Tag: 2020s

Crocodile Tears (Air Mata Buaya, Tumpal Tampubolon, 2024)

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What happens when the baby wants to break out of the egg? The hero of Tumpal Tampubolon’s Crocodile Tears (Air Mata Buaya) isn’t a baby, he’s a 20-year-old man, but the crocodile zoo where he lives with his mother is also a kind of extended womb in which she keeps him constrained. The film’s title is apparently inspired by the fact that crocodiles protect their young by holding them in their jaws, the same jaws they use to snap at the live chickens Johan (Yusuf Mahardika) and his mother (Marissa Anita) throw over the fences. 

Mama is evidently aware her little boy’s growing up. In the first shot of the film he’s furtively masturbating until he’s interrupted by her screaming for him outside. She scrubs his pants and seems to notice that they’re soiled, taking care to remind him that he should keep himself clean now he’s a grown man, but Johan doesn’t seem to understand telling her that he showers every day. Perhaps he’s smarting a little at her comments having overheard two women complaining about a bad smell while sitting next to him at a restaurant and wondering if he carries the stench of the crocodile park even when in the outside world. Later he takes to wearing some of the perfume he picked up for his mother’s birthday and had also given to his girlfriend Arumi (Zulfa Maharani).

Arumi is a direct threat to Mama who knows that another woman will inevitably replace her. She and Johan still sleep in the same bed. The irony is that her loneliness becomes that of Johan who is terrified of ending up all alone in the crocodile park prevented from having anything like a normal life by his mother’s possessive neediness. He loses his virginity to Arumi, a more worldly woman working in the local karaoke box and on the fringes of the sex trade, and she becomes pregnant though unsure whether or not Johan is the father. He realises he likely isn’t, but like his mother is so lonely that he doesn’t care only begging Arumi not to leave him because he can’t bear the idea of being on his own. 

But despite the obvious conflict and rivalry between them, the past is essentially repeating with each woman oppressed by Indonesia’s oppressively conservative and patriarchal social norms. Mama had Johan at 19 and seemingly unmarried. Though she resented the baby in her womb, when he was born she gave all of herself to him and he became her entire world. There are rumours that Mama may have murdered her husband and fed him to the crocodiles though Johan says he never knew his father. He was told both that he had died before he was born and that his father is the zoo’s white crocodile whom his mother refers to as “Papa” and claims to have a special connection to “mentally”. Now Arumi looks her in the eye and says she will do for her child as she did for Johan, but she too has been railroaded into a marriage through lack of other options. Aside from the stigma attached to unwed motherhood, she is fired from the karaoke bar for shoving a customer who was harassing her with the boss apparently thinking it’s all part of her job and she should have known better than to upset a paying client. 

The two women become almost like crocodiles in a cage snapping in defence of their territory as if knowing only one of them can stay. Plagued by strange visions, as is Arumi later, it seems the choice is really Johan’s of whether to bust out of his shell and symbolically break free of his mother’s womb or abandon the idea of starting his own family with Arumi to stay in there forever. Tumpal Tampubolon cracks up the sense of dread and eeriness  beginning merely with discomfort in this quasi-incestuous relationship and heading into the realms of folk horror with its strange and surreal hallucinations that confront Johan with his Oedipal dilemma as he tries to crawl free only waiting to see if Mama’s jaw will finally snap.

Crocodile Tears screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Black Box Diaries (Shiori Ito, 2024)

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Shiori Ito, then using just her first name, made headline news when she decided to go public naming a prominent political journalist with strong ties to then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the man who had drugged and raped her following what she believed was an appointment to discuss a potential job working overseas. Using recordings made at the time along with footage filmed more recently, Black Box Diaries is a kind of companion piece to her book Black Box which details her quest for justice in the face of a misogynistic justice system and conservative society.

The reason she’d only used her first name at her original press conference was to protect her family because there is significant social stigma attached not only to being a survivor of sexual assault but for daring to speak out and disrupt the illusion of social harmony. In fact, during the opening sequence which takes place in a long dark tunnel we hear a recorded phone call with Shiori’s sister who pleads with her not to show her face. The families of those who appear in the news often become targets for the media and can end up being ostracised by their communities or losing their jobs and livelihoods. Shiori herself also tearfully remarks on the guilt and uncertainty she feels because she knows that her decision, which she feels necessary, will have a negative impact on her friends and family while she herself continues to receive hate mail from those who call her an opportunist or ask why talks down her country while continuing to live there.

There is an essential irony in the fact that it’s Shiori who ends up in a symbolic prison, having to leave her apartment and stay with a friend unable to venture outside or work for fear of being hounded by the press. Her decision to go public was motivated by the failure to gain justice via the judicial system firstly because the police do not take her attempt to report her assault seriously. At that time (though they’ve since been updated), Japan’s rape laws hadn’t changed since the Meiji era and were rooted not in ideas of consent but only in whether or not physical violence had taken place and the victim had resisted physically. The secondary charge of “quasi-rape” was used in cases such as these when the victim was unable to do so because they had been drugged or incapacitated in some other way. Thus even though Shiori has evidence such as CCTV footage that shows her being physically carried out of the taxi into the hotel and barely able to walk, it does not help her case and nor does DNA on her bra because it only proves that her assailant touched it and nothing else. An investigator describes what happened to her as taking place within a “black box” that no one can ever really see inside.

But for all that, the film touches on the way that other people latch on to her case and try to use it for their own ends such as an offer from Yuriko Koike, the ultraconservative mayor of Tokyo, to join her new political party which she had started to challenge the ruling LDP of which she was once a member in fact serving as a cabinet minister under Shinzo Abe during his first stint as Prime Minister in 2007. The editor of her book also tells her that the reason everything’s moving so quickly is because of the upcoming election and people should have this kind of information before they vote. The Abe administration was plagued by scandal and accusations of cronyism which the suggestions that he personally intervened because Yamaguchi was a friend of his (and coincidentally also had a book coming out which was a biography of Abe) only furthered this narrative. Shiori counters that she wasn’t really interested in politics (of this kind, at least) and was just trying to tell her story in the interests of justice, but is noticeably dejected on watching Abe once again win in a landslide.

His victory seems to stand in for a triumph of patriarchy as Shiori is repeatedly silenced or ignored. The editor also tells her Yamaguchi could stop her book being published because publishing isn’t given the same freedom as the press theoretically has but does not use. Meanwhile, the implication is that the head of the Tokyo Police stopped Yamaguchi’s arrest in order to bolster his own political capital and was in fact rewarded for it later. Shiori seems to develop a friendly relationship with a conflicted policeman who was sympathetic to her case, but even he drunkenly makes a pass at her during an ill-advised phone call that comes off as sexual harassment and is even more inappropriate given the circumstances. The doorman at the hotel meanwhile makes an awkward attempt to centre himself as the hero when agreeing to testify publicly even if it puts his job at risk that she should be grateful it was him who was on duty because he’d always thought the laws surrounding sexual assault were too lenient though he actually did very little to try to help on the night in question even if he did attempt to call the police but was shut down by the hotel.

Nevertheless, his agreement and support bring Shiori to tears while begins to feel isolated and under incredible pressure from those who regard her as someone who can bring real change. Despite an early monologue warning that if she died and they said she took her own life she’d been bumped off, we later see her heading into a very dark place describing the difficulty of living life in her new persona as “that girl who was raped” even if she also receives support from other women oppressed by Japan’s fiercely patriarchal culture. Of course, others call her a traitor to her gender and say they feel sorry for the men she’s accusing. But still she continues undaunted, eventually emerging from the long dark tunnel at the film’s conclusion and continuing to project the sense of support for other women echoed in the opening title cards addressed to those watching who have likely themselves experienced similar trauma.

Black Box Diaries screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival and will be released in UK cinemas 25th October courtesy of Dogwoof.

UK trailer (English subtitles)

The Trap (罠 THE TRAP, Kaizo Hayashi, 1996)

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At the beginning of the final instalment of the Maiku Hama trilogy The Trap (罠, Wana), a strange-looking man dressed in a long overcoat and wearing a mask to hide a facial deformity tries to hire Maiku (Masatoshi Nagase) to look for himself. It’s a decidedly odd moment, and it seems that Maiku, who takes every job that comes, turns the man down because it’s just too weird though in a way his refusal to grant his request may contribute to the unfolding tragedy. If previous instalments saw Hayashi in Nikkatsu Noir and Fukasaku territory, this time around he seems to be channeling Seijun Suzuki in his intensifying surrealism and bold use of colour.

Indeed, in one sense, this is a tale of doppelgängers. We first see the strange man lurking outside the cinema standing so still that until he slowly turns his head we assume he is a statue. What we later realise is that he wanted Maiku to look for someone who was making use of his identity along with perhaps returning to him his own. Nagase too is playing a double role and Maiku is also searching for himself eventually confronted by the fact the man he’s been looking for has his own face. 

Nevertheless, as the film opens Maiku is riding high. He’s doing very well financially after making a name for himself saving a child from a burning building. His sister Akane has got into a prestigious college, and he’s fallen in love with a woman from the post office, Yuriko (Yui Natsukawa), who is mute but can hear. By contrast, box office lady Asa remarks that nothing good’s happened since Maiku got his police commendation for saving the child adding to the sense that things are going far too well for Maiku and probably quite likely to plunge the other way. There’s currently a serial killer on the loose who’s abducting young women, drugging them, and posing their bodies in public places. Unfortunately, Yuriko becomes a target for the killer(s) after a moment of kindness to someone who was being bullied in a park. 

An orphan raised in the church, Yuriko seems to be the embodiment of an otherwise absent purity. She tells Maiku off for gambling and generally tries to improve him as a person while he later acknowledges her willingness to sacrifice herself for others perhaps even at the cost of her own life. Her forgiving nature might help her overcome the fact that Maiku and the detectives effectively use her as bait on two separate occasions swooping in to save her only in the nick of time. This moral dichotomy reinforces a sense of tension in the city in which good and evil co-exist on different planes just as past and present had in the previous film and further transforms Yokohama into a mystical, haunted place of ever present dangers. 

The sense of surreality is further heightened by the casting of actor Tetta Sugimoto who starred in Stairway to the Distant Past as the man in red but here seems to be playing an idealistic rookie cop, again countering the cynicism of detective Nakayama (Akaji Maro) who just wants to cut corners and get the job done rather than get it done right. Thus when Maiku is framed as the killer, Nakayama indulges in his long standing grudge against him and is determined to nail Maiku despite rookie Kozu’s insistence that he couldn’t have done it because they were together at the time. When even fingerprints can be faked, there is no such thing as reliable evidence.

Hayashi once again makes fantastic use of colour from the expressionistic storm to the eerie, dreamlike closing sequence in which Maiku must face himself and battle his demons before being saved by the angelic Yuriko. Taking place in an atmospheric sewer tunnel, the climax has an oneiric atmosphere and surrealist edge as Miku confronts this man who has his own face only to lose the image of him at the critical moment and thereafter seemingly disappear himself. The moments after also have an unreal quality, a poster for the film we’re watching, The Trap, positioned behind Asa at the counter and Hai-Ping’s letter from the first film seemingly playing as part of the film screening in the cinema causing us to wonder if this too is a dream or fabricated future for one who will not return. Dark and disturbing in its implications, coloured by the real terror of living of Japan in the mid-90s which had just experienced a devastating earthquake and unprecedented terror attack, the film nevertheless displays the warmth of the Yokohama we’ve come to love with its cast of charming characters and cheerful atmosphere despite the eerie emanations at its centre.

The Trap screens 19th October at Japan Society New York.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Stuntman (武替道, Herbert Leung & Albert Leung, 2024)

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No matter how good a film is, it’s never worth risking someone’s life. Intellectually, “heartless” action choreographer Sam knows that, but once the camera’s rolling all he seems to see is the take and it’s win at all costs. An homage to the glory days of Hong Kong cinema when no one had ever heard the words health and safety, Herbert Leung & Albert Leung’s Stuntman (武替道) is in its way a paean for those who risked their lives for our entertainment but also for a fading Hong Kong which has the film seems to argue lost it’s bite and become rather defeatist if not docile. 

Those around Sam, played by real life action choreographer Tung Wai, seem to be convinced that “Hong Kong cinema is dead,” largely because, for very good reason, it’s no longer possible to make the kind of films they did back then with crazy, death-defying stunts and visceral action sequences. The opening scenes of the film, set in the mid-1990s, find Sam filming what appears to be a Police Story-style chase through a shopping mall that is supposed to end with a stuntman stand-in jumping from a bridge onto a moving car to catch the bad guy. The stuntman, Wai, is young and experienced so he doesn’t make the jump at which point Sam yells at him and asks his assistant, Kam, to to do it instead. But everything that could go wrong does and Kam is seriously injured because of Sam’s singleminded stubbornness in refusing to film the sequence with a cut which would obviously make it safer even if he argues less exciting. 

Sam evidently does feel a degree of guilt for this, especially as it later has other consequences for his personal life, and retreats from the film industry to run a bone setting clinic with posters for classic Hong Kong films on the wall. It’s a reverence for this bygone era that enables him to bond with Long (Terrance Lau Chun-him), a younger and more modern kind of stuntman who isn’t necessarily afraid of taking risks but understands the importance of on-set safety. Long can’t catch a break with demand for stuntmen falling rapidly precisely because of the concurrent decline of action cinema while his brother keeps pressuring him to give up his dreams and join his logistics company instead. It’s Kit’s delivery firm that becomes an accidental villain representing a Hong Kong that’s lost it’s nerve and is determined to play it safe while Sam’s recklessness perhaps represents the opposite, a dangerous desire to risk it all without considering the consequences for those around him.

But as he’s fond of saying, there’s always a way. It doesn’t have to be either or. The film seems to say, Hong Kong cinema isn’t dead, but now it belongs to those like Long to lead in new directions, modernising rather than fading away and taking the best of the past with it while leaving the more problematic elements behind. Originally swayed by Sam’s charisma, Long is somewhat horrified when he’s confronted with the consequences of his old school approach to filmmaking which includes going guerrilla style in the street without paying for permits with the consequence not only of police with real guns getting involved but innocent civilians trying to go about their day getting caught up in their fake robbery, becoming frightened and even injured in the ensuing panic. 

Meanwhile, he teaches old dog Sam a few new tricks in that being deliberately unpleasant is no longer the way to exert authority on set while ordering takeaway for everyone is a nice gesture that reminds them you’re all part of a team. As much as Long is a kind of surrogate son for Sam, he’s also reminded that there are some relationships that can’t ever really be fully repaired even if it’s not too late to try to remake them. His pain on seeing his soon-to-be-married daughter’s (Cecilia Choi Sze-wan) step-father taking pride of place at the wedding is palpable, but in the end he realises he’ll never really change because he’s a relic of an older Hong Kong unable to move forward into this new era. “No matter how strong the wind, keep the flame alive,” he tells Long talking both about the Spirit of Hong Kong and its cinema while in a flashback sequence reminding his young daughter that the fireworks will forever glow in her heart. Lent a degree of pathos by Tung Wai’s impassioned performance, the film is a true homage to classic Hong Kong action while also insisting that there’s always a way and it’s never too late to reclaim something of what’s been lost.

Stuntman opens in UK cinemas 11th October courtesy of CineAsia

UK trailer (English subtitles)

Gifts from the Kitchen (キッチンから花束を, Hisashi Kikuchi, 2024)

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One of the few places offering Chinese-style home cooking, Fumin had become a home from for many during the 50 years its founder worked her kitchen herself. Fumi Sai has now retired, though welcoming one set of guests a day to her home, but there are many who continue to visit the restaurant under the management of her nephew Kazuyoshi and reminisce over their long years of enjoying not just the cooking but a familial relationship with Fumi herself. 

Collaboration with the clientele is cited by many as a reason Fumi’s restaurant became so popular. After a few years of working as a hairdresser, she decided to open a cafe after a friend remarked it was a shame more people didn’t have the opportunity to taste her cooking. Her first location was a tiny bar-style place with a handful of seats at the counter which of course meant that she was able to build up close relationships through talking directly to her customers. Others describe her cooking style as spontaneous, that she would come up with new dishes just by adding something or other to see how it would taste but she also took hints from customers as well sometimes adding their successful requests to the main menu and allowing them to feel as if they were fully involved in the restaurant. It’s this sense of connection brokered by an exchange of tastes that seems to be integral to the degree of warm feeling many have for the place and for Fumi herself.

Director Kikuchi frequently switches between testimonials from regular customers some going back decades and many remarking on the incongruous sight of Fumi herself, a small woman battling a giant wok in the centre of the kitchen. All these years later and despite the expanded capacity there are always queues to get in while customers claim that there are dishes they might not otherwise care for or actively dislike but that Fumi alone can make appetising. She attributes her skill to her upbringing in a Taiwanese family where her sisters joke their father had a gambling problem and didn’t work but did do most of the family cooking. She picks up new ideas on trips to the island nation and on one occasion visits a Taiwanese woman to experience more home cooking who also points out that cooking is imbued with emotion. Fumi’s own enthusiasm and love of the craft finds its way in, delivering care and attention to her customers who just as often may be looking for somewhere to belong as much as a good meal.

The film otherwise does not pry too much into Fumi’s personal life, never stepping too far outside the restaurant save for exploring her relationship with nephew Kazuyoshi and three younger sisters as well as her soon to be 100-year-old mother who was responsible for the restaurant’s constant supply of Taiwanese sausages. Food is a family affair, the now elderly women recalling the dishes they remember from their childhood and putting on a large spread for New Year. Yet the restaurant is also a kind of home for Fumi, one she admits she was reluctant to leave. She’d never considered a successor, but later came round to the idea of entrusting it to her nephew and head chef. 

As other guests remark, food a means of building body and soul. The nourishing wholesomeness of Fumi’s cooking seems to have a positive effect on those who visit the restaurant which was often home to various celebrities from the illustrators and designers of the surrounding area to the top stars of the day such as Tora-san himself, not to mention sustaining her mother to the ripe old age of almost a century. Guests describe her as a radiant character, like someone in an animation, an improbably small woman filled with a warmth that draws others to her offering comfort and connection through food but also an artist whose medium was cooking creating a series of unique dishes that couldn’t be found anywhere else yet quickly offering to teach anyone who wanted to know how to make them. A tribute to a bygone era, Kikuchi captures a sense of nostalgia for simple pleasures but equally of pleasure in the moment for as Fumi says to eat is to live.

Gifts from the Kitchen screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Till the Day I Can Laugh about My Blues (ブルーを笑えるその日まで, Karin Takeda, 2023)

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A lonely, isolated young woman finds refuge in a new friendship only to worry it won’t survive summer’s end in Karin Takeda’s gentle adolescent drama, Till the Day I can Laugh About My Blues (ブルーを笑えるその日まで, Blue Wo Waraeru Sono Hi Made). Opening with a title card reading “to you and me back in the days,” the film has an autobiographical sensibility and boundless empathy for the kids who feel they don’t fit in, that no one notices them, and their lives will never we worth living.

You can tell that Ayako (Miyu Watanabe) is depressed by her opening dialogue, “I don’t like this weather,” said to perfectly blue skies. She says everything in her life is blue, and is so shy that she literally can’t speak. Her class are reading Night on the Galactic Railroad, and though she spends the entire time reading the line that she’s figured out is hers is put off when another student heckles her because of her quiet voice and just stands there gripping the paper while her teacher prompts her with the previous line. He then just moves on to the next student, but more out exasperation than empathy, doing nothing much else to help her. 

It’s not clear if Ayako was always this way or if something led to her becoming withdrawn but the other kids evidently regard her as weird while her former best friend Yuri (Rin Marumoto) has joined up with two popular girls who appear to be bullying her. Ayoko’s parents aren’t much help either, unfairly comparing her to her sister who wants to be a doctor all of which only makes Ayako feel even more useless and inadequate. It’s only when a mysterious old lady gifts her a kaleidoscope that Ayako’s outlook starts to improve and she befriends a another young girl she meets on the rooftop of the school who has a kaleidoscope too.

In discussing the passage of Night on the Galactic Railroad, which is about a friendship between two boys which ends abruptly in tragedy, a teacher asks what the milky way is made of before explaining that if you look at it through a microscope it’s full of tiny stars. Ayako too begins to see tiny stars while looking through the kaleidoscope, refracting her world and beginning to see the beauty of the light between the trees even if she’s cautioned that the patterns are pretty because you never see the same one twice. In any case, Ayako finds a kindred spirit in Aina (Sumi Kokona) but also suspects she may actually be the ghost of a girl who took her own life by jumping off the roof of the school, so their friendship can’t last past the start of the new term.

Like Giovanni in the story, Ayako has to figure out how to go on alone not just without Aina but in her complicated relationship with Yuri too who tells her she doesn’t like and hanging out with mean girls Natsumi and Nao but still joins in when they make fun of her. Some gentle words from a librarian who knows what’s she going through all too well remind her of the point of the story, that the boys still go on travelling together as Campanella still exists in Giovanni’s heart. But before all that she still ponders blowing it all to hell, saving the school goldfish but otherwise letting the place burn while wondering if she’ll ever be able to grow up. 

Shot with an etherial whimsicality, Takeda shoots Ayako’s world in shades of loneliness in which her literal inability to speak is almost a reaction to the fact no one listens. Pondering the fate of a goldfish that died because of another student’s neglect she laments that no one’s kind to you until die, a comment that later seems ironic but echoes her sense of alienation. She thinks her friendship with Aina is like a dream, but like she says not necessarily one they need to wake up from because whichever way you look at it their friendship is “real”, saving each of them and giving them strength to survive until the day they can laugh about their blues smiling at a memory rather than feeling sad and alone while looking for the tiny stars hidden in the fabric of the universe.

Till the Day I Can Laugh about My Blues screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Tatsumi (辰巳, Hiroshi Shoji, 2023)

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The titular Tatsumi (辰巳) laments that there used to be a line. They used to be better than this. But his incredibly duplicitous boss just laughs at him and says they can’t live on honour and humanity anymore. In any case, there didn’t seem to be much honour or humanity in Tatsumi’s decidedly unglamorous life of petty gangsterdom even before everything went to hell but despite his cynicism and seeming indifference he is the last holdout for some kind of gangster nobility.

Though he has a cover job as a fisherman, Tatsumi’s (Yuya Endo) main hustle is as a cleanup agent getting rid of inconvenient bodies for various gangs. He finds himself mixed up in local drama when a pair of crazed, sadistic gangsters become aware someone’s been skimming their meth supply. They torture and kill a suspect who leads them to another, garage owner Yamaoka (Ryuhei Watabe) who is married to an old flame of Tatsumi’s, Kyoko (Nanami Kameda), while her younger sister, Aoi (Kokoro Morita), is also in trouble with another rival ganger, Goto (Takenori Goto), on the suspicion of having pinched some of his meth supply. Tatsumi ends up agreeing to mediate for Aoi, gets much more than he bargained for when the crazed Ryuji (Tomoyuki Kuramoto) murders Yamaoka and Kyoko and Aoi becomes a secondary target after catching him in the act.

Ryuji doesn’t seem to care about tying up loose ends, but just wants Aoi dead for reasons of total vengeance. It’s his uncontrolled violence that has disrupted the equilibrium of the local gangster society though the proposed solution is simply more violence in allowing him to kill the people he wanted to kill in the hope he’ll then calm down and stop which seems unlikely. Like many similarly themed yakuza dramas, Ryuji’s violence appears to have a sexually charged quality and there is also a hint of a potential relationship between Ryuji and Tatsumi’s boss whom he calls “Skipper.” 

Ryuji also has a slightly less crazy sibling in an echo of the relationship Tatsumi once had with his own brother who died of a drugs overdose having become involved in petty crime. The implication is that Tatsumi gave up on his brother and was relieved when he died but also that he harbours a degree of guilt for preventing him ending up the way he did and not trying harder to save him. That may partly be why he decides to help Aoi, seeing echoes of the brother he couldn’t save while she is also friendless alone having unwisely made enemies of almost everyone because of her outrageous behaviour and reckless disregard for authority. Aoi has an unpleasant habit of spitting at people who upset her while otherwise adopting a devil-may-care attitude with those minded to kill her. If she did skim from Goto’s stash, it cost the life of another falsely accused underling. 

Despite himself, Tatsumi becomes increasingly determined to help Aoi even though or perhaps because he assumes neither of them is likely to survive this crisis. Desperately trying to stay one step ahead he plays one side against the other and tries to find the best angle for escape while knowing there probably isn’t one. Shoji sets the tale across a series of moribund jetties and shacks laying bare the busy emptiness of this world with only the sea beyond. “Emotion will make you fail,” Tatsumi tells Aoi while describing dead bodies as just things and trying to keep his cool when needled by Ryuji or another dangerous and violent gangster. 

Death and life by extension appear to be meaningless and of little value. Tatsumi does perhaps close a circle, or maybe more than one, as the last principled gangster who thought there ought to be a line between what they do and greedy thuggery only to find there never was one and his determination not to cross it is the kind of sentimentality that can get a man killed. Making good use of slow dissolves, Shoji revels in a retro aesthetic in a tale of moral compromise and redemption as Tatsumi determines to safeguard Aoi not only from her own reckless impulses but the meaningless emptiness of the gangster life and the toxic legacy of violence and fallacy of vengeance as a salve for the wounds of the soul.

Tatsumi screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Promised Land (プロミスト・ランド, Masashi Iijima, 2024)

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An avalanche approaches a small town in Japan, a harbinger of change in which the centuries old practice of bear hunting has finally been put to rest by government directive. The buried question at the centre of Masashi Iijima’s Promised Land (プロミスト・ランド) is who exactly that land has been promised to and what the rights and responsibilities surrounding it are in the midst of a changing society in which there may longer be a place for the hunter.

Some might argue that there shouldn’t be, and it has to be said this is one ancient tradition that’s increasingly hard to defend. Set in 1983, the film finds the “Matagi”, or traditional hunter, already all but extinct even before the head of the local association (which appears to only have five members) calls them all together and tells them the hunt is off for that year due to a preservation order by local government. One of the younger members, Rei (Kanichiro), immediately objects sensing that if the hunt is canceled this year it will never be held again. He says he thinks it’s unfair as it’s industry encroaching on the forests that has led to a decrease in the bear population rather than overhunting while another of the men takes constant pops at rich men from the city who come in and treat hunting like a hobby failing to abide by any of their rules such as not shooting mothers with their cubs.

The hunters seem to think of themselves as keeping nature in check, “culling” the bears to keep the mountain safe though there’s no sign that they are any real danger to humans and anyway their numbers are now depleted. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to defend this practice outside of tradition, but it’s evidently something very important to Rei, important enough to constitute a large part of his identity. Thus he alone is determined to defy the order and kill a bear anyway even though he knows there’s a good chance of going to prison for illegal hunting and being branded a poacher. 

Rei ropes in Nobu (Rairu Sugita), a childhood friend who apparently owes a debt to him having received a blood transfusion from him when he was four and now deeply resents having that fact wielded against him all these years later. Unlike Rei, Nobu is a much more modern young man whose father makes fun of him for wearing fashionable clothes and perfume. He hates working on his father’s farm and longs to escape the moribund small town and its brutal traditions such as the bear hunt he’s been roped into since birth just because like many things his ancestors always did it. While hunting for a bear, the pair have an opportunity to talk, Rei admitting that hunting and the gun represent for him the essence of the man he once was while reeling from the breakdown of his marriage to a woman he failed to support when she failed to fit in to village life. He recounts the story of a banker he did some work for who says that he envies the freedom of his life as a landscape gardener while he sits in a prison all day counting other people’s money but when he asks him why he does’t give it a try the man just backtracks and starts making excuses.

Rei seems to be wondering what true freedom means and perhaps feels he doesn’t really have it, asserting dominance over the mountain by killing the bear to regain control over his life. He calls the bears a gift from the mountain god as if they existed only for him to kill, though it’s difficult to see why his tradition or need for raw masculinity is worth more than a living creature’s life. When he eventually kills a bear, the film hovers on the ritualistic quality of the act as Nobu and Rei bend over the body, wafting it with leaves, and skinning its pelt before drinking its blood. This is an act of cruelty more of necessity. They have no need of the pelt or meat, do not make a major part of their income from selling them, and the bear did not threaten them. This is in short a tradition that can safely be left by the wayside, but by the film’s conclusion the two men seem to have switched positions Rei now pondering leaving the village while Nobu seemingly has a renewed desire to stay and preserve these old traditions. Perhaps it is his promised land after all, or else was intended to exist for the bears as creatures of nature free from the destructive forces of humanity.

Promised Land screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Afterschool Anglers Club (放課後アングラーライフ, Hideo Jojo, 2023)

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What does it take to learn to trust people again after a traumatic experience? Mezashi (Toomi), the heroine of Hideo Jojo’s adaptation of the light novel by Kaeru Inoue Afterschool Anglers Club (放課後アングラーライフ, Hokago Angler Life), was bullied by people she once called friends and has since retreated within herself, becoming a massive people pleaser while terrified of annoying people or upsetting them in some unknown way.

Fortunately for her, her father is transferred to the country and so they all have to move with Mezashi taking the opportunity to trash her phone and with it her traumatic memories of being bullied both online and off. As one might expect, people in the country are inherently more friendly and it’s difficult for Mezashi to tell if her new classmates are just excited about her arrival or already making fun of her. On moving to the country she’d written a new manifesto swearing that she wouldn’t attempt to make friends and would carry on people pleasing, instantly agreeing to any favours asked of her, smiling sweetly, and always giving non-committal answers to avoid causing offence. 

She runs into trouble when she’s invited to the secret club run by two of the girls, realising that her goals are incompatible so she can’t avoid both making friends and refusing a request. Though the girls more or less adopt her and make her a part of their unofficial fishing club, Mezashi can’t seem to work out how to be a part of a friendship group and is often confused about what she should say and do. She’s constantly worried that her new friends are annoyed with her for not being very good at their shared hobby of fishing and subsequently ruining their fun. But this sense of insecurity is a vicious cycle in that she continues to present a facade of blandness which prevents her from generating a friendly intimacy with any of the girls. Ring leader Shiira (Marupi), who originally bonds with her because their names both have a fishy connection, says as much in mentioning that it bothers her Mezashi never laughs from her heart or gets angry with them. Her defensive mechanisms actively sabotage her new relationships while she struggles to overcome the trauma of her betrayal at the hands of former friends turned bullies.

But then there are also tensions within this otherwise close and supportive friendship group in that Akari (Tamao Hirai) has an obvious crush on Shiira and is resentful of Mezashi joining their gang though not to the extent of bullying or rejection. Shiira, meanwhile, seems to be constantly flirting with Mezashi who does not appear to be interested in her in that way, even at one point pretending to have been stung by a venomous fish so that Mezashi will suck the toxins out of her leg. Nevertheless, Nagi (Futaba Mori), another member who discovers Mezashi’s secret, tries to encourage her to be less of a people pleaser and just be honest if she doesn’t like something or doesn’t want to do it such as threading the bait onto the hook or gutting the fish. In effect, she gives her permission to be herself and the confidence to believe that your friends won’t abruptly stop liking you just because you asked for help but they can’t bond with someone who won’t let them know when they’re not okay. 

All in all, Jojo paints this corner of a small coastal town as a wholesome place of kindness and comfort where people are on the whole friendly and welcoming as opposed to the city where they can be cruel and judgemental. The very thing that allows Mezashi to find her new friends was her unusual name for which she’d previously been bullied. Learning to trust again is certainly no easy thing, but just as Nagi had said humans are made to rely on each other and friendship is about both give and take, offering support and agreeing to accept it. With fishing, you just have to cast the line and see if anything bites and friendship is much the same, Mezashi gaining the strength to reel it in thanks to the gentle support of her new friends and tranquil rhythms of small town life free of the petty prejudice and casual cruelties of the city.

Afterschool Anglers Club screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Worlds Apart (違国日記, Natsuki Seta, 2024)

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Adapted from the manga by Tomoko Yamashita, Natsuki Seta’s quietly empathetic drama Worlds Apart (違国日記, Ikoku Nikki) eventually reveals the private lonelinesses and hidden sorrows that everyone has which isolate them from others. The film’s Japanese title plays on a homonym for the word for “foreign country” instead using the character for “different” which in itself suggests each person is an entire world often unable to make contact or be fully understood by those who cannot after all ever travel there. 

Perhaps that’s something most people feel every once in a while but becomes acutely obvious to 15-year-old Asa (Ikoi Hayase) when her parents are killed in a surreal traffic accident in the film’s opening scenes. She sits struck dumb and vacant at the funeral, having no idea what’s going to happen to her now while other relatives crassly describe her as having been cast adrift like an “unwanted barrel”. It’s this insensitive phrase that seems to drive her aunt Makio (Yui Aragaki), a novelist, into an impromptu decision to offer to take her in though they had only met briefly long in the past and had no real relationship with each other. Makio had been estranged from her sister for many years and never makes any attempt to disguise her utter loathing and resentment towards her for having been so cruel and judgemental when they were children. 

It’s refreshing, in a way, that the film doesn’t encourage her to change her feelings after her sister’s death. She doesn’t discover another side to her through bonding with Asa nor are her feelings invalidated much as Asa originally tries to make her like her mother as a means of reclaiming her. In fact, what Makio does is normalise whatever way Asa is feeling telling her at the hospital when forced to identify her parents bodies that it’s alright not to know how she feels. The two sisters were it seems very different, though the grandmother eventually offers an explanation that Makio’s sister had once been seriously ill and therefore unable to live a “normal life” which might explain why she was so enraged by Makio’s decision to chart her own course and wilfully spurn conventionality. 

These are also hints to the hidden world contained with the diaries Asa’s mother left behind to opened when she graduated high school. Makio wrestles with whether or not to pass the notebooks on and when, unsure if Asa is ready to receive the knowledge that might be inside them. Though she settles in to Makio’s home quite comfortably, Asa keeps her grief and occasional bouts of resentment to herself. Seta often frames her as standing alone in vast empty spaces or total darkness, isolated and lonely, now displaced by her liminal status no longer anybody’s daughter but not quite independent. 

Yet this isolation also blinds her to that of others. She doesn’t quite pick up on it when she clumsily attempts to talk about boys with her best friend Emily (Rina Komiyama) who directly tells her she has no interest in them and deflects the question when she asks if she likes girls instead. Emily is also lonely and isolated in feeling anxious to reveal her sexuality to Asa who in any case reacts clumsily when she eventually does. A similar thing happens with a girl in their class who studied hard to apply for a special programme only to be told the organisers are looking for a male student because it requires “physical strength,” while Asa also seems to develop a fascination with a bass player in the school music club who declines an offer to collaborate because she doesn’t want to get her hopes up only to be disappointed in the end. 

Makio hadn’t previously wanted to share her life, separating from an old boyfriend she still seems attached to out of an apparent fear of intimacy but nevertheless opens herself to Asa in deciding to respect her as an adult giving her agency over her own choices along with good, empathetic advice while simultaneously being clear that she doesn’t know if she can come to love her given the depth of hatred and resentment she bore towards her sister. But what the pair of them realise is that good or bad they can each share their memories rather than being forced into a frosty silence even if as Makio points out Asa will never understand her hurt and she will never understand Asa’s loneliness. Gentle and wholesome, the film ironically lays bare how opening up to others can in fact expand the world inside you instead filling the space rather than leaving you isolated inside it and returning light to a world that might otherwise have seemed dark and lonely.

Worlds Apart screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)