Tag: Mizuki Yoshida

The Lump in My Heart (あつい胸さわぎ, Shingo Matsumura, 2022)

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A young woman with a growing desire for independence is thrown into turmoil by a totally unexpected diagnosis of cancer in Shingo Matsumura’s gentle coming-of-age tale and maternal drama, The Lump in My Heart (あつい胸さわぎ, Atsui Munasawagi). Perhaps because of her youth, the heroine finds herself struggling not with a fear of pain or death but of being unsexed while preoccupied with what it might mean for the rest of her life if she were to lose her breasts at such an early age.

It seems that Chinatsu (Mizuki Yoshida) has had a particular hangup about her chest size since the onset of puberty when her mother, Akiko (Tokiko Tokiwa), first refused to buy her a bra, making her wait a year longer than the other girls and leaving her with a sense of embarrassment that might be out of keeping with her age. One of the things that most bothered her about the doctors visits is that she was treated by a middle-aged man who was then the first person ever to touch her breasts which is something she’s unhappy about while also feeling insecure that she’s never had a proper boyfriend and might never get one if it turns out she needs a mastectomy. As it turns out, she’s carrying a torch for childhood friend Ko (Daiken Okudaira), an aspiring actor, but is too shy to say anything especially with this threat to her sense of femininity hanging over her. Of course, it doesn’t help that the doctors are asking her to make advance decisions about things an 18-year-old wouldn’t usually consider such as if and when she might want children because her feelings about her fertility might affect her treatment options. 

Then again, it’s also true that she remains trapped in adolescence resentful when her mother tells her not to worry she’ll make all the decisions but also perhaps relieved. A little sick of their co-dependency she’d been thinking of moving out though it seems difficult to believe she’d be able to afford rent with just her part-time job while studying full-time at university. But when her mother shows a little interest in an incredibly awkward man at work it sends her in the other direction, now feeling resentful and rejected while fearing the loss of their familial intimacy given it had just been the two of them for so long after her father’s death when she was four.

Motoharu (Masaki Miura) accidentally demonstrates the entrenched sexism of the world around them when he makes a misogynistic joke as an attempt at an icebreaker when introduced as the boss at the factory where Akiko works. It later comes to light that he left his last job due to an accusation of sexual assault, and though it turns out to have been a misunderstanding highlights a lack of awareness in the working environment that feeds in to Chinatsu’s ongoing preoccupation with her femininity and the elusiveness of romance. Her homework assignment over the summer holidays is to write a story about her first love, a topic which might be seen as bordering on inappropriate, perhaps discriminatory against those who do not feel romantic desire not to mention that Chinatsu is only 18 so it is only natural that she is still in the process of figuring things out and cannot be expected to have much of a perspective on what is to her still a fairly recent (in fact ongoing) event. 

Meanwhile, her mother and Motoharu are each feeling a pang of regret that they always let things pass them by like the arrival of the circus, destined to be in town for a limited time only so it’s best to catch it while you can. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done especially when not everyone’s on the same page. The lump in Chinatsu’s heart is her yearning for romantic love, though she still lacks the courage to be honest with her feelings even if it’s helped her repair her relationship with her mother. An unexpected piece of compassionate advice also helps her begin to re-imagine her femininity in accepting that the loss of her breasts might not mean that she’s destined to be alone forever nor undeserving of romantic love symbolically dissolving the lump in her heart in allowing her to move forward with her life no matter what the future might hold.

The Lump in My Heart screened as part of this year’s Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Original trailer (English subtitles

Mayhem Girls (メイヘムガールズ, Shinichi Fujita, 2022)

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Four teenage girls unexpectedly find themselves with superpowers during the Covid-19 pandemic, but largely struggle with just the same problems as everyone else in Shinichi Fujita’s sci-fi-inflected high school dramedy Mayhem Girls (メイヘムガールズ). Despite the implications of the title, mayhem is not exactly the girls’ vibe though they each in their own way challenge the oppressive social norms of those around them later depressed by the realisation that they’ll soon have to go back to being “normal” and lose this brief respite they’ve been given from the rigours of high school life. 

The girls are already close to boiling point with the pressures of the pandemic as the teachers (ironically) yell at them to use hand sanitiser and social distance. The final straw seems to be the announcement that the Cultural Festival will be going online. That might be one reason why popular girl Mizuho (Mizuki Yoshida) suddenly snaps when her teacher catches her reading Twitter on her phone rather than studying. Miss Sawaguchi (Maako Miwa) is young and somewhat timid, unable to exert her authority over the class which is largely uninterested in her attempt to read out articles from English-language magazines. What’s the point, Mizuho wonders, in learning English if you can’t go abroad anyway? Sawaguchi takes this opportunity to reprimand Mizuho as a means of asserting her control but it backfires as something strange happens when she confiscates the phone. Sawaguchi’s hand stops mid-air allowing Mizuho to simply reclaim it while she runs out of the room as if in pain. 

This is only the first inkling that Mizuho has gained unexpected powers of telekinesis though she struggles to understand what happened, certain that she didn’t touch Miss Sawaguchi and confused that she seems to be talking about “violence” and displaying bruises on her wrists. In any case, the event loses her her phone which is akin to a kind of social death for a teenage girl. Her powers have, however, brought her to the attention of Tamaki (Amane Kamiya) who is a telepath, or more accurately given her an excuse to make contact for as it turns out Tamaki has long been carrying a torch for the oblivious Mizuho who is hung up on the student who was her tutor in middle school, Yusuke (Taisei Kido). Soon they are joined by two more girls, Akane (Manami Igashira) who can teleport, and Kei (Hina Kikuchi) who can read the minds of machines, in a kind of after school superpower club. 

Though they eventually become good friends, the relationship between the girls is strained by their differing views on their powers and by Mizuho’s concurrent obsession with Yusuke who is now a part-time delivery rider struggling to find a full time job in the middle of the pandemic. Using Kei’s powers to track him down she waits outside his house for him to come back and inserts herself into his life. Though he seems as if he’s about to remind her that her behaviour is inappropriate, Yusuke eventually goes all in on Mizuho after learning of her powers and asks her to use them to rob a bank so he can forget about his employment woes. 

There are many things you shouldn’t do for a boy and robbing a bank is very high on the list, though perhaps merely a more extreme version of a lesson typically learned in adolescence. In any case, this is far as Mizuho is pushed to the dark side. Other than that, none of the girls really consider using their powers for evil ends with even Tamaki admitting that she has thought about poking around in Mizuho’s head but feels it would be wrong to do so. It’s Tamaki who draws the short straw in being largely unable to articulate herself even by using her powers before eventually trying to communicate in images only to be robbed of the power to do so at the very last second when she’s reduced to being “normal” once again. 

“Normality” does seem to resume for them, each of the girls heading back to their own individual cliques having seemingly learned little from their experiences save Tamaki who is left with a lingering sadness. Perhaps what they’ve been through is a kind of mayhem, a period of chaos provoked by the pressures of the pandemic along with oppressive teachers and the regular teenage issues of unrequited love and romantic disappointment but they’ve returned to “normal” all too quickly leaving precious little time to meditate on the results of their flirtation with superpowers and psychic abilities in a world in which normality itself is both somewhat illusionary and infinitely oppressive.

Mayhem Girls screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)