Tag: Eriko Nakamura

Yukiko a.k.a (雪子 a.k.a., Naoya Kusaba, 2024)

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“Leave no one behind,” is the theory underpinning the SDGs that primary school teacher Yukiko (Rio Yamashita) is teaching to her students, but it’s also a practice that she unconsciously puts into practice only largely tends to forget to include herself. Timid and insecure, she makes little mark on the world around her and is afraid to express herself which she fears also interferes with her ability to interact with the children worrying that her reticence to speak up because she’s too worried they’ll say it’s all her fault prevents her from asking them if they’re alright or they need any help or guidance. 

It’s only through the possibly surprising hobby of rap music that she finds an outlet where she can be herself and say everything that’s on her mind, only most of her raps are all about her anxiousness and inability to communicate. She has however found a supportive community in a local park where there are a group of rappers who seem to have her back and encourage her to get more into the hobby by participating in rap battles so she can express herself more. It seems though that part of her anxiety stems from a sense that she’s approaching a crossroads in life and is in many ways dissatisfied. She’s been in a long-term relationship with another teacher, Kodai (Daichi Watanabe), she met when they were both students but as he’s been assigned to another school a long way away, they only meet up at weekends.

All around her, her friends are getting married and it seems Kodai may also be ready to pop what seems to most an inevitable question, but there’s something that seems to be holding her back. Kodai later tells her that he doesn’t like the her that does rap, which suggests in a way that he doesn’t really want the version of her that can express herself or is confident in saying what she does and doesn’t want. He’s much more interested in the timid Yukiko who meekly goes along with what he wants and is too afraid to rock the boat. A fellow teacher, Riho (Hina Higuchi), has an ambition to be married with a child before 30, which is surprising to Yukiko and often criticised for being old fashioned. Yet what the film seems to insist is that neither perspective is wrong, merely different, and largely a matter of what suits each individual. Riho is cool in her own way for living her life the way she chooses even if it conflicts with the prevailing attitude of the contemporary society and it’s this sense of empowerment that Yukiko is really seeking as an older teacher, Ohsako (Fusako Urabe), explains. With her short hair and serious demeanour it might be assumed that the kids wouldn’t like Ohsako, but she’s actually their favourite and perhaps precisely because of her self-assuredness. In contrast to the ultramodern Riho she likes to hand write and draw her teaching materials as a means of transmitting sincerity and integrity to the children while acting as a voice of authority between the teachers. 

Indeed, it’s Ohsako who largely teaches the film’s lessons and Yukiko how to embrace herself so that she can communicate better with the students explaining that her ability to pick up on the same anxieties in them is much more valuable than anything else. Locking eyes with a distressed young girl during a PE lesson, she quickly figures out that she’s experiencing menstrual cramps and is able to take her to the nurse’s office for some positive help and support. Meanwhile, she struggles with two boys in her class one of whom has become a school refuser and hikikomori. She visits Rui at his home every week with handouts but fails to make a breakthrough until she too is brave enough to expose her own fears and doubts. His deskmate Kotaro is now forced to join in with the girls either in front or behind when they’re asked to do pair work because of the painfully empty seat next to him.

But then unbeknownst to Yukiko, times have changed. Rui is not completely isolated but has been communicating with his friends, including Kotaro, through video games which as Kotaro’s father says is just as real to the children as talking in person. He’s also got really into educational apps and might have actually learned more by himself at home, which isn’t great for Yukiko’s self-esteem but at least he’s doing alright even if she might be becoming obsolete. Meanwhile the school still insists on making the kids read out loud to their parents who are then supposed to fill in a comment sheet but Kotaro writes those himself because his mum’s too busy. Nervously challenged by Yukiko, Kotaro’s mother asks what the educational point of the exercise is. She says she has her own way of communicating with her son and doesn’t have time for this meaningless bit of form filling. Yukiko’s insistence that it’s only 10 minutes belies a lack of understanding that Kotaro’s mother, who seems to be a working lone parent, simply doesn’t have another 10 minutes in her day. Still, the point is that Yukiko doesn’t really know the educational point of the exercise but has only been doing it because it’s what you do without giving it any real thought. 

But as Ohsako had said, maybe neither way is wrong, it’s just a matter of personal taste. Through her rap music hobby,  Yukiko begins to accept another side of herself while gaining the courage to be more confident and express herself more freely. She realises that it doesn’t really matter if she wins a rap battle or not because even putting herself out there was a minor victory that convinces her she has the power to do things with her life and live it in a way that best suits her while teaching similar lessons to the children and finally listening to her own advice.

Yukiko a.k.a screens in Chicago 22nd March as part of the 19th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Lonely Glory (わたしの見ている世界が全て, Keitaro Sakon, 2023)

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A thoroughly unpleasant young woman gradually begins to realise that other people have feelings too and she has no idea what she’s doing with her life in Keitaro Sakon’s indie drama Lonely Glory (わたしの見ている世界が全て, Watashi no Mite Iru Sekai ga Subete). Haruka currently runs a startup geared towards helping people maintain good mental health which is ironic in the extreme because she has no understanding of or regard for the feelings of others. Yet as she says during a role play with an employee, the basic principle of their business is helping people identify their problems which she ironically does on returning home to her estranged family if not entirely for altruistic reasons. 

Before that, however, we see her be unnecessarily harsh during a staff evaluation later justifying herself to the boss that they needed to clear out those who are of no use. To her, the staff member’s feelings were irrelevant, she just informed them of their subpar performance. Her boss isn’t buying it. He tells her that her management techniques are counterproductive and that with multiple accusations of bullying behaviour she herself says she is unwilling to work on (because she doesn’t understand she’s done anything wrong) he has no option other than to ask for her resignation. Unfazed, Haruka decides to start her own startup, but is soon confronted with another crisis on learning that her mother has passed away. 

On arrival at the hospital and despite being the youngest sibling Haruka immediately takes over, seemingly unmoved, and opts for the cheapest funeral plan available. She didn’t come to her father’s funeral and her siblings didn’t expect to see her for this one either, but now she has an ulterior motive in that she wants to sell the family home and business to finance her new business venture despite the fact all three siblings still live there and two of them are financially dependent on the cafe/greengrocers for their living. Haruka is incredibly judgemental about her small-town siblings’ life choices branding them as delusional and generally carrying on with an air of superiority but it’s also true enough that they are all to a degree trapped, unable to move on with their lives while afraid to leave the safety of their childhood home. 

As she says, sometimes people just need a little push which is something that she can give them but it’s never quite clear if she genuinely cares or is motivated solely by the desire to manipulate her siblings into agreeing to sell the house. Divorced sister Miwako is fairly unfussed either way but oldest son Keisuke is consumed with shame in the idea of giving up the family business while Takuji has self-esteem issues and thinks everyone looks down on him for never managing to get a job since he finished university four years previously. Challenged by Keisuke’s much younger farm girl girlfriend Asuka on the nature of success, Haruka replies that it’s having everyone around you admit you were right which lays bare her own insecurity and need to dominate every situation that she’s in. But then ironically enough she does help each of her siblings identify their problems and then gain the courage to begin moving forward. 

The dissolution of the family business and the erasure of the family home becomes in its way liberating, less the glue that bound them together than that trapped them in a perpetual adolescence. Haruka begins to realise she’s not much better than the life coach scammer who sold her vulnerable brother false promises of easy success, and that the way she treats others can have unintended consequences but in the end she’s the one left rootless and bereft of direction after closing the shop. Perhaps that’s her lonely glory, the knowledge that she helped each of her siblings do what she now can’t (or maybe just that she got what she wanted and doesn’t know what to do with it). Told with a down to earth naturalism, Sakon’s indie drama is also a lament for the changing nature of small-town life and a loss of community as the closure of the store robs the locals of another neighbourhood hub ironically leaving Haruka all alone in the now empty space of her family home with a newfound sense of loneliness still searching for the right words and a new direction. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Our Huff and Puff Journey (私たちのハァハァ, Daigo Matsui, 2015)

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Generally speaking, teenagers aren’t really known for their ability to think things through. If the four high school girls at the centre of Daigo Matsui’s Our Huff and Puff Journey (私たちのハァハァ, Watashitachi no Haa Haa) had stopped to think things through, they’d never have gone on their completely mad, actually quite dangerous, road trip to Tokyo by bicycle but then perhaps adolescence is all about completely mad, actually quite dangerous things a thinking adult would automatically reject. 

Like Matsui’s earlier anthology film, How Selfish I Am!, Our Huff and Puff Journey is essentially a promotional video for the band Creephyp whose music features prominently throughout. The girls are all devoted fans who take band loyalty incredibly seriously and having seen them in concert in their hometown of Fukuoka decide that they need to chase them to the final leg in Tokyo the only problem being they’re teenagers with no money and Fukuoka is a thousand miles away from the capital. Setting off with a great deal of excitement (and total secrecy from their parents), they run out of puff by Hiroshima and end up dumping the bikes to hitchhike the rest of the way. 

It’s after Hiroshima that the novelty and sense of freedom begin to wear off as the cold, hard reality of their plan begins to hit home. Matsui turns the film on its head a little, still proceeding from the point of view of the teenage heroines but revealing how dangerous a place the world can be for a naive high school girl. At one point, they try to get jobs at a hostess bar despite being under age to earn a little money only two of them are deemed not pretty enough and sent home which further strains their already fracturing relationship. Though some of the drivers who give them rides are nice and just want the girls to get where they’re going safely others are not, such as the young man (Sosuke Ikematsu) who transgressively kisses the gang’s leader Settsun for the thrill of trying it on with a high schooler seconds after she gets off the phone with her boyfriend who quite understandably disapproves of the gang’s Tokyo-bound adventure. 

Of course he already knows a lot of what’s going on because the girls keep posting pictures from the trip online including those of them hanging out in clubs and bars. They obviously assume their parents won’t be checking Twitter, but nevertheless soon discover that social media can be a double-edged sword. Though they’d got some interest posting about their mad bicycle trip, an attempt to appeal to netizens for help when they run out of options goes south when they’re widely mocked online as a bunch saddos who’ve taken devotion to their favourite band far too far. It’s this that provokes a major schism when Chie decides to message a band member directly to ask for help with Fumiko left distraught to think that they might have made him worry or feel guilty, aside from hugely embarrassing themselves, only to discover that Chie only came along for a fun trip and doesn’t even really like Creephyp while Fumiko feels she really might die if they don’t make it to the concert. 

Matsui switches between the low-grade handheld of the gang’s video camera and his own his own more abstracted perspective but generally allows the girls to speak for themselves in a manner that feels authentically adolescent and suggests their obsession with Creephyp is at least in part a means of escape from the pressures of their lives with each of them thinking about life after high school. What they discover through their trip maybe a sense of life’s dead ends and disappointments, and that decisions made impulsively rarely work out the way you hoped they would. Looking out at the darkened city Fumiko laments that nothing seems to have changed despite the concert having begun, while later making another impulsive decision that also spectacularly backfires. Even so, Matsui allows them the final thrill of arrival at Shibuya Scramble, four young girls from rural Kyushu taking in the streets of the capital while knowing they will soon have to return to the “reality” of their high school lives and anxiety of what lies ahead. 

Our Huff and Puff Journey screened as part of this year’s Nippon Connection. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

August in Tokyo (愛の小さな歴史, Ryutaro Nakagawa, 2015)

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august in Tokyo posterFollowing on from the dark series of coming of age tales in Plastic Love Story, Ryutaro Nakagawa continues to examine his central themes of unusual connections, lingering effects of past trauma, and the dark side of familial dysfunction in the cheerfully titled August in Tokyo (愛の小さな歴史, Ai no Chiisana Rekishi). Beginning with a framing sequence involving suicide and depression, Nakagawa spins back for a no happier look at two very different people facing much the same problems as they attempt to reconnect with family members, pursue doomed romances, and generally fail to move forward even though they each strive to put the past behind them. Yet there is hope here as the framing sequence proves in its insistence that loss is an inevitable part of life but that the end of one relationship does not mean no others should start.

A young girl, Natusmi (Asaka Nakamura), receives a phone call from the police telling her that her best friend has committed suicide. Left reeling, Natsumi also attempts to kill herself but is saved by a young man with whom she later develops a friendship after bonding over their shared loss in each having lost someone close to them who died by their own hands.

Their story gives way to that of another man and woman who don’t know each other but are living very similar lives in close geographical proximity. Natuski (Eriko Nakamura), having left a job at a book shop following a failed affair, has a part-time job delivering bento. Approached one day by a young man (Sosuke Ikematsu) who tells her that her estranged father (Ken Mitsuishi) is in a bad way, Natsuki decides the best form of revenge might be to move in and look after him. Meanwhile, Natsuo (Takashi Okito) is a petty gangster becoming disillusioned with his life of senseless unpleasantness. Reencountering his younger sister Asuka (Manami Takahashi), Natsuo decides to reassume his familial responsibilities by “saving” her from her dead end life as a drug addicted casual sex worker.

Abandonment and familial breakdown are the threads which bind the stories of Natsuki and Natso together. Living out their eerily similar lives, they each reflect on why it was they were born if their parent(s) did not want them enough to bother looking after them. Natsuki’s memories of her father who left when she was small are not positive. She has a scar on her chest from where he burnt her with a cigarette and still resents him for the drunken beatings he inflicted on her mother who later died when Natsuki was only ten years old. She wonders if her life might have been different if she’d had a normal childhood. A failed a attraction to a middle-class pianist only serves to ram home her sense of insecurity and inadequacy, leaving her to wonder if she can ever escape the cycle of suffering to which her father’s failures seem to have condemned her.

Natsuo and his sister have it harder, each wondering why it was they were born, preferring to think it was all just an unhappy accident of a biological urge rather than the expression of a love they themselves have never felt. At some point Natsuo made the decision to abandon his family, leaving Asuka to deal with it alone. Attempting to care for their abusive father with senile dementia, Asuka’s life was destroyed, leaving her no way to support herself until an ill advised romance led her into the path of drugs and the sex trade. Natsuo wants to put things “right”, but he may be running out of time.

Natsuki and Natsuo struggle, each trying to do the “right” thing but finding themselves conflicted. Natsuki can’t forgive her father for everything he’s put her through. The young man who convinced her to help him, perhaps disconnected himself, describes Natsuki’s father as “like a father” to him – a figure of nobility who stood up for others and was the only man who took him for drinks and spent time with him as a father might. Natsuki says says her only purpose in life is hating her father, yet in the end she can’t. Natsuo’s worries are equally self focussed in his guilt over having abandoned his sister and her subsequent fall into dangerous drug dependency but his late in the day attempts to “save” her and their patronising paternalism often frustrate his essential goal.

Running in parallel these two sad stories are tragedies waiting to happen but, even in their darkness, they hold the potential for salvation. As in the framing sequence, such unexpected connections may be born from sadness but there is happiness to be found if you can find the strength to carry on. Maintaining his familiar aesthetic of naturalism mixed with expressionist dance sequences, Nakagawa’s latest examination of human relationships and contemporary society is bleak but also hopeful, insisting that patch work hearts are the path to a brighter future.

Available in most territories via iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, and Google Play.

Trailer (English subtitles/captions)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmErCX23mkc

The City Of Betrayal (裏切りの街, Daisuke Miura, 2016)

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city of betrayalWhat is it that makes one person betray another? Following Love’s Whirlpool, playwright and Be My Baby author Daisuke Miura returns to the world of messy modern love with a tale ridden with infidelity and the impossibility of trust. Despite being in outwardly successful relationships, the central characters find themselves seeking something, trying to eclipse some element of dissatisfaction which is more with themselves than with their partners by burying it in a meaningless affair which only becomes less meaningless as time goes on. Formerly a TV drama now recut for the big screen The City of Betrayal (裏切りの街, Uragiri no Machi) is a melancholy and contemplative piece but one which shares Miura’s rather depressing view of romance with its inherent difficulties and contradictions.

Yuichi (Sosuke Ikematsu) is a young man with a part-time job he never bothers to go to and a successful girlfriend, Satomi (Eriko Nakamura), who is content to pay all the bills and even give him pocket money to out drinking with his friends. Bored at home, Yuichi checks porn sites and chats on a meet up board for casual sex. When he sees a message from “Tomo” popup wondering if anyone nearby is up for some no strings fun, he jumps right on it. Yuichi tells “Tomo” that he works in mass communications and reassures her that he’s not all that bad looking so there’s nothing to worry about.

“Tomo” claimed to be 30 and in the fashion business, but really she’s Tomoko Hashimoto (Shinobu Terajima), a 40 year old housewife who is convinced her husband has been having an affair. Tomoko is not unhappy with Koji (Mitsuru Hirata) – a salaryman of a similar age to herself, he’s a good man, considerate and well mannered if a little dull. Like Yuichi and Satomi, Tomoko and Koji enjoy a full relationship and get on pretty well even if there are the usual little niggles hiding beneath the cheery facade.

Despite having met up for casual sex, the start of Yuichi and Tomoko’s affair is a slow one in which Tomoko originally changes her mind, aware of the large age difference between herself and Yuichi and afraid it would put him off. Spending time together just as friends, the pair grow closer before heading into a love hotel for an experience which is not altogether successful. Still, they continue to meet up at regular intervals behind their partners’ backs.

The cheating and the subterfuge doesn’t sit well with either of them, but their secret affair fulfils needs which weren’t being met elsewhere. Neither Yuichi or Tomoko is particularly unhappy in their relationships but each were in their own way deeply unhappy. Yuichi’s masculine pride is hurt by his girlfriend’s status as the breadwinner while he cannot seem to get his act together, find a job, and make a success of himself. Later on he tells Tomoko that part of the reason he liked spending time with her was that she never scolded him for being the way he is, she just accepted him at face value. Tomoko by contrast, was perhaps looking either for revenge against her possibly adulterous, sometimes neglectful husband or a something more straightforward than her slightly strange marital arrangements. Though Koji is generally attentive and a goodhearted, kind person his ministrations sometimes have the whiff of manipulation and Tomoko has reasons to be suspicious of his ongoing friendship with someone called “Tamura” from “work” whom no one else at work seems to know.

In actuality it turns out that there are no faithful relationships, as one character puts it “there are many truths”. A man can love his wife and his mistress and that’s not necessarily a contradiction, much as it might seem so to the accidentally adulterous Yuichi. Despite the bond generated by their shared loneliness, the relationship between Yuichi and Tomoko remains casual, in one sense, though Yuichi eventually contemplates leaving his girlfriend and suggesting Tomoko leave her husband to allow them to start a new life together, probably knowing that it’s impossible. A lengthy post-credits sequence seems to provide a melancholy if reassuring coda as the lovers return to their respective spheres each having achieved a kind of “success”, though perhaps are no more fulfilled in themselves than they had been before. Another despairing look at modern love from Miura, The City of Betrayal is human at heart, rather than moralistic, arguing for the mature view whilst at the same time offering an ambivalent defence of conventionality.

The City of Betrayal was screened as part of the Udine Far East Film Festival 2017.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Love’s Whirlpool (愛の渦, Daisuke Miura, 2014)

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Love's WhirpoolNo names, no strings. That’s the idea at the centre of Daisuke Miura’s adaptation of his own stage play, Love’s Whirlpool (愛の渦, Koi no Uzu). Love is an odd word here as it’s the one thing that isn’t allowed to exist in this purpose built safe space where like minded people can come together to experience the one thing they all crave – anonymous sex. From midnight to 5am this group of four guys and four girls have total freedom to indulge themselves with total discretion guaranteed.

The four couples are a disparate group which includes a primary school teacher, office lady, shy college student, and a brusque regular who apparently comes to the club five times a week. The male side consists of a slick salaryman, a freeter, a factory worker and an anxious NEET who’s cleaned out his bank account just to be here in this extremely expensive, upscale sex club. After receiving the instructions from the owner (shower first, after sex, after going to the toilet, always use a condom, and respect the women’s right to say no), the group sit awkwardly wearing only their towels waiting for someone else to kick things off.

Everyone is being extremely polite to one another, the women beginning to talk amongst themselves whilst the men do the same. Everyone has come here for the same reason but it’s not as quite as straightforward as they thought it would be. Soon enough, people start to pair up an head downstairs but after the initial ice is broken the edges sharpen, relationships change, and a kind of Bacchanalian harshness begins to take over.

Once inside the split level, trendy club style environment, the guests spend the entirety of the evening naked save for their white bath towels but this is about as far from intimacy as it’s possible to get. They may have all come for one reason, but they each had various different motives for doing so. The office lady and the school teacher are both attractive young women, confident in what they do and don’t want, and would prove a hit in any club or bar (though this is a safer option). The freeter and the salaryman could say the same though the salaryman spends half the evening phoning his wife to explain that he’s been kept out drinking with a boring colleague. College girl and Neet are both too shy to get it on independently, leaving the cynical regular and the overweight factory worker as the odd ones out. It’s not long before they’ve begun to dissect each other, ticking off the check list like remembering to buy washing powder and then discussing the merits of “Ariel” vs “Persil” with your fellow “shoppers” in the checkout line. Utilitarian as it is, as the night goes on the barriers fall away leaving both wild abandon and cruelty lying behind them.

Things are reinvigorated half way through when another couple join, a husband and wife duo who each claim to be 100% OK with how this is going to work but, as it turns out, one of them was more serious than the other. By this point, relationships have begun to solidify themselves and shy Neet has grown attached to the unexpectedly raucous, repressed college girl. Such attachments are unwise in an environment like this, and can become dangerous if everyone does not remain on the same page as to what’s going on. At the end of the evening, the guys are asked to wait so the girls can leave first – to help prevent stalking. This is no strings, remember. No names, no phone numbers, none of this ever happened.

This intense need for secrecy is understandable yet speaks something to the oddly specific conflict between repression and the open expression of erotic desire that is permitted inside the club but only if you follow its rather strict (if very sensible) rules, not to mention the arcane, underground directions needed to find it at all. For some the reason for coming here was loneliness but what they’ll find is only likely to exacerbate the aching lack of connection they already feel. The case of the college student becomes the most interesting as she fights both her own shyness and the intense shame she feels in regards to her own sexual desires. After the fact, she feels as if she’s betrayed herself, as if the “other self” that emerged during the previous night’s proceedings is a shameful doppleganger that must now go back into hiding. She wants to forget this happened, go back to being a lonely college girl but for the NEET, it’s the opposite, he feels unreal now – as if he left his “real” self behind in that unreal space.

A sophisticated take on modern human relationships, Love’s Whirlpool occasionally pulls its punches in opting for a satirical tone and only really skims the surface of why places such as these still need to exist. Stylishly shot and explicit without becoming exploitative or sleazy, Miura’s film proves a refreshingly nuanced, mature take on modern sexual behaviour even if it stops short of probing into some of the darker aspects that flicker around its edges. If Love is a whirlpool, desire is a tornado, but where a whirlpool may drag you under you’ll eventually float to the surface gasping for air. After a tornado burns through, all you’re left with is ashes and emptiness. Modern love, indeed.

English subtitled trailer (NSFW)