The Pit of Death (怪談おとし穴, Koji Shima, 1968)

Posted on by

The building at the centre of Koji Shima’s dread-fuelled horror noir Pit of Death (怪談おとし穴, Kaidan Otoshi Ana) is said to be haunted by the spirits of the many people who died during its construction. In his opening voiceover, anti-hero Kuramoto (Mikio Narita) likens the city to a hornet’s nest, the salaryman drones mindlessly buzzing around the business district as if driven by some supernatural force. In that sense, the office building itself becomes an eerie place, the nexus of the salaryman dream which in the end drags all to hell. 

Largely a retelling of Yotsuya Kaidan for the mid-20th century with a little A Place in the Sun thrown in, the film finds Kuramoto an ambitious man deluded by consumerism and resentful of the classism and snobbishness which limit his prospects as a man who has otherwise been able to pull himself out of poverty. His boss pointedly speaks of his talents which include the ability to speak several languages despite only having attended night school rather than university while it’s unusual for a man of his background to hold this kind of position even if he’s only a secretary and not yet an executive. Nevertheless, his boss clearly sees him as a potential successor and plans to marry him to his daughter (Mako Sanjo) who has in some ways inexplicably developed a crush on him.

But Kuramoto is already in a relationship with typist Etsuko (Mayumi Nagisa). In fact, the reason the boss is so pleased with him is largely down to her in that he asked Etsuko to sleep with their foreign client, Mr Hancock, to seal the deal which she duly did. Kuramoto plans to throw her over in order to pursue his dream of taking over the company so he can look down on those who once looked down on him. He tells Etsuko that the marriage will be in name only, that he isn’t attracted to the boss’ daughter Midori, and their relationship will continue as before only to be confused when Etsuko is not totally on board with the plan. She tells him she’s pregnant with his child though he callously points out it could be Hancock’s and insists on an abortion thereafter determining he must kill her so that he can fulfil his destiny by joining the executive class. 

His desires are obvious when he steps into Midori’s home and gazes at a painting crassly asking how much it’s worth, admitting that he’s the kind of poor person who has a fascination with luxury. His forward propulsion is driven by a fear of poverty, the trauma of the hard life he’s had and the futility he felt in his inability to escape it. Yet it’s also a kind of class rebellion motivated by resentment for the prejudice held against him as a man without means in a highly stratified society. Paradoxically, he will do anything and everything to be accepted as a member of the elite class including murdering Etsuko, the symbol of the working class past he fears will drag him down.

Etsuko does indeed drag him down eventually in her own revenge against his callousness and the double standards of a patriarchal society. Her relationship with Kuramoto seems to be a secret in the office while he uses and discards her when no longer useful to him. She too is trapped within this building of a newly corporatised society but can rise no further alone and is in a fairly bleak position without Kuramoto for she has already thrown away her only bargaining chip by entering a sexual relationship with him. Should she attempt to raise his child alone as a never married single mother, her life would be very difficult indeed if not actually impossible. Nevertheless, she does have real power over Kuramoto in her ability to expose the affair and ruin his chances of career advancement through dynastic marriage destroying any possibility of his future success. 

In Kuramoto’s mind, Etsuko cackles like a witch or evil spirit. Her hair billows out into the wind like a vengeful ghost, though the first few times Kuramoto only imagines her death. He sees himself push her off a roof, only to be surprised to see her still standing over him. Etsuko haunts Kuramoto while alive as an image of his destruction all while he silently plots hers. He plans to use the building against her, hiding her body inside it where he assumes no one will see. In the end, it’s as if this building, an edifice of soulless corporatising capitalism, consumes them both, drawing them in with their unfulfilled desires until they fall into the bottomless pit of post-war ambition. Shima makes frequent use of solarisation and film noir lighting to destabilise Kuramoto’s world as his mental state starts to fracture along with innovative use of split screens to lend the space a sense of eerie continuity but ultimately posits the salaryman society as a kind of death trap beckoning greedy souls towards their demise with an inexorable fatalism.

Lonely Glory (わたしの見ている世界が全て, Keitaro Sakon, 2023)

Posted on by

A thoroughly unpleasant young woman gradually begins to realise that other people have feelings too and she has no idea what she’s doing with her life in Keitaro Sakon’s indie drama Lonely Glory (わたしの見ている世界が全て, Watashi no Mite Iru Sekai ga Subete). Haruka currently runs a startup geared towards helping people maintain good mental health which is ironic in the extreme because she has no understanding of or regard for the feelings of others. Yet as she says during a role play with an employee, the basic principle of their business is helping people identify their problems which she ironically does on returning home to her estranged family if not entirely for altruistic reasons. 

Before that, however, we see her be unnecessarily harsh during a staff evaluation later justifying herself to the boss that they needed to clear out those who are of no use. To her, the staff member’s feelings were irrelevant, she just informed them of their subpar performance. Her boss isn’t buying it. He tells her that her management techniques are counterproductive and that with multiple accusations of bullying behaviour she herself says she is unwilling to work on (because she doesn’t understand she’s done anything wrong) he has no option other than to ask for her resignation. Unfazed, Haruka decides to start her own startup, but is soon confronted with another crisis on learning that her mother has passed away. 

On arrival at the hospital and despite being the youngest sibling Haruka immediately takes over, seemingly unmoved, and opts for the cheapest funeral plan available. She didn’t come to her father’s funeral and her siblings didn’t expect to see her for this one either, but now she has an ulterior motive in that she wants to sell the family home and business to finance her new business venture despite the fact all three siblings still live there and two of them are financially dependent on the cafe/greengrocers for their living. Haruka is incredibly judgemental about her small-town siblings’ life choices branding them as delusional and generally carrying on with an air of superiority but it’s also true enough that they are all to a degree trapped, unable to move on with their lives while afraid to leave the safety of their childhood home. 

As she says, sometimes people just need a little push which is something that she can give them but it’s never quite clear if she genuinely cares or is motivated solely by the desire to manipulate her siblings into agreeing to sell the house. Divorced sister Miwako is fairly unfussed either way but oldest son Keisuke is consumed with shame in the idea of giving up the family business while Takuji has self-esteem issues and thinks everyone looks down on him for never managing to get a job since he finished university four years previously. Challenged by Keisuke’s much younger farm girl girlfriend Asuka on the nature of success, Haruka replies that it’s having everyone around you admit you were right which lays bare her own insecurity and need to dominate every situation that she’s in. But then ironically enough she does help each of her siblings identify their problems and then gain the courage to begin moving forward. 

The dissolution of the family business and the erasure of the family home becomes in its way liberating, less the glue that bound them together than that trapped them in a perpetual adolescence. Haruka begins to realise she’s not much better than the life coach scammer who sold her vulnerable brother false promises of easy success, and that the way she treats others can have unintended consequences but in the end she’s the one left rootless and bereft of direction after closing the shop. Perhaps that’s her lonely glory, the knowledge that she helped each of her siblings do what she now can’t (or maybe just that she got what she wanted and doesn’t know what to do with it). Told with a down to earth naturalism, Sakon’s indie drama is also a lament for the changing nature of small-town life and a loss of community as the closure of the store robs the locals of another neighbourhood hub ironically leaving Haruka all alone in the now empty space of her family home with a newfound sense of loneliness still searching for the right words and a new direction. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

OMG! Oh My Girl (รักจังวะ..ผิดจังหวะ, Thitipong Kerdtongtawee, 2022)

Posted on by

The course of true love never did run smooth. For the lovelorn hero of Thitipong Kerdtongtawee’s OMG! Oh My Girl (รักจังวะ..ผิดจังหวะ), it’s a path filled with misunderstandings, bad timing, and diffidence on his part that all leave him out in the cold watching the object of his affection get swept off her feet by other guys while little realising she likes him too but thinks he’s only interested in friendship because of his cool and aloof demeanour. 

The hero has the amusingly generic name of “Guy” (Wongravee Nateetorn) making him an accidental everyman in this tale of romantic confusion. He first meets June (Plearnpichaya Komalarajun) in university where she is so popular with guys on campus that it’s impeded her ability to make friends with other women. After a serendipitous meet-cute and bumping into each other several times the pair become friends but, in a motif which will be repeated, Guy finds himself giving advice to his friend Phing (Michael Pugh) about how best to ask her out and ironically tells him to send a text message reading “I like you, June” while standing directly in front of her never thinking Phing would actually do it let alone that it would work. June and Phing have a rather tempestuous relationship and are always breaking up every five minutes only to get back together again leaving Guy nervous to make his move. 

In effect, this happens several times. Guy is too diffident to shoot his shot and ends up missing out, while everything he does to try and win June’s heart ends up backfiring as if fate were conspiring against him. Then again, perhaps there’s a danger in over romanticising romantic destiny. It’s true that the pair experienced a “meet-cute” but June also had a meet-cute with another guy, Pete (Pachara Chirathivat), whom she later ends up dating. Who’s to say Pete’s meet cute is any less meaningful than Guy’s? Often, we attach meaning to these minor events after the fact to solidify a grasp on the present, never really lending much thought to what might have been with someone we tipped coffee over or lent a few coins to at a parking metre. 

Then again, the real advice Guy had tried to give to Phing is that confessions of love don’t often go anywhere. People usually just hang out together a lot and then come to a mutual realisation that they’re already “dating”, only that never quite happens for Guy and June who seem to actively avoid progressing towards romance unlike Guy’s zany friend Tah (Siwat Sirichai) who is eventually able to enter a romantic relationship with June’s cool roommate Lex (Wasu Pluemsakulthai) through getting to know her socially. After his own attempt at a love confession backfires, it’s Guy whose romantic vision edges towards the toxic in his inability to let go of his obsession with June and accept that she is in a stable long-term relationship with Pete and that is now inappropriate for him to continue pursuing her romantically. 

The problem is that Pete is a nice guy who loves June and takes extremely good care of her leaving Guy little justification for his desire to implode their relationship even if it also seems June may have niggling doubts and unfinished business with her unresolved feelings for Guy. For most of its runtime, OMG! Oh My Girl is a sweet and gentle post-modern rom-com but makes a huge misstep in final moments allowing Guy to make a catastrophic mistake amounting to a huge breach of trust after which it becomes impossible to root for his romantic success given that after he does it neither June nor any of his friends should really want to have much more to do with him. Given that he’s just seen how destructive what he’s about to do could be in the implosion of his sister’s marriage, it’s really difficult to see how he could have thought doing such a thing himself would have a good outcome or make June any more likely to leave her stable relationship for a half-baked attraction to the uni best friend she hasn’t seen in five years.

Even so, the conclusion does have a neatly feminist subtext that undercuts Guy’s vision of June as something like a prize to be won as she fights for a sense of security in independence knowing that she can take care of herself and doesn’t necessarily need to be with anyone to be happy and fulfilled. Filled with the kind of deadpan zany humour familiar from similarly themed Thai comedies of recent years, OMG Oh My Girl would be a surefire classic were it not for its tacit condoning of the hero’s toxic behaviour and wilful indifference to the feelings of others ruining an otherwise charming tale of romantic misconnection. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Asakusa Kid (浅草キッド, Gekidan Hitori, 2021)

Posted on by

To international audiences, Takeshi Kitano has a very specific profile associated most closely with arthouse drama and violent gangster movies yet in Japan he’s best known as a comedian and TV personality. Inspired by Kitano’s memoir, Asakusa Kid (浅草キッド) charts his earliest days from entertainment district elevator boy to manzai star while lionising his earnest mentor Sozaburo Fukami (Yo Oizumi). Yet it’s also a nostalgic look back to a late Showa pre-bubble Japan as Kitano’s idol finds himself falling foul of a changing entertainment industry. 

As the film opens in 1974, “Take” (Yuya Yagira) is one half of a struggling manzai comedy double act touring the country in various variety and cabaret establishments fearing his career may die out on the road before beginning to edge towards success and a high profile TV gig. Two years earlier, however, he’s an awkward college dropout working as an elevator boy at France-za comedy bar burlesque theatre. A local boy, Take has chosen France-za because of his admiration for “Fukami of Asakusa”, longing to make his way into the entertainment world while captivated by Fukami’s cool style, even copying his trademark tap dancing. Fukami soon sees talent in Take and tries to nurture it, but as the pair of them are repeatedly reminded, this kind of comedy is already old-fashioned. Audience numbers at France-za continue to decline while as one of the other girls later reminds him the men who come to these shows are there to see women take their clothes off, not random skits or singing. 

This is brought home to Take when he tries to encourage one of the strippers, Chiharu (Mugi Kadowaki ), to chase her dreams of becoming a singer by convincing Fukami to allow her to fill a 15-minute spot. As Fukami had attempted to warn him, the men appear to enjoy her song and offer rapturous applause but think it’s part of her act and soon resort to catcalls expecting her to take her clothes off. Take’s well-meaning gesture backfires, convincing Chiharu her dreams of singing are over, while Take is also poked into action by the other stripper’s retort that the comedy is only really “filler” between the burlesque acts which is what the customers have come to see. 

Even so, there’s less drama than one might expect in Take’s eventual decision to betray his mentor by choosing manzai and its opportunities for TV success over his by then old-fashioned sketch comedy. The father/son relationship somewhat falls by the wayside as even as a triumphant Take later returns “home” to present Fukami with the prize money for a TV award like a child with a report card full of As, while he gracefully accepts it but is privately filled both with a sense of pride and personal disappointment in being forced to accept that the heyday of Asakusa is over and there is no future in his vaudeville-style comedy acts. Nevertheless, Take appears to attribute much of his success to things he learnt from Fukami from his tap-dancing to his uncompromising attitude. “Don’t be laughed at, make them laugh,” he recalls Fukami telling him, “don’t suck up to the audience, tell them what’s funny,” later refusing to soften his inappropriate jokes about ugly girls and suicide for a more conservative TV audience and finding his edgy comedy an irreverent hit. 

Then again, not everyone is able to achieve their dreams from Fukami who lost the fingers on one hand in the war and finds himself forced off the stage, to Chiharu apparently a regular housewife with showbiz regrets, and Fukami’s wife Mari (Honami Suzuki) exhausting herself trying to help him save his dream of Asakusa. As much as Take might have admired Fukami, others too describing him as a father of contemporary entertainment, he can’t get away from the fact the press is only interested in his funeral if Take attends it. Filled with the nostalgia, the ethereal one shot closing sequence in which the older Take returns to Asakusa and to the past surrounded by the friends of his youth is genuinely poignant in the sudden juxtaposition of a lost world with the contemporary present but perhaps elegises nothing so much as nostalgia in its lament for late Showa breeziness. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Flowing (流れる, Mikio Naruse, 1956)

Posted on by

The denizens of a moribund geisha house contemplate visions of independence in post-war Japan Mikio Naruse’s thriving ensemble drama, Flowing (流れる, Nagareru). There is indeed a flowing through the geisha house, a tumble of comings and goings though mostly connected to money which is itself constantly flowing though the for geisha mainly in the wrong direction. Released in the year of Prostitution Prevention Law, the film casts a shadow over the lives of these women who are unwittingly living in their industry’s twilight but asks if it’s really possible for a woman to survive without a man while each of them is in one way or another badly let down by an inconstant lover. 

We’re constantly told that Tsutanoya is the most respectable geisha house in town yet despite its well appointed interiors, it’s clear that business is not good. As the film opens, a young geisha, Namie, is accusing the owner’s daughter Katsuyo (Hideko Takamine) of diddling her on her pay. Katsuyo acts indignant and tries to shift the blame back onto Namie but later admits that the house has indeed been skimming a little more off their wages than was agreed claiming all the geisha houses do it which is probably true but doesn’t make it right. In any case Namie will eventually quit and end up working at “some third rate place” while her uncle (Seiji Miyaguchi) causes problems for proprietress Tsuta (Isuzu Yamada) complaining that Namie was exploited and wanting both the backpay he feels she’s owed and compensation though it seems unlikely any of that money is finding its way back to Namie. Meanwhile the house is a geisha down with only former office worker Nanako (Mariko Okada) and 50-year-old veteran Someka (Haruko Sugimura) on the books.

Despite their financial situation, Tsuta hires a new maid, Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka) who is immediately renamed “Oharu” on her arrival. Oharu is a salt of the Earth type, infinitely capable, maternal, kind and loyal bringing a much needed sense of stability to the ever flowing geisha house while also fascinated by this exotic and arcane world. But then as Tsuta cautions her geisha houses may look glamorous from the outside but the life inside them isn’t always fun. Oharu runs into trouble on her first trip to the grocers when they inform her Tsuta hasn’t paid her tab and they can’t let her add to it until she does. A 45-year-old widow whose only child died a year previously, Oharu is also trying to live an independent life, a conflicted Tsuta struck with wonder at her ability to survive without a man, but may also have struggled, grateful to have been offered the job which others might have declined because of the stigma towards the sex trade as finding employment as a middle-aged woman is near impossible. 

At the film’s conclusion even she may imply it isn’t really possible to live as a woman without some kind of support or losing one’s humanity suggesting that she may return to her husband’s hometown and the family she claims not have gotten along with after learning of Tsuta’s betrayal at the hands of an old friend and former geisha, Ohama (Sumiko Kurishima), who at any rate seems to be living quite well as the proprietress of a restaurant. Traditionally, the profession of geisha was seen as a kind of independence in itself but it’s also one that by its nature is reliant on men. Tsuta is often described as someone who is not able to do anything else yet is highly skilled at music and dance having spent a lifetime in training. Without a patron she is stuck and as we learn she threw hers over to pursue a man she loved but he left her in the lurch having mortgaged the geisha house to invest in his business by taking a loan from her older sister who seems to have a nice sideline as a polite loan shark also having loaned money to Someka. 

The most outwardly cheerful, Someka is in other ways a dark vision of a geisha’s future surviving on nothing but nihilistic hedonism while apparently living with a much younger man who eventually leaves her to marry into another woman’s family. Katsuyo has rejected the geisha life explaining that she is unable to, as Nanaka puts it, say silly things to men in order to earn her keep and is essentially incapable of ingratiating herself with men she doesn’t like. She claims she has no desire to marry, unconvinced that any man would be interested in a geisha’s daughter while certain that for a man marrying into a woman’s family is humiliating while suggesting the same would be true for her. Putting her faith in industry, she buys a sewing machine and sets about figuring out how to use it less because she envisages being able to support herself and her mother through taking in needlework than she just wants to feel as if she’s doing something. 

Meanwhile, Tsuta’s niece Fujiko observes all the comings and goings of the geisha house learning the traditional arts in preparation for a future which will soon be obsolete. In a typically Narusean touch, Tsuta comes to a resolution about her future and envisages a new beginning for herself but is unaware the rug is soon to be pulled from under her by the underhanded capitalist Ohama who plans to turf her out to turn the geisha house into another restaurant. “My days of seeking favours from men are over,” Tsuta admits, not of her own volition but simply understanding that she no longer has access to that kind of independence though in essence surrendering her autonomy in leaving herself to the mercy of Ohama in order to escape her older sister’s control. Someka had laughed raucously at Katsuyo’s insistence that she need not be dependent on a man (and after everything she’s seen why would she want to be?) but the younger woman is undeterred even as we see her struggling, doubting that her efforts will in the end be enough to win her her freedom. Ever the optimist, Tsuta is perhaps doing something similar but even Oharu is considering giving up and going home, too good to survive in the dog eat dog world of the contemporary capital where the flow of currency is the lifeblood of the city implying that perhaps the answer to her question is no, a woman can’t survive alone, nor can she rely on female solidarity, but she’ll have to try anyway because there is no other choice. 

Seven Years Itch (七年之癢, Johnnie To, 1987)

Posted on by

The shifting social codes of late ‘80s Hong Kong come under the microscope in Cinema City sex farce, Seven Years Itch (七年之癢). Loosely inspired by the 1955 Billy Wilder film, Johnnie To’s third directorial feature may in some senses suggest contemporary Hong Kong is little different from mid-50s America in its overly patriarchal gender politics but does in some senses at least attempt to redress the balance by turning the tables on the feckless husband if only to defiantly restore the status quo in the uncomfortable positioning of domestic violence as a means of social control. 

The ironically named Willie (Raymond Wong Pak-Ming) is a rising executive in a quasi marriage with Sylvia Chang (Sylvia Chang Ai-Chia) which is to say they live together as man and wife but Wille has never bothered to put in the paperwork (something which continues to annoy his harridan of a not quite mother-in-law). The couple have been together for seven years and Willie is beginning to tire of the monotony of (not actually) married life, irritated by Sylvia’s early morning Chinese Opera practice sessions and the fact he’s had nothing but sausage and egg for breakfast every day since moving in. Consequently, he fantasises about having an affair but is too mild-mannered despite the gentle ribbing of his colleagues and constant attempts of his brother-in-law John (Eric Tsang Chi-Wai) to introduce him to the red light district. 

In an early meeting with his colleagues after work, the men all discuss affairs suggesting that if a man isn’t chasing a woman it’s because he’s “sexually disabled” or gay quite clearly tying sexual prowess to masculinity. It’s also quite clear that the men view themselves as a group entirely separate from women, brother-in-law John evidently not thinking anything of it that he’s tempting his brother-in-law to cheat on his own sister implying that to him at least Willie’s masculinity is far more important than his sister’s feelings which in the end don’t seem to matter very much to him at all. John is also, however, a henpecked husband and moral coward. Challenged by his wife, sister, or mother, he immediately changes tack, dobbing Willie in when he’d tried to use him to placate Sylvia’s suspicions of an affair and quickly backtracking after having defended his decision not to file the papers by insisting “marriage is nonsense, old fashioned” only to counter with “I’m just saying for those silly men who try to overthrow the marriage tradition, I’m not one of them,”, “I absolutely agree with marriage. For women’s respect, I oppose living together”. 

Both John, whose constant badgering for loans also places a financial strain on the (non) marriage, and Wille feel themselves emasculated by the constraints of a monogamous relationship as the constant references to wild meat imply. Meanwhile the women are also depicted as vain and parasitical, the collection of trophy wives at Sylvia’s cookery class forever showing off the expensive gifts their husbands have bought them while alternately complaining they feel ignored. The implication is that the men can’t win, if they seem indifferent the wife worries they’re playing around, but too much affection is also regarded as a sign of infidelity. 

Even so it’s Sylvia who eventually gains the upper hand in refusing to play along with Willie’s games after he convinces her join him for a little Vertigo-esque role-play on a second honeymoon in Singapore, re-enacting his brief encounter with a foxy woman he met on a plane who was in fact conning him in order to facilitate a drug smuggling mission. Fed up with his ill-treatment, she falls asleep before the couple end up in an argument about her relationship with her “gay cousin” Chinese Opera partner with an inexplicably jealous Willie descending into an unpleasant homophobic rant. When he goes back to his own seat she has a meet cute of her own with a Chinese-American businessman literally named “Mr. Money” (Wu Fung) who took a liking to her in the departure hall and quite clearly needles Willie in the soft spots of his masculinity being both wealthy and cultured, able to take Sylvia off to a much more comfortable life in America with someone who is almost certainly going to treat her better than he ever intended to. 

As in many subsequent To comedies, it’s then the man who is put on the back foot blindly flailing while trying to win back a woman he took for granted. But if it seemed as if Sylvia might actually have more power in this relationship that either of them had assumed, the notion is quickly knocked back, literally, when her henpecked father raises a hand to her mother at the airport in order to support Willie’s attempt to prevent her leaving not because he thinks his daughter will be happier but in support of Willie’s compromised masculinity while reaffirming his own. An uncomfortable suggestion to a policeman that if “you slap her everything will be OK” reinforces the idea that actually the harridan mother-in-law now respects him more because of his show of manly violence, rebalancing the relationship back towards patriarchal norms while the father-in-law then turns full on sleaze cavorting with young women in public parks. 

It all adds to the impression that Willie is a sad sack, ineffectual man but largely because he turns back towards his wife while continuing to fantasise about other women seven years later claiming no longer to find her attractive and anticipating another itch this time presumably to escape his responsibilities as a father, his eyes following a pretty park jogger played by a then rising now iconic Hong Star who had appeared in the previous film Wong and To had made together. While To’s dancing camera shows glimpses of its future romanticism, it can’t quite escape the contradictions of the material even as it does its best to hand the balance of power back to Sylvia who could, it has to be said, do better. 

Mechanical Telepathy (メカニカル・テレパシー, Akiko Igarashi, 2018)

Posted on by

Many, though not all, people have an interior monologue but what if you could converse directly with an image of yourself, a mental avatar who could talk and move around and might have opinions you would not expect to hear yourself say out loud? The scientists at the centre of Akiko Igarashi’s Mechanical Telepathy (メカニカル・テレパシー), a re-edited version of her 2017 feature Visualized Hearts, are working on a machine that can create a physical simulacrum of a mental image. No concrete reason is given for their research save that of one assistant who suggests its capacity to help those who can no longer communicate physically have a voice, but what quickly becomes apparent is that a self-created image may not be entirely reliable while the images of it held in other minds may differ in interesting ways. 

Each of these philosophical questions begin to occur to scientist Mazaki (Ryuichi Yoshida) when he’s seconded to a research project as a kind of corporate spy on behalf of the business-minded boss who wants to put the product on the market as soon as possible despite the reservations of lead researcher Dr. Midori Mishima (Nanami Shirakawa) whose husband Soichi was injured in a previous experiment and is currently in a coma. Midori’s interest in the machine is then in its capacity to save her husband either by retrieving his bodily consciousness or preserving the image of him captured inside, improving and enhancing it until the point of communication. 

But then as Mazaki comes to realise, perhaps the image of Soichi (Yoshio Shin) in the machine isn’t coming from his mind at all but from Midori’s in which case he doesn’t know anything she doesn’t know already and is in a sense inaccurate, composed only of her memories of him and necessarily limited in possessing the information she does not have even of this man whom she obviously knew intimately. Meanwhile, Mazaki also begins seeing an avatar of Midori, but is unsure if it originates from her mind, that of the comatose Soichi, or indeed his own as a means of confronting him with the desire he may feel for her. His image of himself meanwhile is scathing and self-loathing, challenging him over his various acts of moral cowardice in his essential inability to communicate his true feelings. Only assistant Asumi (Ibuki Aoi), harbouring a decidedly obvious crush on him, is brave enough to take him to task looking her own avatar in the eye and explaining that she has nothing to fear from herself. “If you don’t say it out loud no one will hear you” she explains though it’s a lesson that Mazaki in particular finds difficult to learn. 

As for the avatars themselves, are they representations of particular people or indeed something new and different subject to influence and interference? The mind is supposedly free of time and space but that may not be an entirely good thing. What the machine posits is the separation between mind and body as if a soul could be sheared while it becomes difficult to say if the loss of corporality is liberation or imprisonment while Mazaki wonders if it’s right for a mind to exist without a body. If we can’t trust these images we have of others can we really trust those we have of ourselves which may be largely created through the way that others see us and we them? Complaining he can no longer distinguish whose mind he’s looking at, Mazaki finds himself caught in a moment of existential confusion amid several differing realities his own mind can no longer order. 

This sense of dissociation is perhaps replicated in Igarashi’s detached camerawork set amid the clinical glass and steal environments of the Kobe research institute where the experiments take place, the muted colour palette reflecting a sense of emptiness in the hearts and minds of the scientists who ironically remain incapable of direct communication. The near future production design similarly lends an air of sleek modernity to the otherwise vacant space while perhaps creating a sense of the supernatural in the lightning crackle inside the machine, its tangling wires a digital recreation of an analogue nerve system. A philosophical examination of the representation of the self, its projections literal and metaphorical, and the impossibility of knowing oneself or others Igarashi’s sci-fi drama eventually suggests that perhaps we are all in an empty room talking to ourselves incapable of understanding let alone expressing our true feelings. 

Dissolution Rites (解散式, Kinji Fukasaku, 1967)

Posted on by

“We’re all legitimate businessmen now” as a former yakuza explains to a recently released foot soldier stepping out into a very different Japan in Kinji Fukasaku’s Dissolution Rites (解散式, Kaisan Shiki, AKA Ceremony of Disbanding). The funereal opening scenes feature the first in a series of dissolution rites as a man dressed in black reads from a scroll and explains that all the local yakuza clans will be disbanding because despite “working day and night for the benefit of the world and humanity in the spirit of democracy” times have changed and they find themselves unnecessary.

There at the beginning of that change, Sawaki (Koji Tsuruta) served eight years in prison for the murder of a rival gang boss to ensure his gang got hold of a local landfill site where they later built an oil complex. While he was inside, his boss died and his clan disbanded leaving him with nowhere to go but thankfully looked out for by an old friend, Shimamura, who has since become a construction magnate. On his arrival at Shimamura’s office, however, he’s ambushed in a suspected case of mistaken identity while the man driving him is killed. 

Shimamura (Fumio Watanabe) tells him he’s gone straight, but it soon becomes clear that even as yakuza forsake the streets for more organised crime they still behave like thugs using the same old tactics to get what they want. Shimamura is in cahoots with a corrupt local politician, Kawashima (Asao Uchida), and is determined to get access to another stretch of bombed out wasteland owned by an egalitarian doctor, Omachi, who refuses to sell because he’s set up a community there of marginalised people, including Sawaki’s former girlfriend Mie (Misako Watanabe), who work on his chicken farm. Meanwhile, Shimamura is targeted by rival “legitimate businessman”, Sakurada (Hosei Komatsu), who pulls a few dirty tricks of his own in an effort to cut Shimamura out of the picture.

Once again Tsuruta plays a man who is out of step with his times, partly because he’s been in prison but also in his fierce commitment to a now outdated code of gangsterdom. “The chivalry that we were taught was just a way for bosses to use their soldiers” Shimumura insists, “you’ll look foolish if you don’t get rid of it”, disingenuously casting his transformation into a legitimate businessman as a way of freeing himself from yakuza oppression. Sawaki turns down his offer to join the business because it seems a bit dodgy while intensely disappointed to discover another former colleague, Kubo (Kyosuke Machida), running a trafficking ring masquerading as a management studio for cabaret singers and strippers by tricking women with the offer of good jobs then getting the hooked on drugs and shipping to them to Okinawa to do sex work near the US bases.  

On his return, Sawaki is also stalked by the man whose arm he severed in killing the rival boss who turn out to be, like him, an old school gangster which is why he insists on his revenge only to find an unexpected kindred spirit as the two men find themselves each adrift in a world in which no one really cares about humanity and honour. Sakai (Tetsuro Tanba) chooses to walk a different path, conducting his disbandment ceremony in protest of yakuza corruption. Like many Tsuruta heroes, Sawaki also has the possibility of walking away and living a conventional family life as a husband and father having been forgiven by Mei but inevitably is pulled in a darker direction by the necessities of his code. The oil complex he helped to create is only a symbol of the duplicities of the post-war society allowing men like Shimamura to get rich while literally choking the life out of those like Mei whom they now want to kick out of her home to add insult to injury. 

There’s no one more tragic than a yakuza Sawaki admits, knowing there is no longer any place for him in an amoral gangster society while unable to simply leave it and enjoy a quiet life with the woman he loves. An indictment both of corporatised yakuza and the equally duplicitous practices of “legitimate” businesses and corrupt authorities, the film ends in another righteous assault filmed handheld with Fukasaku’s characteristically canted angles amid the chaos and confusion of a rapidly changing society. 

Her Story (好东西, Shao Yihui, 2024)

Posted on by

Nine-year-old Molly (Zeng Mumei) says she doesn’t have any dreams anymore and is content to remain a member of the audience which is the role she’s been assigned as part of orchestra class. In truth, that might be something she’s picked up from her mother, Tiemei (Song Jia), who also says that she no longer has dreams because she’s seen the reality. Shao Yihui’s Her Story (好东西, is being hailed as something of a landmark film given that mainstream Chinese cinema does not often engage with feminist issues or at least not quite so directly as in this strangely joyful celebration of female solidarity and found family.

Indeed, the Chinese title of the film is “good things” which Tiemei and Molly begin to find after being forced to move to a cheaper apartment in an old-fashioned walk-up building because Tiemei is struggling to find work in a shrinking journalism industry. She later tells a colleague at her new job working for a friend’s online news outlet that she took a break from her career as an investigative reporter not because she had her daughter but because she realised she didn’t have the strength to go on fighting the system. 

Yet in a way she’s fighting the system solely in the way she lives as a divorced woman raising her daughter alone. It later transpires that it was her husband who wanted the divorce because he got fed up with living with as househusband even though that was his choice, though he seems to regret the decision and randomly tells Tiemei that he’s getting a vasectomy as some kind of strange proof of loyalty in insisting Molly will be his only child. Since they’ve split up, he’s apparently come to a feminist awakening and is cognisant of his male privilege thanks to actually reading Tiemei’s articles but ironically still feels the need to insert himself into conversation. 

In any case, after moving into the apartment, Tiemei and Molly become friends with the bohemian woman who lives upstairs and is the singer of a rock band. Ye (Zhong Chuxi) is a very chaotic presence and the total opposite of Tiemei’s defiant practicality, but despite herself Tiemei becomes a kind of maternal figure to her after scaring off a creepy guy who was following her late at night. But equally Ye becomes a kind of big sister or secondary maternal figure to Molly, offering her a more relaxed vision of womanhood along with a creative space to express herself. 

Perhaps surprisingly for a mainstream Chinese film in which LGBTQ+ themes, the two women effectively end up raising this child together almost as if they were a couple in a happy familial environment. They often share a bed and at one point are actually mistaken for lesbians by Ye’s sometime optometrist boyfriend Hu to whom she lied about having a child so that he wouldn’t see her as clingy, effectively adopting Tiemei’s persona. Tiemei even helps Ye sort of break up with him by posing as the scorned lesbian partner, hilariously laying it on thick to get Hu to trip himself up and admit to being a playboy womaniser. Though it’s obviously true that they are not in fact romantically involved, the film nevertheless does not only acknowledge the existence of lesbian women and even lesbian women raising children but tacitly approves and accepts them as part of its broader feminist themes. It even opens on a shot of what appears to be queer longing in lingering on a very striking Ye leaning out of her window drinking in the daytime as Molly looks up from below in wonder. 

It is in fact Molly who becomes the centre of the film as she regains the ability to have dreams again while discovering herself and gaining the courage to take risks in search of happiness in a society all too keen to slap women down. Tiemei writes an article about what it’s really like to be a working single mother but is quickly attacked by internet trolls causing Molly to retreat into herself, realising that if her mother hadn’t written the article she wouldn’t be getting trolled. But thanks to the supportive environment around her and the relationship between Teimei and Ye, Molly resolves not to let the world beat her into submission. The scenes of her rocking out on her drums while the drippy boy who keeps “denouncing” her at school flounders at the dull music club concert speaks volumes. She may realise that she prefers being in the audience anyway, but that’s alright. Writing is her outlet, something else she may have have picked up from her mother, and she’s less of a bystander than observer humorously recording the compromises and contradictions of the world around her while bolstered by her found family and a gentle sense of female solidarity.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

A Girl in My Room (左様なら今晩は, Natsuki Takahashi, 2022)

Posted on by

A young man reeling from a breakup is suddenly confronted by the literal ghost of lost love in Natsuki Takahashi’s supernaturally-inflected romantic drama A Girl in My Room (左様なら今晩は, Sayonara Konbanwa). Set in the peaceful town of Onomichi, the film finds its hero wasting away pining while wondering if falling in love with a ghost is all that bad only to later ask himself if any of it was real or just a fantasy of his lovelorn mind. 

As the film opens, Yohei’s (Riku Hagiwara) girlfriend of two years, Rena (Riko Nagase), moves out of their apartment apparently sick of his superficiality and inconsiderate nature. Soon after, Yohei becomes aware that a ghost has been living in their apartment with them the whole time only should she couldn’t manifest because Rena apparently had unusually strong spiritual energy. Though originally frightened by the new presence, Yohei soon warms to the woman he names “Aisuke” (Shiori Kubo) and becomes determined to find out who she was and how she died only no one will tell him. 

Of course, Aisuke could just be the symbolic ghost of Rena, a spectre of lost love confronting him with his romantic failure, but also seems to have an inner life of her own even if she can’t remember much about who she was when she was alive and how it was she came to die in the apartment. Fleeting memories seem to hint at a life of loneliness marked by romantic longing in which she wanted nothing more than a regular grown-up relationship though sadly it never happened for her. If she has unfinished business, then falling in love may be part of it but then it’s clear that any potential relationship between herself and Yohei is doomed to failure seeing as she is already dead. 

Aisuke chose Yohei because she thought he was a good boyfriend after seeing him with Rena, but even so agrees that though he seems nice on the surface he never really thinks about anything and responds to criticism by smoothing it over with an apology rather than reflecting on his actions or trying to better himself. Work colleague Kanan (Rina Ono), who also has a crush on him, conversely claims that Yohei shows his kindness too easily though also remarking that kindness in itself can also be problematic. In any case, as he bonds with Aisuke, Yohei does seem to engage more with his flaws and reflect on the mistakes he may have made in his relationship with Rena in order to become not just a better boyfriend but a better person. 

In these respects, Aisuke becomes a romantic mirror confronting him with the problematic aspects of his own personality but somehow gaining in corporeality as the relationship progresses as if love were bringing her back to life. But then Kanan also claims that that’s because Aisuke is unwittingly sucking the life out of him which is why he looks tired and gaunt. A picture she took of him on her phone has a dark aura over his face hinting at something malevolent at work that’s taking a toll on his health. But as much as he’s warned, Yohei determines to stay with Aisuke, slowly falling in love with her in the wake of his failed relationship.

Partly a fable about the dangers of remaining trapped by the ghost of lost love rather than resolving to move on, the film is also a poignant love story in which the pair must help each other overcome their mutual unfinished business while becoming aware that their liminal romance cannot continue forever. A side plot involving an estate agent and his endless calls from a confused older gentleman randomly asking him for legal and life advice hints at other kinds of living ghosts and urban loneliness but also at those willing to take care of them as perhaps the estate agent did with Yohei and Aisuke in a bit of supernatural matchmaking helping each of them to begin moving on with their lives on either side of the mortal divide. Charmingly quirky and comforting in its tranquil setting, Takahashi ends on a poignant, bittersweet note but also one of warmth in which the ghost of lost love doesn’t so much haunt as abide, a constant source of comfort in a lonely existence.

Original trailer (English subtitles)