In the wake of tragedy, it’s easy to think that if only you had made a different choice then everything would be alright, but in reality it’s never as easy as that and blaming oneself is merely an act of vanity. There’s a peculiar kind of tradeoff that occurs to journalist Kirino (Goro Inagaki), that if he hadn’t written an article exposing a policeman who founded a support group for former drug users trying to integrate into mainstream society as a sex pest, then he might have gone on to help more people. Of course, he would have gone on abusing some of them too and his behaviour would probably have escalated into something much worse. The journalist begins to ask himself if it’s worth it for the net good, without necessarily examining the ramifications of the policeman’s actions.
Yu Irie’s bleak social drama A Girl Named Ann (あんのこと, An no Koto) draws inspiration from a real life case in which a young woman began to turn her life around only to reach a crisis point during the pandemic. The film’s title almost makes an everywoman of its heroine who is resolutely failed by the society in which she lives and in the end discovers only a sense of futility in realising that she will never fully be able to escape the clutches of her abusive mother (Aoba Kawai) who forced her into sex work at age 12. Ann never even finished primary school even though middle school is compulsory and is functionally illiterate. Her reading level is that of a small child which of course makes it near impossible for her to be employed in any kind of salaried job while when she does secure employment her mother steals all her money.
Being arrested by Tatara (Jiro Sato), a policeman who at first seems well-meaning even if positing “yoga” as a means of turning Ann’s life around, finally gives Ann the encouragement to come off drugs and try to integrate into mainstream society. To his credit, Tatara does everything he can for her from providing a paternal presence to finally helping her escape her mother by getting her a place in an apartment complex set up for women who are being stalked or have experienced domestic violence. Living alone gives Ann a sense of confidence and positivity that allows her to imagine a better future for herself while confronting her past. But on the other hand, it remains true that Tatara may have been better to help her move to another city where her mother would be less likely to find her and derail her life at every conceivable opportunity rather than keeping her close at his own support group which is perhaps an act of vanity if not something worse. No one helps for free and Ann encounters only differing kinds of exploitation from the employers who take her on at poverty wages because they know how desperate she is and don’t think she deserves any better, to the conflicted journalist Kirino who is only really invested in his investigation of Tatara. Ann seems to resent him for exposing Tatara and taking him away from her, but neither of the men make much of an attempt to continue supporting her once the story breaks.
Ann’s plight exposes how the weakest in society were disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The care home she was working at, poignantly because she wanted to learn how to take care of her grandmother (Yuriko Hirooka) who had shielded her from her mother’s abuse, is forced to restrict the number of employees on site meaning Ann is let go while the classes she’d been taking to improve her literacy are also cancelled. Though the apartment requires no rent, she no longer has a means of feeding herself not to mention being stuck inside all the time with nothing to do but study, and not even that when all her pens run out of ink. People are often judgemental and there is no further social support available to her. Even Tatara had been overly fixated on her drug use and while it’s true that she would otherwise be unable to rejoin society without recovering, he otherwise fails to consider other factors such as Ann’s toxic home life or trauma from the long years of abuse she suffered that all contribute to the problems she is facing.
Even so, unlike her mother Ann is a warm and caring person who is well liked at the care home and clearly has a lot of love to give but the universe won’t seem to give her a break. Perhaps it would be easiest to simply blame her mother, but something must have made her like that too and there’s no one there for her either. She sometimes calls Ann “Mama”, as if the roles were reversed and she were the child being parented by Ann rather than the other way round. In any case, she comes to embody the selfishness of an indifferent society which could have saved a girl like Ann if really wanted to but in the end did not.
A Girl Named Ann screens as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.
Trailer (English subtitles)
Images: ©2024 “A Girl Named Ann” Film Partners
The Midnight Diner is open for business once again. Yaro Abe’s eponymous manga was first adapted as a TV drama in 2009 which then ran for three seasons before heading to the 
Yoichi Higashi has had a long and varied career, deliberately rejecting a particular style or home genre which is one reason he’s never become quite as well known internationally as some of his contemporaries. This slightly anonymous quality serves the veteran director well in his adaptation of Arane Inoue’s novel which takes a long hard look at those living lives of quiet desperation in modern Japan. Though sometimes filled with a strange sense of dread, the world of Someone’s Xylophone (だれかの木琴, Dareka no Mokkin) is a gentle and forgiving one in which people are basically good though driven to the brink by loneliness and disconnection.
A Double Life (二重生活, Nijyuu Seikatsu ), the debut feature from director Yoshiyuki Kishi adapted from Mariko Koike’s novel, could easily be subtitled “a defence of stalking with indifference”. As a philosophical experiment in itself, it recasts us as the voyeur, watching her watching him, following our oblivious heroine as she becomes increasingly obsessed with the act of observance. Taking into account the constant watchfulness of modern society, A Double Life has some serious questions to ask not only of the nature of existence but of the increasing connectedness and its counterpart of isolation, the disconnect between the image and reality, and how much the hidden facets of people’s lives define their essential personality.
Kabukicho Love Hotel (さよなら歌舞伎町, Sayonara Kabukicho), to go by its more prosaic English title, is a Runyonesque portrait of Tokyo’s red light district centered around the comings and goings of the Hotel Atlas – an establishment which rents by the hour and takes care not to ask too many questions of its clientele. The real aim of the collection of intersecting stories is more easily seen in the original Japanese title, Sayonara Kabukicho, as the vast majority of our protagonists decide to use today’s chaotic events to finally get out of this dead end town once and for all.
Windows on Worlds 