Three Old Boys (三叉戟, Gao Qunshu, 2024)

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In a surprising development of Chinese propaganda cinema, the once untouchable subject of police corruption has become a prominent feature albeit often in tales of righteous cops who stand up for real justice against the few bad apples who’ve allowed themselves to be corrupted by contemporary capitalism. Then again, its subject matter might explain why TV police procedural veteran Gao Qunshu’s Three Old Boys (三叉戟, sānchājǐ) has been languishing on the shelf since at least 2020 if it were not also for the inevitable effects of the pandemic. 

In any case, Gao’s film has a distinctly retro vibe with use of classic Chinese pop and very ‘70s soundtrack while its maverick cop heroes all dress in the fashions of 40 years previously. All born in the late 1960s, they are products of an even more authoritarian era and began their careers in the late 1980s. Like any other old cop movie, they bemoan the restrictions of the contemporary society and suggest modern notions of appropriate police behaviour prevent them from doing their jobs which has its degree of awkwardness on the one hand implying the modern police force is now not so hardline but also that it should be because that’s what gets the job done. 

As they contemplate retirement, the trio are offered positions as part of a new squad set up to tackle economic crimes and specifically international money laundering, the chief problem with being that the criminals had the effrontery to move the money out of China which is stealing from honest, hardworking, Chinese citizens aside from having already ripped them off with fraudulent investment schemes and good old-fashioned blackmail operations. Of course, as it turns out, the case has a connection to something that happened 20 years earlier and police officer Cui’s (Huang Zhizhong) desire for revenge on the gangster king pin, Huang Youfa (Jin Shijie), who caused the death of his younger brother murdered by gangster Donzgi who was then shot dead by fellow officer Big G (Jiang Wu). 

The convoluted narrative is heralded by a homeless man who takes the police chief hostage and mutters something about a sword of justice that sounds like something right out of a wuxia serial before being updated to the present day. The sword does actually make a reappearance and is wielded by Big G against a young whippersnapper out for revenge and to take care of what he sees as corruption in the earlier generation. When the trio are first put on the case, they are given a young rookie to help them because he’ll be able to do the tech stuff which the old guys probably can’t because their idea of policing was largely rooted in their fists and a capacity for intimidation. But this doesn’t really work with the youth of today who are for some reason fond of reminding them they aren’t their fathers so they don’t have to do what they say. This is particularly true of young thug Blondie who is caught between Ghost, the old gangster king, and Qing an upstart who is actually working for Huang but in pursuit of his own particular goals. 

Huang has his claws well and truly embedded in the modern society and has it seems manoeuvred favourable people into the police force ensuring that Cui and his team are neutered before they get the chance to do anything. Then again, Big G seems to have a very co-dependent relationship with Ghost who tells Blondie off for getting into a fight with him because cops are off limits. Nevertheless, the point is to dismantle Huang’s networks of influence to restore the integrity of the police force so they can enforce the law which exists for the protection of the people. It’s all rather confusing, but generally lightened by the intense action sequences designed by Yoo Sang-Seob which are also suitably retro but make good use of sword play along with a motorcycle chase. Perhaps ironically inspired by Hollywood hero cop dramas, the film ends with a regime change and a new photo being taken of the guys in their more modern uniforms receiving a commendation with the clear indication that something has been put to rest and the rebellion suggested by Qing’s attempt to steal power from the old quelled while the old boys seemingly decide that justice requires they put off their retirement just a little longer.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Female Yakuza Tale (やさぐれ姐御伝　総括リンチ, Teruo Ishii, 1973)

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Having completed her quest for revenge, Ocho (Reiko Ike) returns in Female Yakuza Tale (やさぐれ姐御伝　総括リンチ, Yasagure anego den: Sokatsu Lynch) once again swept up in intrigue after being framed for a bizarre series of murders. With Teruo Ishii taking up the reins from Norifumi Suzuki, the film has a slightly more realistic aesthetic making frequent use of handheld particularly in the narrow backstreets of the late Meiji Society while eventually taking a bizarre detour into the cruel world of an early 20th century mental health institution. 

In any case, Ocho’s troubles start when she’s met at Kobe harbour by a woman who says she’s come to fetch her. On arrival at her destination, Ocho is chloroformed and sexually assaulted by three men who evidently think she’s think she’s someone else and decide to get rid of her after realising their mistake. She wakes up next to the dead body of another woman and is in danger of becoming the prime suspect in a series of murders the subtitles don the “crotch-gauge” killings. After managing to escape, she sets about trying to find out who set her up and what’s going on while getting involved in a succession crisis in the Ogi in which the old boss who was once good to her has been killed. 

Though with much less political subtext, the film nevertheless indulges in the Sinophobia common in many similarly themed dramas in revealing a Mr Lee of Yokohama to be a major player in a drug trafficking scam in which women are forced to smuggle drugs in their vaginas after the gang gets them hooked to manipulate them. Besides Ocho, another woman dressed eerily like Sasori in a black wide brimmed hat and loose dress known as “Yoshimi of Christ” is also on their tail and seeking revenge while echoing some of the religious themes of the first film. She later teams up with recently released yakuza Jyoji who is looking for the daughter of the old boss who has gone mysteriously missing while he is also convinced that present boss Gondo had something to do with it along with the old man’s death. 

This is however mainly a tale of female revenge, Ocho’s being on the yakuza who cut off the Old Boss’ finger after he stood up for her as a teeanger whens she was caught cheating at a gambling den. Nevertheless, what eventually emerges is a sense of female socildairy as Ocho, Yoshimi, and the other women abused by the gang come together to free themselves from its grasp in a strange orgy of violence utilising eerie green lighting to lend it an almost supernatural dimension even if in the end the final blow is struck by a man and not without a little irony. 

This sense of unreality otherwise out of keeping with the immediacy of Ishii’s handheld camera is also seen in the mental institution to which the film eventually travels, a foggy gothic building echoing the Western mansion in the first film but similarly filed with oppressed and abused women sent mad by a patriarchal society or perhaps merely sent there to become so by men who wanted them out of the way. Gondo himself seems to be a regular visitor bringing along his own electroshock machine but finally resorting to using his bare hands in order to tie up a loose end and preserve his own position as head of the clan. 

Ocho is not above using her sexuality to manipulate him, while Ishii maintains the naked sword fights from the first film both from the balletic opening of Ocho and her parasol to the chaos of the final sequence as the women come together to take their revenge as one. Perhaps strangely there isn’t an awful lot of gambling in the film, but Ocho nevertheless makes good use of her trademark hanafuda cards while in a moment of symmetry it’s the wife of her target who eventually settles the matter in a more diplomatic fashion by subjecting herself to the same humiliation to which Ocho had been subjected to bring the circle to a close. Having once again stood up against corrupt crooks and greedy men, Ocho later takes her sisters with her as she walks off this time into the sunset rather than the dark. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Sex and Fury (不良姐御伝 猪の鹿お蝶, Norifumi Suzuki,1973)

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An orphaned daughter takes revenge against the corruptions of the late Meiji society in Norifumi Suzuki’s pinky violence classic Sex and Fury (不良姐御伝 猪の鹿お蝶, Furyo anego den: Inoshika Ocho). As the opening voiceover explains, the Japan of the early 1900s is already stoking imperial ambitions closely linked with the ideas of “modernisation” and “civility” it is seeking though in reality it is very much a gangster society as the three villains the heroine searches for have come to dominate the new Japan. 

This moment of schism is depicted in the opening sequence set in 1886 in which the little girl who will later take the name Ocho witnesses the murder of her policeman father by three unseen assassins who steal from him evidence of a scandal they then use for their own gain. The murder takes place in a shrine, the young Ocho rolling her paper ball onto a discarded charm that reads “misfortune”, while the film then jumps on to 1905 through a series of historical images prominently featuring the emperor Meiji along with a host of patriotic symbols that seem to signal the wrong path that is being taken. 

As for Ocho (Reiko Ike), she has survived by living on her wits as an excellent pickpocket and gambler but is otherwise uncorrupted continuing to dress in kimono and giving off an air of refined elegance that belies her toughness. In the course of her revenge, she is met by her opposite number, Shunosuke (Masataka Naruse), whose father was also killed by the same three duplicitous yakuza and is dragged into geopolitical intrigue by means of plot by the British to turn Japan into the site of the second opium wars using a spy disguised as a dancer played by Swedish starlet Christina Lindberg who is really in Japan for Shunosuke with whom she fell in love abroad only to be cruelly abandoned. 

Somewhat contradictorily, it’s these Western intrusions that are being resisted with Ocho the representative of an older Japan, and the gangsters that of a newer, largely amoral society of burgeoning militarism. Arch villain Kurokawa (Seizaburo Kawazu) lives in a huge Western-style mansion and is preparing to transition into national politics in the post-feudal society insisting that he and his organisation will soon control “everything”. His underling Iwakura (Hiroshi Nawa), who travels by motorcar, will also be handling the construction of Tokyo Harbour. When the girls from Ocho’s adopted family are kidnapped, they are taken to dance hall Panorama which is bedecked both with Christmassy tinsel and signs celebrating the victory in the Russo-Japanese conflict, while in an anachronistic touch scenes of the war are projected inside. Just to ram the point home, the man who throws a knife at Ocho is wearing stereotypical Chinese dress, while Kurokawa is later seen to have at his disposal a secret attack squad of nuns armed with switchblades and has Ocho whipped, by British spy Christina, in front of a large mural of Christ in some kind of underground chapel. 

In taking her revenge, Ocho is also in a sense attempting to right a historical wrong in removing these usurping men and their accomplice from power while fighting their perversion with her sexuality over which only she is master going so far as to kill one with poison rubbed on her own skin. In accidentally having exposed the equally duplicitous practices in a gambling hall, she is attacked while in the bath but instantly leaps into action entirely in the nude in a strangely beautiful sequence of elegant violence and poetic bloodletting that echoes the film’s conclusion in finally moving out into the snow. Eventually captured, she is bound tightly with rope and tortured but manages to cut herself free using only one of her trademark hanafuda cards which also symbolise her skill as a gambler even if her climactic game with Christina is played with Western cards for casino chips over a dining table. 

Suzuki signals the chaotic nature of this early 20th century world in his riotous use of colour and frequent anachronisms along with canted angles and a spinning top shot that seems to echo the world spinning out of control as Iwakura breaks a sacred promise between gamblers and rapes a young woman he had agreed to spare if Ocho was victorious in her bout with Christina. He saves his most expressionistic technique for the film’s closing moments in which Ocho singlehandedly puts a stop to Kurokawa’s corruption, another picture of Emperor Meiji looking down at her as she launches her final attack, and then stops to purify herself in the snow before wandering off into a storm of hanafuda cards with only darkness ahead of her.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

*Norifumi Suzuki’s name is actually “Noribumi” but he has become known as “Norifumi” to English-speaking audiences.

Hovering Blade (彷徨之刃, Chen Zhuo, 2024)

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The funny thing about Hovering Blade (彷徨之刃, pánghuáng zhī rèn) is that it gets away with suggesting that the police won’t investigate properly and is quite unexpectedly sympathetic towards the hero’s desire for first hand retribution, albeit with the caveat that the police are seen to be investigating but possibly hamstrung by otherwise sensible legislation about the age of criminal responsibility. The Keigo Higashino novel on which the film is based had also been rooted in a moral panic that children were deliberately committing heinous crimes in the knowledge they couldn’t legally be punished for them.

The perpetrators in this case are a little older, though the argument is that if they had been properly charged for an offence committed in childhood they wouldn’t have gone on to commit further crimes in the belief that they are above the law. One of the men feels that in fact he is because it’s clear his wealthy and influential father often clears up his messes for him. A secondary issue hints at an anxiety about the nature of justice given that minors who commit serious crimes such as rape or murder receive much lighter sentences meaning they could be free to live a relatively normal life in just a few short years when their victims will obviously have no such opportunity.

Of course, that’s the point. The implication is that these young people were not fully capable of understanding their actions and could still be rehabilitated to become upstanding members of society. But that might not seem right to the families of their victims such as Li Chanfeng (Wang Qianyuan), a doting single father whose only daughter was raped an murdered by a pair of young hooligans with the assistance of their bullied friend. With judicial progress slow, he receives a tip off from the instigators’ underling and pays a visit to one of the other men who assumes he’s a burglar and attacks him leading Chengfeng to beat him to death with a baseball bat while a video of his daughter’s rape plays on the computer screen. 

The film presumably gets away with its hints towards vigilanteism by the fact the police are right behind him despite having received no tip off. The lead officer is however himself conflicted in beginning to doubt he can provide real justice because of the way the law responds to children who commit crimes and appears to sympathise with Changfeng to the extend he appears reluctant to catch him. The TV news and the people watching it also seem to understand and approve of his quest and desire for vengeance with a woman even helping him hide from the police if also urging him to turn himself in.

But the kind of justice Changfeng wants is incredibly direct. He doesn’t want these men off the streets because he fears for other people’s daughters, but wants to ensure they can’t live the share of life his daughter has been denied. The fact that, if legal justice is served, they’d get out and still be young men pains him without end and only death will answer it. Chased by the police, he begs them to kill him too to release him from his torment. 

Chen Zhuo keeps the tension high with a series of exciting action sequences including one though a disused water park near a moribund hotel the bad guys have been using as hideout. The reasons for their crimes are never explained aside from the ringleader’s dependence on his father, though they are assumed to be mere devilment and rebellion, an attempt to circumvent the system knowing they can’t be held legally responsible for their actions.

The familiar series of title cards at the film’s conclusion explain that the police caught all the wrongdoers while they have also lowered the age of responsibility though it wouldn’t have made any difference in this case. A flashback to another trio of teens suggests that they are emboldened by the fact the law can’t touch them, but the bigger issue is likely to be the way the system is corrupted by money and unequal access to justice. Changfeng is after all a lowly construction worker and is largely left on his own with nothing left to live for but vengeance. His quest to kill the killer is also a quest to kill himself and end his suffering. Zhuo follows him through the grimness of this everyday life, the squalid rooms and his general sense of emptiness but finally returns to the world of state justice and apparently compassionate police only sorry that they couldn’t do more to protect their fellow citizens from the “bad kids” of a changing society.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Mosquito on the Tenth Floor (十階のモスキート, Yoichi Sai, 1983)

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A beaten-down beat cop’s existential crisis progressively deepens after he throws himself into financial ruin to buy a computer in Yoichi Sai’s debut The Mosquito on the Tenth Floor (十階のモスキート, Jikkai no Mosquito). Like Pool Without Water, star Yuya Uchida conceived and co-scripted the film as a vehicle for himself and was apparently inspired by the sight of some blood, his own, on a wall where he’d squashed a mosquito though he also claimed the the 10 in the title is intended to reference the 10 commandments in addition to simply where the unnamed protagonist lives.

The fact that he lives on the 10th and top floor in a building with no lift is symbolic of his dismal circumstances. On the one hand he can rise no higher but on the other is stuck with an inconvenient living situation precisely because of his inability to rise socially. As it transpires the hero, a policeman, joined the force right out of high school with aspirations of rising to the rank of captain but has spent the entirety of his 20-year career manning a police box. He’s repeatedly failed the exam for promotion to lieutenant and realistically speaking is now simply too old to make much further progress. A man of few words, he listens as the other officers who took the exam with him outline the hierarchal structure of the police force while meditating that as a man on the wrong side of 40 his possibilities have decreased and it’s more than likely he’ll be stuck in the police box until he retires. 

His boss later says as much, sympathising with him but also pointing out that a policeman is also a public servant with a role to serve within the community. He is supposed to make people feel safe and contribute to the progress towards a crime-free society, but it’s clear that his life has spiralled out of control precisely because he cannot ally his career goals with the kind of life he wished to lead. His wife divorced him two years ago seemingly because she wanted a greater degree of material comfort and became resentful that he failed to progress in his career and could not move on from the low-salaried position of an ordinary street cop. She now makes a living selling golf club memberships, looking ahead to the oncoming Bubble-era and a society of affluent salarymen which is very much what her new boyfriend seems to be. Meanwhile, she lives in a very nice townhouse with their teenage daughter and constantly hassles the policeman for falling behind with his child support and alimony payments. He’s also racked up a healthy tab at a karaoke bar where he regularly hangs out and has a serious gambling problem with betting on boat races seemingly his only other form of social outlet.

As his daughter and others keep reminding him, the world is changing and his decision to buy a computer after unwisely taking out a payday loan is in part a symbol of his desire to progress into the modern society even if, somewhat ironically, others chastise him for spending what is then a huge amount of money on something they think of a child’s toy. Otherwise an upstanding policeman who irritatedly deflects a colleague’s joke about bribing someone to pass the exam, the policeman finds himself taking out one payday loan to pay another with loansharks constantly ringing him at the police box to remind him he’s behind on his payments. To overcome his sense of powerlessness, he begins by abusing his authority in catching a punk woman shoplifting and arresting her but then taking her back to his flat to play computer bowling and take advantage of her sexually. He later does something similar with a bar hostess, Keiko (Reiko Nakamura), who took him home when he was drunk. Though the encounter begins as rape, Keiko soon gives in and even comes back for more claiming that she’d never done it with a policeman before and it exceeded her expectations which is in many ways reflective social attitudes at the time. Emboldened, he invites danger by raping a female traffic cop, tearing her clothes as she fights back, screams, and cries though she presumably does not report him given the professional and social consequences that may adversely affect her life and career if she chose to. 

His ex-wife Toshie (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) says she’s not even sure if he’s human anymore, and his failed attempt to rape her after his boss reminds him that he advised against getting a divorce in the first place because it would negatively affect his chance of promotion may be a perverse way to prove he is though it obviously backfires. Having failed in every area of his life and with no prospect of ever getting back on track or starting again, he begins to go quietly insane typing rude words into his computer while the constant calls from loansharks take on a mosquito-like buzzing as does his own final wail of despair and powerlessness as he’s brought down by same authority he once served. His aloneness and confusion are palpable when he ventures into the city and discovers his teenage daughter Rie (Kyoko Koizumi) dancing in Harajuku staring at her intently but then walking away having invaded this space reserved for the young. “Police yourself!” one of the Rockabilly guys ironically instructs him on noticing that he’s dropped his ice cream cone, explaining that the police might shut them down if they’re discovered to be using the space irresponsibly by littering. Rie and her friends tell him to get a life, explaining that the world is changing while tapping him for cash he doesn’t have but is too embarrassed to refuse, laying bare the extent to which he and those like him have been left behind by the economic miracle, buzzing around maddeningly in mid-air with safe nowhere safe to land. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

A Fine, Windy Day (바람 불어 좋은 날, Lee Jang-ho, 1980)

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Lee Jang-ho returned to filmmaking after a short hiatus having been temporarily banned for the possession of marijuana in 1980 with a fresh new approach focussing on the social issues of the day as Korea found itself in the midst of confusion following the assassination of president Park Chung-hee. Though many hoped for a new era of long-awaited democratisation, those hopes were soon dashed by another military coup and the continuation of oppressive dictatorship under Chun Doo-hwan. During his time away from the film industry, Lee had run a bar with his mother and it was there that he became more acquainted with the struggles of ordinary people.

Adapted from a novel by Choi In-name, A Fine, Windy Day (바람 불어 좋은 날, Barambuleo Joheun Nal) follows three young men who have migrated from the countryside to Seoul in wider movement of urban migration. The sister of one of the men who later joins them remarks that there are no young people left in the countryside and her brother agrees that there is no longer any future in farming. Yet as the opening of the film makes clear in its idealised vision of pastoral life, it is really the expansion of the cities which has displaced the men and destroyed the natural habitats they once inhabited. The film often aligns the three with stray dogs who’ve come scavenging in the city because they can no longer survive in their rural hometowns. 

“It’s as if I’ve been taking a beating for two years straight from some invisible person” delivery boy Deokbae (Ahn Sung-ki) remarks during the film’s conclusion of his life in Seoul which does indeed seem to have been one long and bloody battle that had forced him into submission. As he tells equally naive country boy Suntae, he never stuttered before he came to the city but is now cowed and anxious all too aware of how the native Seoulites treat men like him. Daughter of a wealthy family, Myung-hee (Yu Ji-in) drives her own car around town, knocking over school children and not even bothering to stop until challenged by Deokbae for ruining the food he was currently in the middle of delivering. He later gets a telling off from his boss and his pay docked while she wraps her expensive scarf around his neck and promises to send compensation money to the restaurant where he works. 

Deokbae knows that Myung-hee is merely playing with him, her strangely childish glee like a little boy pulling the wings off a fly, yet he continues to associate with her. She laughs at him when he sits on the floor instead of the sofa after she ordered from the restaurant to get him to come to her house, and then tries to kiss him before becoming angry and pushing him away. Her posh friends later invade the restaurant and are drunk and rowdy, refusing to leave until a fight develops and they’re all carted off to the police.

But it’s only one of several degradations the men suffer at the hands of a new aristocracy not so different from the feudal elite. Chunsik (Lee Yeong-ho) works at a hairdresser’s where he is smitten with the pretty stylish Miss Yu (Kim Bo-yeon) who is being more or less sold by her ambitious boss and thereafter coerced into a compensated relationship with a sleazy businessman, Mr Kim, who was himself once a country boy but got rich quick through property speculation having cheated the old man who appeared in the film’s opening out of his ancestral land which has since been turned into the half-built slum inhabited by the three men. He is about to open a new shopping centre where the barber hopes to gain a prime position thanks to providing access to Miss Yu. The old man rails around the town demanding the return of his land, decrying that heaven will punish Mr Kim for what he’s done, and finally commits suicide in the newly completed building almost as it he were cursing it. 

The old man’s body is laid out on the last remaining stretched field where a shamanistic funeral song plays as a lament for the now ruined pastoral idyll which has been taken from each of the men and replaced with internecine capitalism in which wealth comes at the exchange of humanity. At the Chinese restaurant where Deokbae works, the wife of the dying boss had been carrying on an affair with the manager whom she hopes to marry once her husband has gone, while he expects to take over the shop though as is later revealed he is already married with children and technically performing a long con on her. The third man, Gilnam (Kim Seong-chan), works in a motel while saving money to open a hotel of his own but unwisely gives his savings to his girlfriend who runs off with them leaving him with nothing. He is then drafted for military service, receiving another blow from the contemporary Korea.

The man who spars with Deokbae who takes up boxing after his altercation with the rich kids is also wearing a shirt that reads “Korea” on the back and we watch as he is mercilessly beaten but this time refusing to give up reflecting only that he’s learned how to take a hit which is it seems the only way to survive in the Seoul of the early 1980s. The tone that Lee lands on is however one of playful irony, particularly in the meta-quality of the closing narration along with its victory in defeat motif as Deokbae acknowledges the need to roll with the punches which is also a subversive admission of the futility of his situation in which it is simply impossible to resist the system. A lighthearted but also melancholy chronicle of the feudal legacy repurposed for a capitalist era the film encapsulates itself in its bizarre disco scene as a confused Deokbae dances like a shaman, forever a country boy lost in an increasingly soulless and capitalistic society.

Mom, Is That You?! (こんにちは、母さん, Yoji Yamada, 2023)

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“People of my generation can’t throw anything away,” an older woman admits on her hearing her daughter-in-law has just been featured in a TV series about decluttering. Inspired by Ai Nagai’s 2001 play, the latest from veteran director Yoji Yamada Mom, Is that You? (こんにちは、母さん, Konichiwa, Okasan) seems to hint at a series of circular generational divides while suggesting that the children of the Bubble-era in particular are too quick to get rid of things they don’t think they don’t need anymore.

That’s the irony of soon-to-be 50-year-old Akio’s (Yo Oizumi) salaryman job in HR. It’s his job to cut dead wood from the company and this current round of polite requests to employees of a certain level to take early retirement includes his uni friend Kibe (Kankuro Kudo) who doesn’t take kindly to what he sees as a personal betrayal. Unlike Akio who is beginning to tire of the salaryman dream, Kibe fiercely fights for his position and identity as an executive at a big company even when faced with banishment room treatment and disciplinary dismissal after an altercation with the boss.

But what Kibe doesn’t know is that Akio is already facing a series of crises. His marriage has collapsed and his university student daughter Mai (Mei Nagano) is having a crisis of her own. Fresh from her tidying success, her mother has told her that all she can do is get good grades followed by a boring salaryman job like her dad’s which doesn’t seem to be what she wants which is why she’s run off to stay with her grandmother Fukue (Sayuri Yoshinaga) who runs a traditional shop selling tabi socks near the Sumida River. Fukue has a kindly, laid-back attitude remiscent of the shitamachi spirit found in other Yamada films in contrast to the stressed out uptightness of Akio who hasn’t told her about his impending divorce nor work troubles but finds himself paying a visit home in an attempt to sort himself out only to find Fukue keeping herself busy with a local charity group and nascent relationship with a church pastor. 

Fukue’s charity work is emblematic of a waste not want not philosophy that has otherwise disappeared from the modern society as they pick up the things other people don’t want and donate them to the needy even if it sometimes seems a little simplistic or patronising. Biting into some reject crackers from the local rice cracker shop, Akio reflects that they’re something that’s made to console people and it’s work that has meaning unlike his soulless corporate job that gives him nothing other than stress and money. At the time the play was written, the fallacy of the salaryman dream was clear for all to see in the post-Bubble society but to a man like Akio getting a company job was a big deal and his success is still the talk of his mother’s friends even he starts to wonder if he still has time to start again and discover a more meaningful way of living.

Some of these ideas, and the timescales involved, make much more sense for the play’s millennial setting rather than the film’s apparent present day given the references to the firebombing of Tokyo which would require the older protagonists to be their late 80s to even remember. Akio dismisses his mother’s charity work and insists that the homeless are only those who opted out of the competitive society he too has come to doubt or else were excluded from it, while he’s resentful of her attachment to the pastor in contrast to Mai who is excited by the prospect of her grandmother’s love affair and enduring possibilities of age while Fukue is beginning to fear not death but dependency if her health should suddenly decline. 

It’s in the midst of her heartbreak that the film affords Fukue a new beginning if in coming full circle, Akio choosing to make a clean break with the unhappiness in his life and Mai embracing her youth while falling for the old world charms of her grandmother’s tabi sock shop almost exclusively catering to sumo wrestlers, who as someone points out never waste anything, and people trying ceremony for the first time at 60. Like most of Yamada’s work, the film has a gentle humanity and melancholy poignancy but also a sense of hope and continuity that run contrary to an overly corporatised society in which young and old are already losing faith.

Mom, Is That You?! screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (No subitles)

Don’t Call it Mystery (ミステリと言う勿れ, Hiroaki Matsuyama, 2023)

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Totono once again finds himself at the centre of of conspiracy in the big screen edition of the popular drama based on the manga by Yumi Tamura, Don’t Call it Mystery (ミステリと言う勿れ). Embroiled in what first looks like a family succession drama as he points out recalling The Inugami Family, he soon discovers there’s more in play than might be expected but also that the wounds of the past are slow to heal and often cause people to act in unexpected ways.

In any case, he ends up getting involved care of Garo (Eita Nagayama) who is still on the run following the end of the TV series so unable to help a teenage girl, Shioji (Nanoka Hara), who is one of four grandchildren in line to inherit her grandfather’s legacy if only she can fulfil the bizarre quest he left for them in his will. Her worry is that, as family law dictates one person inherits everything, there will inevitably be deaths and violence involved as the cousins battle each other for the prize of a giant estate near Hiroshima where Totono also just happened to be on a day trip.

Once again, the running gag is that mystery just seems to find Totono who only wants to get on with living his peaceful life as a student eating curry and going to museums though there are some tantalising clues to his own backstory littered through the piece such as his unexpected familiarity with the city of Hiroshima. The case this time as also has a link to Totono’s famously curly hair which only adds to his Kindaichi-esque sense of eccentricity deepened by his reluctance to allow Shioji’s family to do his laundry or to a take a bath in another person’s home. But these foibles are, as he points out to those around him, reflective of a conflict in what is considered considerate behaviour. They think they’re being nice by offering to do his laundry, but he doesn’t want them to so it’s just additional inconvenience for him much in the same way as you if offer someone a lift to the station thinking that’s easier for them and they accept not to cause offence but are secretly disappointed because they were looking forward to the walk.

Totono’s defining characteristic as an accidental detective is indeed his emotional intelligence and ability to pick up on the slightest things that might be bothering those around him, often prone to lengthy monologues that advocate for a more compassionate world and better understanding between people. As the mystery becomes clear, he begins to realise that the parents of the grandchildren were trying to protect them from the toxic legacy of tradition and end the ridiculous family succession drama that apparently led to the deaths of some of their immediate relatives. He gives similar advice to Shoji’s cousin Yura (Ko Shibasaki) on hearing her father tell her that women are happiest as wives and mothers and she should drop what she’s doing to pay more attention to her husband and daughter. Totono takes him to task for his sexist thinking and tells him it’s unfair, advising Yura that she might not unwittingly want to pass these ideas on to her own daughter by suppressing herself to conform to her father’s outdated idea of conventional femininity.

As Totono says, children are like wet cement and the things dropped on them leave their mark for the rest of the child’s life. It seems that the family was in a sense haunted by a child they’d wronged and worried would someday come back to wreak their revenge as a phantasmagorical embodiment of their latent guilt and shame about how they usurped their fortune. What the grandchildren come to realise, is that their late parents did actually understand them and wanted them to be happy following their own paths rather than bound by tradition or outdated notions of properness regardless of whatever happens with the grandfather’s more literal legacy and the buried skeletons it contains. Filled with the same kind of gentle intrigue and mystery along with the compassionate spirit of the TV series and manga, the big screen edition features another difficult case for Totono that also begins to illuminate his own troubled past and the secrets behinds his empathetic soul.

Don’t Call it Mystery screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Missing (ミッシング, Keisuke Yoshida, 2024)

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Why is it that we rush to judgement rather than empathy? When a little girl disappears during a short walk from a local park to her home, less than helpful members of the public are quick to turn on the parents while news media, eager for ratings and clicks, is only too happy to give the people what they want casting aside ethical concerns in their exploitation of the parents’ pain all while the little girl remains missing.

In this society, it’s quite normal culturally for children of Miu’s age, six, to walk short distances alone and be left unsupervised at home at for short periods of time. Nevertheless, the public is quick to blame the mother, Saori (Satomi Ishihara), because she had gone to a concert that night and didn’t notice frantic calls from her husband worried because Miu was not at home when he got back from work at 7pm. Soari too blames herself, as is perhaps natural, but it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to never go out for an evening again after having children. Her husband comes in for less scrutiny, which might be surprising, though her brother, Keigo (Yusaku Mori), soon finds himself the prime suspect having been the last to see Miu and allowed her to walk home alone though he would previously have walked her back.

The family find themselves under scrutiny with their every move judged by an unforgiving society. When they dare to buy fancy pastries, online trolls suggest they can’t be all that bothered about Miu after all and are living the high life with the extra money they no longer need to spend on her. Given all that, it might be surprising that they turn to the media for help but in their desperation to find Miu they will leave no stone unturned. Idealistic reporter Sunada (Tomoya Nakamura) seems to want to help them, but is constantly undermined by his bosses who pressure him to take the story into more sensational territory. Though he wanted to write a human interest piece supporting the parents and raising awareness about Miu’s disappearance, he ends up placing them in the firing line for even more trolling and particularly of Saori’s brother Keigo who is an introverted, awkward man not suited to appearing on television. 

Sunada says he wants to help, but it’s undeniable that the media is exploiting the parents’ desperation raising serious ethical concerns as to how they safeguard sources and subjects while shaping the narrative around sensitive issues. Sunada takes a producer to task for placing images of a cement mixer and the sea into the ident for the piece as if it were hinting at what might have happened to Miu but really what the station is most interested in is digging up dirt on the family rather than drawing out new information on the case. A fellow journalist is having great success with a salacious story about the mayor’s son committing fraud, but his piece is less crusading investigative journalism than gossip inviting judgement. Disliking his flippant attitude, Sunada reminds him their job’s not to make people laugh, but his colleague gets a fancy promotion to head office while Sunada is stuck doing random feel good stories about seals.

Their treatment at the hands of the media also exposes a divide within the couple with Saori often frustrated by her husband’s attitude, feeling as if he isn’t invested enough. Yutaka (Munetaka Aoki) suggests simply not reading the online comments and ignoring the trolls while Saori feels compelled to defend herself. He is also warier of pranks and scammers, unwilling to simply jump on every lead out of desperation when so many people seem intent on causing them further pain. Perhaps it makes people feel more in control of their lives to blame the parents, as if something like this couldn’t happen to them because they make what they feel to be better choices, rather than accept that life is random and unfair and little girls can disappear into thin air mere steps from their own door. Unable to find her own daughter, Saori begins defending other people’s children getting a job as a crossing guard to ensure they reach home safely while simultaneously frantic and afraid, handing out fliers to a largely disinterested populace ever hungry for novelty and excitement and embarrassed by her pain even as they continue to feed on it.

Missing screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

(Ab)normal Desire (正欲, Yoshiyuki Kishi, 2023)

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There’s a pun embedded in the Japanese title of Yoshiyuki Kishi’s heartfelt drama (Ab)normal Desire in that first character in the word for “sexual desire” (seiyoku, 性欲) has been replaced by one that can be read the same but has the meaning of “correct”, or “proper”. But “normal” is also relative construct that implies conformance with the majority even if that may not actually be the case. As one of the protagonists later remarks “everyone is pervy” though they themselves feel such a degree of shame and otherness that it’s largely prevented them from living any kind of life at all.

In that sense it may be hard to understand why a fetish for water would invite such severe self-loathing in that it causes no harm to others if admittedly resulting in ridicule if exposed. Then again, society can be a fierce watchdog. Department store shop assistant Natsuki (Yui Aragaki) is taken to task by her pregnant colleague who refuses to take her seriously when she says she’s not really interested in getting a boyfriend before giving her a lecture about her biological clock. Though Natsuki appears uninterested in her vacant prattling, the woman later becomes upset and harshly tells her that she was only trying to be “nice” because she felt “sorry” for her and that making people be nice to you in this way is actually a form of harassment which, whichever way you look at it, is some particularly twisted logic.

Her alienation seems to stem from the fact that she feels “abnormal” and that her fetish for water is a part of herself she must be careful to hide. Her parents watch a news report on Tokyo Rainbow Pride and marvel at the idea that there are now choices other than marriage and children but even among the young there remains confusion and shame amid an inability to reconcile the seemingly opposing concepts of “normality” and “diversity” as they struggle to define themselves. A plan to have a male dancer who usually dances in a masculine style dance in a more feminine way backfires when he points out that asking someone to dance in a way they don’t want to doesn’t really do much to advance “diversity”.

But diversity isn’t considered an ideal by all and parents of young children find themselves confused and conflicted when their kids begin to reject conventionality at an early age by asking to withdraw themselves from school and instead focus on other kinds of education that align with their interests. Challenged by his wife about why he never listens to their son’s concerns, prosecutor Hiroki (Goro Inagaki) replies that he should “just be normal” and later describes people who are “unable to live normal lives” as bugs in the system which must eradicated. A symbol of lingering authoritarianism, Hiroki is an intensely conservative man obsessed with properness who thinks it’s his job to decide which crimes everyone is guilty of rather than make any attempt to understand the world around him outside of binary terms like right and wrong or normal and abnormal. When his assistant passes him information on fetishes as a potential explanation for the case of a man who repeatedly steals taps, he simply rolls his eyes and dismisses it.

Yet he perhaps has his own fears and internalised shame as evidenced by his outrage on discovering that another man has been coming to the house to help his wife with tech setup for their son’s new outlet in livestreaming and not only that, he was able to blow up the balloons that Hiroki himself failed to inflate. It’s his rigid authoritarianism that eventually alienates his wife and son who come to see him only as an oppressive bully unable to accept anything that differs from his own definition of “normal”. Finally, he’s the one who is isolated, imprisoned by his own repression and lack of understanding or unwillingness to accept those around him.

Even so, despite its positive messages that no one should feel themselves alone or that society has no place for them the film muddies the waters by introducing fetishes that are necessarily problematic in that they cause harm to others who do not or cannot consent and could not and should not be accepted by mainstream society though oddly those that have them seem to feel less shame only fearing being caught because acting on their desires is against both moral and judicial laws. In any case, in discovering togetherness, that they are not alone, those who feel their desires to be “abnormal” can begin to ease their loneliness and find a place for themselves in an often judgemental world.

(Ab)normal Desire screened as part of this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)