Tag: Kengo Kora

A Crowd of Three (ケンタとジュンとカヨちゃんの国, Tatsushi Omori, 2010)

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crowd-of-threeTatsushi Omori’s debut feature The Whispering of the Gods proved so controversial that he was left with no choice other than to set up his own temporary cinema to screen it. Five years later he returned with another uncompromising look at modern society which is only a little less grim than its predecessor. A Crowd of Three (ケンタとジュンとカヨちゃんの国, Kenta to Jun to Kayo-chan no Kuni) takes what has become a staple of quirky indie comedy dramas – a small group of disconnected people taking a road trip to look for something better, and turns it into a depressingly nihilistic voyage to nowhere. Never quite achieving the kind of painful, angst ridden atmosphere of disaffected young men desperately trying to break out of a social straight jacket, A Crowd of Three is an oddly cold film, undercut with a pervasive layer of misogyny and hopelessness which makes its ultimate destination somewhere few will wish to travel.

Kenta (Shota Matsuda) and Jun (Kengo Kora) are young men working dead end construction jobs. Growing up together almost like brothers in the same orphanage the pair share an intense bond but also a shared sense of having been badly let down by life even at such a young age. Their main source of relief seems to be in picking up “loose women” from the street by asking random ladies on their own for their ages. One evening Jun picks up Kayo (Sakura Ando) – a melancholy woman with low self esteem who sleeps around because she is insecure about her own plain looks. After Kenta is assaulted by the foreman, he decides to take revenge by smashing up the office and his boss’ car before taking off on a journey north to see his (biological) brother who is currently in prison.

Kayo tags along with the pair after apparently having fallen in love with Jun who is only interested in her for easy sex and occasional cash tips. Despite the fact that the film’s original Japanese title is “Jun, Kenta, and Kayo’s Country”, Kayo is quickly cast aside by the pair of travellers who think it’s funny to throw all of her stuff out of the window and abandon her at a service station in the middle of nowhere. Getting thrown out of cars and left behind in remote places is something which happens to Kayo repeatedly throughout the film as she tries to follow Jun despite his obvious indifference towards her.

Kayo just wants to feel love, but at least as far as the film goes she’s looking for it in all the wrong places. Even if Jun does start to feel something more genuine for her in the end, it’s born of a kind of shared insecurity as he worries about a repetitive strain injury from using the pneumatic drill which turns his hand white at moments of stress. After literally jilting Kayo, Jun takes up with a vacuous bar hostess who does, indeed, recoil from his pale hand. The bar hostess has very ordinary dreams – a big house, wealthy husband, children. She’s even planned out her own death. These are all things which Jun could never give her, a middle school drop out with no family he already fears he has no future but at least he’s not railroaded onto a pre-determined course and is free to choose his destination even if he feels there is nowhere for him to go.

Kenta expresses this early in the film when he states that there are two kinds of people – those who choose how they’re going to live, and those who don’t. The boys feel as if they’re in the no choice category – unceremoniously kicked out of social care and expected to fend for themselves with no education or contacts, reliant on poorly paid temporary work to get by. In a slightly overworked metaphor, Kenta and Jun’s jobs on demolition projects point to their desire to dismantle their world but the more they smash away at it the less progress they make. Kenta’s literal smashing of the car and office belonging to his boss are his final act of choice but again it gets him nowhere. Even talking to his brother who is in prison for the most heinous of crimes, Kenta finds no encouragement but only cold rejection.

A Crowd of Three goes to some very dark places ranging from work place harassment to child abuse and sexualised violence, but it largely fails to capitalise on its grim atmosphere to make any kind of impact aside from the pervasive melancholia. Omori mostly sticks to a straight forward approach with some interesting editing choices and composition but largely relies on the quality performances of his leading players. Far from youth aflame with nihilistic rage, A Crowd of Three is bleaker than bleak and frozen throughout making the battling of its heroes to transcend their difficult social circumstances a forlorn hope of epic proportions.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Kanikosen (蟹工船, SABU, 2009)

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kanikosenBack in 2008 as the financial crisis took hold, a left leaning early Showa novel from Takiji Kobayashi, Kanikosen (蟹工船), became a surprise best seller following an advertising campaign which linked the struggles of its historical proletarian workers with the put upon working classes of the day. The book had previously been adapted for the screen in 1953 in a version directed by So Yamamura but bolstered by its unexpected resurgence, another adaptation directed by SABU arrived in 2009.

As in the book the film follows the lives of a group of men virtually imprisoned on a crab canning ship anchored near Russian seas in the 1920s. The men on the boat are of various ages and come from various different backgrounds but each is here out of necessity – nothing other than extreme poverty and lack of other options would ever persuade anyone to take on this arduous and often unpleasant line of work. Technically speaking the boat has a captain but it’s the foreman who’s in charge – dressed like a European officer in a white frock coat and riding boots and with a vicious looking scar across his left eye, Asakawa rules the waves, barking out orders and backing them up with a walking stick.

SABU films the workers’ struggles through the filter of absurdist theatre beginning with a darkly comic segment in which each of the men recount their poverty riddled circumstances and dreams for social advancement before one, Shoji, emerges and posits another idea. They will make a bid for everlasting freedom by committing mass suicide in protest to poor working conditions and consistent exploitation of their class by those above. Predictably, this fails when everyone realises they didn’t actually want to die in the first place. Later Shoji and another man are picked up by a Russian boat after being stranded at sea and after seeing how happy the Russian sailors seem to be, they return determined to enact the revolution at home.

Conveying the workers’ plight through production design, SABU opts for a packing room which is both oversized yet claustrophobic, filled with giant cogs and gears of the capitalist system in motion. The men are little more than fleshy gears themselves, just another piece of the production line to be thrown out and replaced once worn through. Gradually the workers start to realise that this system is only sustainable because of their own complicity. The foreman is, after all, only one man and the workers have made a decision to obey him – they also have the ability to decide not to. That said, the spanner in the works is that the foreman also represents the larger mechanism at play which is the imperial state itself and can call on its resources to defend himself against a potential mutiny.

Having decided to rebel and seen their revolution fail, the workers come to another realisation – that the only true path to social change is a movement for the people lead by the people as one, i.e. with no leaders and therefore no head which can be cut off to disrupt all their efforts. Hand in hand and with the bloody flag raised high do they march into battle to put an end to unfair exploitation of those without means by those that have. Ever since they’ve been on this boat, they’ve been told that they’re at war, that their services are necessary for the survival of the Imperialist state – and now so they are, engaged in the class war to end the imperialist hegemony.

In the end, SABU’s message is a little confused – he advocates collective action, but not the collective, as his revolution is born of individual choice rather than the workers linking hands behind a faceless banner. It works as a semi-effective call to arms, but more often than not undermines itself and has a tendency to pull its punches when it really counts. That said, even if it wasn’t perhaps quite what Kobayashi meant, the more general message that the revolution begins in the heart of the individual and that one has the possibility to choose to live in hell (as a slave of the state) or create a heaven for one’s self (as a free person) is one that has universal merit and appeal.

 

Being Good (きみはいい子, Mipo O, 2015)

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Being Goog J poster“Being good”. What does that mean? Is it as simple as “not being bad” (whatever that means) or perhaps it’s just abiding by the moral conventions of your society though those may be, no – are, questionable ideas in themselves. Mipo O follows up her hard hitting modern romance The Light Shines Only There by attempting to answer this question through looking at the stories of three ordinary people whose lives are touched by human cruelty.

The film begins with newbie teacher Okano (Kengo Kora) who is still trying to adjust to the extremely stressful life of a primary school teacher in charge of 38 little guys and girls. As he’s young and he’s only just started he’s filled with enthusiasm and is intent on doing his best to make a difference. On the other hand, he’s a young man with a private life of his own to think about and sometimes he’s just too tired to want to be bothered with a bunch of kids intentionally trying to push his buttons. When he notices one of the pupils hanging around the schoolyard everyday long after he should have gone home, he begins to worry about the boy’s life outside of school.

Strand two also features the life of an abused child as stressed out mother Masami (Machiko Ono) struggles to cope with her three year old daughter Ayane while her husband is frequently abroad on business. Having been an abused child herself, Masami enters a vicious cycle of hating herself for treating her daughter the way she does and resenting Ayane even more for making her feel this way. After becoming friends with a cheerful woman who seems completely at ease with her two rowdy kids, there may be a better way out on offer for Masami and Ayane.

The third tale is a little different than the other two as it encompasses themes of lonely older people in Japan’s rapidly ageing society and the position of those who are different from the norm. Akiko lost her entire family during the war and never had children of her own so she’s all alone now. Every evening while she’s sweeping the steps a young boy says “hello, goodbye” to her as he walks past. One day the boy is in a terrible panic because he’s somehow lost his house key but Akiko calms him down and takes him inside until his mother can come and fetch him.

Okano is full of good intentions. He wants to think himself a “good” person and genuinely wants to look after the young lives placed in his care. However, he is still young, inexperienced and a little bit vain so that the slightest bit of criticism niggles at him. Simply put, he just doesn’t really know what to do and several of his ideas backfire quite spectacularly or appear extremely ill-conceived. Some of this is still about him and his own idea of his being a “good person” rather than an altruistic desire to help the children under his care.

The same, however, cannot be said of the elderly lady who still takes such delight in the falling cherry blossoms which waft down from the school to her small suburban house. Akiko might be lonely, but there’s nothing selfish in the warmth she extends to others. When Hyato’s mother, Kazumi, arrives to fetch him, she’s immediately mortified, convinced that her son must have caused immense levels of trouble for this little old lady. Akiko claims not even to have noticed Hyato’s differences but remarks on how polite he is greeting her every evening and that he’s been the perfect houseguest – in fact she was enjoying herself so much she’s a little sorry Kazumi has turned up so quickly. Kazumi is completely overwhelmed by Akiko’s kindness – it’s the first time she’s ever heard anyone say something nice about her son rather than having people criticise him for being different. In fact, sometimes even she begins to forget how “good” he can be.

In the case of Masami and her daughter Ayane, it’s not that Masami is “bad” person but is responding to a cycle of violence that she finds impossible to escape. Masami doesn’t cope well with stressful situations, dislikes noise and disorder and has impossibly high (and arbitrary) standards for her daughter which result in “discipline” through physical violence. Nevertheless, Ayane loves her mother and, even if Masami recoils when Ayane tries to hug her, reacts with horror to cheerful friend Yoko’s joke of adopting her into their family. Ayane wants to be like her mum, taking delight in wearing a matching pair of shoes even if that means she can’t play with the other kids. As Masami was abused, so she abuses – will the cycle continue with Ayane? Luckily, the pair may have found a more gentle solution in the form of the kindly Yoko who proves far wiser than one would suspect.

As Okano’s sister tells him, when you’re nice to children, they’re nice to others. If everyone could be nicer to their children perhaps we could have a nicer world. The young boy whom Okano is trying to save has come to believe that he’s a “bad kid” – proven by the fact that Santa never comes to their house. He can’t bring himself to talk about his step father to his teachers and Okano’s interventions only make things worse for the boy. He needs someone to show him that he’s not at fault and that the world is not a bad place but it will take more than just “good will” to solve the problem. Sometimes, all you can do is knock on the door.

Reviewed as part of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2016.

This is the original trailer for the film but in my opinion it contains a few spoilers so bear that in mind if you plan on watching in the near future:

Miss Hokusai (百日紅, Keiichi Hara, 2015)

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MISS_HOKUSAI_teaser_A4_oldpaper_1600When it comes to the great Japanese artworks that everybody knows, the figure of Hokusai looms large. From the ubiquitous The Great Wave off Kanagawa to the infamous Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, the work of Hokusai has come to represent the art of Edo woodblocks almost single handedly in the popular imagination yet there has long been scholarly debate about the true artist behind some of the pieces which are attributed to his name. Hokusai had a daughter – uniquely gifted, perhaps even surpassing the skills of her father, O-Ei was a talented artist in her own right as well as her father’s assistant and caregiver in his old age.

Miss Hokusai, based on the popular 1980s manga Sarusuberi by Hinako Sugiura, takes up O-Ei’s story towards the beginning of her career before her marriage and subsequent divorce, after which she returned to her father’s side to nurse him as his health declined. Like the manga, the film is a collection of scenes from Edo life loosely tied together by its overarching theme, but broadly follows O-Ei as she lives her life as a young woman with a level of forthrightness and determination which sets her apart from the women of the time. Determined to become an artist, she lives with her father in their studio where neither of them cooks or cleans but each devotes themselves solely to art. Also living with them at the time is an ex-samurai and aspiring artist, Zenjiro, who specialises in erotica which has its own particular qualities even if his skills aren’t on a par with Hokusai or O-Ei.

When not in her father’s studio, O-Ei likes to visit her younger sister who, ironically, was born blind and is being cared for by the local nuns. O-Nao’s blindness is a sore spot for her father who hardly ever visits her, feeling as if her lack of sight is some sort of cosmic slight against him – the master painter with the daughter unable to appreciate his art and therefore his entire life philosophy. O-Ei is not so rigid and delights taking the girl out on trips where she can experience the world through her richly developed other senses. O-Nao particularly likes visiting the bridge with its complicated soundscape from the river below to the vendors above and all the passersby. There’s also a lovely set piece in which a young boy who quickly figures out that O-Nao can’t see tries to entertain her by knocking snow off a tree. Miss Hokusai, though a story of visual art, has an especially intricate sound design which proves that you can paint with materials other than ink and makes a point of calling out the stubbornness inherent in the world view of someone like Hokusai whose singleminded vision has become his entire universe.

O-Ei has her fair share of troubles as a young woman, though living with her father as his assistant she is a relatively free and unsheltered one. Her father doesn’t hide any aspect of his work from her – she even assists him with his erotic pieces and is said to be a particularly fine painter of women though her male figures lack conviction. “Sensation” itself becomes a theme, art is something which must be felt and therefore must have feeling imbued within it. As an unmarried woman O-Ei is ill equipt to complete these kinds of assignments and some say perhaps she should not be given them though her determination would never permit her to turn them down leading to rather a strange interlude in which she tries to gain some “experience” in a presumably “safe” way which won’t have much effect on her later life.

Less successfully, the film also attempts to enter the realm of the supernatural as we learn a painting can have other effects on the viewer particularly if it isn’t completed in the proper fashion. From a possessed geisha to a woman driven mad by O-Ei’s suitably creepy painting which features terrifying scenes from hell, Miss Hokusai most definitely occupies a world where ghosts, spirits and demons are real things which co-exist with real people. Luckily, Hokusai is able to fix the problem with the disturbing painting by closing its symbolic imagery with a suitable addition whilst berating O-Ei for having cut corners and not properly complete her vision so as to leave the onlooker “haunted” in an unintended way. Again, the painter is parent to the painting which attains the kind of immortality impossible for its creator in this transient world.

Clearly bound-up with the notion of transience, Miss Hokusai makes a valiant attempt to bring ordinary Edo living with its geisha houses, dusty rooms and drinking songs to life in vivid detail. However, its message becomes slightly confused with the superimposition of the modern Tokyo in the final frame of the film. At this point, the rather bizarre choice of a modern, electric guitar based soundtrack, begins to make a degree of sense at least on a thematic level but nowhere near enough to mitigate its jarring presence throughout the film.

Animated by animation powerhouse Production I.G who have been responsible for some of the most beautifully made animated movies of recent times, Miss Hokusai is a giant step up from Hara’s previous film, Colorful, in terms of its execution and boasts a number of scenes which are remarkable in their technical proficiency. The sky in particular as well as the background in general takes on a dreamy, woodblock style which is perfectly fitting for the film’s themes. An interesting look at the young O-Ei, an inexperienced female artist still looking for her voice in a world where the only thing that counts is the signature, Miss Hokusai doesn’t quite succeed in breathing life into its disparate collection of tales but makes a valiant attempt all the same.

Miss Hokusai is currently touring the UK with the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2016 and will be released by All the Anime later in the year.

 

Snakes and Earrings (蛇にピアス, Yukio Ninagawa, 2008)

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91+iM1s07LL._SL1500_When 21 year old Hitomi Kanehara’s Snakes and Earrings (蛇にピアス, Hebi ni Piasu) was published back in 2003 it took the coveted Akutagawa prize for literature and the country by storm. Its scandalous depictions of the dark and nihilistic sex life of its outsider youngsters outraged and fascinated enough people to get it onto the best seller lists and earn a cinematic adaptation from Japan’s top theatre director Yukio Ninagawa in only his second foray into the world of moving pictures. However, Snakes and Earrings is perhaps that rare instance of an adaptation which clings to closely to its source material as its detached, emotionless and straightforward approach end in something of a miss fire.

Lui (Yuriko Yoshitaka) is a typical “gyaru” – for those of you reading from the future, this is an “ultra feminine” fashion trend which encourages young women to barbie doll it up to the max. It’s a little strange then when she catches sight of young punk Ama (Kengo Kora) in a nightclub and becomes fascinated with his forked tongue. In actuality, it’s the tongue she falls for, not the guy, but the two become a couple and she moves into his apartment. Before long she too gets a tongue ring and becomes determined on splitting her own tongue as well as getting herself a large tattoo. That’s how she meets Ama’s tattooist friend Shiba (Arata Iura) who becomes equally fascinated with Lui. Lui trades sex with Shiba in return for designing her body art and the two begin an illicit, sado-masochistic affair behind Ama’s back but even after Lui’s tattoo is completed it only sends her further into a spiral of nihilistic self annihilation.

Snakes and Earrings opens with a beautifully shot near silent sequence which pans across the skyline of modern Tokyo picking out the neon lights and advertising boards that proclaim it as a city which belongs to the young. Even when we’re with Lui inside the nightclub, the sound remains muted as young men and women dance to music that we cannot hear – even when Lui spots Ama it’s only the visuals that hang until he comes over and talks to her and we realise she’s had her headphones in the entire time. This sequence is neatly echoed at the film’s conclusion but is, however, something of an anomaly when it comes to the prevailing style of the film which is relentlessly detached and straightforward in approach.

Lui – short for “Louis Vuitton” remains something of a cypher. She’s torn between her two lovers – the punkish dope Ama who would kill for her and the cold, sadistic Shiba who would kill her given half the chance. She doesn’t seem to know what she wants or who she is and quickly loses herself in alcoholism and self disgust. It feels as if there should be more to this – a critique of the emptiness of modern life or the dehumanising effects of the city but all there is is a great nothingness. Perhaps that’s the point, there is nothing to Lui – not even a real name. She possesses no clearly defined identity and therefore does not exist. This is a fine idea, on paper, but does leave a great gaping hole where the protagonist ought to be.

Lui’s two love interests, the oddly vibrant Ama and the restrained Shiba represent two sides of the same thing as Lui is torn between pleasure in pain and pain in love. Kengo Kora does what he can with a thinly defined role which often feels more like a plot device than anything else. Arata Iura fares a little better with the meatier role of Shiba who is accorded more screen time but the film remains resolutely cold and distant. In a minor instance of distraction, Shun Oguri and more prominently Tatsuya Fujiwara turn up as bit players in the roles of two street punks who get into a fight with Ama which is, frankly, baffling.

Though opting for simplistic, straightforward compositions much of Snakes and Earrings is beautifully captured even if deliberately alienating. As in the book, even the frequent, semi-explicit sex scenes are shot in such a matter of fact way as to render them totally neutered, devoid of any kind of sensation. Ultimately, Snakes and Earrings finishes as a noble failure, neatly echoing its heroine’s nihilistic mindset whilst simultaneously failing to engage.

The Hong Kong DVD/blu-ray release (as well as the Japanese blu-ray) of Snakes and Earrings includes English Subtitles.

 

My Man 私の男 (Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, 2014)

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162276_02Based on the Naoki Prize winning novel by Kazuki Sakuraba, My Man tackles the difficult subject of a quasi-incestual “love” affair between a young orphaned girl and the “distant” relative who adopts her as his “daughter”. Though this taboo subject has never been far from Japanese screens (find me an art film from the ’60s which doesn’t involve incest in some way), My Man dares to examine in it in all its realistic muddiness and is marked by nothing so much as its raw intensity. Brought to the screen by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri whose last picture Summer’s End chronicled the romantic and existential dilemmas of a woman approaching middle age, My Man is a disturbing and unsettling film which poses a fair few unpleasant questions about the nature of familial and romantic relationships.

The film begins with a young girl, Hana, crawling away from a scene of intense devastation. Finally ending up at a refugee centre, it seems that Hana’s entire family have been killed in a natural disaster. Creeping back to her house, Hana is discovered by a rescue worker, Jungo, who by coincidence happens to be a distant relative of hers. Asked who the little girl is, Jungo immediately asserts that she is his daughter and there after claims her as his own. The pair continue to live together in a small, seaside Hokkaido town until Hana reaches middle school age at which point their relationship changes and the lines between father/daughter and husband/wife become exceedingly blurred. Only growing in intensity, the two will eventually even go so far as to kill to protect their illicit relationship which eventually takes them to the comparatively more anonymous Tokyo but what the outcome of their unconventional bond will ultimately be, only time will tell.

Hana and Jungo are both people in search of “family” and unbreakable bonds. Hana, having just lost her entire world in a tsunami is haunted by nightmares of being carried by her desperate father running from the coming storm but comes to see her new guardian Jungo as something more than a paternal figure. Jungo, as the kindly uncle Oshio remarks, is the sort of man who shouldn’t have a family. At this point, we don’t know why Oshio feels this way, merely that people seem uneasy in Jungo’s company and there’s something a little strange in his bearing and in his willingness to adopt an orphaned little girl with very little consideration. Though they are described as “distant” relatives, Jungo spent sometime in Hana’s familial home just before she was born and claims to have had a fondness for her mother – perhaps not such a “distant” relative after all.

In fact, Hana comes to feel an indestructible bond with Jungo precisely because of their blood ties. She believes he may be her true father and makes him also her carnal lover. Hana’s possessiveness begins almost at the beginning of their relationship with a repeated motif where she sucks on his fingers which takes on an increasingly erotic context as the film goes on. Seeing off Jungo’s more age appropriate girlfriend, Komachi, Hana delights in her triumphant ownership of Jungo decrying that he needs a blood relative and nothing else will do. Horrified, Komachi eventually leaves the area altogether and Hana and Jungo to their strangely intense “family” life. When Oshio accidentally discovers what exactly goes on in their household and comes to the conclusion Hana may once again need rescuing, talking may not quite be enough. Though their relationship has crossed social taboos the pair see nothing wrong in it yet are afraid of the possibility of being discovered and will go to great lengths to protect their illicit secret.

The tale starts to lose momentum a little after the move to Tokyo but it’s here that the central problem makes itself most plain. Jungo, having left the sea behind him, works as a cab driver in the city but eventually drifts into a life of aimless alcoholism as Hana grows up and away from him. “I just want to be a father” he cries after having just had a bizarre and humiliating encounter with a would be suitor of Hana’s. “You’re not good enough” he tells him, a repeated phrase offered to another of Hana’s men at the end of the film – fatherly words, but tinged with the jealousy of a rival. In the end, it seems as if Hana may have abandoned their “family” for a more conventional life, however, in a telling sequence set in a restaurant everything else appears to disappear leaving just the two of them isolated in their own world. Flirtatious and possessive, theirs is a bond which will truly never be broken, for better or worse.

Kumakiri shoots this bleak tale in a mostly naturalistic style occasionally giving way to expressionism and snaps of non-linear editing. In a pivotal scene as Jungo and Hana indulge their carnal passions one morning before school, the entire room rains blood – first falling as droplets on Hana’s back before becoming a torrent which leaves them both stained crimson. A blood wedding or presaging their further transgressions, this startling moment is only one of Kumakiri’s impressively nuanced symbolic touches. Though the film has its B-movie, melodramatic elements, Kumakiri has been able to integrate these into his slightly elevated tone with little difficulty to create a modern, melancholic mood piece which is rich with mystery and only hinted at implications.

Another interesting film from Kumakiri, My Man is an impressively directed dissection of its difficult subject matter. Anchored by extraordinary performances from Tadanobu Asano and particularly from Fumi Nikaido as the complicated and conflicted Hana, Kumakiri thankfully keeps the sleaze factor low though simmering enough for its necessary impact. It may not be a pleasant watch, but for those who can bear its unrelenting melancholy My Man offers a fascinating portrait of the modern family in crisis.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語, Isao Takahata, 2013)

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no3_kaguya_nikonikoboard_outSo, Studio Ghibli is no more. For the moment anyway – both of the old masters have hung up their paint brushes for good, intent on indulging other pursuits, or so they say. Neither has yet found a suitable apprentice to succeed them and so all Ghibli’s revels are now ended, the staff is broken, the book is burned and it’s time we all went home. We’ve not quite set them free yet though, 2014 saw both the founders release their “final masterpiece” in a pattern that was intended to mimic their early success – the double header of the gently melancholic yet uplifting My Neighbour Totoro and the utterly devastating Grave of the Fireflies. Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises read like a deeply moving final poem – a artist’s apology for his failings as man. Takahata’s, in a pattern reminiscent of his career overall, feels in some ways harsher. He pushes deeper both artistically but also emotionally, less cynical but also perhaps less forgiving. Based on the classic Japanese folktale by the same title, often translated into English as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is another late career masterwork from Takahata that cuts right to the quick of what it means to be human.

Bamboo cutter Okina makes his everyday journey up the mountain to cut bamboo, but this time finds a single stalk shining strangely. When he cuts into it, a tiny yet elegant lady is sleeping inside. Quickly realising she must be a princess sent from heaven, he carries her home to his wife in whose hands she suddenly morphs into a screaming human child. The couple embrace their miraculous gift heartily and raise the girl as if she were their own. “L’il Bamboo” as the other village kids call her, grows at an alarming rate, but enjoys an idyllic country childhood full of long hot summers, juicy, ripe melons pinched from a neighbour’s garden and fantastic adventures. However, another shining bamboo stalk has yet more presents for Okina in the form of gold and expensive kimonos. Believing his little princess is intended for the life of a noble woman, not that of the lowly daughter of a bamboo cutter, he buys a big house in the city filled with teachers and servants. However, one person’s idea of “best” can be quite different from another’s, and no matter how much you love someone, there are lines that cannot be crossed.

Li’l Bamboo is an elemental creature, meant for frolicking with frogs and dancing under cherry blossoms but Princess Kaguya, the name given to her by a nobleman as she comes of age, is forced into the constrained life of a court lady. Imprisoned inside her castle, separated from her childhood friends and confined to a life of sedately studying “the feminine arts” Kaguya’s once wild love of life seems to dissipate under the weight of adulthood. Even on a rare (and secret) journey outside to once again view the transient cherry blossoms, she decides to return almost immediately after encountering a mother and her children who rapidly kneel, apologise for their presence and leave. Feeling the ever present barrier between herself and “ordinary” people because of her fine clothes and appearance, Kaguya retreats despondently. However, as relative “new money” to the noble set, she doesn’t fit in there either.

The life that Okina envisages for his “princess” maybe one that society regards as better, but that isn’t to say it’s the best for everyone. Okina’s tragedy is that he never stops to consider his adopted daughter’s own feelings. The responsibility he takes is too great and he never sees that he’s stifling the gift nature has given him. Kaguya goes along with most of this because he’s her father and she doesn’t want to displease him, but she’s constantly setting free caged animals because she herself feels so imprisoned. Okina’s desire to ensure his daughter’s future happiness has only made her miserable and in the end will cost them both dearly. As common now as it’s ever been, this classic miscommunication between parent and child is made all the more tragic because it has love at its core.

Unfolding like an illustrated scroll, Princess Kaguya is full of beautiful and imaginative artistry. With its beguiling watercolour-like aesthetic, the film often breaks into breathtaking, impressionistic spectacle that can allow a girl to dissolve into the landscape or summon dragons from the clouds and waves. It’s a style that’s perfectly suited to the classic nature of the story which is only aided by the traditional, folk-tale narration and whimsical score from Joe Hisaishi (working with Takahata here for the first time despite his long association with Studio Ghibli as a whole).

A fitting end to a long and sometimes difficult career, Princess Kaguya is, in the end, a tale of sad yet inevitable partings. Still, though Kaguya was often unhappy on Earth, ultimately she doesn’t want to leave nor to forget her experiences be they of joy or sorrow. Perhaps better appreciated from a perspective of age, Princess Kaguya is a sorrowful tale in many ways, full of misunderstandings and missed opportunities yet there is great beauty in it too. All things must pass, and we must bid goodbye to Studio Ghibli (for now, at least) though painful as it may be, we ought to be grateful for having had something to grieve.

A Tale of Samurai Cooking – A True Love Story (武士の献立, Yuzo Asahara, 2013)

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A-Tale-of-Samurai-Cooking-teaser

I kind of love this photo because he already looks so annoyed 🙂

Review of period romantic comedy/drama with a side serving of culinary delight A Tale of Samurai Cooking – A True Love Story up at UK Anime Network.

It’s a little known fact but though all samurai carry swords, some of them hang them up when they get to work and serve their lords with meat cleavers and skewers in the relative safety of the kitchen rather than the noisy chaos of a battlefield. Of course, a retainer’s job is to serve the lord in whatever capacity is expected of him, though some maybe happier with their dictated fates than others. In A Tale of Samurai Cooking – A True Love Story (武士の献立, Bushi no Kondate), it’s not only a conventional romantic tale between two initially mismatched people that the title alludes to, but also how one may fall in love with a path in life that was once deeply resented.

Back in feudal Japan, Haru (Aya Ueto) is an orphaned maid servant to a prominent samurai house. She was briefly married, but embarrassingly enough was “sent back” because her new husband and his family found her far too headstrong for their household. The daughter of a pair of restaurateurs, Haru has a keen sense of cooking of her own which sees her catch the attention of a visiting famous cook, Dennai Funaki (Toshiyuki Nishida), when she is the only person able to guess the real ingredients in his “mock crane” dish. Instantly smitten, Dennai makes her a proposal – albeit one for his son who is set to take over the family business but has no real aptitude for cooking. Yasunobu (Kengo Kora) is his second child whose fate was sealed on the death of his elder brother and though he would rather be a more conventional kind of samurai, he is the only heir to this kitchen empire. Can Haru’s cooking skills raise a fire in Yasunobu’s heart for his unwanted destiny or will they both be subjected to a lifetime of cold dinners?

A Tale of Samurai Cooking is definitely much more “period drama” than “samurai movie” though it does share a little of the historical intrigue of your typical “jidaigeki”. Set in the Edo period of feudal Japan, there are plenty of sudden reversals of fate where one house jumps ahead of another which then falls out of favour, sometimes with tragic consequences. However, though those these events inform the drama they are really just the backdrop to the true story of the very grown up (though extremely chaste and innocent – this is a U rated movie!) slow burning love story between Haru and Yasunobu. Though it’s a very charming and old fashioned sort of romance, it’s also true that Kengo Kora and Aya Ueto don’t have a tremendous amount of chemistry and their love story is pretty subtle and one sided until very late into the film. Of course, the audience knows how this sort of film has to end, but the film does rather rely on this fact.

Yasunobu is at heart a kind man undergoing very difficult circumstances. Having had to let go of the life he wanted that was so nearly his following the death of his older brother, it isn’t a surprise that he’s generally sullen and extremely resentful that his father has arranged this marriage for him with a slightly older woman who’s already been married once before, not to mention the fact that it’s all because she’s better than he is at this thing he’s now supposed to do for the rest of his life. Yasunobu doesn’t even like cooking, he thinks it’s “woman’s work” and had devoted his life to the art of the sword. Luckily, Haru’s perspicacity extends beyond her palate and she’s quickly figured out what’s going on with Yasunobu so she can turn him into the ace cook his father needs him to be. Haru’s influence opens up his wilfully closed eyes to the rewards of both good women and good cookery which is part way to saying that food cooked with love can heal a broken heart, but it’s equal parts changing times and a young man growing up.

As films about food go, A Tale of Samurai Cooking certainly has a fair few mouth watering dishes on display but perhaps lacks the hearty fare of something like the comparatively more sensual, though equally comic, Tampopo. In truth, its overwhelming quality is a kind of inoffensive niceness and perhaps for some tastes could have done with a little more spice though like the best Japanese cuisine offers its own rewards precisely because of its subtlety. It’s a perfectly nice light meal, but you’ll probably wishing you’d gone for something more substantial come bed time.

 

I went a bit overboard with the food metaphors, which is maybe what you get when you spend your food budget on movie tickets. I regret nothing.

Anyway this is showing at the Curzon in Mayfair until tomorrow, though they did say it may extend if there’s enough interest. It’s also going to be screened at the Genesis Cinema in Mile End and the Everyman and apparently will open in Ireland from 9th January. Yume Pictures will then release it on DVD in 2015 if you aren’t near a cinema that’s showing it, or you can even watch it on Curzon Home Cinema right now.

 

Roommate (ルームメイト, Takeshi Furusawa, 2013)

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meinImage(Is the tag line really “A woman’s unpainted face is scary!”? I get where they’re coming from but, hmmm – problematic)

Adapted from the 1997 novel by Aya Imamura, you’d be forgiven be forgiven for thinking that Roommate is something of a rehash of seminal ’90s “my roommate is a psycho” drama Single White Female though it goes a couple of steps further in the influences stakes and throws in Fatal Attraction and The Three Faces of Eve for good measure. Honestly anything else is a spoiler (though anyone who’s ever watched a film of this nature before is going to guess 70% of the plot about ten minutes in) but sit back and get ready to enjoy a very silly (though not really silly enough) tale of violence and psychological intrigue!

The film starts with the police arriving at the scene of a violent crime where a severely injured man and woman are being taken to hospital leaving another man dead inside. Cut to three months earlier and Harumi (Keiko Kitagawa) – the woman from the crime scene, has been injured in a car accident and wakes up in a hospital dormitory. Shortly thereafter she’s visited by the man who was driving the car, Keisuke (Kengo Kora), along with his insurance broker friend who’s very keen to sort out the paperwork for the compensation etc. Whilst recuperating Harumi builds up friendship with one of the nurses, Reiko (Kyoko Fukada), and when it comes time for Harumi to be discharged the two decide to become roommates! It’s all amazing at first but cracks begin to appear as Reiko’s behaviour becomes increasingly strange and Harumi starts getting closer to Keisuke. Then Harumi starts seeing a woman who looks really like Reiko, but is not actually Reiko, hanging around and things just start to get even more bizarre from then on.

Yes, you’ve seen all of this before. Not just in Single White Female and every other identity theft stalker drama since but even the various twists and turns feel lifted from other, more successful, movies. There’s even an incident with a pet that’s kind of like the one in Single White Female but it’s been given a Fatal Attraction style twist to make it less obvious. At this point, when your roommate’s behaviour has become this dangerous, a normal person would actually do something about it, wouldn’t they? Not in the land of the movies though! Revelation after revelation and about an hour of psychobabble later it’s all explained (sort of, as long as you don’t really think about it) but the last twist and the subplot with Tomorowo Taguchi’s sleazy mayoral candidate seem a little superfluous.

Mostly the film has a disappointingly televisual feeling and though there are a fair few interesting techniques in play such as the use of split screens, this feels both too on the nose and underdeveloped to have much of an impact. Performances are also on the weaker side though this may rest partly on the lack of depth in the fairly schlocky script – Kengo Kora isn’t left much to do other than being generally ‘nice’ and though the bond between the two women is well brought out, neither of them really gets to let loose with the intense extremes of their characters. The problem, really, is that Roommate walks a fine line between camp horror movie and serious psychological thriller, which just makes it a little bit dull. It never manages to build up much of an atmosphere of fear and its unwillingness to play with ambiguity makes it that much less engaging. Had it gone further down the schlocky, campy, melodrama route, Roommate might have proved more fun but this light on gore heavy on drama approach makes it only mildly diverting.

It’s about as tame and mainstream as they come, but Roommate isn’t exactly a bad film, just not a very interesting one. Not crazy enough for the midnight crowd nor smart enough lovers of cerebral thrillers, it ultimately falls between two stools. With such a high profile cast you might have expected something a little more powerful but Roommate is the classically OK, yet totally inconsequential film that’s fine for occupying a couple of hours but little more.