an elderly man later revealed to have been living with Alzheimer’s, mistook the accelerator for the brake but as he had been a prominent local official the matter was swept under the carpet and he faced no consequences. What people can’t seem to understand is why Ryoko chose to attend the old man’s funeral when he eventually died. It seems attend was all she did, but the man’s son had security throw her out and his lawyer accuse her of “harassment” while expressing anger and resentment that her presence tarnished his father’s lavish ceremony when he had been such a good a man. Her presence perhaps annoys him because he knows on some level he’s in the wrong, while her strength and dignity shame him knowing that they should have just apologised. The lawyer implies she’s being unfair targeting the family who were not themselves responsible for the accident, except that in a sense they were because they failed to protect the old man by continuing to allow him to drive by himself.
Ryoko refused the compensation money for this reason, that they tried to settle it with cash as if her husband’s life had no meaning. She lives in subsidised government housing, but doesn’t claim any benefits supporting herself after she was forced to close her cafe through a part-time job in a supermarket floristry department and after hours sex work. “Break a rule, break your life” she teaches her 13-year-old son Junpei (Iori Wada) yet constantly falls foul of rules written or otherwise while doing nothing wrong in the eyes of those who rant about benefit scroungers and routinely belittle those without means. She’s taken to task by her manager for taking home flowers that were due to be thrown out and for taking a phone call outside the store after clocking off, but when they fire her on a pretext to hire the daughter of a prominent client who can’t find a part-time job because of the pandemic, they refuse to honour the two month notice clause in her contract. Similarly when bullies from Junpei’s school set fire to some books left outside their apartment, they are the ones who have to move for violating the rule about causing a disturbance to the other residents.
Given all of this no one can understand why Ryoko isn’t seething mad. She still pays for her father-in-law’s nursing home and even child support for a girl she’s never met fathered by Yoichi with another woman. Struggling herself, the child’s mother later turns to a sleazy friend of Yoichi’s, Ryu (Tateto Serizawa), to petition Ryoko to increase the child support but like her also worries that it “doesn’t seem right” to further burden a woman who is also struggling to raise a child alone just like herself while Ryu, as he had unsuccessfully with Ryoko, attempts to extort sexual favours in return for his assistance. Ryoko does these things when she doesn’t strictly have to and many people wouldn’t less out of pride or stubbornness than because it’s the right thing to do and if she can satisfy herself that she’s done right by others even if they’ve not done right by her then she maintains her dignity and their scorn can’t harm her.
Even so, sick of being treated like a bug Ryoko’s rage eventually begins to boil over her subdued outfits giving way to a fiery red as her hopes of escape are once again dashed on realising a potential romantic suitor only ever viewed as a plaything. Everyone is always telling Ryoko’s that she’s “strange”, “weird”, “crazy”, in her passive resistance living by her own rules while constantly betrayed by those of others which they only enforce when it suits them. Ishii flags up all of her various expenses on the screen making it clear just how much it costs for Ryoko to be this poor while she seemingly grins and bears it. Then again as the film’s only title card tells us Ryoko is a good actress, and perhaps she has to be to get by in this indifferent society filled hidden suffering and an almost sadistic lust for self-preservation. “Mom, it’s all too much” Junpei sighs as he comes to an appreciation of his mother’s fortitude and her desire to simply “get through this” as they ride a mamachari towards a glowing technicolour sunset which ironically enough refuses to end trapping in them in this space of grief and unfairness but carrying with it a far off hope perhaps cruel in its elusiveness.
A Madder Red streamed as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Images: ©︎2021 “A Madder Red” Film Partners
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