Author: Hayley Scanlon

Manhunt (君よ憤怒の河を渉れ, Junya Sato, 1976)

October 3, 2017October 3, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

Most people, when faced with being framed for a crime they did not commit, become indignant, loudly shouting their innocence to the rooftops and decrying injustice. Prosecutor Morioka (Ken Takakura) reacts differently – could he really be a master criminal and have forgotten all about it? Does he have an evil twin? Is he committing crimes in his sleep? The answer to all of these questions is “no”, but Morioka will have to go on a long, perilous journey in which he pilots his first solo aeroplane flight, fights bears, and escapes a citywide police net via horse, in order to find out. Junya Sato’s adaptation of the Juko Nishimura novel Manhunt (君よ憤怒の河を渉れ, Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare, AKA Dangerous Chase, Hot Pursuit) is a classic wrong man thriller though it has to be said thrills are a little thin on the ground.

Morioka’s very bad day begins with a woman (Hiroko Isayama) pointing at him and screaming, clutching the arm of a policeman and insisting that Morioka is the man who burgled her a few nights ago and stole her diamond engagement ring. Morioka is very confused but goes calmly to the police station before asking to see an officer he knows, Yamura (Yoshio Harada). Unfortunately, at the police station things only get worse as they dig up another witness (Kunie Tanaka) who says Morioka mugged him in the street for his camera. Beginning to doubt his sanity Morioka is sure things will be sorted out when they search his apartment, only when they get there they do indeed find a camera, the ring hidden in his fish tank, and a whole lot of dodgy money. Realising the game is up and that his prosecutor buddies aren’t interested in helping him, Morioka takes to the road to clear his name, finding himself increasingly compromised every step of the way.

This being Japan Morioka’s options for disappearing are limited – it’s not as if he can dye his hair or radically change his appearance, he’ll have to make do with sunshades and burying his face in the collar of his mac. Looking askance at policemen and trying to avoid people reading newspapers, he tries to investigate his case beginning with his accusers who, predictably, are not quite who they seemed to be. When one of them ends up dead Morioka can add murder suspect to his wanted card but at least he correctly figures out that this all goes back to one particular case his boss was very keen to rule suicide but Morioka was pretty sure wasn’t.

During his quest Morioka picks up an ally – Mayumi (Ryoko Nakano), the daughter of a wealthy horse trader with political ambitions whom he saves during a random bear attack. Mayumi falls instantly in love with him and despite the best efforts of one of her father’s underlings determines to help him clear his name. Morioka is an honest sort of guy but does also pick up another girl in the city (a cameo appearance by Mitsuko Baisho) who rescues him and takes him home to recuperate from an illness. Much to her disappointment he only has eyes for Mayumi who unexpectedly saves the day thanks to her herd of horses, not to mention her father’s “kind offer” of a light aircraft which Morioka will have to learn to pilot “on the fly”.

Eventually Morioka gets himself confined to a dodgy mental hospital to find the final clue during which time he uncovers a corporate conspiracy to manufacture drugs which turn people into living zombies, all their will power removed and compliance to authority upped. Rather than a dig at corporate cultism, enforced conformity, and conspiratorial manipulation, the Big Pharma angle is a just a plot device which provides the catalyst for Morioka’s final realisations – that having experienced life on the run he can never return to the side of authority. For him, the law is now an irrelevance which fails to protect its people and the “hunted” are in a much stronger position than the “hunters”. Accepting his own complicity in the adventure he’s just had, he willingly submits himself to “justice” for the rules he broke as a man on the run but it looks like those sunshades, the anonymous mac, and the beautiful and loyal Mayumi are about to become permanent fixtures in his impermanent life.

August in Tokyo (愛の小さな歴史, Ryutaro Nakagawa, 2015)

October 2, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

Following on from the dark series of coming of age tales in Plastic Love Story, Ryutaro Nakagawa continues to examine his central themes of unusual connections, lingering effects of past trauma, and the dark side of familial dysfunction in the cheerfully titled August in Tokyo (愛の小さな歴史, Ai no Chiisana Rekishi). Beginning with a framing sequence involving suicide and depression, Nakagawa spins back for a no happier look at two very different people facing much the same problems as they attempt to reconnect with family members, pursue doomed romances, and generally fail to move forward even though they each strive to put the past behind them. Yet there is hope here as the framing sequence proves in its insistence that loss is an inevitable part of life but that the end of one relationship does not mean no others should start.

A young girl, Natusmi (Asaka Nakamura), receives a phone call from the police telling her that her best friend has committed suicide. Left reeling, Natsumi also attempts to kill herself but is saved by a young man with whom she later develops a friendship after bonding over their shared loss in each having lost someone close to them who died by their own hands.

Their story gives way to that of another man and woman who don’t know each other but are living very similar lives in close geographical proximity. Natuski (Eriko Nakamura), having left a job at a book shop following a failed affair, has a part-time job delivering bento. Approached one day by a young man (Sosuke Ikematsu) who tells her that her estranged father (Ken Mitsuishi) is in a bad way, Natsuki decides the best form of revenge might be to move in and look after him. Meanwhile, Natsuo (Takashi Okito) is a petty gangster becoming disillusioned with his life of senseless unpleasantness. Reencountering his younger sister Asuka (Manami Takahashi), Natsuo decides to reassume his familial responsibilities by “saving” her from her dead end life as a drug addicted casual sex worker.

Abandonment and familial breakdown are the threads which bind the stories of Natsuki and Natso together. Living out their eerily similar lives, they each reflect on why it was they were born if their parent(s) did not want them enough to bother looking after them. Natsuki’s memories of her father who left when she was small are not positive. She has a scar on her chest from where he burnt her with a cigarette and still resents him for the drunken beatings he inflicted on her mother who later died when Natsuki was only ten years old. She wonders if her life might have been different if she’d had a normal childhood. A failed a attraction to a middle-class pianist only serves to ram home her sense of insecurity and inadequacy, leaving her to wonder if she can ever escape the cycle of suffering to which her father’s failures seem to have condemned her.

Natsuo and his sister have it harder, each wondering why it was they were born, preferring to think it was all just an unhappy accident of a biological urge rather than the expression of a love they themselves have never felt. At some point Natsuo made the decision to abandon his family, leaving Asuka to deal with it alone. Attempting to care for their abusive father with senile dementia, Asuka’s life was destroyed, leaving her no way to support herself until an ill advised romance led her into the path of drugs and the sex trade. Natsuo wants to put things “right”, but he may be running out of time.

Natsuki and Natsuo struggle, each trying to do the “right” thing but finding themselves conflicted. Natsuki can’t forgive her father for everything he’s put her through. The young man who convinced her to help him, perhaps disconnected himself, describes Natsuki’s father as “like a father” to him – a figure of nobility who stood up for others and was the only man who took him for drinks and spent time with him as a father might. Natsuki says says her only purpose in life is hating her father, yet in the end she can’t. Natsuo’s worries are equally self focussed in his guilt over having abandoned his sister and her subsequent fall into dangerous drug dependency but his late in the day attempts to “save” her and their patronising paternalism often frustrate his essential goal.

Running in parallel these two sad stories are tragedies waiting to happen but, even in their darkness, they hold the potential for salvation. As in the framing sequence, such unexpected connections may be born from sadness but there is happiness to be found if you can find the strength to carry on. Maintaining his familiar aesthetic of naturalism mixed with expressionist dance sequences, Nakagawa’s latest examination of human relationships and contemporary society is bleak but also hopeful, insisting that patch work hearts are the path to a brighter future.

Available in most territories via iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, and Google Play.

Trailer (English subtitles/captions)

Tale of a Raindrop (雨粒の小さな歴史, Ryutaro Nakagawa, 2012)

October 1, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

Leaving university is a stressful time in anyone’s life, but for the heroine of Ryutaro Nakagawa’s debut feature, Tale of a Raindrop (雨粒の小さな歴史, Amatsubu no Chiisana Rekishi), troubles seem to have arrived all at once. A young woman about to step out onto the adult stage, Michiru (Noa Sakakibayashi) is faced with a series of problems familial and personal as she learns to come to terms with abandonment by her estranged father through the strange repetition of her own adolescent life.

22 year old Michiru is about to graduate university, but her life has just taken a for the surreal. Her best friend dies, she finds out she has a younger sister only to lose her too, and then a strange guy with a Chaplin fixation thinks now is the best time to nervously declare his love. Receiving a letter from a mysterious young woman named Sayuri (Mio Minami), Michiru discovers her long lost father had another daughter and abandoned her too. Sayuri wants to get to know her father and asks Michiru for advice, but Michiru knows even less than she does. Raised by her mother alone, Michiru hasn’t thought of her father in years and knows nothing about him. The letter says he liked the song Ma Vie En Rose, the films of Charlie Chaplin, and foreign cigarettes, but precious little else.

From this point on Michiru’s life splits into a series of concentric circles. Somehow afraid to answer Sayuri’s letter, Michiru nevertheless wants to find out more about her familial relations, reading the book Sayuri suggested in her letter which her mother later confirms was among her father’s favourites and details the marriage of a snowflake and a raindrop which produces a child but then dissolves. It seems Michiru’s father was a nervous sort of man, a mumbler, who found it difficult to voice his feelings and had a tendency to leave his lovers after they had his child. Strangely enough, Michiru’s own suitor, a nervous cinephile who frequents the cinema where she works, is also a mumbler who loves Chaplin and can’t seem to make himself plain where it comes to emotional truths but this strange romantic circularity only seems to confuse Michiru further.

Meanwhile, Michiru’s close childhood friendship suddenly ends when she receives a call from her mother to say that Harumi has been killed by a train. There was no note, but it’s difficult not assume her death was a suicide, perhaps brought on by longterm abuse at the hands of her mentally ill father to whom Harumi had become the sole carer. Not having detected the extent of the sadness in her melancholy friend who often remarked that she wished Michiru was her sister, Michiru’s guilt and loneliness intensify as she contemplates the sudden revelation that she has a younger sister she never knew about.

Rather than answer the letter, Michiru opts to track Sayuri down, discovering that until very recently she had been living with a no good, drug addict boyfriend (Sosuke Ikematsu) intent on pimping her out for extra money. Hoping to get her new sister out of a dead end life on the fringes of the sex trade, she takes her in and the pair become firm friends but Sayuri’s life has been harder than Michiru could ever have imagined. Michiru’s upbringing was stable and loving whereas Sayuri’s was troubled and loveless. Sayuri’s only wish was to find the sister she hoped would be mired in the same misery and is disappointed to discover that another woman sharing her no good father’s genes has turned out fairly normal.

Looking for answers, Michiru eventually gets in touch with a friend of her father’s who, somewhat tactlessly, describes him as “like a father to me”. Oddly enough this nonbiological son is able to illuminate the latter part of her father’s life which seems to have been a sad and lonely one though she does find some evidence that perhaps she was always in his thoughts after all. Split into three chapters in which Michiru hears “the music pouring out from the world” and “the music pouring out from her”, before learning to embrace the “music pouring out from myself”, Michiru’s journey is a slow dance into adulthood as she learns to put the traumas of the past to one side, accepting their part in her formation but refusing to let them interfere with her future happiness. Elliptical and drenched in symbolism, Nakagawa’s feature debut is a beautifully restrained look at blossoming womanhood in which the past is neither friend nor enemy but a constant companion whose existence must be recognised but never dwelt on.

Available in most territories via iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, and Google Play.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Monkey King (西游記之大鬧天宮, Cheang Pou-soi, 2014)

September 30, 2017September 19, 2019by Hayley Scanlon3 Comments

Everybody knows the story of The Monkey King. His “journey to the west” has been reimagined by everyone from Tsai Ming-liang to Akira Toriyama but, all power to them, no one has yet had the courage to stuff Donnie Yen into a monkey suit to fully recreate the legend. Cheang Pou-Soi’s The Monkey King (西游記之大鬧天宮) rectifies this problem but makes up for it by adding a lot more to the already overcrowded arena. Based on a few early chapters of the story, this first of three Monkey King films could best be classified as an origin story as it retells the events which eventually see Sun Wu-kong imprisoned underneath Five Finger Mountain for 500 years.

Basically, a long, long time ago there was a war between gods and demons after which a fragile truce was formed. The demons were defeated and exiled from Heaven which is repaired thanks to the sacrifice of Princess Nuwa (Zhang Zilin) who transforms herself into crystal tears, one of which births a strange divine creature who has a long and arduous journey ahead of him. Emerging from his crystal egg, The Monkey King (Donnie Yen) returns to lead his people before being discovered by a monk who seeks to train him and make sure he remains on the path of the light. Now renamed Sun Wu-kong, The Monkey King finds himself summoned to the heavenly court where he causes a bunch of trouble and becomes swept up in the Demon King’s ongoing plot for revenge.

A super high budget production, The Monkey King is a live action/animation hybrid even beyond that of any recent Chinese fantasy blockbuster. Utilising green screen for the majority of backgrounds, Cheang also adds in a menagerie of strange creatures including supernatural dragons before the final fight develops into a complete CGI fest as a giant cow and super powered monkey duke it out for the rights to define their world. Rendered in 3D the battles are a whirl of brightly coloured mythic action but it’s often a confection too sweet to be to be truly satisfying, backed up only by a very variable quality of animation.

The film’s true standout element is in the surprisingly nuanced performance of Yen who completely becomes The Monkey King right down to his animalistic gestures. This being a family film he’s much more of a recalcitrant fun lover than someone who likes to cause trouble, but nevertheless trouble is usually what you get if The Monkey King pays you a visit. He is, however, hampered by the slightly incongruous obviousness of his monkey suit given the more abstract designs afforded to other characters. Despite the inherent strangeness of his appearance, Yen is afforded the opportunity to do some quality acting alongside killer fight sequences even if he’s often let down by the lacklustre script and production design.

The origin story of The Monkey King is a necessarily long and complicated one but even so, Cheang seems to have decided that coherence is unnecessary when his audience knows the story so well already. Consequently, the potential romance between Son Wu-kong and the fox spirit Ru-xue is inadequately backed up given its importance to the central narrative whereas other characters appear for such little screen time that they almost seem like excuses to add yet another famous name to the poster. Meandering from one episode to another, the film makes little attempt to maintain engagement between its large scale set pieces, becoming over reliant on its parade of well known personages.

Despite the gravitas offered by Chow Yun-fat and the intense villainy of Aaron Kwok’s poisonous antagonist, The Monkey King remains a fairly silly exercise, a visual sugar rush which seems primed to put viewers off their tea whilst leaving them with a slight headache to boot. Playing best to small children and family audiences, The Monkey King’s only selling point is in the surprising (and almost unrecognisable) performance of Yen as its titular hero whose good hearted japes are sure to be appreciated by the young of heart everywhere. The Monkey King will return, but hopefully with a little more maturity as his quest nears its iconic destination, or at least with a little more finesse.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Ghostroads – a Japanese Rock’n’Roll Ghost Story (ゴーストロード, Enrico Ciccu, 2017)

September 29, 2017September 29, 2017by Hayley Scanlon2 Comments

What price would you pay for fame? A down on his luck rockabilly guitarist asks himself just this question when faced with the offer of fantastic success beyond all his wildest dreams at the small cost of sacrificing some friends to the musical gods. Rest assured, Ghostroads: A Japanese Rock’n’Roll Ghost Story (ゴーストロード) isn’t waxing metaphorical on the price of success or the pitfalls of the music business so much as it is riffing on B-movie rock and roll horror. Everything about Ghostroads is retro from the rockabilly scene setting to the shooting style and musical cues but it’s all done with such charm and good humour that it’s near impossible to resist the film’s old fashioned appeal.

The Screaming Telstars are, as the narrator tells us, a bit “crap” and their lead singer, Tony (Mr. Pan), is perhaps not as committed to the band as he once was. Fellow band members remain exasperated by Tony’s often hilariously late arrival at rehearsal sessions while the producer and tech guy cringe at his terrible, lazy playing. Nevertheless, Tony vows to pull it together in time for the gig and, to be fair, he usually does. This time, however, things take a turn for the worse when Tony’s absent minded guitar frenzy proves too much for his ancient amp. The venue they’re supposed to play the next day doesn’t have house amps so Tony will need to sort himself out with a new one or risk cancelling.

Tony also has no money so makes the decision to stop into a tiny old fashioned second hand musical equipment store in a back alley to look for a vintage amp to add to his collection. Despite the warnings of the shop assistant (Taka Shin-Okubo) who acts more like the wise monk in a kung fu film than a serious businessman, Tony is strangely drawn to one amp in particular. Seeing Tony won’t be dissuaded, the man behind the counter lets him have it for free on the condition that it’s his responsibility now and whatever happens with it, he can’t bring it back.

This is largely because the amp comes with a lodger or as he calls himself, an “amperition”. Peanut Butter (Darrell Harris) is a smooth American blues singer who has been imprisoned in his amp so long he’s quite desperate to impart some musical wisdom to a struggling rock star like Tony, but his advice comes at a price.

Tony’s playing improves under the tutelage of Peanut Butter, but Tony has another problem in the return of a longterm nemesis from his student days, Shinzo (Tatsuji Nobuhara) – lead singer of The Mad Reader, and the man who possibly stole Tony’s girl, Shinobu (Tomomi Hiraiwa). Thus Tony’s journey begins from useless loserdom to big time star, besting his rival and finally having a shot with the beautiful Shinobu, but all the while everyone is worrying about him. Peanut Butter is not a positive influence in Tony’s life, and the fact that he keeps talking to someone no one else can see is a definite cause for concern, but then again Peanut Butter says he can make Tony a star, if only he’ll ditch all his friends…

In short, Ghostroads is a vehicle for The Neatbeats – the kind of band movie they just don’t make anymore. Set firmly within the world of rockabilly subculture, the film also features a number of other underground bands including 50 Kaitenz and The Privates whose lead singer, Tatsuji Nobuhara, plays the part of Tony’s arch rival Shinzo. Peanut Butter assures Tony that all he needs is to find the one perfect song (something he can help him with, for a price), but every song featured is a hit with the soundtrack proving the film’s most essential asset.

Ghostroads commits absolutely to its retro aims, aping the classically kooky effects of the down and dirty silly rock horror movies of ages past. The effects are spot on with Peanut Butter permanently surrounded by a blueish haze which seems to intensify whenever he’s doing something not quite right. Peanut Butter also has a strange little hologram device featuring a tiny burlesque dancer (played by The Tassels’ Miwa Rock) which is never explained but adds to the increasingly surreal atmosphere. Surreal and quirky it most definitely is but Ghostroads has real love both for its subculture setting and for the long forgotten classics it’s trying to resurrect. Good, clean, unpretentious fun, Ghostroads is proof enough that the rock and roll spirit is alive and well and living in Japan.

Screened at Raindance 2017.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Noise (Yusaku Matsumoto, 2017)

September 28, 2017May 7, 2018by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

What makes someone take off on a homicidal rampage? First time director Yusaku Matsumoto attempts to find out by examining the down and dirty backstreets of Akihabara eight years after a mass killing shook the nation. Dealing with trauma, the death of the family, the precarious position of vulnerable young women pulled into an industry they don’t quite understand, economic insecurity, underground idols, and general nihilistic hopelessness Matsumoto has certainly conjured enough noise to drive even the most level of heads to distraction but once again, it is the city itself which eats its young in the indifferent frenzy of modern life.

Eight years ago, Misa’s mother was one of several people murdered by a lone assailant who drove a truck into a busy pedestrian intersection in Akihabara before getting out and stabbing random passersby. Misa is now making a go of it as an “underground idol” – young girls who sing and dance in clubs in Akihabara but don’t have recording contracts or big studios behind them. When not performing on stage she makes ends meet by working in the “massage parlour’ attached to the studio where she provides sexualised services but not actual sex to met who pay a flat rate on the door and then pick their particular activities off the menu inside.

Meanwhile, delivery driver Ken lives a lonely and miserable existence with his hedonistic mother who rolls in drunk early in the morning and constantly badgers her son for money. Ken would like to better himself and escape his dreadful living conditions, but his mother disagrees and disapproves of him spending his money on online courses rather than giving it all to her. Ken’s mother is also in trouble with the same loanshark gangsters which (secretly) run Misa’s club.

The third plot strand follows high school girl Rie and her lonely father who looks after grandpa at home and tries to reconnect with his daughter but can’t seem to get through to her. Rie chases a delinquent boyfriend she fantasises about trapping through pregnancy before getting herself mixed up with gangsters and embroiled in the same world as Misa but with no one looking out for her.

The strongest theme which runs through the film is that of familial breakdown. All of the protagonists come from one parent families in which the remaining parent has largely failed in their responsibilities. Though this seemingly deliberate approach is unfortunate in playing into the stigma surrounding atypical families, it is certainly true that none of the young people has any access to support from the older generation. Misa’s father had long been abusive even before her mother died, gambling the family money away betting on the horses and spending his life at home drinking. Now seemingly reformed (though not perhaps free of gambling), he wants to try again but it may already be too late.

Similarly, Rie’s father does his best – coming home from work on time, cooking proper meals, and trying to take an interest but he can’t get through to his angry teenage daughter and is also preoccupied by the need to care for his aged, bedridden father. In a strange coincidence he ends up visiting Misa’s underground idol bar where he takes a liking to Misa precisely because she looks a little bit like Rie. Nicknamed Yama-chan by the girls, Rie’s father’s attempts to forge a connection with a look-a-like of his own daughter take on a painfully tender quality of muddled, misdirected affection but a quick look around the rest of the club makes plain it’s not so far removed from the massage parlour as one might think. One of the other regular patrons is a colleague of Ken’s who seems to have little else in his life apart from underground idols, spending his life in the club buying false connection through Polaroid photos and handshakes. What the girls are selling isn’t sex but (false) kindness, providing a facsimile of the love each of these disconnected men is seeking but either thinks themselves unworthy of or is unable to find out in the “real” world.

Ken looks down on these men, he doesn’t understand why they waste their lives in vacuous pursuits of empty pleasure, but his own life, which has been more or less ruined by his irresponsible mother, holds little pleasure of its own. Reading books about mass killings and inspired by the 2008 mass murder, Ken repeatedly makes nuisance phone calls to the police station which arrested the killer threatening to commit a similar crime himself. Flat broke, abandoned, evicted, and with no future possibilities it’s little wonder he feels as backed into a corner as he does but Ken’s final, raw phone call in which the policeman on the other end tries to reassure him that hope does exist proves the last straw in his ever fracturing mental state.

In trying to answer the question why someone might want to kill others, Matsumoto does indeed blame noise. Misa, in giving a painful to camera interview looking back on the massacre reveals that she took all of her anger and internalised it, hurting herself rather than others. Ken, by contrast, seems to burn with rage permanently on the brink of explosion. Rie tries to find the peace she couldn’t find in her own family by starting a new one but is extremely deluded by her choice of mate and then deluded once again by a man faking kindness but thinking only of commerce. All of this desperation – the exploitation, the gangsters, the dire economic prospects of neglected children, conspire to push the already strained closer to the edge, believing that harming others will make them feel better through a strange kind of social revenge. Matsumoto’s Akihabara pulses to beat of synth strings and idol pop, though its soundscape is not one of freedom and joy but anxiety and depression as the city’s disenfranchised youth marches towards its dead end future with no hope in sight.

Screened at Raindance 2017

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Perfect Revolution (パーフェクト・レボリューション, Junpei Matsumoto, 2017)

September 27, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

If there is one group consistently underrepresented in cinema, it surely those living with disability. Even the few films which feature disabled protagonists often focus solely on the nature of their conditions, emphasising their suffering or medical treatment at the expense of telling the story of their lives. Junpei Matsumoto’s Perfect Revolution (パーフェクト・レボリューション) which draws inspiration from the real life experiences of Yoshihiko Kumashino – a Japanese man born with cerebral palsy who operates a not for profit organisation promoting awareness of sexual needs among the disabled community, makes a criticism of the aforementioned approach a central pillar of its narrative. Unlike many on-screen depictions of disabled people, Perfect Revolution attempts to reflect the normality of life with a disability whilst never shying away from some of the difficulties and the often hostile attitude from an undereducated society.

Kumashiro (Lily Franky), a man in his mid-40s, was born with cerebral palsy and has been using a wheelchair for most of his life. An activist for disabled rights, he’s written a book about his experiences and is keen to address the often taboo subject of sexuality among disabled people. Kumashiro has long since given up on the idea of romance or of forming a “normal” relationship leading to marriage and children but his life changes when a strange pink-haired woman barges into his book signing and demands to know why he’s always talking about sex but never about love. Kumashiro thinks about her question and answers fairly (if not quite honestly as he later reveals) that he doesn’t yet know what love is but is just one of many hoping to find out. This impresses the woman who approaches him afterwards and then refuses to leave him alone. Ryoko (Nana Seino), asking to be known as “Mitsu” (which means “honey” in Japanese – a nice paring with “Kuma” which means “bear”), suddenly declares she’s fallen in love with Kumashiro, whom she nicknames Kumapi.

The elephant in the room is that there is clearly something a little different about Mitsu whose brash, loud manner runs from childishly endearing to worryingly reckless. Mitsu is a sex worker at a “soapland” (a brothel disguised as a bathhouse in which the customer is “washed” by an employee) and sees nothing particularly wrong in her choice of occupation though recognises that other people look down on her because of it – something which she doesn’t quite understand and is constantly exasperated by. Perhaps offensively, she sees her own position as a woman (and a sex worker) as akin to being “disabled” in the kind of social stigma she faces but does not identify as being disabled in terms of her undefined mental health problems beyond accepting that she is “different” and has not been able to integrate into “regular” society. Nevertheless, she believes herself to be at one with Kumashiro in his struggle and is determined to foster the “perfect revolution” with him to bring about true happiness for everyone everywhere.

Thankfully Kumashiro is surrounded by supportive friends and family who are keen to help him manage on his own rather than trying to run his life for him but he does regularly encounter less sympathetic people from a drunken couple who decide to lay into him in a restaurant to a well meaning religious woman who runs after Kumashiro to tell him how “inspired” she feels just looking at him before trying to thrust money into his purse. Mitsu’s problems are less immediately obvious but her loud, volatile behaviour is also a problem for many in conformist Japan as is her straightforwardness and inability to understand the rules of her society. Mitsu has no one to look after her save a fortune teller (Kimiko Yo) who has become a surrogate mother figure, but it is a problem that no one has thought to talk to her about seeing a doctor even when her behaviour turns violent or veers towards self-harm.

Despite their struggles to be seen as distinct individuals, both Kumashiro and Mitsu are often reduced simply to their respective “differences”. Kumashiro does a lot of publicity for his book but is exasperated by well-meaning photographers who ask, tentatively, if they can photograph just his hands – literally reducing him to his disability. An “inspirational” TV documentary strand is also interested in interviewing Kumashiro and Mitsu, but only because of the “unusual” quality of their relationship. It quickly becomes apparent to Kumashiro that the documentarians aren’t interested in documenting his life so much as constructing a narrative around “damaged” outsiders that viewers can feel sorry for. Fearing that Kumashiro looks too cheerful, the producers ask him to remove his makeup and colourful clothing whilst explaining to Mitsu that they don’t want her to talk about sex work in a positive manner and would prefer it if she used a more acceptable euphemism rather than calling it what it is. Mitsu doesn’t realise she’s been had, but Kumashiro leaves the shoot feeling humiliated and annoyed.

Matsumoto does his best to present the issues sensitively, never patronising either Kumashiro or Mitsu but depicting them as real people with real faults just living their lives like everybody else. Neatly avoiding the classic Hollywood, happy ever after ending he emphases that there is still a long way to go but it is unfortunate that Mitsu’s situation is treated more lightly than it deserves and that her eventual desire to get treatment is undermined by the film’s liberated ending which is, nevertheless, inspirational as Kumashiro and Mitsu both commit themselves to the “perfect revolution” of a better, happier future both for themselves and for all mankind.

Screened at Raindance 2017.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Freezing Point (氷点, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1966)

September 26, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

Revenge is a dish best served cold, so they say, but just how cold can you go before your own heart freezes over? Based on a novel by Ayako Miura, Freezing Point (氷点, Hyoten) is a somewhat unusual family drama centring on parental responsibility, familial love, and the necessity of forgiveness following betrayal and tragedy. Maintaining Miura’s characteristic Hokkaido setting with its appropriately snowbound vistas, Yamamoto sidesteps the author’s Christianising viewpoint whilst embracing her views on the nature of sin and the innocence of children.

Ophthalmologist Keizo (Eiji Funakoshi) returns home one day to find his wife, Natsue (Ayako Wakao), playing the piano, seemingly in a kind of self involved rapture. The maid has taken their son, Toru, out, and their daughter, Ruriko, is supposedly playing outside. Only, she isn’t – Ruriko has gone missing. Some time later they find the little girl’s body at the riverside, apparently strangled. The killer is caught and commits suicide in prison. Natsue has a breakdown and spends some time in a hospital but on her release Keizo decides to adopt a baby to help her recover from losing Ruriko.

More exactly, Keizo is torn between altruistic, humanist values and a deep and cruel desire for revenge on the wife he believes neglected their daughter while she entertained a lover at home. Keizo’s plan is to adopt the now orphaned baby girl of the man who murdered his daughter both as a way of proving himself a good, forgiving person and of getting his own back on his wife by forcing her to raise a murderer’s child, only revealing the truth once she has come to love it like her own.

Natsue’s heart truly is broken by the death of her daughter. It’s not exactly unusual for small children to be playing outside in ‘60s Japan – in this Natsue is not at fault. Here is the first grain of “sin” – there was indeed someone else in the house that day, another doctor from Keizo’s hospital, Murai (Mikio Narita). What exactly happened is not clear but Keizo is convinced the pair have been having an affair for some time and assumes his wife had asked the maid to take their son out and put Ruriko outside so that her lover could visit unseen. Natsue is also unable to bear any more children due to complications with a previous pregnancy and Keizo seems to think she gave herself free reign in having an affair seeing as there could be no “consequences”. Keizo’s “revenge” is as much about his betrayal as a husband as it is resentment in holding his wife responsible for the death of their daughter even though, as another friend points out, unexpected, random events occur all the time and this one was no one’s fault but the killer’s.

Parenthood, or more specifically motherhood, becomes a persistent theme as Natsue becomes pre-occupied with being a “good mother”. Time moves on and the baby, Yoko (Michiyo Okusu billed here as Michiyo Yasuda), grows up only for Natsue to discover the truth by accident after she finds a letter Keizo had written to a friend in which he expresses his inability to love Yoko knowing what she is. Yoko is not and cannot be responsible for her father’s crime but its effects are visited on her as she is branded a “murderer’s child” or a carrier of “murderous genes”. Once Natsue knows the truth the relationship changes and becomes one of artificial game playing as she and Keizo tiptoe around the issue, each unwilling to give the other the satisfaction of knowing that the game is up. Yoko realises she must be an adopted child but remains cheerful, kind, and innocent, not wanting to be a burden to the family to which she is desperate to belong.

Matters come to a head when Yoko approaches adulthood. Brother Toru (Kei Yamamoto), overhearing his parents’ ugly argument, discovers Yoko is not his blood sister and develops complicated, inappropriate romantic feelings for her (feelings which his mother almost wants to encourage if only as a kind of revenge against Keizo). Meanwhile, he also brings home a university friend, Kitahara (Masahiko Tsugawa), as a possible suitor for her and way out of this dead end tragic love story. Natsue tries to put an end to this by literally getting in the middle of it – cutting off the correspondence between Yoko and Kitahara before trying it on with him herself either as a way of frightening him off completely or positioning herself as a direct rival to her adopted daughter. Rival she already is in the eyes of her son, and also perhaps those of Keizo whose eyes linger on the daughter he couldn’t force himself to love a little too long in realising she is no longer a child and no blood relation. Thus it comes as a relief to him when a family friend offers to make Yoko her heir, paying for a college education or foreign travel if those are things Yoko would like to do.

Yoko, however, wants nothing more than to stay with her family forevermore. This is a common sentiment from a daughter in a family drama, one which usually changes when an appropriate marriage partner is found, but it means more for Yoko whose single concern is feeling unwanted by her parents whilst also feeling grateful to them for taking her in. Her romance with Kitahara provokes a revelation which leaves her feeling internally destroyed. A classically “good” person, she did not want to see any “bad” in herself but now finds out her birth father committed a heinous, senseless crime against people she loves. This, she says, is the freezing point of her heart. Realising that “sin” is everywhere and even if it hadn’t been her father there would be other instances of wrongdoing somewhere in her lineage she feels as if her heart is frozen, her spirit killed, and she can no longer continue.

Of course, there are more revelations to come provoked by yet another tragedy which threatens to bring the whole thing full circle. Nobody expected or intended this as a result of their own petty desires for revenge, but then all they really thought about was themselves and the way they’d been slighted. Keizo asked his doctor friend who facilitated his adoption whether there existed two people in the world who’d be able to love the child of the man who’d killed their own. His friend is sure such people do exist (though it turns out he had his own solution to this particular problem), but Keizo’s desires are less about trying to prove himself one of them than exacting the most painful kind of emotional wound on a wife he feels has humiliated him. This family is a fraud and the only “innocent” member is the adopted daughter whose capacity for goodness they have in part destroyed. Bleak, probing, and extremely uncomfortable, Yamamoto’s adaptation of Miura’s novel is an artfully composed dissection of family values, such as they are, in the post-war world.

The Road to Mandalay (再見瓦城, Midi Z, 2016)

September 25, 2017by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

Kipling’s Mandalay, as uncomfortable as it seems to us now, is an imperialistic nostalgia trip through the orientalised, “exotic” East. Midi Z adopts a well known line of the poem, The Road to Mandalay (再見瓦城, Zài Jiàn Wǎ Chéng), as an ironic comment on the journey undertaken by the central pair of hopeful migrants crossing from Myanmar into Thailand each for different reasons but both in search of something unavailable to them at home.

Lianqing (Wu Ke-xi) crosses a river on a dingy and is met by a man on a motorbike who takes her to a truck which will take her into Bangkok. Only a second class passenger, Lianqing is about to huddle into a hidden compartment in the vehicle’s boot when a man volunteers to give up his seat in the front so that she can have a more comfortable journey. When they arrive, the man, Guo (Kai Ko), offers to help her find work and gives her his cousin’s phone number so they can keep in touch. Lianqiang is grateful but not particularly interested and tries to fob him off with a jar of shrimp paste as a thank you.

Mostly told through Lianqing’s eyes, her migration story is a difficult one. The friend she’s come to meet, Hua, isn’t even there when she arrives and is in a permanently bad mood after having lost her job due to not having the proper documentation. The other two women in the flat, one of whom, Cai, is also from her village, are currently working in the sex trade – something which they don’t particularly advise Lianqing take up, but finding a job without papers proves near impossible. Lianqiang eventually finds work as a dishwasher in a restaurant which, all things considered, suits her well enough – the work is menial and intensive, but the atmosphere is relaxed, the boss is OK, and she still earns enough to live on and send money home. Guo objects to Lianqing working in such a lowly place and wants her to come to work in a factory with him where the pay is better but Lianqing prefers her independent city life to an oppressive factory-bound existence. Nevertheless when the restaurant is raided she is forced to join Guo’s factory after running out of other options.

Though The Road to Mandalay is often described as a love story, its central romance is as thorny as the protagonists’ liminal status. Guo’s early gesture of self sacrifice looks like altruistic chivalry, but his designs on Lianqing are obvious from the outset. His big brotherly protection soon veers off into a kind of patronising paternalism before developing into something more worryingly possessive. Despite appearing to avoid seeming overbearing, Guo’s personal insecurities eventually lead him into the worst kind of betrayal when he tries to stop Lianqing from acquiring her work papers in the belief that they will take her away from him.

Guo’s philosophies are all short-term. He wants to earn as much money as possible with the idea of eventually going back to Myanmar and perhaps opening a shop selling imported Chinese clothing. Lianqing’s thinking couldn’t be more different. Her plans are longterm. She wants her work permit to get a proper, middle-class city job so she can have a better quality of life. After getting her work permit she wants a Thai passport which will allow her to move on again, perhaps to Taiwan, to further improve her living standards and future prospects. Guo wants Lianqing and he wants her to come home with him. He is not prepared to follow her and knows that she does not envisage the same kind of future as he does. Prompted by Lianqing’s talk of going to Taiwan, Guo asks her if she’s ever thought about getting married. Sensing his intention, Lianqing’s answer is a flat no. It’s too soon, she wants something more out of life than being someone’s wife.

Thailand, however, is not particularly supportive of her dreams. The migrants’ lives are hard. The streets are regularly patrolled at night with police checking IDs and constant crackdowns mean the visa rules are being enforced though bribery is also rife. Migrants present an easy point of exploitation for all as they have no way of protecting themselves and are unable to go to the authorities due to their undocumented status. Lianqing decides to get a permit through the back door, bribing officials through a broker, but the papers she paid a small fortune for are next to worthless and her only other options involve identity theft. At the factory she doesn’t even have an identity as her name is taken away from her and replaced with a number. When another migrant from Myanmar is badly injured in an accident, Lianqing and the others are forced to sign a waver form which absolves the factory of responsibility and declares the matter “settled” with an agreement to pay medical costs but with no further compensation or legal recourse. It’s no wonder that the common advice swapped between migrants is to leave Thailand as soon as possible for somewhere less hostile to young people with big dreams.

Midi Z’s visual style is broadly naturalistic but slips into surrealism as Lianqing is forced to consider working in the sex trade while Guo impotently throws logs into a furnace with drug fuelled frustration. Lianqing might have been able to escape her economic circumstances, but she can’t escape the net of patriarchy presented by men like Guo who can’t accept her desire for independence and negation of their hopes and dreams which largely rely on her agreeing to conform to their visions rather than her own. Chances of success are slim yet Lianqing refuses to give up on her determination for a better future. For others, however, this dead end life of constant frustration is bound only for tragedy with no hope in sight.

The Road to Mandalay screens at Regent Street Cinema on 26th September before opening in selected cinemas courtesy of Day for Night. Further dates scheduled so far include:

Original trailer (dialogue free)

Mukoku (武曲 MUKOKU, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, 2017)

September 24, 2017by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

The way of the sword is fraught with contradictions. Like many martial arts, kendo is not primarily intended for practical usage but for self improvement, emotional centring, and fostering a big hearted love of country designed to ensure lasting peace between men. Nevertheless, it tends to attract people who struggle with just those issues, hoping to find the peace within themselves though mastery of the sword. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s long and varied career has often focussed on outsiders dealing with extreme emotions and Mukoku (武曲 MUKOKU) is no different in this regard as the two men at its centre lock swords at cross purposes, each fighting something or someone else within themselves rather than the flesh and blood opponent standing before them.

Kengo Yatabe’s (Go Ayano) life has been defined by the sword. As a young boy his father, Shozo (Kaoru Kobayashi), began training Kengo intensively but his standards were high, too high for a small boy who only wanted to please his dad but found himself beaten with the weapon he was failing to master. Twenty years later Kengo is a broken man after a long deferred violent confrontation between father and son has left Shozo in a vegetative state, neither dead nor alive, no longer a figure of fear and hate but of guilt and ambivalence. Kengo has given up kendo partly out of guilt but also as a kind of rebellion mixed with self harm and is currently working as a security guard. He spends his days lost in an alcoholic fog, trailing an equally drunken casual girlfriend (Atsuko Maeda) behind him.

Meanwhile, high school boy Toru (Nijiro Murakami) is a classic angry young man working out his frustrations through a hip-hop infused punk band for which he writes the angst ridden poetry that serves as their lyrics. Toru has no interest in something as stuffy as Kendo but when he’s set upon by a bunch of Kendo jocks he decides he’s not going down without a fight. Winning through underhanded street punk moves would normally be frowned upon but the ageing monk who runs the high school kendo club, Mitsumura (Akira Emoto), is struck by his nifty footwork and decides to convince the troubled young man that the path to spiritual enlightenment lies in mastery over the self through mastery of the sword.

The wise old monk pits the self-destructive older man against the scrappy young one, hoping to bring them both to some kind of peaceful equilibrium, with near tragic results. Kengo’s ongoing troubles are born of a terrible sense of guilt, but also from intense self-loathing in refusing to accept that he’s become the man he hated, as broken and embittered as the father who made him that way. Shozo was a kendo master, but as the monk points out, in technique only – his heart was forever unquiet and he never achieved the the true peace necessary to master his art. Knowing this to be the truth only made it worse yet Shozo also knew the burden he’d placed on his son. They say every man must kill his father, but Kengo can’t let the ghost of his go – clinging on to a mix of filial piety and resentful loathing which is slowly turning him into everything he hates.

Toru’s problem’s are pushed into the background but seeing as his enemy is not the flesh and blood threat of an overbearing father but the elements and more particularly water, it will be much harder to overcome. Water becomes a constant symbol for each man – for Toru it’s an inescapable symbol of death and powerlessness, but for Kengo it represents happiness and harmony in rediscovering the good memories he has of his father from joyful family outings to less abusive summer training sessions. Mukoku is the story of three ages of man – the scrappy rebellious teen, the struggling middle-aged man, and the elderly veteran whose own heart is settled enough to see the battles others are waging. The “warrior’s song” as “mukoku” seems to mean changes with each passing season, nudged into tune by the graceful art of kendo.

Kumakiri embraces his expressionist impulses as a young boy finds himself suddenly underwater, vomiting mud and fish while Kengo has constant visions of his father, mother, and younger self ensuring the past is forever present. The ominous score and strange occurrences including ghostly graveyard old women who appear from nowhere in order to offer a lecture on the five buddhist sins lend a more urgent quality to Kengo’s disintegration, though interesting subplots involving a possibly alcoholic girlfriend and a mamasan (Jun Fubuki) at a local bar who might have been Shozo’s mistress are left underdeveloped. Two men face each other to face themselves, trying to beat their demons into submission with wooden swords, but even if the battle is far from over the tide has turned and something at least has begun to shift.

Screened at Raindance 2017.

Original trailer (no subtitles)