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Over the past few years, there have been a series of scandals exposing a culture rampant sexual harassment and abuse which has long been an inextricable part of the Japanese film industry. Just recently, a director very like the one in Urara Matsubayashi’s indie drama Blue Imagine (ブルーイマジン) was arrested following several accusations of sexual assault though like his film counterpart insists that he has done nothing wrong and all his relationships were consensual.
This is the battle that the women face. When Noeru (Mayu Yamaguchi), an aspiring actress, tries to take her case to the press she’s first met by a scruffy reporter who puts it to her that she willingly participated in a game and her problem is she didn’t get her half of the bargain rather than having been victimised by a predatory man. The reporter claims that they have women like that in the office who are keen to accompany older men for drinks or dinner in the hopes of getting ahead. In retrospect, one could see Tagawa’s treatment of her as a kind of grooming. He love bombs her with praise for her talent and then half promises her a leading role in his upcoming film before attempting to take advantage her. He insists he’s done nothing wrong, and perhaps on some level believes he simply seduced the women he assaulted unable to see how the power he wields over them prevents them from refusing or resisting him. Then again, he and his producer routinely engage in misogynistic banter and wilfully give false hope to the actors who take part in his workshops hoping to bolster their chances of landing professional gigs.
Eventually it’s this wilful crushing of dreams that begins to get to Noeru along with the knowledge that Tagawa is still out there probably doing the same thing to other women aided and abetted by a misogyinistc culture that prevents the women from speaking out through shame and social stigma. When Noeru tells her brother, a lawyer, what happened to her he snaps back that this is why he didn’t want her to become an actress as if she’s somehow brought it on herself. A female reporter who treats their case with sympathy encounters something similar when her editor is relcutant to publish because to him it’s just how things work in the entertainment industry so there’s not really a story in it.
Yet the waters are muddied a little by a sub plot revolving around the concept of compensated dating or as it’s now called “sugar dating” in which young women “date” wealthy older men who provide them with material goods rather than money. One of Noeru’s friends encounters the dangerous side of the arrangement when her Daddy becomes violent and possessive, threatening to leak nude photos of her if she chooses to break up with him. Her friend Yurina (Yui Kitamura) disapproves of what she’s doing which is in effect what the actresses were accused of in engaging in, a solely transactional relationship. A young man Noeru meets who lives in the floors above the refuge she later begins helping out at sees some of their fliers but immediately says they aren’t really for him, which seems like an ironic comment though it’s also of course true that men also suffer sexual harassment from both men and women while facing a similar but different level of social stigma to the women who are just beginning to find the strength to speak out thanks to their newfound solidarity.
Much of this is due to the efforts of Michiyo who runs Blue Imagine to support women who’ve suffered sexual assault or violence. Her Filipina barmaid Jessica also suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her Japanese husband which was compounded by her vulnerability as foreign national knowing her husband could use her immigration status as a further tool to control her while she had little access to help or support.Yet it’s she who tells Noeru that silence is also complicity and she should speak out to the extent that she is able in order to improve the situation for women in the film industry or at least put a stop to Tagawa’s abuse of power.
Confronted at a press conference for his film that is still shockingly going ahead, Tagawa denies everything while the leading actress is forced to say that he was a perfect gentleman only later asking why he and the producer bullied her into a nude scene that wasn’t in her contract or why it was so important for her to take off all her clothes. Pressed by the women for a explantation for his assaults he offers only that his sexual desire was too powerful. The female reporter and her colleague bemoan the lack of progress over lunch, but also refer to another scandal about a minister and his secretary though it turns out not even to be the one the female reporter thought they were talking about.
In the end, however, it’s less about changing the film industry or in indeed society at large as it is about solidarity between women as symbolised by the closing scenes in which everyone at Blue Imagine sits down to dinner together to enjoy traditional Filipino food prepared by Jessica and another woman who arrives at the refuge after suffering domestic violence. Through bonding with other women in similar positions and making the decision to fight back, Noeru comes to make peace with herself and begins moving past her trauma determined to support other women in the hope that something will finally change. Shot with a down to earth naturalism, the film may at times feel bleak and filled with a sense of despair yet displays its own resilience and eventual serenity born of female solidarity and long-awaited self acceptance,
Blue Imagine screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.
Original trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 