Tag: Japan

A Snake of June ((六月の蛇, Shinya Tsukamoto, 2002)

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Mr9TSdN - ImgurOne day, I will add some new content to this blog! Today is not that day. Nor is tomorrow, or the day after or the day after that (probably) but someday soon and for the rest of my life! Sorry, carried away there. Anyway, review of the newly restored HD blu-ray release of Shinya Tsukamoto’s masterpiece A Snake of June up at UK Anime Network. It’s very weird and I love it a lot.

Shinya Tsukamoto made his name with body horror infused, pulsing cult hits such as Tetsuo the Iron Man, Tokyo Fist and Bullet Ballet (all of which are also available in the UK on blu-ray courtesy of Third Window Films). He’s no stranger to the avant-garde, the surreal or the troubling but even then Snake of June takes things one step further than even his generally intense filmmaking would usually go. A literal “blue movie”, Snake of June is the story of one woman’s sexual awakening, her husband’s release from OCD and the final fulfilment of the couple’s relationship set against the backdrop of a cold and unfeeling city.

Rinko is an attractive, if slightly mousy, young woman who works a telephone counsellor at a Samaritans-like call centre. As for her homelife, she lives in an upscale Tokyo apartment with her salaryman husband Shigehiko. It’s unkind to say, but the couple are a total mismatch – Rinko, young and pretty even if a little shy, is obviously way out her slightly overweight, balding middleaged husband’s league. Though they seem to have a pleasant enough relationship, there’s no spark between them and they live more like friends or roommates than a married couple. Shigehiko also has an extreme love of cleaning and a touch of OCD that sees him more often caressing the bathtub rather than his wife.

All that changes however when Rinko receives a mysterious envelope full of voyeuristic photos of her masturbating and looking up erotic material on the internet. Soon enough, it turns out these are a “gift” from a troubled photographer, Iguchi, who had planned to commit suicide before talking to Rinko on the helpline. Now he wants to help her by encouraging her to embrace her sexuality and her deepest, darkest desires. Iguchi sets her several tasks to set her on her way such as buying sex toys and walking through town in revealing outfits in an attempt to make her more comfortable with her own sexuality. However, having watched Rinko blossom, Iguchi eventually turns his attention to her husband and events take a decided turn for the surreal.

Erotic – yes, in some senses of the word, but never exploitative. Shot in a melancholy blue designed to mimic the color of the falling rainwater that stains a rainy season June in Tokyo, A Snake of June is a neon inflected journey into urban isolation where the demands of city life drown out the inner fire of those who live in it. Shy and repressed Rinko makes her first foray into town wearing the ridiculously short skirt her blackmailer has “prescribed” for her nervously, clutching a long umbrella in front of her like a shield. Making the same journey sometime later Rinko walks with a swagger, almost dancingly flirtatious she owns herself – her former shield is now a sword. Her “awakening” has nothing to do with her husband or with Iguchi, it’s something she’s achieved for herself and by herself and has left her a happier and more complete person than she’s previously been allowed to be.

Her husband, Shigehiko, by contrast hasn’t quite come to terms with this new version of his wife and even when graphically confronted with it responds in an entirely passive, selfish way. Cracking Shigehiko’s shell will require a little more than gentle coaxing, manipulation and blackmail and thus begins the nightmarish second volume of the film which becomes increasingly bizarre from here on out. Strange drowning themed sex shows where a woman bangs a drum and you have to wear a funny cone on your face which only lets you view everything through a tiny circle like the iris of a an old silent movie? It’s certainly an unorthodox solution.

Like all of Tsukamoto’s work, A Snake of June is exquisitely shot with its blue tint only adding to its native beauty. This new blu-ray edition from Third Window Films remastered from the original negative and supervised by Tsukamoto himself is a pristine presentation of the film which reveals all the tiny details that were rendered invisible by previous transfers. Strange and surreal, A Snake of June is a richly multilayered film dripping with symbolism, not to mention urban melancholy, that has lost none of its power in the intervening years since its shocking debut.

Stuck on Tsukamoto? Here are some more reviews by me:

Also, look out for a review of his latest movie Fires on the Plain which is ready to go some time soon!

Over Your Dead Body (喰女 クイメ, Takashi Miike, 2014)

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Oh! I think there’s something in your eye…

Review of Miike’s latest (well, not really latest…maybe recent? Does recent still work? This is Miike after all) classy horror shocker Over Your Dead Body up at UK Anime Network. It’s OK but it’s not very scary, gets a bit too clever for its own good and shows you a film you’d much rather be watching than the one that you came for. It’s fine though, really. And quite pretty to look at.

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see what I mean?

Nobody could ever accuse Takashi Miike of being a slouch and his breakneck pace of film production continues here with a more classically subdued take on the horror genre than his casual fans may expect. It’s not the first time the director has dipped a toe into the world of kabuki theatre – indeed he’s no stranger to the stage and his most recent outing made sure to inject a little of his characteristic craziness including space aliens and references to Star Wars. Over Your Dead Body is much more in the vein of Harakiri than of Audition or Ichi the Killer and despite its often grotesque overtones and suggestions of supernatural machinations its chief merit is in the beauty of its stagecraft rather than in its infrequent thrills.

Miyuki (Ko Shibasaki) is a successful kabuki actress and has landed a plum leading role in the classic play Yotsuya Kaidan. Using her status and connections, she’s been able to wangle the central male role in the piece for her boyfriend, Kosuke (real life kabuki superstar and previous Miike collaborator in Harakiri Ichikawa Ebizou XI), with whom she’d like to settle down and have a family. Kosuke, however, has a wandering eye and may not be quite as committed to the relationship as Miyuki. Before long, onstage and offstage events begin to blur as supernatural forces, mental illness and distorted realities begin to take their toll on this unlucky troupe of actors.

Yotsuya Kaidan is a true classic of kabuki theatre. Filmed countless times, it’s the story of down on his luck samurai Iemon who’s in love with a young woman but denied by her father thanks to his lowly status. Eventually, Iemon murders him and hides the body so he can marry his one true love after an appropriate amount of time has passed. However, Iemon’s crimes begin to weigh heavily on his conscience and having got what he wanted he finds himself haunted and unable to live the happy life he’d dreamed of. His dreams of becoming a high ranking, respected samurai consume him and when he’s offered the opportunity to marry into a more impressive family he makes a shocking and bloody decision.

The darkness of this stygian tale doesn’t take long to seep into the “real” world and it quickly becomes near impossible to distinguish between several different layers of reality. Wronged heroine Miyuki’s behaviour becomes increasing erratic as her rather cold and calculating boyfriend Kosuke gradually takes on the cruel persona inherited from Yotsuya Kaidan’s Iemon. Her elaborate revenge plot seems to go around in circles, culminating in an extremely bloody and completely insane set piece before heading off into the realms of the supernatural.

However, the real success of the film lies in the kabuki scenes themselves and some viewers may even windup wishing they were watching Yotsuya Kaidan instead. Built with an unfeasibly beautiful theatrical set utilising a modern, fully revolving stage Miike blurs us seamlessly from the theatricality of the stage set into the world of the play. Always beautifully filmed, the world of Yotsuya Kaidan comes to life before our eyes whereas the regular “reality”, our world with its everyday demands, feels cold, sterile and emotionless. One actor even remarks that he wishes the world of the play were real – quite an odd thing to say considering it’s a morality play about the wages of sin which is soaked in blood including that of a young infant.

Despite the committed performances of the cast, the off stage antics which ought to be the focus of the film end up feeling superfluous. Ultimately, despite its relatively short running time Over Your Dead Body feels like a short story unwisely expanded into a novella which might have benefitted from stronger editorial control. The overall tone is one of unexplained mystery but its refusal to explain itself is more likely to frustrate rather than delight and something about its plot machinations just never manages to come together in a satisfying way.

Something of a mixed bag, Over Your Dead Body is not without its merits – it looks beautiful for one thing, yet never manages to engage. It lives and breathes in its kabuki scenes and perhaps a filmed kabuki production of Yotsuya Kaidan may ultimately have proved more satisfying. Gore fans and lovers of the bizarre who stay with the slow burn approach will find a lot to like in Over Your Dead Body but die hard horror aficionados  maybe advised to look elsewhere for their supernatural thrills.

 

Here be a trailer:

If you’re a Miike fan don’t forget that another of his more “recent” efforts will also be screening at the London Film Festival before being released on DVD & blu-ray by Manga in November – Yakuza Apocalypse, which sounds like a very boring film about a weird frog or something? Yeah, you probably wouldn’t like it anyway. *buys all the tickets*

Wanna read more about Miike?

Phew – that was actually a lot of work. Someone remind me I’ve already done it so I don’t have to do it next time. Takashi Miike probably made ten more movies while I was writing that list!

The Yellow Handkerchief (幸福の黄色いハンカチ Yoji Yamada, 1977)

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siawasenoWhen you hear the name Yoji Yamada, you pretty much know what you’re getting. A little laughter, a few tears and a reassuring if sometimes sad ending. You’ll get all that and more with the Yellow Handkerchief although, to allow a minor spoiler, the ending is anything other than sad even if it provokes a few tears. Yes it’s sort of syrupy and it’s not as if it breaks any new cinematic ground but once again Yamada has been able to work his magic to turn this romantic melodrama into a warm, funny and ultimately affecting tale.

Kin-chan, nursing the pain of unrequited love buys a garish red car and goes north where he attempts to pick up girls in fairly cack handed ways. Finally he hooks one outside of a station as she’s too shy and polite to tell him to buzz off. Things get decidedly awkward until the pair bond over a shared hatred of miso noodles at which point Akemi becomes a little more lively. A short way into their road trip, they meet the forlorn figure of Yusaku (Ken Takakura) who ends up joining them on their random road trip around Hokkaido. However, Yusaku’s brooding nature raises a few questions – where has he been, where is he going and why does he both very much want to go and not want to go at all?

Given that it’s Ken Takakura playing Yusaku, you might have a few ideas and you wouldn’t be *entirely* wrong but Takakura amply proves there’s more to his talents than playing a yakuza badass in series of extremely popular but by then out of fashion gangster movies. Suffering from an excess of nobility, Yusaku is a man who’s made a series of poor life choices and is slowing building up the courage to find out if a particular bridge he tried to burn is still salvageable.

Kin-chan and Akemi by contrast turn out to be a pair of live wire odd balls with Kin-chan desperately chasing Akemi and Akemi blithely ignoring him. Despite various attempts to shake Kin-chan off he generally ends up coming back (one time with a giant crab dinner) and getting himself into all kinds of hilarious trouble. They may be the film’s comic relief but in their story proves strangely moving too.

The Yellow Handkerchief won the very first Best Picture award at the Japanese Academy Prize ceremony back in 1978 as well as a host of other awards from Kinema Junpo and other critical bodies and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a prestige picture, and a pretty saccharine one at that, but Yamada makes it all work and comes out with a genuinely affecting piece of cinema. Filmed against the gorgeous backdrop of the island of Hokkaido, The Yellow Handkerchief is the ideal rainy day movie and though it may all end in tears they are far from tears of sadness.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (カタクリ家の幸福, Takashi Miike, 2002)

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This new cover art from Arrow is actually really great, isn’t it?

Arrow Films are really spoiling us lately when it comes to amazing Japanese cinema – they’ve given us some cool ’60s classics and forgotten gems like Lady Snowblood, The Stray Cat Rock movies, Branded to Kill, Massacre Gun and Retaliation but now they’ve zapped back to the more recent past and brought us one of Takashi Miike’s zaniest and best loved efforts, The Happiness of the Katakuris. You don’t need me to tell you what this crazy, zombie and murderous inn keeper themed musical psychedelic masterpiece is about but you can read my review of the film and Arrow’s new HD effort over at UK Anime Network. (Spoiler, it’s pretty great).

 

Ah, Takashi Miike – that unpredictable Japanese auteur who’s equally at home with bloody yakuza dramas, gore soaked satire and strange fever dream experiments. There’s no denying his out put is decidedly patchy, which given his prolific career isn’t particularly surprising, but there’s really nothing he won’t at least try. Such is the joy of a Takashi Miike movie. The Happiness of the Katakuri’s wasn’t the first time he made use of musical sequences in his films and it wasn’t the last, but it is one of the craziest. Inspired by the 1998 Korean film The Quiet Family (debut movie of Kim Jee-woon) The Happiness of the Katakuris is, essentially, a family drama which incorporates shady goings on at a guest house, singing zombies, volcanoes and weird stop motion creatures appearing in people’s soup only to fly off with their uvulas (dangly bit between your tonsils).

The film begins with a young girl finding a weird looking creature in her soup which then rips out her uvula and flies off with it before before being snatched by a crow which is then hit with a log by an old man with surprisingly good log throwing game. The old guy is the grandpa of a family which runs a small hotel in the middle of nowhere. Family patriarch Masao used to be a shoe salesman but after losing his job was convinced to buy a hotel after a tip off that a road was supposed to be built nearby which would likely mean lots of customers. Predictably, the road has not materialised and the fledgling inn isn’t exactly packing them in. Besides grandpa, Masao is helped out by his long suffering wife, grown up daughter with a little daughter of her own and a grown up yet seemingly feckless son.

At last, a guest arrives but unfortunately dies soon afterwards. Bearing in mind the declining state of their new business, Masao makes the decision to quickly bury the body in the woods rather than report the death and suffer the negative publicity. Just when things were looking up, another two guests arrive and then promptly die too (in somewhat embarrassing circumstances). As if that weren’t enough, love sick daughter Shizue has fallen in love…again! With “Richard” the secret Japanese love child of the British royal family who’s also some kind of sailor which is why it’s difficult to get in touch with him. All told through the child’s eye view of the youngest member of the family, Shizue’s daughter Yurie, this was one crazy summer in the life of this strange family.

It would be wrong to call The Happiness of the Katakuris a musical, there’s no real musical through line so much as a collection of musical sequences inserted at points of high tension. The musical numbers themselves often act as parodies of other genres with their traditional ballads, karaoke video style sequences and the bonkers Sound of Music-esque field frolicking. Then there’s the singing corpses – who knew zombies were so jolly?

It all undeniably gets a bit grim as the family have to contend with burying the bodies of their unfortunate customers all the while waiting for someone to finally build this long promised road so their business can take off. Each of them is chasing a different kind of “happiness” the father in looking for success in business which will lead to financial security for the family, the daughter in looking for love (in all the wrong places) but it takes the totally bizarre death filled adventure of demons, corpses and escaped murderers to make them realise that they had what they needed to be happy all along – each other. The Katakuris may not be a model family, but everything runs better when they work as a team and they are very happy together no matter what strange adventures befall them. Despite all the trappings of weirdness, The Happiness of the Katakuris maybe Miike’s most subversively conservative film as it ultimately fulfils the role of that most Japanese of genres, the family drama, in which the traditional family is reformed and everything in the world is right again.

Available for the first time in HD, Arrow’s new set is nothing short of a wonder. Shot near the beginning of the digital age before the cameras where anywhere near as good as they are now, you wouldn’t assume The Happiness of the Katakuris would look this good and even if it does show its age here and there the presentation is pretty much top notch and the best it’s ever going to look. The set also comes with a host of special features, some ported over from the original release but also adds a Takashi Miike commentary with critic, Miike champion and sometime actor Toshitoki Shiota in Japanese with English subtitles but also, in an appropriately strange and surreal option, a dubbed version with actors “playing” Miike and Shiota speaking their lines in English too. You also get an entirely new commentary from Japanese film scholar and Miike expert Tom Mes of the recently deceased Midnight Eye plus a short video essay about Miike’s career and a couple of new Miike interviews too.

Almost 15 years on, The Happiness of the Katakuris remains as endearingly bizarre as it did on its first release and is truly worthy of its status as a beloved cult movie that continues to be the go-to weird Japan choice for the genre savvy cinephile. Back and better than ever, this new set from Arrow breathes new life into the film and is a great excuse for another stay at the White Lover’s Inn.

 

Here’s a trailer for the film:

If Takashi Miike x musical madness is your thing you also need to see Ai to Makoto (AKA For Love’s Sake) – available in the UK from Third Window Films.

Also a mini reminder for Miike fans that Over Your Dead Body is going to be at Frightfest and is apparently going to receive a UK release from Yume Pictures (the same people who released A Tale of Samurai Cooking: A True Love Story, now available on UK DVD). Miike madness is back! In more ways than one.

Over Your Dead Body trailer:

Fukuchan of Fukufuku Flats Released on UK DVD Today

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44ea2aa088e78643f1ee584fde4e3d2eQuirky comedy Fukuchan of Fukufuku Flats is released on UK DVD today by Third Window Films. I reviewed the film for UK Anime Network back when it was screened at Raindance last year and I also had the opportunity to interview the director Yosuke Fujita while he was over here doing promotion.

Fukuchan of Fukufuku Flats UK Anime Network Review (previous link post)

Yosuke Fujita Interview also for UK Anime Network (previous link post)

I also reviewed the portmanteau movie Quirky Guys and Gals which Fujita directed a segment of (the “Cheer Girls” bit with the overly helpful cheerleaders) and the movie also contains a short film by Mipo O (The Light Shines Only There) about a woman who’s neglected to pay her electricity bill so it’s well worth a look (also released in the UK by Third Window Films).

Here’s a trailer for Fukuchan

Anyway I completely loved this movie. It also has an amazing song (with thanks again to Genkina Hito who tracked it down).

You should all go and watch this very funny film right now because I want to see more movies by Fujita (and I’m selfish like that).

P.S.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is also out today and you can read a review of that over here . ‘Tis very good though you likely knew that already 😉

The Funeral (お葬式, Juzo Itami, 1984)

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The FuneralThe Funeral is the debut film from actor and director Juzo Itami, probably best known for his crazy food odyssey Tampopo. Like all of Itami’s films, The Funeral is, essentially, a social satire and though not as raucous as the later Tampopo it does a fine job of mixing a traditional comedy of manners with a poignant examination of end of life rituals. Full of naturalistic details, The Funeral is a surprisingly warm film that’s much more about laughter than tears.

Successful actress Chizuko suddenly gets a phonecall in the middle of a shoot to say that her father has died suddenly and unexpectedly. Her mother would appreciate it if they could hold the funeral her house and if Chizuko and her actor husband Wabisuke would take charge of the funeral arrangements. Wabisuke is extremely reluctant but eventually agrees letting himself in for a whole new world of complications as the couple find themselves negotiating on the price of coffins, organising food for a wake and trying to work out what the most appropriate “donation” for a priest is. That’s not to mention trying to accommodate the wishes of all the relatives who will also be descending on them for the duration of the funeral which will last three whole days….

Funerary customs are the sort of thing you just assume everybody knows to the point that it can be a little embarrassing if you find yourself in the situation of having to ask. Luckily there are trained professionals available to help organise the main structure of events but when it comes down to the small details – what you should say, where you should stand and for how long, who’s invited and who isn’t, things can get tricky. In one hilarious moment, Chizuko and Wabisuke find themselves watching a VHS tape entitled “The ABCs of Funerals” and taking notes furiously as if learning lines for a new play.

Suddenly everything is a complicated decision and everyone seems to have their own opinion on matters. Having successfully got hold of a coffin, the couple need to decide whether to take the body home first or transport it in the coffin as advised by their very helpful funeral director. The majority of the family are in favour of the comparatively simpler option of putting the body into the coffin now and leaving it that way but an older uncle seems quite distressed by this new fangled business and laments that they don’t do it like this back home.

Said older uncle and business tycoon continues to find fault with various things including the direction of North which he insists the deceased’s head should be facing causing him to stare at the coffin and walk around the house waving his arms trying to work out, literally, which way is up. However, he’s also responsible for one of the more shocking breaks with appropriate behaviour as he starts trying to stage direct the final goodbyes so he can get a good photo, at one point asking the grieving widow to just “hold it a second” and “maybe get a little closer to his face” while he snaps away trying to capture the moment. Mind you, he’s not the only one to throw the book of etiquette out of the window as most people would probably list inviting your mistress to the funeral of your wife’s father as one of the top ten things you should never do.

However, these moments of everyday lapses in morality are just one of the film’s charmingly naturalistic elements like the priest (played by veteran actor Chishu Ryu) arriving in a very expensive car and obsessing over a series of French tiles. From a collection of shoes in different sizes scattered outside the family home to the children’s morbid curiosity in checking out the furnace at the crematorium the film is shot through with the tiny details of everyday life that are likely to find recognition everywhere. In fact the brief period of time with the whole family assembled together before the funeral really begins could easily be any other springtime celebration rather than the solemn occasion that has brought them all together this time. Even the artsy black and white video shot by a friend of Wabesuki’s to document the event shows the family laughing together and the children playing happily even as they learn the proper way to light funerary incense.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its share of sorrows too – the film is called The Funeral after all and the final funeral oration given by the grieving widow is likely to leave many viewers complaining of something in their eye (especially given the couple’s rather strained relationship in the early part of the film). However, as usual Itami successfully manages to avoid sticky sentimentality in favour of a warm, natural and most importantly funny exploration of family dynamics and social customs. Not as madcap or laugh out loud funny as some of Itami’s later work, The Funeral is nevertheless a wry and witty comedy that knows how to play a merry tune on your heartstrings.

Did You See the Barefoot God? (君は裸足の神を見たか Kim Soo-gil, 1986)

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cinemawakuwaku-img600x438-1408793455juxypw5028A very late entry into Art Theatre Guild’s catalogue of Japanese art movies, Did you See the Barefoot God? (君は裸足の神を見たか, Kimi wa Hadashi no Kami wo Mitaka) marked the feature length debut of Korean-Japanese director Kim Soo-gil who, though he remains active in many fields up to the present day, sadly did not go on to build up an extensive filmography after the film’s release. Like many ATG films, Did You See the Barefoot God? is a “seishun eiga” or youth film with a contemporary setting which looks at the internal difficulties of adolescence running the gamut from romantic problems to familial responsibilities and the decision of whether to give up the dreams of youth in favour of the calm and ordered adulthood that the wider world demands.

Shinji and Shigeru are two best friends currently approaching the end of high school in a small rural backwater. Both boys currently have a crush on, thankfully, different girls but each is too shy to do anything. Shigeru is a painter and has restricted himself to painting the object of his affection as a special project that he intends to enter in a national competition. Shinji is also an artist, a poet in fact, but is much quieter about it. He’s got a crush on a girl who goes to the local girls’ Christian school and goes to great lengths to stalk her though he hasn’t spoken to her since they both attended the same middle school. As it turns out, Shigeru remembers Shinji’s girl, Hitomi, quite well as they shared a (strange) bonding experience during their middle school years. Shigeru then decides to contact Hitomi and convince her to date Shinji to help his sensitive friend out. Little does he know this will set in motion a tragic series of events which will change all of their lives forever.

Anybody can see where this story is going – it’s the oldest story in history. Boys A and B are friends, boy B likes girl C who prefers boy A, A & C eventually get together behind B’s back but feel so bad about it that the hot acid venom of their betrayal burns straight through everything in sight. Yes, this film is no different though its somewhat overwrought and melodramatic subject matter manages to feel oddly realistic. Intense painter Shigeru takes the leading role with his “complicated” personality and tortured artist dreams, whereas the gentle and sensitive poet Shinji ends up just as much on the sidelines as he would be in real life. The girl who comes between them, Hitomi, is in truth a little under developed and is largely defined by her religiosity (which is never fully explored).

Shigeru wants to be an artist but his father wants him to take over the family construction business – even his school advisor recommends he consider architecture. Shinji lives alone with his mother who runs a small bicycle store that she doesn’t particularly want to pass on to him but eventually Shinji, in a surprisingly mature fashion, decides that a quiet life as the proprietor of a bicycle store who writes poetry on the side might suit him (and perhaps a wife?) better than that of a starving urban poet. Headstrong Shigeru doesn’t waver under the constant pressure to conform to a “normal” life though fear and resentment conspire to fuel his already fraught nerves to near breaking point. Shinji looks at the sort of life he might have and makes his decision accordingly. Hitomi, alas, has far less personal agency to decide her own fate and seems destined for a life as a missionary nurse in some far off land in need of relief. Each is caught in the difficult liminal space of adolescence where they’re still trying to decide which parts of their childhood selves they’re going to keep, and which discard.

That’s without the added romantic complications which, again, leave Hitomi stranded in the middle like some kind of damaged prize. Both boys look down on a poor, Saraghina-like figure who dances madly in the graveyard and makes untoward advances to young boys – even the more understanding Shinji is reluctant to sympathise because she’s “prostituted” herself. Hitomi, as the nice kind of religious person, pities the woman and explains that it’s only because she’s been betrayed by so many men over the years that she’s ended up like this – if Shinji won’t sympathise he’d better take his place on the guilty side with the rest of the menfolk. Ultimately, Hitomi fears ending up this way herself, betrayed by faithless men and slighted by her own faith as a “fallen woman”. The boys can mourn their pride, throw a few punches and forget about it but for Hitomi, it’s not so easy.

Well, this being a seishun eiga it doesn’t end particularly well for the boys either. Everything’s ruined, dreams are shattered, hearts are broken and lives are ruptured beyond repair. In the end, it may be Hitomi who’s best placed to pick up and move on as a running subplot regarding the changing economic environment offers her another opportunity, but for Shigeru he’s left with nothing but the pain of realising how many lives he’s ruined with his self centred lack of consideration. Typical seishun eiga stuff, but well done. Director Kim Soo-gil handles the epic scope of the material with assurance and a good deal of directorial flair, it’s a shame he didn’t continue directing feature films to a greater extent. Not without its flaws, Did You See the Barefoot God? is nevertheless another interesting effort from the later ATG catalogue.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

 

Tamako in Moratorium (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2013)

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Tamako in Moratorium
We’ve all been here.

Nobuhiro Yamashita is, in this writer’s opinion, one of the best Japanese directors working today. Probably best known for the girl band high school comedy drama Linda, Linda, Linda, Yamashita has made gentle character studies infused with wry humour and occasional social comment a speciality. Tamako in Moratorium is a slight diversion in his career so far as it had a slightly unorthodox genesis beginning as a series of TV shorts intended as a vehicle for ex AKB48 star Atsuko Maeda (who also starred in Yamashita’s previous film, Drudgery Train). Its TV origins bring both an episodic structure plus a slightly different shooting style and aesthetic than we’ve previously seen from Yamashita yet given these constrained circumstances, he’s been able to craft yet another nuanced and charming character drama that is perhaps his quietest yet.

23 year old Tamako has returned home after graduating university but has failed to find a regular job and is content to have returned to the days of blissful adolescence where she rejects all adult responsibilities in favour of hanging out at home reading manga and playing video games while her father cooks, cleans and does her washing for her. We follow her through four seasons as various things change or don’t and really nothing much happens but that’s the beauty of the tale. Tamako has called a moratorium on being herself, as for when or why it might be lifted? Only time will tell.

It would be easy to read Tamako a symptomatic of a larger cultural malaise and a growing class of young people who have, quite literally, lost the will to live were it not for the fact that most of Tamako’s contemporaries seem to be doing OK (“seem” being the operative word seeing as one late scene in the film would suggest it’s not all as hunky-dory as it looks). We’re given plenty of possible reasons for Tamako’s lack of enthusiasm for life though no one great explanation for her refusal to engage. “Japan’s rubbish” she’s fond of shouting at the TV as if to blame her current lack of success on an entire nation, “No it isn’t” counters her dad “You are”. A fact which Tamako doesn’t seek to refute.

Her lack of self esteem also prevents her completing her current CV where she can’t  come up with any personal hobbies or skills and ends by saying that she doesn’t quite feel herself right now, as if everyone’s just expected to play several different roles throughout a lifetime. A realisation which sees her set her sights on a rather improbable career opportunity which nevertheless cheers her father up and leads to her forming a slightly strange friendship with a young teenage boy. Indeed, Tamako avoids most of her old friends in town, preferring to stay at home out of sight, and only really communicates with her father (and then barely).

Her father by contrast, though perturbed and worried about what’s to become of this listless child who’s sinking like a stone, is nevertheless content to try and give her the space to figure out how to get herself out of this mess that seems to be of her own making. However, paradoxically, this may actually be the exact opposite of what she wants and it’s only when the bond with her father looks as if it’s about to be disrupted that something begins to reawaken inside Tamako’s soul. Like an odd subversion of Ozu’s Late Spring, father and daughter must one day part – it is the natural way of things after all, but this time it feels like a much more positive thing.

Tamako in Moratorium began on TV and unsurprisingly has a televisual quality that’s difficult to escape from. Shot with a largely static camera and shallow depth of field, it also feels oddly formalist relying as it does on classical compositions and close-ups with the added effect of making the world seem claustrophobic, as if some invisible pressure is pressing down on Tamako and keeping her sleepily imprisoned within the frame. Aesthetically, the film has a much more HD video look than Yamashita’s other work with a hyperreal sharpness that paradoxically makes everything look unreal  and is occasionally distracting but not detrimentally so.

“The feelings just naturally disappeared”. Sometimes it’s like that, no grand event or epiphany just a gradual process of things working themselves out, almost unseen in the background. Has the moratorium been lifted by the end? Not sure, but something has changed, shifted into gear. Uneventful on the surface, Tamako in Moratorium is a wry and nuanced character study that is full of incidental details begging to be unpacked and reassembled by the attentive viewer and is another well crafted effort from Yamashita.

Raindance 2014 Interviews – Hirobumi Watanabe / Kosuke Takaya (Via UK Anime Network)

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Forgot to link to the other two interviews I conducted at Raindance last year for UK Anime Network.

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And the Mud Ship Sails Away

Hirobumi Watanabe – Director of And the Mudship Sails Away

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Buy Bling Get One Free

Kosuke Takaya – Director of Buy Bling Get One Free.

Both of these films are available in Third Window Films’ New Directors From Japan box set alongside Nagisa Isogai’s The Lust of Angels whom I also interviewed at the festival.

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The Lust of Angels

Um, maybe don’t read them all though or you’ll figure out that I mostly just asked everyone the same questions without quite realising at the time….

I’d like to think I’m getting better at this but perhaps not, judge for yourselves!

 

0.5mm (Momoko Ando, 2014)

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0.5mm-poster-20.5mm is only Momoko Ando’s second film following on from her lesbian love story manga adaptation, Kakera: A Piece of Our Life. Starring her real life sister Sakura Ando in the lead role, 0.5mm is undeniably more complex and epic in scope than her previous film but retains some of its whimsical atmosphere and benign objectivity. Encompassing such disparate themes as Japan’s rapidly ageing population, entrenched sexism, archaic ideas about gender, and what it’s like to find yourself at the bottom of the heap thanks to a series of unfortunate incidents, 0.5mm is a hugely impressive sophomore effort from Ando and one of the best Japanese indie movies for quite some time.

Sawa is a home care nurse and her current assignment is caring for an elderly, bedridden gentleman who lives with his daughter and grandson. One day, the old man’s daughter makes an extremely odd and inappropriate request of Sawa which she eventually agrees to. However, things go just about as wrong as they could possibly go and Sawa finds herself out of a job and, as she lived in nurse’s accommodation, out of a home too. That’s not the end of her troubles as she manages to leave her coat, in the pocket of which is an envelope containing her life savings, on a train. At this point she’s pretty much down and out when she notices an elderly gentlemen confusedly trying to find out if it’s OK to sleep all night at a 24 hour karaoke box. Pretending to be the old man’s date she hires a room for two and bamboozles him into it for a night of singing and snoozing. In the morning it turns out the old man quite enjoyed the mad adventure as he’s temporarily run away from home because all his son seemed to care about was the inheritance so he thought he might as well spend it all himself. This strange encounter begins Sawa’s odyssey into a series of similar episodes where she blackmails an elderly gentleman into letting her stay with him for a while until one final meeting brings things full circle.

Sawa is definitely a very unusual woman. Good at her job, she’s a caring person in more ways than one. Her new found method of survival is certainly a novel one, and not entirely ethical, but then all she’s doing is exploiting circumstances in the same way circumstances have had a way of exploiting her. Though she weaselled her way into these men’s lives, she did, at least, care for them. Yes, she did the cooking and the cleaning and assisted with healthcare too but she also helped them to realise a few things about themselves and move on with their lives. Whether it’s saving them from yakuza backed pyramid scams or listening to their traumatic memories of the war, Sawa has a knack for seeing people’s hidden pain and another for knowing how to make it better.

Yet, her various encounters with the older generation speak of a number of different social problems that cannot be repaired by one person alone. The first man she meets feels unwanted by his family and is looking for escape, a reassertion of his independence and perhaps a little revenge. The second is really quite mad – obsessively counting the trees in the park, stealing bicycles and letting people’s tires down but he too is alone with no one looking after him. The third man has a bedridden wife and, apparently, a taste for erotic school girl magazines but no children of his own to take care of him. The fourth man discovered a teenage child he’d never met though is incapable of forming a relationship with him. Society is full of lonely, elderly people who either have no close family or have become estranged from them. Some of them have become vulnerable and half mad through extreme isolation and others have become embittered, violent or trapped in the past.

In the way that these men react to Sawa there’s also a complex system of ideas at play as each of Sawa’s employers seem incapable of defining exactly what sort of “services” they expect of her. Nurse, housekeeper, mother, courtesan? From the original, perhaps innocent though far from appropriate, request each of the men Sawa encounters can’t help but view her as a some kind of sex object and react with various degrees of embarrassment about it. To them she is many things though never quite a “person” until, perhaps, their relationship begins to near its end and each reaches some kind of epiphany brought about by her presence. However, Sawa herself is perfectly aware of each of these complexities and perfectly willing to exploit them with a sort of amused ruefulness.

The 0.5mm of the title refers to a metaphor offered on a farewell cassette tape from the second of Sawa’s old gentlemen that one person may be only be able to move a mountain by 0.5mm but if everyone got together the mountain would move and you could start a revolution. At once he bemoans Japan’s military past but also laments that something of the community spirit from those days has been lost. That if we all just stopped living in wilful isolation and embraced the fact that we’re all here together at the same time we could make things better for everyone. Much of the film is about the distance between people – young/old, male/female it isn’t the distinction that matters but the series of invisible walls that exist to keep people apart.

Warm, enigmatic and surprisingly funny (if in a kind of dark way) 0.5mm is is a complex and thought provoking film that is also often very beautiful and immensely enjoyable. At 196 minutes, it’s undeniably a long film with an episodic structure though it largely manages to sustain its lengthy running time without outstaying its welcome. Rich and strange, 0.5mm is all the better for its unresolved mysteries and offers an impressively nuanced cross section of modern society made all the more detailed thanks to its epic scope.