Tag: 2020s

The Asadas! (浅田家！, Ryota Nakano, 2020)

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There’s a kind of irony at the centre of Ryota Nakano’s The Asadas! (浅田家！,Asada-ke!) in that its photographer hero makes a name for himself photographing his family yet at times neglects them or appears curiously insensitive, perhaps even selfish in the pursuit of his dreams. Inspired by the life of photographer Masashi Asada, the film is at once a celebration of the family and an advocation for the tangibility of a photograph as a repository of memory that can bring comfort even in the absence of its subject.

The first part of the film is narrated from the perspective of Masashi’s (Kazunari Ninomiya) much more conventional older brother Yukihiro (Satoshi Tsumabuki) who is generally exasperated by and a little resentful of the family’s indulgence of Masashi, a seeming free spirit who acts on impulse and gives little thought to the consequences of his actions. People frequently describe both Masashi and his father Akira (Mitsuru Hirata) as “not normal,” and there is something unconventional in their family setup with Akira a househusband in a small town in the 1980s while his wife Junko (Jun Fubuki) supports the family with her career as a nurse. It’s Akira who first gives Masashi a camera and his dream of becoming a photographer which he eventually achieves through taking amusing pictures of his family in various scenes casting them as firemen, racing drivers, or even gangsters. 

Masashi attempts to get the photos published as a book, but is quickly dismissed and told that no one wants to buy his personal family photo album. Though the publisher may have a point that in general people value photos of their own family but not those of others, the family photo itself is treated as a triviality as if it had no real worth. The same could be said of Masashi’s work, that some do not take it seriously because the subject is his own family. Yet Masashi finds new value in it in his ability to capture the essence of a moment in family life through a staged photograph such as that he designs for the family of a little boy who is dying of a brain tumour.

In the back of his book, eventually published by an eccentric woman who runs a small press and decides to take a loss because she found the photos so funny, Masashi pledges to travel anywhere to take similar photos for other families which of course means he is often separated from his own whom he then rarely photographs much to his father’s disappointment. After leaving for university, he had barely contacted them for two years while after travelling to the zone of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami he abruptly drops out of contact with his long suffering girlfriend Wakana (Haru Kuroki) after becoming immersed in the task of cleaning up the orphaned photos found among the wreckage. 

Of course, there are those who object to his work thinking that there are more important things to do while so many people are still missing, but as he discovers recovering the photos gives people a sense of comfort and healing as if they were getting back a little bit of the past that had been taken from them and most particularly if the people in the photographs are no longer here. A little girl who’s lost her father is alarmed and resentful that she can find no photos of him, realising that he was rarely in the ones they took as a family and wondering if that meant he didn’t really love them hinting at an ironic sense of parental absence in that parents often take the photos of their children so do not appear themselves but still leave their imprint in a sense of absence in which every photograph also contains the invisible presence of the photographer.

And then sometimes the reverse is true. A grandmother comes looking for pictures of her grandchildren, but ironically finds pictures only of herself. The triviality with which the family photo was regarded seems almost offensive for something that can offer such comfort and warmth in a time of profound grief as a tangible link to a past that will never return. Masashi makes his family’s unrealised dreams come true through his photos, bringing them joy if also a little anxiety in a creating a perfect record of their unconventional family while Nakano does something similar capturing of the essence of a happy family life filled with equal parts laughter and tears.

The Asadas! screens Feb. 24 as part of Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Yoko (658km、陽子の旅, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, 2023)

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Sometimes home is the hardest place to go. At least that’s how it is for the eponymous Yoko (658km、陽子の旅, 658km, Yoko no Tabi) in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s emotional road movie in which a defeated middle-aged woman is jolted out of her self-imposed inertia on hearing of the sudden death of the father she had not seen in over 20 years. As much about a moment of mid-life reevaluation as one woman’s gradual return to the world through a process of self-acceptance, the film displays a boundless empathy not to mention a sense of warmth out of keeping with a snowbound winter in northern Japan. 

At 42, Yoko (Rinko Kikuchi) lives alone in a one room apartment that she seemingly never leaves. Ironically enough, she works as a customer service assistant operating a remote chat box in which she encourages the customer to try turning it off and on again but otherwise offers little real support. When she accidentally breaks her phone, he first thought is to try contacting the online consumer helpline only to realise the irony of her situation and think better of it. In a moment of cosmic coincidence she receives a visit from her cousin, Shigeru (Pistol Takehara), who explains that her sister Rie has been trying to call but obviously couldn’t get through because of the broken phone. Yoko’s father has passed away suddenly. Shigeru and his family are making the long drive from Tokyo to Aomori and they’ve been instructed to bring Yoko with them for the funeral the day after next. 

We can tell that Yoko is no longer used to interacting with other people. Her voice is almost inaudible and her words tumble out in a half-confused jumble. Shigeru seems sympathetic and we can interpret that she’s been this way a long time, if not all of her life. He asks her if she has clothes for the funeral and is unsurprised when she gives no answer, assuring her they can sort it out when they get there while trying to cajole her downstairs and into the car where his wife and kids are waiting. The kids are, predictably, incredibly noisy and a little insensitive while the mother tries to get some sleep and Shigeru sings a folksong that was a favourite of her father’s. His spectre (Joe Odagiri), not so much a ghost as a manifestation of her memory silently, haunts her throughout the journey reminding of her of her unresolved shame and the reasons she had avoided contact with him for the last 20 years. 

These moments are full of painful melancholy but also an underlying sense of dread as if Yoko were being stalked by her own self-loathing projected onto the figure of father. After becoming separated from Shigeru at a service station and assuming she’s been abandoned with no phone and only loose change, she decides to hitchhike to Aomori and in effect travels backward meeting echoes of herself as she goes. Her first driver is a woman of about her own age (Asuka Kurosawa) in Tokyo for a job interview who reflects her buried cynicism, remarking that she resents the people she sees at service stations who to her at least seem far too happy. On learning that Yoko has no children and never married, she chuckles that she couldn’t imagine a life without out them hinting at another life Yoko might have led and perhaps quietly yearns for in her solitude. 

Yoko answers the woman with only grunts and a shake of the head, unable to communicate and in effect too shy to ask for help from passing strangers. Through her journey she gradually recovers the ability to speak, her words eventually pouring out of her in a voluntary monologue to a stranger on whose kindness she has become dependent. But in a girl she meets at the next rest stop she sees only her teenage self, the girl answering that it’s too hard to explain when questioned about why she’s hitchhiking alone in the middle of the night. When she gives her her scarf, it’s like a gift from her younger self, a small moment of embrace and support. Something similar happens as she approaches the area affected by the 2011 tsunami and meets a kindly older couple who represent her parents as she might have wished them to be rather than as they were. While the man gives her some fatherly advice, not unkindly, the woman (Jun Fubuki) gives her a pair of sheepskin boots in another gift of warmth that further proves to her that the world is full of kindness even if not all of the people who gave her rides were nice.

There maybe something in the fact that Yoko has to travel through the disaster zone in order to emerge from it, journeying towards the site of her trauma and beginning to overcome it as she comes to accept her father’s death and that is simply too late for many things though crucially not for all. What she comes to realise is, as her first driver told her, everyone has their reasons and she wasn’t the only one carrying a heavy burden. She only made it as far as she did because of the kindness of strangers and those, like Shigeru, who are willing to wait for her to come in from the cold. Rinko Kikuchi’s extraordinarily nuanced performance along with the snowbound vistas and melancholy score conjure a poignant atmosphere but one oddly buoyed with warmth in which the world can be a kind place or least as long as we can be kind to ourselves. 

Yoko screens Feb. 22 as part of Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Hoyaman (さよなら ほやマン, Teruaki Shoji, 2023)

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According to Hoyaman, a kind of superhero in the guise of a mutated sea squirt, the sea squirts’ lifecycle involves swimming around like tadpoles after hatching from an egg and then finding a nice rock to sit on at which point they lose their brains. This is what the hero of Teruaki Shoji’s quirky island comedy Hoyaman (さよなら ほやマン, Sayonara Hoyaman) is becoming afraid of, worried he’s about to lose his brain forever stuck in the home he inherited from his parents but also afraid to leave its safety to venture forth and explore some other rocks before it’s too late.

He’s jolted out of his sense of inertia by a mysterious woman, Mahiru (Kumi Kureshiro), who suddenly arrives and tries to buy his house off him though of course Akira (Afro) is not willing to sell despite being so heavily in debt he’s about to lose his fishing boat (and therefore his means of supporting himself) and he and his brother Shigeru (Kodai Kurosaki) are subsisting on a single pot of instant ramen a day. The house itself is like a kind of rock pool where the brothers are trapped in a protracted adolescence having lost their parents in the 2011 tsunami, thereafter floundering around unable to move on with their lives. As their bodies were never found, Akira hasn’t even got round to registering his parents’ deaths or dealt with any of the practical matters surrounding their living arrangements but now realises that he’ll have to something to secure a financial future for himself and Shigeru who seems to have some kind of learning difficulties and is unable to work.

That’s one reason he decides to accept the deposit from Miharu, a manga artist fleeing her life in Tokyo feeling all washed up as she too drifts onto the shore looking for a good rock to sit on. They are all looking for a kind of escape but unsure where to to find it, Akira wondering if it’s time to leave the island just as Miharu arrives. The old woman next door, Haruko (Yoneko Matsukane), who acts like a kind of surrogate mother figure to the boys, confesses that she would have liked to try living off the island and was resentful when their father mentioned the possibility of leaving. She encourages Akira to swim out into deeper waters but he continues to struggle with himself consumed by the trauma of the earthquake, his guilt, and complicated feelings about the responsibility of looking after Shigeru who likely would not be able to adjust to life outside of the island or remain behind on his own.

Madcap schemes ensue including an unlikely bid to become YouTube stars by resurrecting a mascot character created by their father to promote the island, Hoyaman. Miharu tries to explain to them that like everything else in the village they’re ten years behind the times, but the boys are naively excited about their prospects while simultaneously trying to recapture the past in the same way Miharu may be in admitting that she based her manga on her own younger brothers of whom Akira and Shigeru remind her. Well meaning gestures eventually backfire, but also lead to a kind clarity that allows each of them to realise who they are and where they want to be or at least what kind of rock they want to be sitting on when it’s time to jettison their brains. 

Even so, it’s not all rainbows on the island as Akira discovers when his bid for YouTube success turns sour and the villagers turn against him for embarrassing them on national scale while Miharu also has her fair share of haters along with a troubled past she’s struggling to overcome. What they rediscover is a sense of community and solidarity among those who wash up on the island whether by virtue of birth or some other happy accident. Meeting his trauma head-on, Akira is able to find an accommodation with his guilt and loss but also a way forward that might not necessarily be the one most would expect as does Miharu though buoyed by her serendipitous connection with the zany brothers, nice old lady, and the gentle rhythms of an island life.

Hoyaman screens Feb. 18 as part of Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Night in Paradise (낙원의 밤, Park Hoon-jung, 2020)

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Sometimes being too good at your job can be a definite liability. So it is for the hero of Park Hoon-jung’s melancholy gangster noir, Night in Paradise (낙원의 밤, Nagwonui bam). Park’s worldview is often nihilistic and sometimes downright unpleasant, though it’s a sense of fatalistic sadness that dominates this otherwise over familiar tale of a noble gangster cruelly misused by those who choose not to obey their shared code and thereafter finding himself on a dark path towards if not exactly redemption then at least an inevitable ending. 

Rising foot soldier Tae-gu (Uhm Tae-goo) has found himself in the middle of an old-fashioned gang war, serving an ambitious boss, Yang (Park Ho-san), who has unwisely decided to press into territory operated by the well established Bukseong gang. Getting some of his guys back after being kidnapped by Bukseong and held in an apartment block where the community is currently protesting the take over and demolition by gangster redevelopers, Tae-gu is told by his opposing number that Yang is a crazy upstart who would be a nobody without him and that he made a mistake turning down a job offer from Bukseong boss Doh. Tae-gu is however an old school mobster loyal to his gang which is why he doesn’t stop to think things through when someone close to him is killed in a car accident in which he assumes he was the intended target, believing Doh is striking a low blow. Encouraged by Yang, he meets with Doh in person and daringly knocks him off at a swimming pool sauna escaping through a window in the nude. Yang arranges to send him to Jeju Island to lay low before moving on possibly to Russia, but Yang has also been engaging in a failed pincer movement which left them all in hot water after failing to take out Doh’s no. 2, Ma. 

As the title might hint, even the island “paradise” of Jeju is not free of death and crime as Tae-gu discovers after bonding with their contact, Kuto (Lee Ki-young), a fixer smuggling guns from Russian mobsters hidden inside consignments of fish. Like Tae-gu’s sister, Kuto’s niece Jae-yeon (Jeon Yeo-been) is suffering from an undisclosed terminal illness that seems to have few obvious symptoms but has left her with suicidal tendencies. Kuto’s decision to take Tae-gu in is motivated by his desire for money to take Jae-yeon to America for treatment though she and Tae-gu are also much the same both having lost people close to them because of their proximity to the gangster world while he and Kuto search for ways to make up for the harm their lives of violence has caused. 

Jae-yeon is quick to remind Tae-gu that she will soon be dead and that therefore nothing really matters and her life has no meaning while he perhaps as a gangster feels something similar that his life ended the day he first picked up a gun yet there are also ways in which he must act in satisfaction of his code. His tragedy is that he’s operating under a misapprehension, blindly trusting in the wrong people when the truth is painfully obvious to all but him.

Park inserts a series of ironic pillow shots of the idyllic Jeju night scene with comforting lights swinging from tropical trees and gentle waves rolling on the horizon, before closing with a series of eerie daytime shots of familiar locations now devoid of people as if this were a hell our heroes had recently been haunting, ghosts of a violent landscape. His fight scenes are visceral yet also occasionally cartoonish, several taking place in the confined space of a car expertly framed by Park as the heroes fight desperately for life while constrained by their environment. A high octane chase through an airport with its ubiquitous escalators soon gives way to an impressive motorway-bound set piece with an unexpected resolution, the gangsters later scattering on hearing far off police sirens though as we also realise police collusion is an inescapable factor in the fragile equilibrium of the underworld even if it might not stretch all the way to idyllic Jeju. “Don’t waste your tears” Tae-gu unironically offers in weary resignation to his fate, a noble gangster to the last too good to survive in a world of nihilistic futility. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Storm (大雨, Yang Zhigang, 2024)

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A cosmic storm is likened to the chaos of life in Busifan’s beautifully drawn but narratively obscure family animation, The Storm (大雨, dàyǔ). Set seemingly in a fantasy past which is also a kind of post-apocalyptic future in which mankind has ruined itself through greed, the film is at heart a kind of redemption story in which those left behind attempt to exorcise the negative emotions of the past and ease the destruction they have wrought by abandoning outdated ideas of wealth and status. 

The hero, Bun, is a young orphan adopted by the elusive Biggie who found him drifting down a river in a chest. Biggie decided to adopt the boy as his own but never allowed him to call him father while himself struggling the stigma of having been a criminal. Biggie sometimes leaves Bun on his own while he goes off to try and earn money to give him a better life and justifies his actions that everything he’s doing is only for Bun. Later in the film he expresses regret for “lying” to him, pretending the world was not so chaotic as is it is as the pair become embroiled in a supernatural curse while looking for the famed Nuralumin Satin said to be aboard a mysterious black ship filled with monsters. 

According to biggie, the Black Dragon Army hunting the Nuralumin birds into extinction led to an explosion in the jellyfish population while a prophesy states that the jellyfish will soon unite with another monstrous force during a cosmic storm becoming an awesome dragon that casts a shadow over the land. The ship itself seems to be a symbol of insatiable greed, a kind of floating marketplace in which people entered in search of riches but did not leave again. Inside, they became monsters devoid of all humanity and hungry only for material gain. 

The king’s own mother is said to have fallen victim to the curse, while his nephew also knew a troupe of opera singers who boarded the boat in search of an audience but have apparently lost their way. The spirits of the opera singers recount their plight, that as lowly entertainers they were only ever looked down on and abused no matter if they entertained the king himself and all his other royals. That they fell victim to the curse seems to be a condemnation of outdated ideas about social class and the stigmatisation of a profession, while Biggie’s fate seems to imply something similar. No matter how much he tried to turn himself around and be a good father to Bun, the world continued to reject him and he was left only with crime as a means to support himself. That’s one reason he wants the Satin, so that Bun will be looked after for the rest of his life and they won’t have to debase themselves anymore. 

We can see that the area they live in which is close to the famed Dragon Bay where the Black Ship eventually resurfaces is rundown and abandoned perhaps itself because of the lore that surrounds the area. Even so, the backgrounds are gorgeously animated with flowers in full bloom and Bun making his way through colourful and lively vistas of rural beauty. Yet it’s just this beauty that mankind’s greed has destroyed in the Dragon Army’s senseless killing of the Numalurin birds for which their guardian tribe has never forgiven them. Only the return of these birds and the giant deity that protects them can help end the curse, restoring the proper balance to the land in which the jellyfish are kept in check and the dragon cannot be formed. 

It has to be said that narratively the film is incredibly confusing and difficult to follow, at least for viewers who do not speak Mandarin. Nevertheless, what shines through is Bun’s redemptive power as he desperately tries to rescue Biggie from his own worst impulses, his greed and desperation in being drawn to the black ship like moth to a flame and in danger of being turned into one of the monsters. Constantly accompanied by round ball of fluff he encounters several other cute creatures while otherwise guided by a handsome young man who seems to be made of cloud while his wish that he really could stop Biggie from leaving by treading on his shadow might in an odd way come true. Boundlessly inventive, the film’s ideas sometimes get ahead of itself but are more than made up for in the unshowy beauty of its fantasy world. 

International trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

One and Only (热烈, Dong Chengpeng, 2023)

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An aspiring street dancer from an impoverished background just can’t seem to catch a break no matter how hard he works in Dong Chengpeng’s inspiring dramedy One and Only (热烈, rèliè). A mild rebuke against a rising fuerdai generation of obnoxious narcissists who don’t think twice about using their money to game the system, the film not only emphasises the virtues of hard work and perseverance but the importance of camaraderie and fellow feeling over an individualistic drive to succeed. 

The conflict is encapsulated in the opening sequence in which hotshot dancer Kevin starts a fight with one of his own team members in the middle of dance competition over a move that didn’t go as planned. The problem is that Kevin is an obnoxious rich kid whose US-based father has been bankrolling the team. He plans to sack most of the other dancers and replace them with foreign ringers, only manager Ding (Huang Bo), who dared to suggest the problem was he doesn’t practice enough with his teammates, isn’t so sure. In an effort to appease him, he hires a ringer of his own in Shou (Wang Yibo), an aspiring dancer who auditioned for the team but didn’t get through, booking him to stand in for Kevin during rehearsals with the caveat that he won’t actually get to perform in any of their concerts or competitions. 

Kevin is not untalented, but his path has been easy wheareas Shou is doing a series of part-time jobs in addition to helping out in his mother’s restaurant while burdened by debts as a result of his late father’s illness. Yet he never gave up on his street dancing dream, working with his uncle doing a series of humiliating gigs at shopping malls and birthday parties never complaining but grateful for the opportunity to dance. The offer from Ding is the answer to all his prayers, but also a cruel joke in that he’s only there to sub in for rich kid Kevin until such time as he feels like showing up again. 

Ding is aware of the choice he faces even as he forms a paternal relationship with Shou whose father was also a breakdancer. To redeem himself and achieve his dreams of national championship glory, Ding thinks he has to choose Kevin and his unlimited resources but is also drawn to Shou’s raw passion and pure-hearted love of dance if also mindful of the “realities” of contemporary China where money and connections are everything and boys like Shou don’t really stand a chance because socialist work ethics are now hopelessly outdated. Ding may be outdated too, even his old friends who got temporarily rich during an entrepreneurial boom have seen their dreams implode in middle age and are currently supplementing their incomes as substitute drivers for partying youngsters. 

Tellingly, after Kevin has them kicked out of the gym he paid for, the team start training in an abandoned factory theatre from the pre-reform days where Shou’s parents used to perform, quite literally resetting their value systems after jettisoning Kevin to focus on team work and unity. Then again in a mild paradox, Ding realises that he shouldn’t lead the team by dominating It but support from within which results in a kind of democracy as he holds a secret ballot to decide whether they should stick with Kevin and a certain, easy victory, or reinstate Shou and take their chances the old-fashioned way. 

Of course, the team choose hard work and perseverance, never giving up even when it seems impossible, leaving the obnoxious Kevin to his self-centred narcissism. Kevin only really wanted backing dancers which is why he couldn’t gel with the team, whereas when challenged one on one Shou does each of his teammates signature moves proving that he’s mastered a series of diverse dance styles along with his own high impact headspring move. Heartfelt and earnest, the film shines a light on a number of issues from middle-aged disappointment and the moral compromises involved in chasing a dream but in the end reinforces the message that there are no shortcuts to success which can never be bought with money but only through sweat and tears along with teamwork and the determination to master one’s craft.

Original trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

The Call (콜, Lee Chung-hyun, 2020)

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The call is coming from inside the house. It’s a final revelation intended to chill, the idea that the source of threat is located in the very place where you ought to feel safe, protected, invulnerable. Of course, there are many reasons someone might not feel completely safe at home, those who perhaps live with hidden threat every day, a hidden darkness that lies at the centre of twisty Korean thriller The Call (콜). Another in a small series of time travelling communication, The Call makes connection through outdated technology, an almost literal ghosting in a voice from the past that, like an inverted Strangers on a Train, offers the tantalising promise of mutual salvation only to prove extremely unreliable. 

28-year-old Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) has just returned to her rundown country home because her mother, whom she intensely resents blaming her for the death of her father in a fire, is suffering with a brain tumour. Though her strawberry farmer uncle Sung-ho (Oh Jung-se) describes the place as the most desirable property in town, the home in which Seo-yeon finds herself is cold and austere, a creepy old mansion decorated in an outdated style and filled with gothic furniture. To make matters worse, Seo-yeon has left her phone on the train but unexpectedly assures Sung-ho that she’ll be fine with the landline, later calling herself and getting through to a woman who claims to have found it but asks for a reward and then hangs up presumably to assess her options. Then, the landline starts ringing with calls from a young woman trying to reach a friend and claiming that her mother is planning to set fire to her. Though obviously disturbing, Seo-yeon assumes the calls are a simple wrong number until she discovers a hidden room with what looks to be some sort of tiled experimentation area along with a box of memorabilia which lead her to think the phone is somehow connecting her to the girl who lived in her room at the turn of the millennium. 

Also 28 only born 20 years earlier, Young-sook (Jeon Jong-seo) claims to be at the mercy of a wicked shamaness step-mother convinced that she has a dark destiny. The two women engage in a strange act of intergenerational bonding between two people who are the same age, Seo-yeon mystified by the meaning of the word “Walkman” while Seo-yeon struggles with the concept of the multifunctional smartphone. The force which unites them is parental dissatisfaction as Seo-yeon claims a hatred for her mother she does not perhaps really feel and cannot in any case compare with that of Young-sook for the religiously abusive stepmother who fully believes she is possessed by the devil. In in this the time difference proves useful, Seo-yeon realising that Young-sook has the power to prevent her father’s death, but only latterly that she also even from the future has the ability to change her new friend’s fate. 

Essentilally a Strangers on a Train scenario, the two women agree to save each other, Young-sook dutifully restoring Seo-yeon’s imagined fairytale future, the creepy mansion transformed into an elegant modern dwelling, her mother and father now both healthy and happy. Seo-yeon, however, begins to neglect her promise, too busy enjoying her repaired family life to remember that Young-sook is imprisoned in the house suffering horrifying abuse. Young-sook is, in a sense, the embodiment of Seo-yeon’s familial trauma, the violent resurfacing of a long buried memory that threatens to tear to her life apart but also has the ability to repair it in revealing the truth that allows her to reconnect with her mother who, we learn, has repeatedly sacrificed herself for her daughter’s sake. Nevertheless, you begin to wonder if the shamaness had a point and the lid was best left on Young-sook as her hurt and resentment in being neglected by her new friend eventually take a turn for the dark. 

In essence, Seo-yeon’s decision to interfere with the past engineers a chain of disastrous events robbing her of her illusionary happiness while eventually landing her right back where she started if perhaps with a little more insight and having healed her relationship with her mother. Part tale of millennial anxiety, part gothic nightmare, The Call may not always be internally consistent but charts a dark tale of trauma and response as a haunted young woman finds herself stalked by the psychopathic embodiment of her buried guilt only to discover that a call from the past is always hard to ignore. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Undercurrent (アンダーカレント, Rikiya Imaizumi, 2023)

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Part way through Rikiya Imaizumi’s adaptation of the Testuyua Toyoda manga Undercurrent (アンダーカレント) a detective asks his client what she thinks it means to “understand” someone. Of course, she doesn’t really have an answer, and the film seems to suggest there isn’t one because we are forever strangers to ourselves let alone anyone else. We do things without knowing why or that somehow surprise us, while the actions of others can an also be be worryingly opaque. But then perhaps you don’t really need to “know” someone in order to “understand” them and as someone else later says perhaps it’s true enough that most people don’t really want the truth but a comforting illusion. 

But then Kanae’s (Yoko Maki) illusions aren’t exactly comforting. Her husband of four years Satoru (Eita Nagayama) suddenly disappeared during a work trip a year previously and has not been heard from since. She turns the television off when the news announces details of a decomposing body discovered near a set of electrical pylons, but on another level she’s sure that Satoru is alive and chose to leave her for reasons she can’t understand. Kanae tells a friend that what pains her most is thinking that in the end she wasn’t a person Satoru felt he could share his worries with so she was powerless to help him. Then again, there’s something in Kanae that is equally closed off, a little distant and otherworldly as if she were also putting up a front to keep her true self submerged.

The detective (Lily Franky), whose name is “Yamasaki” yet allows people call him “Yamazaki” because it’s easier for them, says of Satoru that his “cheerful,” ever smiling nature may also have been a kind of masking designed to dissuade people from looking any deeper. Someone else admits that they lied mostly to fit in, be what others wanted them to be, only to be caught out by the gulf between their genuine feelings and and the ever expanding web of their lies. Caught in a kind of suspended animation uncertain if Satoru will ever return and if and how she should continue with her life, Kanae ends up taking in a new assistant at her family bathhouse. Hori (Arata Iura) is the polar opposite of the way her husband is described, silent, soulful and somehow sad. We might be suspicious of him, his arrival seems too coincidental and the way he looks at some children running past in the town perhaps worrying. Yet how can we judge based only on his silence knowing nothing else of his history? Nevertheless, he may understand Kanae much better than anyone would suspect and may be the comforting presence from her recurring nightmares.

In her dreams, she’s plunged into water with a pair of hands around her neck. Unknowingly, Hori asks her if she’s ever really wanted to die and she can’t answer him even if it seems to us that the dreams reflect her desire for death, to be submerged in a sea of forgetfulness. Yet we later learn they come to have another meaning reflecting her long buried trauma and the reason for her own listlessness. These are the undercurrents that run silently through her, waves of guilt and grief that obscure all else. Disappearances have happened around her all life and seem only to increase, another bath house owner seemingly disappearing after a fire having promised to sell her his boiler. Yet through her experiences, she comes to fear them less reflecting that anyone could leave at any moment and that’s alright, as Hori had said nothing’s really forever. 

Even so, she regrets that there couldn’t have been more emotional honesty from the beginning then perhaps no one would need to disappear without a word. Confessions are made and the air is cleared. Someone had said that no one wanted the truth, but it seems Kanae has chosen it as perhaps symbolised in her decision to call Yamasaki by his actual name rather than the one he allows people to use because it’s too much trouble to correct them. Aside from his multiple names, Yamasaki is a strange man who holds meetings in karaoke boxes and theme parks though perhaps because he simply thinks Kanae could use a little cheering up. In more ways than one, it’s the ones left behind who are left in the dark, but they may be able to find their way out of it with a little more light and reflection.

Screened as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Table for Six 2 (飯戲攻心2, Sunny Chan Wing-Sun, 2024)

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“It’s okay to be screwed, we’ll unscrew you later,” youngest brother Lung (Peter Chan Charm Man) comforts his dejected brother in an accidental advocation of what means to be a family in Sunny Chan’s followup to the phenomenally successful comedy  Table for Six. Like the previous film and in true Lunar New Year fashion, Table For Six 2 (飯戲攻心2) explores the concept of family in a wider sense along with contemporary attitudes to marriage and traditional gender roles.

Even so, it has to be said this table is now uneven as oldest brother Steve has literally run away from his romantic dilemmas taking off for Africa leaving new girlfriend Miaow (Lin Min-Chen) behind claiming she’s too far out of his league and it’s not fair of him to waste her youth. Ironically enough, Bernard (Louis Cheung) has now started a wedding business helping people pull off extravagant public proposals such as the sort of fake one he prepares for Monica (Stephy Tang Lai-yan) as a publicity stunt featuring him dancing in a 90s-style music video. As part of the campaign, they’ve set up Lung and Miaow as a fake couple hoping to build a following for their romance online much to unexpected chagrin of Josephine (Ivana Wong) who has begun to embrace her dreams by becoming a well-known quirky chef who makes food disguised as other food. Though they had agreed to separate so the could both follow three dreams at the end of the previous film, Josephine suddenly proposes leading Bernard to put on an extravagant wedding as promotion for his business. 

In a way, Bernard’s company symbolises the performative qualities of marriage as couples put themselves through a stressful and expensive ritual more out of obligation than real desire. When Lung is prevented from reaching the ceremony on time, Bernard ends up impersonating him in a full body costume making plain that the spectacle is more for show than sentiment and it could really be anyone up there simply fulfilling a role. In fact, no one even checks the certificates were properly signed. Then again, just as in Josephine’s cooking sometimes the “fake” and can actually contain the “real” just in a different way than expected. She may say that once a relationship has cooled the spark can’t be regained, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a new, different, spark couldn’t be found. 

Perhaps that’s what happened for Bernard and Monica who’ve now overcome the awkwardness of Monica having been in a longterm relationship with oldest brother Steve. Ironically enough, they’d more or less decided not to get married only to be blindsided by their reactions to the “fake” proposal but as it turns out more because of the emotional baggage from their parents’ failed relationships that have left them too afraid to get married. Monica is still traumatised by her father’s extra marital affair which resulted in a half-brother she’s never met but has since become a Cantopop star, while Bernard still has bad memories of being treated as a “red-headed” child and like Steve is preoccupied with a desire to keep the family together while worried that he isn’t really up to it. 

The lesson Bernard learns is that family is a burden that’s carried together so he didn’t need to save it on his own and that it’s alright to mess things up because his family will be there to take care of him. Miaow meanwhile is left in the same place as Steve had been in the first film, wondering how long she should wait for love or if Steve is ever coming back, trying to decide whether to accept a promising job offer in Japan or stay in Hong Kong. Part of her reluctance to move on is that she’s become wedded to the family and fears losing her place within it but as Monica says her status wasn’t dependent on blood or relationships and that she’s already been accepted into the family just for being herself. 

Then again, families can also be annoying as Bernard remembers after inviting his gangsterish uncles to one of the weddings only for them to muscle in as a major sponsor for another own insisting on designs the dress themselves complete with a par of shark fin wings to promote their business none of which meshes well with Monica’s passion for conservation. In any case, as Monica reflects family means you can embarrass yourselves together so maybe wearing a stupid dress for a few minutes isn’t such a big deal. Heartfelt and zany, Chan’s farcical drama shifts past the performative aspects of marriage and family to what lies beneath which, like Josephine’s cooking, may not always be what it first appears.

Table for Six 2 is in UK cinemas from 9th February courtesy of CineAsia.

UK trailer (English subtitles)

Twilight Cinema Blues (銀平町シネマブルース, Hideo Jojo, 2023)

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Japan’s mini theatres have been in a status of crisis since the pandemic. Already struggling under the weight of changing times the immediate restrictions pushed many over the edge unable to entice older regulars back into screens or find a new audience among the young. This is doubly bad news for the industry as a whole as it’s mini theatres that allow indie films the platform they need to succeed and without them there is little avenue for films produced outside of the mainstream. Like Lim Kah-Wai’s Your Lovely Smile, Hideo Jojo’s Twilight Cinema Blues (銀平町シネマブルース, Ginpeicho Cinema Blues) similarly extols the virtues of the mini theatre which is not just somewhere to watch films but a place to belong that has room for anyone and everyone that wants to be there.

That’s more than true for Takeshi (Keisuke Koide), a struggling man approaching middle age who’s become near destitute and is almost sucked into a welfare scam targeting the homeless by a pair of shady yakuza claiming they run an NPO. At the orientation he runs into Kajiwara (Mitsuru Fukikoshi ), the owner of a mini theatre who declines to join the gangsters’ scheme but offers Takeshi the opportunity to bunk in his storeroom while working part-time little knowing that to Takeshi this particular mini cinema is like a return to source allowing him to rediscover his love of film.

But the mini cinema itself is also struggling. They simply don’t get bums on seats and Kajiawa is behind on paying his staff. Though they have a small collection of regulars, they aren’t enough to keep the lights on on their own. Even the projectionist is thinking he’ll probably retire along with the machine. Unable to afford new films, Kajiawara relies on cheap and easily licensable classics such as old favourite Casablanca but is largely unable to see away out of his situation while feeling guilty over ending what was effectively a family business and local landmark. The building’s 60th anniversary, 60 being a symbolic number in Japanese culture as it represents a full turn of the Chinese zodiac and literal new start, presents an opportunity to both Kajiawara and Takeshi to begin to move forward by renewing their faith in cinema.

The faith of Takeshi’s homeless friend Sato (Shohei Uno) needed no renewing. Though he had nothing, the ability to see a film twice a month made him feel human while the community at the cinema is perhaps the only one that still accepts him. He offers a small prayer after every film, and instructs Takeshi that he should the same. But his openhearted faith is also his undoing, allowing him to fall for the yakuza scam little realising they’ll force him to work for them taking half of the social security payments they helped him sign up for in the process. In the outside world, men like Sato find only exploitation and prejudice with cinema their only refuge.

Then again, filmmaking isn’t easy. A young woman who desperately wanted her debut film to play in her hometown cinema has based her first feature on the life of her father, a failed film director who drank himself to death (in a neat allusion to Oshima’s Cruel Story of Youth, her film’s title literally translates as “cruel story of a director”). Similarly, the suicide of a much loved assistant director has prevented those around him from moving on, preoccupied with the shock his death caused them in its suddenness and lack of obvious cause. They blame themselves sending their lives into a downward spiral that results in crushing financial debts and the end of a marriage. In some ways, the film is an ode to the ADs who keep everything running, including on occasions the director, and are in a sense the custodians of filmmaking.

Still, it’s clear that not everything can seamlessly repaired. Times have moved on even if some have been left behind and you can’t always simply reclaim what you’ve lost, but you can always start again with another spin of the wheel and make the most of what you’ve got. It won’t be the same, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be good. Jojo’s heartwarming tale of cinema has an undercurrent of darkness and despair running beneath, but also suggests that the silver screen can be a beacon hope when the world is at its bleakest and not least for those whose existence largely lies behind it.

Screened as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Original trailer (English subtitles)