Tag: Camera Japan 2022

Intolerance (空白, Keisuke Yoshida, 2021)

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At times of tragedy it may be natural to look for someone to blame, as if being able to pin all of this pain and anger on a single source would somehow help you to accept it. But in other ways tragedy is just a confluence of circumstances that are either everyone’s fault or no one’s. How far back can you really trace the blame? There would be no end it. That’s perhaps the conclusion that the protagonists of Keisuke Yoshida’s Intolerance (空白, Kuhaku) eventually come to, realising that their attempts to blame others are often born of a desire to deny their own responsibility or else to protect something else they fear losing. 

At least that’s how it is for grizzled fisherman Mitsuru (Arata Furuta), a man well liked by no one. A rude and violent bully, he terrorises all around him not least his teenage daughter Kanon (Aoi Ito) who is meek and passive with a slightly ethereal quality as if she’s learned that blending into the background is the best way to protect herself. Stopping in to a local convenience store on her way home from school, she’s accosted by resentful store manager Naoto (Tori Matsuzaka) who grabs her by the arm and accuses her of shoplifting nail polish. At some point, Kanon panics and bolts out of the store. Naoto chases her along a busy highway until she suddenly darts out into the road trying to get away from him and is hit first by a car driven by a young woman and then by a truck travelling in the opposite direction. Despite his gruff exterior, Mitsuru is quite clearly destroyed by his daughter’s death but becomes fixated on clearing her name of the shoplifting, insisting that he never saw her wear any makeup and that Naoto is to blame for her death in acting with such a heavy hand. 

Of course, it doesn’t occur to Mitsuru that Kanon may have worn makeup in secret and made sure to keep it from him knowing how he’d likely react. Likewise, perhaps she ran from the store because Naoto would have called her father and she was frightened of what he’d do if he found out she was caught pilfering, and pilfering nail polish at that. He remembers that she wanted to talk to him about something to do with school the night before she died but he didn’t listen, assuming she must have been being bullied and was forced to steal the nail polish only to hear that no one at school really even remembers her. She was a just a vague presence they can’t even quite identify. Her teacher meanwhile begins to reproach herself, realising that she failed in her duty of care repeatedly shouting at Kanon that she had “no motivation” rather than trying to help her find some or to get along in her own way, let alone figuring out what caused her to behave the way she did or if there were problems at home. Sick of Mitsuru’s belligerence the school finally set him on the new target of Naoto who was once accused of molesting a teenage girl he accused of shoplifting. 

Like Kanon, Naoto is a slightly hollow presence who also had a strained relationship with his father. As he lay dying, Naoto failed to answer his calls because he was playing pachinko and felt ashamed, afraid of another lecture from his dad about wasting his life on gambling. He struggles with his role in Kanon’s death, on the one hand guilty feeling he overreacted and inadvertently caused her to stray into harm’s way while otherwise resentful, justifying himself that it’s only natural for a storeowner to chase a shoplifter down the street. Both he and Mitsuru soon fall foul of a media culture that likes sympathetic victims and heartless villains, the media shocked by Mitsuru’s boorish behaviour but more so by Naoto’s callous indifference trimming an otherwise nuanced statement to imply that he feels his supermarket is the real victim as customers stay away or else issue complaints about their obviously heavy-handed shoplifter policy. 

“Imposing your own views on others is nothing more than torture” Naoto tells a well-meaning middle aged woman whose narcissistic cheerfulness is a neat mirror of Mitsuru’s intimidating aggression. Aggressively mothered by Kusakabe (Shinobu Terajima), Naoto carries an additional burden of guilt in realising he’s lost the store his father left to him, but she embarks on a tasteless “real victim” campaign insisting they did nothing wrong and it’s all Kanon’s fault for stealing in the first place. Kusakabe can’t bear to lose the store because it seems there’s not much else in her life. The film’s Japanese title translates as “blank” or “void” and it is indeed a void that Kusakabe is trying to fill in needing to feel needed by centring herself in her various volunteer activities such as working at a soup kitchen in addition to her crusade to save the store. 

It’s this giant abyss of grief and guilt which pulls each of them towards the edge, but in the end there’s really no way to apportion blame. The poor woman who first knocked Kanon down is completely undone by the experience though it really wasn’t her fault, repeatedly approaching Mitsuru asking for his forgiveness only to be cruelly rebuffed. It’s her mother’s (Reiko Kataoka) quiet show of dignity which stands in such stark contrast to his own white hot rage that finally forces him to realise the destructive quality of his intimidating behaviour, accepting his responsibility in his daughter’s death while understanding that in his fierce desire to control he robbed himself of the ability to know her. Really you can’t say whose fault it was, Mitsuru’s for the fear he instilled into his daughter, Naoto’s for his insecurity and misplaced zeal in hunting down a thief, the drivers’ for failing to brake, Kanon’s mother’s (Tomoko Tabata) for remarrying and having another child, the teacher’s for making Kanon feel useless, the other kids’ for rejecting her, or Kanon’s own for darting out into the road. For each of those there are a hundred other branches. There would be no end to it. But then, the strange thing is that Kanon shares her name with Buddhist deity of mercy, Mitsuru beginning to soften now willing to offer an apology where it’s due and to bear his own degree of guilt if not yet entirely able to forgive. In any case, ending in bright sunshine, Yoshida concludes with a return of the gaze between father and daughter that suggests forgiveness may indeed have arrived. 

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

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Eternally Younger Than Those Idiots (君は永遠にそいつらより若い, Ryuhei Yoshino, 2021)

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An insecure young woman struggles to assume her place in the world while preparing to leave the aimless security of college life for an uncertain adulthood in Ryuhei Yoshino’s empathetic social drama, Eternally Younger Than Those Idiots (君は永遠にそいつらより若い, Kimi wa Eien ni Soitsura yori Wakai). Adapted from the novel by Kikuko Tsumura, Yoshino’s film has its share of quirky humour but seems to be overshadowed by a lingering darkness in which there is only constant suffering tempered by a longing for recognition which often goes unanswered.

Horigai (Yui Sakuma) is one of the lucky ones in that she’s already locked in a job for after graduation as a children’s social worker back in her hometown. After making a speech at a uni party, however, she’s challenged by a rude fellow student who calls her out for her arrogance in thinking she has the right to interfere in people’s lives. He has perhaps touched a nerve. Though it’s a job she’s always wanted, Horigai is worried that she isn’t up to it and won’t be able to help anyone in part because she feels herself to be somehow different from those around her and lacking the skills to see what everybody else just naturally sees. 

Her sense of inadequacy is thrown into relief by a chance meeting at a party with a soulful fellow student who has just been released after getting arrested for suspected kidnapping having allowed a little boy neglected by his parents to stay in his apartment. Though she bonds with him, he soon leaves her life in unexpected fashion leaving her with an unspoken story hanging in the air. At her part-time job doing quality control at a factory she befriends another young man, Yasuda (Yo Aoi), who eventually confides in her about a very personal problem which she had originally not taken very seriously only to feel bad that she didn’t notice how much pain it was causing and had in a sense even made it a little worse by unwittingly teasing him. She didn’t see it because, in this case understandably, she did not want to look but without fully realising did perhaps make a difference a life just by listening. 

Most of all, she berates herself for picking up on her new friend Inogi’s (Nao) buried trauma as manifested in a physical wound to her body. Horigai’s uni thesis is on the link between childhood environment and visions of success, exploring whether or not there’s a difference in the way people dream based on the way they were raised. Some of the answers are, if taken at face value, a little surprising, Inogi wishing for a beautiful daughter-in-law to take care of her in her old age perhaps hinting at her desire for the security of a conventional family, but also somewhat poignant in their seeming simplicity. When Horigai relates a traumatic childhood memory Inogai is brought nearly to tears, despite having just met her, in guilt and sorrow that she wasn’t there to help, a sentiment which is later returned when Horigai learns of her trauma while also reflecting on the fact that she survived it if only by force of will and the gentle kindness of someone who was simply there. 

Simply being there is as Horigai learns a big part of it, finally stepping into herself by daring to look at the things she didn’t want see and making a difference in someone’s life who might not have survived if she had simply gone about her business. Having believed herself a “defect”, unfit for human society and unable to make lasting connections with others she gains strength through mutual acceptance that gives her the confidence to be there for those who need her still uncertain if she is really up to the job but doing her best anyway. Death seems to overshadow her, haunted as she is by missing children and the spectres of those whose suffering she could not see, but she is finally able to rise above it in overcoming some of her own childhood trauma. Almost everyone is burdened with something be it guilt, loss, or the legacy of pain and abuse but it helps to have someone to help carry the load. “The world is full of scary shit. Want to try Mario Kart?” Inogai asks, and it might be as good a suggestion as any. 

Eternally Younger Than Those Idiots screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Straying (猫は逃げた, Rikiya Imaizumi, 2021)

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Part way through Rikiya Imaizumi’s Straying (猫は逃げた, Neko wa Nigeta), a tabloid reporter and the photographer with whom he’s been having an affair attend a screening of a pretentious film made by a hypocritical director exploring why a once loving relationship between husband and wife broke down. His reasoning may not be all that sound in the end, but does perhaps hint at something of the malaise which has invaded the relationship between Hiro (Katsuya Maiguma) and his wife of five years Ako (Nairu Yamamoto). Now on the brink of divorce, the couple have hit a stumbling block in the inability to agree who gets custody of their beloved cat, Kenta. 

Kenta may not be all that happy about the separation either, peeing all over the divorce papers which only Ako has so far stamped. Hiro suggests that they’re going about it in the wrong order, that the papers should have been the final step once they’d sorted out dividing their property and finding alternative living spaces but he is perhaps a little reluctant as his determination to hang on to Kanta implies. A kitten they found together in the street in the midst of a pregnancy scare, Kanta is a symbol of their love and the hopes they had for it in the beginning. When he suddenly disappears, it sends each of the couple into a tailspin trying to find him which is also an attempt to recapture their lost love. 

Yet we can see that the marriage has failed in part because of dissatisfaction in either on side. As he later admits, Hiro was always insecure in the relationship and had been planning to run out on Ako after hearing about the possible pregnancy while overcome with paternal anxiety. He once dreamed of being a novelist and hates himself for his morally dubious job as a tabloid journalist exposing the sordid secrets of the rich and famous, yet he does the job in part because he feels emasculated by Ako’s success as a manga artist and cannot bear the idea of being supported by his wife. For her part, Ako declares that she’s bored with eroticism while working on an erotic manga for a publishing company specialising in sexually explicit series aimed at a female audience. When she says she’s thinking of writing a cat manga, like the much loved Gugu the Cat, it suggests that what she wants is love rather than sex but she’s also begun a revenge affair with her besotted editor Matsuyama (Kai Inowaki) little realising that she’s toying with his feelings. 

Like Matsuyama, Hiro’s girlfriend Mamiko (Miyuu Teshima) is more emotionally involved in the relationship than Hiro is though he sadly tells her he loves her and has superficially committed to leaving his wife. Mamiko also has a habit of eating Haribo at every opportunity which hints at her childish nature, though as is later revealed she’s surprisingly conservative for her age coldly telling Ako in a final confrontation that wives are responsible for their husband’s affairs while insisting Ako let Hiro go because she wants to become a traditional homemaker cooking and cleaning for him. She was also offended by the film because of its anti-marriage stance all which fuels her desire to unmask the “devoted familyman” director as just another industry sleazeball. Yet evidently the last thing Hiro wants is marriage because if that’s what he wanted he wouldn’t be getting a divorce. It’s no surprise that he put his foot down over getting Kanta neutered, insisting he be free to sow wild oats wherever he sees fit which is apparently with next-door’s cat Mimi who becomes an accidental victim of his sudden disappearance. 

Yet sometimes straying only shows you the way home as the central couple awkwardly discover, brought closer together by the search for Kanta while forced to face the realities of their frustrated desires each emerging on a more authentic note and resolving to chase their individual dreams. The second film in the L/R15 project of contemporary sex comedies, Straying is scripted by Hideo Jojo who directed Imaizumi’s script for Love Nonetheless and in its ironic conclusion is perhaps less cynical than it might seem in hinting at new beginnings founded less on forgiveness than acceptance of life’s imperfections. 

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

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Nagi’s Island (凪の島, Masahiko Nagasawa, 2022)

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“Doctors don’t heal patients. We just help them heal themselves” according to the kindly grandmother at the centre of Masahiko Nagasawa’s warmhearted drama Nagi’s Island (凪の島, Nagi no Shima). In many ways an island film, Nagasawa’s gentle tale of the power of community support and mutual compassion celebrates the healing power of laidback island life while simultaneously lamenting its decline amid rural depopulation and an ageing society which it leave it in someways vulnerable without the protections of big city infrastructure. 

For young Nagi (Chise Niitsu), however, it’s a kind of haven. Following her parents’ divorce she’s returned to live with her grandmother Yoshiko (Hana Kino) who runs the island’s only medical clinic while her mother (Rosa Kato) has a secured a job as a nurse at the hospital on the mainland. Nagi has adjusted to island life fairly quickly, but is also haunted by her past and suffers from panic attacks when witnessing small acts of violence and aggression that recall painful memories of her father’s drunken rages. In any case it seems that Nagi has maintained contact with her dad, Shimao, through social media while he is trying his best to undergo treatment for alcohol abuse and repair his relationships with his family. 

As Yoshiko puts it, history has in a sense repeated as she too came to the island with her daughter, Mao, after leaving her husband and was comforted by the total acceptance of the island community who asked few questions and never attached any social stigma to the fact she was a single mother. Many people here are, however, also suffering such as Nagi’s new friend Raita who is touched by her relationship with her mother while missing his own. Irritated by his grandfather’s refusal to explain to him what’s happened to her other than that she’s in a hospital, he determines to find out dragging Nagi along for an adventure but perhaps discovers something he wasn’t quite prepared for only to be comforted by a frank yet compassionate outlaying of the facts from a sympathetic doctor and the gentle support of his friends and family. 

Nagi’s arrival also begins back painful memories for the school’s janitor who is nicknamed Grumpy Grandpa (Kyusaku Shimada) by the kids (of whom there are only five) because of his morose appearance and the fact he never smiles. Having lost his own daughter to a heart attack, he worries for Nagi who in turn becomes determined to make him smile and eventually succeeds in making him feel a part of the community allowing him to begin making peace with his daughter’s death. 

That sense of community is however threatened by the realities of contemporary island life. Nagi’s new friends Kengo and Raita are secretly worried that Mao will decide to remarry and Nagi will leave the island leaving them alone again as the only children of their age. In the local school all the kids are taught together because there are only five of them, the other two being an older boy and his younger sister. Life on the island may seem so idyllic that it’s difficult to see why anyone would want to leave, but with few jobs available younger people often seek better futures in the city while there’s no denying that because of the decreasing population there are few resources available. Yoshiko is the only doctor on the island and her clinic is only a regular GP’s office meaning those who require more serious medical treatment will have to travel to the mainland which is possible only by small fishing boats in good weather. 

In any case the island provides a healing environment of its own, allowing Nagi and her mother to begin putting the past behind them while offering a chance of redemption for Shimao who may be able to start over in a kinder place free of the pressures of city life. As the islanders celebrate the first marriage taking place in the village in 30 years, there is promise of new life and new beginnings despite the prevailing narrative that communities such as these have little future in a continually evolving society. What is clear is that Nagi has found her place to belong along with a purpose in life in the gentle lull of the island’s seas and its welcoming shores. 

Nagi’s Island screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan. It will also be screening at Japan Society New York on Nov. 20 as part of The Female Gaze: Women Filmmakers from JAPAN CUTS and Beyond.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Shrieking in the Rain (雨に叫べば, Eiji Uchida, 2021)

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“Let’s change Japanese film” a duplicitous distributor tries to convince a diffident director though his “creators first” stance predictably turns out to be somewhat disingenuous. Inhabiting the same territory as Netflix’s Naked Director, Eiji Uchida’s meta dramedy Shrieking in the Rain (雨に叫べば, Ame ni Sakebeba) finds a young woman struggling to take charge of her artistic vision while plagued by workplace sexism, commercial concerns, and absurd censorship regulations but finally claiming her space and along with it her right to make art even if not quite everyone understands it, 

Set entirely on a Toei lot in the summer of 1988, the film opens with rookie director Hanako (Marika Matsumoto) locking herself inside a car with her hands clamped over her ears, fed up with the chaos that seems to surround her. How Hanako got the job in the first place is anyone’s guess, but it later becomes clear that she is in a sense being exploited by the producer, Tachibana (Kazuya Takahashi), who thinks a pretty young girl directing a softcore porno is a selling point in itself. Meanwhile, he’s teamed up with an US-based production company and its Japanese producer, Inoue (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), who seems fairly exasperated by the Japanese-style shoot and despite his pretty words is all about the business. For him, the main selling points are the actors, one a young idol star intending to boost his profile by getting into films and the other a veteran actress stripping off for the first time in an attempt to revitalise her fading career. 

Surrounded by male industry veterans, Hanako struggles to get her voice heard and feels under confident on set as they encircle her and bark orders she doesn’t quite understand. Her decisions are continually overruled by the male AD, cameraman, and finally Tachibana who always has his mind on the bottom line while Hanako’s inability to express herself to the crew results in endless takes of scenes that others tell her are “pointless” and should be cut despite her protestations that they are essential to the piece. A forthright female makeup artist (Chika Uchida) asks if filmmaking should really be this heartless as she watches Hanako humiliated by the chauvinistic cameraman who forces her to get on her knees and beg for help, while a more sympathetic grip (Gaku Hamada) later tells her that becoming a successful director has little to do with talent and a lot to do with the art of compromise. 

Nevertheless, Hanako tries to hold on to her artistic vision even while some roll their eyes considering the project is a softcore romantic melodrama revolving around a love triangle involving two brothers in love with same woman. Inoue claps back that film is a business, admitting that when he said creators first he just meant the ones that make money. According to him, anyone could direct the film because all anyone’s interested in is the actress’ bared breasts and the teenybopper appeal of top idol Shinji. Or in other words, it doesn’t really need to be good, it’s going to sell anyway. In any case, it seems incongruous to cast a squeaky clean idol in an edgy erotic drama especially considering that if they want to market it to his fans then they need to secure a rating which allows them to see it without adult supervision. Business concerns and censorship eventually collide when the rather befuddled censor puts a red line through some of their kink and explains that the actress’ third hip thrust has just earned them an X rating. 

Unlike Hanako and her similarly troubled junior camerawoman Yoshie (Serena Motola), veteran actress Kaede at least knows how to advocate for herself and get what she wants on set so that she can do her best work. Only in this case doing her best work means she wants to go for real with arrogant idol star Shinji who refuses to wear a modesty sock or trim his pubic hair to fit in with the arcane regulations of the censors board. Shinji is brought to task by aspiring actor Kazuto who is pissed off by his unprofessional behaviour while struggling to get a foothold in a difficult industry and apparently finding one through a romantic relationship with the producer which otherwise seems to be a secret from cast and crew. 

In any case a final confrontation prompts a rebellion against Inoue’s production line metaphor as the crew reaffirm that they are a team working together on an artistic endeavour not mere cogs in his machine. Reemerging in bright red lipstick, Hanako returns to retake what’s hers boldly claiming her artistic vision and taking charge on set before descending into an unexpected musical number. With a retro sensibility, the film neatly echoes late 80s production style with a cutesy background score often heard in movies of the era while posters for top Toei movies from the 70s and 80s such as Yukihiro Sawada’s No Grave for Us line the walls. A meta rebuke against the constraints placed on filmmakers by those who shout “creators first” to bolster their image but never follow through Shrieking in the Rain, is at once a homage to the classic days of low budget Toei erotica and an inspirational tale of an artist finding her voice in a sometimes repressive industry.

Shrieking in the Rain screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Unlock Your Heart (ひらいて, Rin Shuto, 2021)

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A straight-A student and popular girl enters a self-destructive tailspin on discovering her longterm crush has a secret girlfriend in Rin Shuto’s adaptation of the novel by Risa Wataya, Unlock Your Heart (ひらいて, Hirate). Wataya also penned the source material for Akiko Ohku’s Tremble All You Want and Hold Me Back, and while Shuto may shift away from Ohku’s quirky style she maintains and intensifies an underlying sense of unease in what has the potential to develop into an incredibly messy situation. 

As the film opens, popular girl Ai (Anna Yamada) walks away from a dance rehearsal and discovers fellow student Miyuki (Haruka Imo) collapsed by a tree next to a pouch containing her insulin. Barely conscious, Miyuki asks her for something sweet and Ai soon returns with some sugary juice. Unable to find to an efficient way of getting her to drink it, Ai passes the liquid from her own mouth in a literal kiss of life that seems have an unexpected effect on her. Meanwhile, after sneaking into the school late at night with some friends halfheartedly joking about stealing the exam papers, Ai raids the locker of her crush, Tatoe (Ryuto Sakuma), and discovers a series of love letters which turn out to be from Miyuki. 

For some reason this revelation turns Ai’s life upside-down even though she later reveals that she had been enduring the silent crush on Tatoe for some years without ever acting on it. It may partly be that Ai is popular and attractive and so the idea that someone may not find her desirable is destabilising, cutting to the quick of her teenage insecurity while pulling the rug out from under her if she had indeed thought of Tatoe as a kind of comfortable backstop or easy plan B. Enraged, she befriends Miyuki yet for unclear reasons, perhaps hoping to get some insider info on Tatoe, find out what it is Miyuki has and she doesn’t, or somehow break them up, but finally settles on seduction unexpectedly kissing her again in an echo of their awkward meet cute.  

At heart, Ai does not understand herself and is operating with no real plan. Each escalation seems to come as a surprise even to herself leaving her with moments of internal conflict gazing into a mirror wondering what it is she’s doing. On separate occasions, both Miyuki and Tatoe accuse her of lying and indeed she is, most particularly to herself in a wholesale denial of her own desires which fuels her impulsive and self-destructive behaviour. Others accuse her of being selfish and self-absorbed, unable to look beyond herself and indifferent to the feelings of others which is also in its way a reflection of the degree to which she is consumed by internal confusion, driven slowly out of her mind while taking out her frustration on those around her not least in her increasingly dark manipulation of Miyuki and Tatoe. In the end, as Tatoe points out, she’s little different from his abusive father in her need to possess and control but it’s the extreme control that she’s trying to exercise over herself and the desires she can not accept that is causing her self-destructive behaviour. 

Only Miyuki seems to be able to see through her, at least to an extent, yet it’s not entirely clear at first if she responds to Ai’s advances willingly or simply goes along with them because she has no other friends and is afraid Ai will reject her if she refuses. Ostracised by the students because of her diabetes which is of course a very visible condition in that it requires her to inject herself while at school, Miyuki is shy and lonely while required to keep her relationship with Tatoe a secret because of his abusive father. But as Miyuki later puts it in her letter, Ai isn’t quite as aloof as she’d like to pretend and acts with an unexpected tenderness and consideration, even a kind of vulnerability, in moments of intimacy that betray the true self otherwise stifled by anxiety and internalised shame. With a persistent air of danger and unease spurred by Ai’s impulsive and chaotic nature, Shuto’s intense drama reaches its climax in its deliberately abrupt conclusion perfectly capturing the heroine’s moment of realisation imbued with all of her idiosyncratic messiness. 

Unlock Your Heart screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

International trailer (English subtitles)

The Midnight Maiden War (真夜中乙女戦争, Ken Ninomiya, 2022)

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An apathetic college student is pulled between nihilistic destruction and the desire for life in Ken Ninomiya’s adaptation of the novel by F, Midnight Maiden War (真夜中乙女戦争, Mayonaka Otome Senso). “Do those who struggle for life deserve to be defeated as evil?” is a question that is put to him while he asks himself if there’s something wrong in his yearning for a “boring”, conventional existence with a good job, house in the suburbs and people to share it. Then again as the forces of darkness point out, those who long for normality usually cannot attain it which only fuels their sense of resentment towards a “rotten” society. 

The unnamed protagonist (Ren Nagase) has come to Tokyo from Kobe to attend university and as his family are not wealthy is supposed to be studying for a scholarship exam while supporting himself with part-time jobs. Only as he’s abruptly let go from his side gig, he finds himself unfulfilled by his studies and wondering what the point is in wasting his youth just to lead a dull life of drudgery. In an intense act of self-sabotage which later goes viral, he tells his English professor (Makiko Watanabe) to her face that her classes are pointless while calculating exactly how much they cost per hour which turns out to be the equivalent to three hours of labour for his mother, the price of a new text book, or three months’ Netflix subscription which oddly becomes a kind of currency benchmark. He can’t see that anything he’s learning will be of much use to him in the further course of his life when the only prize is conventionality even if that conventionality might also provide basic comfort. 

After joining a mysterious “hide and seek” club and becoming distracted by a series of minor bombings of public bins on campus, the hero is pulled between a woman only known as “Sempai” (Elaiza Ikeda), and a man only known as “The Man in the Black Suit” (Tasuku Emoto) who sell him conflicting visions of hope and darkness. While Sempai thinks it’s wrong to belittle those who want to live their lives and are genuinely content with the conventional, The Man in the Black Suit quite literally wants to burn it all to the ground. What begins as an awkward friendship between two awkward men, soon develops into a cult-like organisation of, as the hero puts it, “social outcasts”, drawn to the Man in the Black Suit’s desire to destroy the rotten society which has rejected them through blowing up Tokyo on Christmas Day. 

Positing Tokyo Tower as the “root of unhappiness”, the hero claims he wants only to destroy, and most particularly himself along with everything else. Experiencing extreme ennui, he struggles to find meaning in his life yet is also conflicted in the breadth of the The Man in Black’s goals being fairly indifferent to the existence of others and unconvinced that those merely complicit in the system should also be targets of his social revenge. If not quite dragged towards the light, he realises that he must kill the nihilist within himself and in a sense be reborn, as the Man in Black puts it, as the god of a new world. “You’re alive, that’s good enough for me” Sempai echoes as the hero does at least in a sense embrace life even amid so much destruction. 

Ken Ninomiya has become closely identified with a singular style heavily inspired by music video and often taking place in Tokyo clubland. Midnight Maiden War is in many ways a much more conventional film mimicking the aesthetic of other similarly themed manga and light novel adaptations featuring only one real party scene and no extended musical sequences while routing itself in a more recognisably ordinary reality albeit one secretly ruled by a lonely tech genius. It does however feature his characteristic neon-leaning colour palate, focus pulls, and striking composition such as the revolving upside down shot which opens the film and hints at the unnamed protagonist’s sense of dislocation. Quite literally a tale of darkness and light, the film finds its dejected hero struggling to find meaning in a stultifying existence but perhaps finally discovering what it is to live if only at the end of the world. 

The Midnight Maiden War screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

It’s All My Fault (ぜんぶ、ボクのせい, Yusaku Matsumoto, 2022)

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A young boy and a homeless drifter attempt to overcome the legacy of parental rejection in Yusaku Matsumoto’s sensitive coming-of-age drama, It’s all My Fault (ぜんぶ、ボクのせい, Zenbu, Boku no Sei). “It’s all my fault” is something many children think about circumstances which are well beyond their control, but it’s also something they’re encouraged to believe by an abusive or neglectful parent who tells them that they are to blame for the treatment they receive. Nevertheless, Yuta (Haruto Shiratori) comes to think that all the bad things happening in the world are in some way his fault, which might on one level be easier to believe than trying to accept that the world is sometimes a relentlessly unkind place. 

A sad and sullen boy, Yuta is viewed with some suspicion by the staff at the care home where lives due to his brooding nature and refusal to speak. The cause of his anger is that he was told by a previous caretaker that he’d be able to see his estranged mother, Rika (Marika Matsumoto), when he entered middle school and is resentful that he has still had no contact with her. The sad fact is, however, that Rika stopped taking their calls a long time ago and seemingly has no further intention of maintaining contact with her son. 

After the orphanage is rocked by a literal earthquake, Yuta sets off to find his mother but though she is moved to see him it quickly becomes clear that she is not really prepared to play a maternal role. When her drunken boyfriend returns home, she tells him that Yuta is a relative’s child she agreed to watch for a short time and appears otherwise conflicted, solicitously making sure he has enough to eat but more or less forgetting he’s even there whenever the boyfriend is around. Eventually she rings the care home to come and take him back, forever ruining Yuta’s faith in genuine human connection. 

Managing to run away, Yuta is later taken in by eccentric drifter Sakamoto (Joe Odagiri) who strongly identifies with the boy in having grown up with an abusive mother whose legacy he has been unable to escape. Shiori (Ririka Kawashima), a teenage girl with issues of her own who also befriends Sakamoto, is envious of his untethered lifestyle viewing him as free and bound by no one. But in truth he too is trapped as symbolised by the broken van which prevents him from leaving to travel to Nagoya and confront his mother as he often says he intends to do. Sakamoto describes his trauma as a like a rock in the heart that tortures him as he continues to resent his mother for the abuse she dealt him while simultaneously suggesting that she has dementia and may not even remember that she has a son. Yuta by contrast insists that his mother is not a bad woman and continues to yearn for her, treasuring the friendship bracelet she made for him only for it to be broken by thuggish teens who get their kicks bullying those they perceive to be weaker than themselves.

Sakamoto becomes an awkward paternal figure, teaching Yuta how to survive in his way of life by hatching scams on wealthy passers by and fetching junk to sell to a local scrap merchant but is equally arrested, unable to come to terms with the traumatic past and therefore unable to move on. Shiori envies what she sees as his freedom in part because she has little of her own. Secretly blaming her authoritarian father for her mother’s death which she has come to doubt was really from an illness as she was told, Shiori has an internalised sense of shame and inadequacy knowing that she cannot be the person her father wants her to be and longs to escape him. Yuta continues to dream of a family, inviting Shiori to come with them to Nagoya when the truck is fixed, but is met only with despair as the world conspires against his happiness and encourages him to blame himself for his all his misfortune. Shot with an unsentimental if empathetic eye, Matsumoto’s hard-hitting drama examines the legacies of parental abuse, neglect, or absence persisting long into adulthood while his young hero struggles with himself in his conflicting emotions towards the woman who abandoned him with only an impossible future. 

It’s All My Fault screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Prior Convictions (前科者, Yoshiyuki Kishi, 2022)

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An earnest young woman finds herself questioning her way of life after one of her charges is implicated in a spate of murders in Yoshiyuki Kishi’s social drama Prior Convictions (前科者, Zenkamono). As the double meaning of the English title implies, the issue is as much about preconceived notions and unfair judgements as it is about “crime”, its causes and legacies, while ultimately arguing for a more compassionate approach to law enforcement which prizes healing and rehabilitation over meaningless punishment. 

Kayo (Kasumi Arimura) is what’s known as a volunteer probation officer which is to say that she assists those who’ve recently been released from prison to reintegrate into mainstream society so that they can live comfortable lives within the law. She is not however a civil servant and though making regular reports to an official probation officer has very little power and no pay for her work which can at times be difficult and emotionally draining especially considering that she also needs to work a regular job in a convenience store to support herself. In what seems like a very poor safeguarding decision, she meets most of her clients in her own home where she lives alone one of them even breaking in while she’s not there for an impromptu hotpot party. 

While she is exasperated by some of her charges such as a woman who can’t seem to stick to a regular job no matter how many she finds her, Kayo is incredibly proud of her work with Kudo (Go Morita), a quiet and soulful middle-aged man who was convicted of murder after stabbing a co-worker who had been bullying him so badly that he lost the hearing in one ear. Kudo had been struggling to reconcile himself to his crime, intensely worried that while unable to understand why he did it he might end up doing it again. When Kudo suddenly disappears after being linked to a series of suspicious deaths most assume the worst, but Kayo alone refuses to believe that Kudo could be the killer and is determined to find out what’s really going on if only to vindicate her conviction that her work is good and useful rather than naive and misguided as some including intense police officer Takimoto (Hayato Isomura) seem to see it. 

As Kayo later reveals she’s carrying some baggage herself which contributed to her decision to begin working with those who’ve been convicted of crimes, but is doing it with the aim of reducing suffering and ending the cycle so that there are no more victims or victimisers. Also wounded, Takimoto tells her that murderers aren’t human and can never be rehabilitated, while she’s forced to consider the problem from all angles meeting with a lawyer (Tae Kimura) who defended an abusive husband who murdered his wife and learning that she did so for similar reasons to herself certain that he too deserved a second chance and could perhaps be reformed if given the proper treatment. Kayo sees that many of the people she meets ended up committing crimes because of traumatic personal circumstances and if someone had helped them earlier they may not have offended in the first place. She can’t change the past but at least in helping them now she might prevent further crimes in the future while giving them a source of stability as they attempt to root themselves more firmly in mainstream society. 

Inspired by Masahito Kagawa’s manga, Prior Convictions was previously adapted into six-part WOWWOW TV drama to which the film is technically a sequel though fairly stand alone in its gentle unpacking of Kayo’s own unresolved trauma and subsequent epiphanies as regards her relationships with those she’s trying to help. As one young woman puts it, they find her vulnerability reassuring in contrast to the often authoritarian, didactic approaches taken by law enforcement and social services who only talk down to them from a condescending place of superiority rather than trying to meet them on a more human level. In the end it’s about healing, trying to find an accommodation with the traumatic past and limiting its legacy to break the cycle of pain and violence. The prior convictions which most need addressing are those of a judgemental society that all too often contributes to the mechanisms of violence in seeking to punish rather than to help.

Prior Convictions screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Riverside Mukolitta (川っぺりムコリッタ, Naoko Ogigami, 2021)

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The spectre of death hangs over the protagonists of Naoko Ogigami’s adaptation of her own novel Riverside Mukolitta (川っぺりムコリッタ, Kawapperi Mukolitta) despite the sunniness and serenity of the riverside community where they live. They are each, in their own way, grieving and sometimes even for themselves in fear of a far off lonely death or else wondering what it’s all for and if this persistent suffering is really worth it, but eventually find a kind of solidarity in togetherness that can at least make the unbearable bearable. 

Recently released from prison, Yamada (Kenichi Matsuyama) has been sent to a remote rural village to start again with a job in a fermented squid factory and an apartment in a small row of houses by the river. His landlady Shiori (Hikari Mitsushima), an eccentric young woman with a little girl, assures him that though the building is 50 years old and many have passed through during that time no one has yet died in his unit. His neighbours Mizoguchi (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and his small besuited son Yoichi traipse the local area selling discounted tombstones reminding potential customers that no one lives forever and it might remove some of the burden of living to have your affairs in order for when you die. If all that weren’t enough, the last house in the row is thought to be haunted by an old lady whose ghost sometimes appears to water the flowers so they don’t turn to weed. Arriving home one day, Yamada discovers a letter from the local council letting him know that his estranged father has passed away in a lonely death and his remains are ready to collect at the town hall at his earliest convenience. 

Yamada is a man who keeps himself to himself, clearly ambivalent in trying to adjust to his new life wondering if he really deserves the opportunity to start again and if there’s any point in doing so. Seeing as his parents divorced when he was four and he had no further contact with his father, he is unsure if he wants the responsibility of his ashes which will of course contain additional expense for some kind of funeral. He meditates on the fates of “those who are not thought to exist”, such as the many homeless people who live by the river and are swept away by typhoons, and the elderly who die nameless and alone. When he ventures to the town hall, he discovers an entire room filled unclaimed remains some of which remain anonymous while the sympathetic civil servant (Tasuku Emoto) explains that in general they keep them for a year and then bury them together if no one comes forward to claim them. Aside from the staff members at the crematorium, the civil servant was the only person present at his father’s cremation which at any rate must be quite an emotional burden for him though he is familiar with the case and willing to talk Yamada through his father’s final days. 

Meanwhile, he’s bamboozled into an awkward friendship with the strange man from next-door (Tsuyoshi Muro) who brands himself a “minimalist” and claims to be self-sufficient in the summer at least with the veg he grows in the garden behind their apartments but insists on using Yamada’s bath because his is broken and he doesn’t have the means to fix it. Giving in to Shimada’s rather aggressive attempts at connection, Yamada comes to feel the power of community in finding acceptance from the other residents in the small row of apartments along with the paternal influence of his boss at the factory and the kindness of an older woman who works there. Yoichi, the tombstone seller’s son, is fond of playing on a junk heap which is in its way a graveyard of forgotten and discarded things from rotary telephones to CRT TVs and broken air conditioners, while he and Shiori’s daughter Kayo try to contact aliens from a purgatorial space where the living and the dead almost co-exist. Taking place at the height of summer during the Bon festival when the mortal world and the other are at their closet, Ogigami’s laidback style gives way to a gentle profundity in the transient nature of existence but also in the small joys and accidental connections that give it meaning. 

Riverside Mukolitta screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)