Tag: Osaka Asian Film Festival

Memories of His Scent (においが眠るまで, Kahori Higashi, 2024)

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The link between scent and memory is incredibly strong to the extent that they are often inextricable from one another. For Hinoki, what she fears is that her father’s scent will fade from the world around her and she’ll no longer be able to feel his presence either externally or within herself. She tries to recapture and recreate it artificially only to realise that there was a crucial component that she never thought to include but was always central to her memories of her late father.

We can see the way she immortalises him in her dream sequence in which she walks through a gallery looking at a series of small exhibits marking out her father’s life until his hospitalisation at age 45 and subsequent death from illness. The last box appears empty but turns out to contain a simulacrum of his scent in the same way some museums offer the opportunity to experience what it may have felt like to live in a place through breathing in its ambient smells. It’s this sense of intimacy that Hinoki longs to recapture as she attempts to deal with her grief and the series of upheavals to her life in the wake of her father’s death including closing his coffee shop and bean roastery. She’s horrified that her mother’s put his favourite apron in the to go pile as if she were throwing away an essential part of him she can’t recover. It’s this along with a diary dropped off by the owner of a mini theatre he used to deliver coffee to that sends Hinoki on a summer holiday road trip adventure looking for traces of her father in the places he visited and trying to identify that behind a poetic entry at the end of the diary. 

The film then doubles as another in a series of films elegising the dying culture of boutique cinemas in small towns often catering to small but dedicated audiences who have formed a kind of community around their love of film. These smaller screens generally show older and indie films and are key to the success of independent filmmakers whose work often wouldn’t be shown in larger multiplexes, yet audiences have often not returned after the enforced break of the pandemic era while they also face competition from streaming and other forms of entertainment. The first cinema Hinoki visits is closing down in 42 days though she marvels at the scent and atmosphere of this retro space which has its own elegiac quality. Whilst there she also coincidentally runs to a scent scientist who gives her some pointers about how to preserve and recreate her father’s scent before it fades. By the time she reaches the end of her journey the final cinema has already closed down and rather depressingly been replaced by an entirely empty open air car park. 

Even so what she begins to realise is that nothing really disappears and experiences can be recreated to an extent as she discovers when they put a movie on in the car park leading to a very personal epiphany. The people she meets along her way teach her various things such as the importance of clearly stating how you feel while there’s still time even if her best friend’s attempt to do just that doesn’t quite go to plan. A single father raising a small daughter brings back painful memories for her of her own childhood and her father’s now continuing absence while also reminding her that those experiences live on in her memory along with the various things her father taught her throughout her life. 

Though suffused with melancholy, the film is ultimately uplifting in its determination that life goes on and nothing really disappears. Originally diffident and describing herself as someone who doesn’t particularly like interacting with others, through her partly solo road trip Hinoki learns to open herself up to the world around her along with its myriad fragrances and what they say about the people who inhabit a place. She thinks she’s looking for her father, but she’s really looking for herself and the path towards the rest of her life lived in his absence while discovering the richness of life as its lived in addition to that which has passed.

Memories of His Scent screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Unborn Soul (渡, Zhou Zhou, 2024)

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When a woman receives the news that her unborn child has a 70% chance of being born with a disability she finds herself confronted by a series of uncomfortable social attitudes and prejudices while trying to decide what is best both for herself and her child in Zhou Zhou’s empathetic drama, Unborn Soul (渡, dù). Touching on issues such as the demands of caring for someone with a profound disability and patriarchal notions of needing to continue the family line, the film sees its heroine more or less isolated in her refusal to be pressured into an abortion she isn’t convinced is the right decision. 

Though now relaxed, the legacy of the One Child Policy may in part be influencing the way people think about raising children and the ageing society with Qing’s father-in-law insisting on a “perfect child” to inherit their family name. Qing has been the sole carer for her 60-year-old uncle who has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability since her grandmother died and it seems to be in the back of her mind to wonder who might be around to care for her child when she is no longer able to if they were indeed to be born with a disability that prevented them from living an independent life. Because of her closeness with her uncle, she has also has a more empathetic view of living with a disability than those around her and believes it is wrong to think that the baby is better off not being born having heard from him that he is glad to be alive.

Her husband however leans towards an abortion admitting that he is not really prepared to care for a disabled child for the rest of his life while his father outright objects to the idea of having someone with a disability in their family. Laying bare the patriarchal attitudes that surround her, Qing is essentially silenced by her husband and father-in-law who at one point says he’s sick of women like her who “can’t communicate” and won’t do what they’re told. Her husband is also in a sense trapped by this patriarchal system in that his father heavily pressures him to force his wife to have an abortion until she finally files for divorce. He has a clause put into the agreement that if Qing insists on going ahead with the pregnancy the child will have no connection to his family regardless of whether or not it is born with a disability. 

While all of this is going on, the baby seems to narrate its thoughts on the present drama while lamenting the suffering he feels himself to be causing to his mother. The question arises of whether or not the baby would wish to be born which is not a question anyone could answer and in any case perhaps he would end up feeling it would have been better to not to have been even if he were born able-bodied and with no intellectual disabilities. In an attempt to reassure herself, Qing visits a home for disabled adults and encounters a man with cerebral palsy who has got a job as a masseur and is living a fulfilling and independent life but is also confronted by the fact that many of these people have been abandoned by families who feared the stigma of disability. 

The implications of the film’s ending maybe slightly uncomfortable even if they reflect Qing’s nature as a true mother who thought only of her child even while the film is otherwise critical of an overly efficient medical system which tries to usher Qing towards an abortion without really considering that her choice to give birth to the child might be valid which also displays a lack of respect for the lives of disabled people. Shot in a classic 4:3 the film flits between theatricality and detachment while shifting into a strangely dreamlike aesthetic with its commentary from the unborn baby who certainly seems quite a sophisticated thinker for one so young. In any case, the decision is in a sense taken out of Qing’s hands leaving her with little choice other than to accept the hand that fate has dealt her while otherwise isolated from a cold and rational society.

Unborn Soul screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Su Yu-Chun, 2023)

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Why does everything always go wrong just when it was about to go right? Everything has fallen into place for director Kiriko’s upcoming indie film but suddenly she finds herself experiencing a series of crises that are perhaps a bit of a wakeup call teaching her a few things about herself as well as the process of filmmaking. The latest film to tackle the perils of the independent movie scene, Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Hashirenai hito no Hashiri-kata) never shies away from the difficulties involved but does suggest they can be overcome with humility and a willingness to get creative.

Part of the problem is Kiriko’s difficulty in making decisions and lack of clarity over her role as a director. Her producer, Takimoto, tries to keep her grounded by pointing out places where the script will be difficult to film and dealing with the actors, but also tells her that she should have a better idea of the message she intends her film to carry and be prepared to answer questions about the script from her cast members. But Kiriko says she doesn’t really intend the film to have a message and thinks creating a character is an actor’s job not a director’s. Whenever Takimoto asks her to reconsider something, Kiriko childishly answers that she’ll think about it probably without really intending to.

But her irresponsible behaviour causes problems for others, particularly when she messes up the company car during a bit of unauthorised location hunting, or fails to shut the front door properly allowing her pregnant roommate’s pet cat to escape and thereby sending her into an early labour. It’s only after these series of crises that Kiriko begins to understand that she needs to make amends and be more considerate in future if she wants to continue receiving help and support from those around her. After all, you can’t make a film all on your own.

Ironically enough she describes her film as like a road movie but on foot about people going to the same place over and over again. Even one of her crew members asks her why it is indie filmmakers like to end at the sea hinting at her screenplay being slightly cliché even as she tries to think her way out of the problem. At a particularly low point, she has a vision of the film being taken away from her as her (all male) crew members and Takimoto remark on how useless she is and vow to take over their section from her. She also has an obsession with her horoscope which is usually a little negative further deepening her lack of confidence and general sense of despair. 

“Don’t worry, just believe in yourself and move forward’” one of her horoscope ads advises and it might indeed by good advice for an indie filmmaker. Learning to be a little more considerate of those around her, she begins to benefit from their help and advice rather than rejecting it in her own insecurity. Despite all of the constraints her friend tells her that she should make something authentic, what she actually wants to do rather than cynically doing what seems the most advantageous, but what’s really important is a sense of balance. As Takimoto told her, she needs to learn to prioritise rather than expect to get everything she wants and be realistic about what’s achievable while still aiming for the film she wants to make. 

Then again in the cinema scenes which bookend the film Su implies that the audience weren’t particularly impressed or perhaps confused by her road movie that doesn’t go anywhere. One audience member was so deeply asleep they had to be woken by an usher. Nevertheless, to overcome her problems Kiriko has to take the lead in more ways than one asserting control over her project but also prepared to work with others, listen to their suggestions, and make firm decisions as they inch forward towards their goal. Warm and quirky, Su’s lighthearted dramedy never shies away from the difficulties of indie filmmaking but finally resolves that it is possible to overcome them with a little mutual respect and solidarity between those on the other side of the screen.

Inch Forward screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Faraway Family (彼方の家族, Taro Kawasaki & Eisuke Sakauchi, 2023)

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It may be a truism to say that you never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives, but even if a family looks superficially happy and gives the impression everything is going just perfectly for them that might not actually be the case. The title of Taro Kawasaki & Eisuke Sakauchi’s Faraway Family (彼方の家族, Kanata no Kazoku) has a double meaning in that in the Japanese title can be also read as “Kanata’s Family” which is the name of the hero and also a word meaning “somewhere in the distance” which is in fact how both of the boys feel their fathers to exist. 

Kanata may feel it more closely in that he lost his father in the 2011 tsunami and has never really dealt with the grief having moved to Yamagata with his mother. Kanata’s father also had quite a difficult relationship with his fisherman grandfather who was intent on railroading him to take over the boat and seemingly never had a good word for anyone yet his father lost his life after heading to the harbour to look for him explaining only that he was family. Now the only breadwinner in the family, his mother has to work to support them and is therefore often absent, leaving him money to buy dinner from a convenience store which he usually eats alone. 

Having become withdrawn and fearful of making new relationships that may end suddenly, Kanata also has the added stigma of being someone from Fukushima in the wake of the nuclear disaster. His new teacher, Yoshikazu, makes a well-meaning faux pas in telling Kanata to consider him a father figure yet as it turns out Yoshikazu is a fairly compromised one. On being introduced to his classmate Riku who is also Yoshikazu’s son he thinks he’s had his face rubbed in it with this picture of the perfect family.

But what he discovers is that Riku has many of the same problems as himself seeing as he also fears he does not really fit in his family and wonders if they’d be happier and better off if he weren’t in it. Unlike Riku, Kanata doesn’t seem to be overly burdened by parental expectation and despite the problems between his father and grandfather his early childhood seems to have been happy and filled with love and cheerfulness. His problem is more to do with what he’s lost and the resulting sense of absence it’s left behind as he finds himself eternally missing his father. 

For Riku meanwhile, it’s the connection itself which is painfully absent. The more he tries to connect with Yoshikazu the more it seems to backfire while Yoshikazu seems obsessed with the idea of his getting into Japan’s most prestigious university mostly for his own gratification as double proof of what a great teacher and father he is. Or else, to mask his own sense of inadequacy in that he would feel embarrassed professionally if his own son turned out not to be academically inclined. Riku’s family don’t celebrate birthdays and he can’t ever remember getting a present but when he decides to try and buy one for Yoshikazu it’s a reminder of a happier memory when he simply played with him as a loving father rather than a hard taskmaster driving him on to a vicarious goal as evidence of his controlling nature. 

Kanata seems to have had more than his share of tragedy in life and is painfully aware of the things just our of reach but also increasingly that not all of them are and if you’re not careful you can in fact be the one to push them away. Shooting in the icy snow of a Yamagata winter, Kawasaki and Sakauchi capture the frostiness of the boys’ emotional isolation but also the quickening warmth of their friendship as they bond over their shared loneliness in pining for an absent father. What Kanata learns is to embrace the things that seem somewhere far away for they do at least exist there, even if no longer present in a physical sense, and that the memory of them can be warm and comforting rather than painful or lonely. 

Faraway Family screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Missing (Iti Mapukpukaw, Carl Joseph E. Papa, 2023)

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The title of Carl Joseph E. Papa’s meta animation The Missing (Iti Mapukpukaw) most obviously refers to the hero’s uncle with whom his mother has lost contact, but in a deeper sense refers to the protagonist himself and the various things he too is missing which notably includes his mouth. Shot in a rotoscope style, Eric’s (Carlo Aquino) mouth is literally blurred out as if it had been erased and smoothed over. He can no longer speak but uses a dry erase board to communicate with those around him.

His troubles start just he’s about to go on a sort of date with coworker Carlo (Gio Gahol) which ends with them discovering the body of his uncle who has apparently passed away in a lonely death. It’s it at this point that Eric is plagued by an alien who keeps trying to abduct him claiming that they have unfinished business. Eric later asserts that he’s afraid the alien is trying to take over his body, hinting at a deeper childhood trauma and anxiety over bodily autonomy and intimacy. The alien’s attacks seem intensify as he grows closer to Carlo, frustrating their tentative romance as if it actively trying to obstruct it. 

The alien’s presence leads to what may seem to others like strange or inconsiderate behaviour. He disappears on Carlo, locks him out of his flat, and seemingly drops out of contact for days on end causing him not an inconsiderate degree of worry given he’s just lost his uncle and appears to be in a state of emotional distress. Yet the most surprising thing is even on being told about the alien Carlo decides to just go with it, taking Eric’s explanation at face value and trying to help him evade it for as long as possible. He eventually admits that he can’t see what Eric sees and they aren’t where he thinks they are but otherwise provides a safe and non-judgmental presence that quietly supports him while he battles his internal demons. His mother Linda (Dolly De Leon) does something similar apparently aware of the alien’s existence, but not what lies behind it or what it really might mean.

Just as reality and fantasy begin to blur for Eric, Papa uses the medium to express his mental state as the world seems to literally crumble around him. The alien steals parts of his body and they literally disappear, a missing ear and blurred out eye along with a blankness where his hand should be. When Eric begins to recall his childhood memories, the animation style switches from the sophisticated rotoscoping of the rest of the film to something much simpler echoing a child’s drawings. In these sequences, the face of Eric’s uncle is always scribbled over in black pen echoing his more literal refusal to see and accept the past. He has been literally silenced by his trauma but now finds it banging on the doors of his mind demanding to be let in.

Yet the reason he is able to overcome it is precisely because of the love an acceptance he receives from his mother and Carlo who never question his reality or attempt to break him out of it, instead deciding to join him there and help him in his quest to get rid of the alien that has plagued him since his childhood. Only this way can he begin to reclaim the parts of himself that were missing, digging through the buried past to retrieve what was taken from him and eventually recovering his voice. 

His quest has a gently absurd quality as parts of him suddenly detach themselves and run away, leaving it unclear for much of the film if Eric’s alien is “real” in a more concrete sense or merely a representation of his childhood trauma and very much inspired by logics and aesthetics of a small child who has been forced to keep a secret out of fear and shame and thereby unable to communicate his pain. In the end it’s love that brings him out of it, a gentle, patient and unconditional love that takes him as he is and gives him the space to find his own way out his trauma. Filled with a sense of warmth despite the darkness of its centre Carl Joseph E. Papa’s strangely poignant film for all its talk of aliens and destruction is remarkably human allowing its protagonist to finally begins to recover himself thanks to the loving support of those around him.

The Missing screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

City of Wind (Сэр сэр салхи, Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, 2023)

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Part way through Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s Mongolian drama City of Wind (Сэр сэр салхи), a young woman asks the hero if he’s ever felt as if he were split in two and there’s a part of him sitting somewhere else vaguely unfulfilled. It’s a feeling he might know all too well as he finds himself torn between the traditionalism of his upbringing and the pull towards the shiny consumerism of the modern city even as his school friend chuckles that he can’t wait to leave the country altogether.

The juxtaposition is evident even in the opening sequence as a figure in a shamanistic outfit referred to by others as “Grandpa Spirit” attempts to reassure an elderly man who fears that his time is near and that his son isn’t ready. The figure speaks with the ominously deep voice of an ancient deity while a young woman translates back and fore between a more archaic dialect and modern Mongolian though when the figure removes its headress the face the behind the mask is that of a teenage boy far too young to offer such rich life advice.

Now 17 and about to leave high school, Ze (Tergel Bold-Erdene) is a top student only mocked a little by his classmates over his shamanistic side hustle while clearly a favourite of their ridiculously pompous teacher who is convinced he is a future saviour Mongolia. But despite the traditionalism of his homelife, Ze dreams of living in a fancy appartment in the city and frequently takes trips to wander around the shopping mall gazing at items he could never afford as if infected with an unstoppable consumerist virus. 

The irony is that the girl he fancies wants exactly what he has, a peaceful life in the country and the security of a family home her parents having spilt up and her father living abroad in Korea. He first meets Maralaa (Nomin-Erdene Ariunbyamba) when her mother hires him to do a blessing before she has a risky heart operation. She brands him a conman and he’s hooked. Nevertheless, the more he associates with her the further he travels from steadiness of his spiritual practice. She dyes his hair which raises eyebrows at school and at home, and takes him to nightclubs in the city where the strobe lighting seems to cause him an existential confusion as if parts of himself were blinking in and out. He leaves abruptly and explains that he doesn’t think he should be there, it seems to have upset his spirit.

Little by little be begins to rebel, acting up at school and tempted away from his home but seems genuinely worried by the prospect that his spirit may really have abandoned him and that in crossing a line in his relationship with Maralaa he may have unwittingly made a choice that can’t be reversed. Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir deftly scans the changing nature of Mongolian society in panning over the somewhat rundown area in which Ze lives where yurts are mingled with more modern-looking bungalows and neighbours are treated as members of an extended family. A Soviet-era mural peers down at Maralaa and Ze as they overlook the city with its myriad high rise buildings and discuss their ironically contrasting dreams for past and future respectively.

Ze’s teacher views him as a future CEO who will one day save Mongolia through his economic acumen, though it seems like he may end up rebuilding the nation in a different, perhaps more literal way. Despite his adventures in modernity he comes to understand the value of his gift which lies in his ability to provide comfort to those around him along with a sense of continuity and spirituality that anchors them in their ever changing world. Suburban setting aside, Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir captures a sense of beauty and serenity in the landscape through the snowcapped vistas that lie in front of Ze in the midst of his confusion as a young man torn in two, one looking toward the future with an irrepressible yearning, and the other towards the warmth and reassurance of the past while perhaps like his nation still floundering for balance and direction but always supported by the gentle love of those around him content to let him find his own way back to wherever it is he’s supposed to be.

City of Wind screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

All the Songs We Never Sang (Chris Rudz, 2023)

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A young woman finds herself diving into the past after receiving a less than enthusiastic welcome on visiting her mother’s island home in Chris Rudz’s gentle indie drama, All the Songs We Never Sang. As the title implies, the film is as much about time wasted in bitterness as it is about the surreality of life on a small island where pearl diving is still a dominant force in the local economy.

17-year-old Natsumi (Miru Nagase) has travelled to Kojima in search of her estranged aunt, Reiko (Junko Kano), her mother’s twin sister, only as it turns out Reiko is a strange and embittered woman who is only ever comfortable in the water. She grudgingly allows Natsumi to stay but only to avoid further island gossip and is unconvinced by her desire to become a pearl diver like her ancestors. As far as we can see, Reiko is one of a handful of divers left on the island and the other two are approaching old age. In fact, there don’t seem to be a lot of other young people around except for Shijo (Kai Hoshino Sandy), an eccentric boat operator and aspiring rapper with a nascent crush on Natsumi. Nevertheless, people on the island mainly remember her mother Akiko as the one who ran off with a fisherman and was never seen again.

Though the older pearl divers are kind to her, not everyone is happy to see an outsider visit and most especially rookie policewoman Yuka (Aoi Shono) who according to some has been given grandiose ideas thanks to going to university on the mainland. She is suspicious of everyone and hungry to uncover some kind of major crime, quickly coming up with an unlikely yakuza invasion as a possible explanation for a missing boat despite the fact that its owner is known to be fond of a drink or two and may simply have neglected to tie it up properly. A patient superior, Sarge (Pierre Taki), tries to explain the nature of small community policing to her that she should integrate more with the people of the island so she can tell when something’s not right and know best how to help. But her zeal for preventing crime eventually leads to accidental cruelty in bluntly divulging upsetting news, smugly proud of her successful bust without reflecting on its implications or the necessary hurt caused by an improper application of her authority as a police officer.

In a way it’s this kind of insensitivity that lies at the centre of the film as it becomes clear that Rieko has wasted the last 18 years of her life in bitterness unable to get over an act of emotional betrayal. She’s sworn off music, which she once loved, and often retreats to her bathroom to plunge herself into the water only really at peace when she’s diving. Looking for a treasure her mother supposedly left for her, Natsumi is diving too, reaching into the past while trying to figure out why her mother and Rieko became estranged and looking for a sense of home and family she feels she’s lost.

That might be the real treasure that her mother left for her even if she has to go diving for it and will need some help to bring it to the surface. In some ways a typical “island movie” about a slightly strange place more or less cut off from time, Rudz hints at a sense of despair in living somewhere there is not much else to do than drink and sing but otherwise captures the warmth of the community most of whom are very welcoming of eccentrics and outsiders even if somewhat prone to gossip for a lack of other entertainment. Through the process of their reconnection, old wounds begin to heal and a kind of peace is found with the past which is in many ways filled with “mermaid’s tears” more than pearls of joy. Still there’s a kind of lament for the songs unsung because of hurt and bitterness, and for the lost love and opportunities that went with them that has its own sense of poignancy tempered by the infinite possibilities of making up for lost time amid the gentle island atmosphere.

All the Songs We Never Sang screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

A Weather Report (胴鳴り, Yu Kajino, 2024)

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A successful television writer is confronted with the mistakes of his past when the teenage daughter he abandoned before birth suddenly tracks him down in Yu Kajino’s indie drama, A Weather Report (胴鳴り, Donari). The film does indeed feature several storms of the more literal kind, but dances around the fallout of the writer’s unexpected reconnection along with his ongoing inability understand himself or the nature of his relationships.

This is in a sense ironic, as Omori’s (Ryuta Furuya) big hit show Cliffs of Love is a poignant romantic drama about two people who are too shy to reveal their feelings openly and consequently can only behave in ways which seem bizarre. Omori later has a similar moment to the lovers from the show when he attempts to take his relationship with casual girlfriend Satsuki further only to find her on a completely different page and explaining to him that they are both people who don’t know how to love or be loved so they were never really destined to be together for the long term. 

Even so, the man we see now, if perhaps a bit of a sleaze, does not really seem like the “human shit” his former partner Mayumi describes him to be. It’s difficult to know what brought the relationship to an end with such apparent recrimination, though the reappearance of his daughter Hikari confronts him with the possibly questionable decision he made to stay out of her life having been told by Mayumi that she intended to raise the child alone and didn’t need his input. He abandoned her with a sense of relief born of parental anxiety, yet now begins to act like a father protecting and nurturing her after she comes all the way from Niigata on the train to find him having fallen out with her mother who has taken up with a smarmy business man, Numata. 

Hikari later ironically remarks that she was never really interested in her mother until they were separated and is getting to know other sides of her thanks to talking to others that knew her. In another way, it might have been the reverse with her father who was otherwise absent from her life leading her to create her own image of him which meeting threatens to shatter. Omori dreams of attending a theme park with his now teenage daughter who is clearly too old for such things, only to suddenly realise she wasn’t with him any more and feel unexpectedly anxious for her. 

It seems that Hikari was hoping he’d be able to do something to oppose her mother’s relationship with Numata though for obvious reasons he is reluctant to do so, politely listening to Numata’s conservative political ranting without saying a word. She sees them float up like ghosts in a hotel corridor and is somehow haunted by their presence though she says she doesn’t mind her mother dating only taking a personal dislike to Numata who was a frequent customer at the bar her mother ran. As for Mayumi herself she too seems to struggle with loving and being loved, still incredibly angry with Omori all these years later while otherwise drinking heavily and playing Momoe Yamaguchi’s Last Song For You on repeat.

In any case, though the unexpected reconnection with her father may strain the relationship she has with her mother it eventually seems to give her a new kind of strength and maturity even as she contends with a self-centred boyfriend who simply rides off on his bike when she challenges him about sleeping with her friend and tries to adjust to the ironic role reversal of her mum moving on by getting a boyfriend leaving her largely home alone. Omori continues to narrate his life while researching his next drama and getting suckered by the bizarre claims of a potential subject just as he begins to interrogate himself and the regret and failures of his life. Set in picturesque Niigata with the fabulous home in which Hikari and her mother live surrounded by the nature, the film has an elemental quality in which a change in the weather can signal calamity or liberation but also a sense of peace amid the serenity of unexpected reconnections.

A Weather Report screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Momoe Yamaguchi – Sayonara no Mukougawa (Last Song for You)

Swimming in a Sand Pool (水深ゼロメートルから, Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2024)

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As the film’s title implies, the teenage girls at the centre of Swimming in a Sand Pool (水深ゼロメートルから, Suishin Zero Meter Kara) each find themselves pushing forward but meeting with resistance in Nobuhiro Yamashita’s deadpan teen comedy. Inspired by a high school play, the drama has a timely quality as each of the girls reconsiders what it means to be a woman while simultaneously insisting that gender doesn’t matter. In this case, however, it seems to matter a great deal as they’re forced into the “meaningless” and Sisyphean task of sweeping their swimming pool free of the sand that drifts over from the boys’ baseball game.  

As one of the girls, Chizuru (Mikuri Kiyota), suggests, the boys probably don’t realise (or care) how their actions are inconveniencing them. It’s the middle of summer and the pool is supposed to be undergoing maintenance in August which makes this pointless task seem even more absurd yet after trying to complain to their equally frustrated teacher Yamamoto they’re told they’ve got an attitude problem and it’s only “meaningless” because they’ve decided so in heir heads. As an adult woman, you’d think Yamamoto would have more sympathy or at least some kind of advice for the girls but only seems to want to drum mindless obedience into them, insistent that if she’s told them to do something then it must in fact have meaning. At the end of her tether she snaps that perhaps she doesn’t really like having to conform to the idea of what a teacher should be either, but seems clear that one must do it anyway. Still when a friend from home expresses surprise she’s staying in town over the summer to supervise students, Yamamoto bristles when she remarks that she now seems very like a teacher and is later seen having a covert smoke round the back of the school. 

Obsessed with rules and conformity, one of the chief reasons she’s disliked by the girls is a sense of treachery in having made one, Kokoro (Saki Hamao), humiliate herself by forcing her to participate in a swimming lesson while menstruating. Yamamoto complains that she didn’t ask for an exemption via the appropriate protocols, adding that some girls use it as an “excuse” for getting out of things. Repeatedly the girls accuse each other of using their gender to make excuses for themselves in backing down in front of the boys or allowing themselves to be constrained by social ideas of femininity. Gender is indeed something they seem to think about and dwell on, Kokoro constantly insecure in her appearance while insisting that a girl must be cute in order to count and this is the way she strives for equality with men while simultaneously insisting that gender equality is a myth.

For Miku (Reina Nakayoshi), meanwhile, the opposite maybe true in that she dances the male version of the local folk dance and has done since she was little though now wears a chest binder while she does. Miku seems hurt by Kokoro’s picking at her, eventually walking off and bumping into another girls, Rika, whom it appears she may have a crush on and is a sort of rival of Kokoro’s having beaten her to become manager of the boys’ baseball team. Another girl, Yui, seems to have a similar admiration for swimmer Chizuru but is frustrated by her having experienced a moment of existential crisis being beaten in a race by baseball team star Kusonoki with whom most of the other girls are in love.

What’s true, however, is that none of the girls can do much of anything while desperately trying to sweep up all the dust the boys chucked at them so they can get their pool back and finally swim again. “Don’t take high school girls lightly,” one insists, while another decides to make a “declaration of war” but only seems to elicit snickers from the boys. Nevertheless, through their time shovelling the sand, the girls seem to have come to their own conclusions about the role of gender in their lives and generally discovered a new kind of liberation both from their own self-imposed ideas and the sometimes repressive nature of education that reinforces them. A charming teenage summer comedy, Yamashita nevertheless captures an inspiring sense of rebellion from the students who will no longer be bound by outdated notions of what everyone else tells them they should be.

Swimming in a Sand Pool screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Wash Away (うぉっしゅ, Ikunosuke Okazaki, 2024)

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A disconnected young woman begins to rediscover herself while caring for her ageing grandmother who is largely bedridden and has advanced dementia in Ikunosuke Okazaki’s lighthearted indie drama, Wash Away (うぉっしゅ, Wash). In a sense, the heroine is attempting to wash away loneliness but is ironically unable to scrub away her own while filled with a sense of shame and aimlessness in the city working at a soapland and dreaming of a career in real estate.

Soaplands are are legalised form of sex work in which generally male customers can pay pretty young women to give them a wash. Kana has been working at one for some time under the shop name Koyuki and has made a nice life for herself with a swanky apartment but has avoided returning to visit her family and has led them to believe she’s an estate agent. Despite having a maid visit three times a week, her flat is strewn with rubbish and empty fast food containers which hint at her inability to look after herself along with a sense of internalised shame. She looks to her housekeeper, Mrs Natori, as a kind of surrogate mother and is forever giving her expensive gifts and inviting her to stay for dinner in an attempt to circumvent the loneliness she feels in the false connections of her work in which the customers either become over invested in her Koyuki persona or completely forget her once the appointment is over.

As Mrs Natori later points out, it was Kana herself who had largely forgotten about her grandmother Kie whom she had not seen in at least eight years. When her mother, Sanae, has to be hospitalised for a hip operation she asks Kana to watch Kie during the day to which she reluctantly agrees. Despite not having had any recent contact with her, Kana is still disappointed when Kie cheerfully introduces herself on her arrival as if they were complete strangers meeting for the first time, something she continues to do each day that Kana arrives at the house. The irony is that part of Kana’s job is to wash her grandmother in the same way as she washes customers at the soapload though she encounters the same kind of frustrated connection unable to get through to Kie who is lost in time and often incredibly anxious that she’s late for some kind of event where everyone is waiting for her. 

Though she approaches the responsibility seriously, the truth is that Kana is fed up after the first few setbacks and decides to subcontract her care responsibilities by outsourcing to a professional carer telling herself that her grandmother would probably prefer that anyway. Her friend Sumire seems disappointed in her, remarking that perhaps Kie is in a way lucky to get to experience so many things for the first time again and meet the world with a sense of childish wonder such as in her fascination with colourful plastic balls. In an odd way, caring for her grandmother encourages to Kana to start caring for herself, gaining the confidence to speak honestly with someone she assumes won’t remember anything she says but reassured by Kie’s surprising outburst that work is work and she’s no need to feel ashamed of herself if she approaches it with pride whatever her occupation might be. 

This simple act of interest begins to reawaken something in both of them, Kie’s memory and energy seeming to improve in the light of Kana’s determination that she won’t be forgotten much as she hopes she won’t be either in a constant search for connection. Though she may have thought her grandmother had forgotten her, that she was in a sense invisible and faceless to the customers who bought her services, Kana washes away her misconceptions and learns to see herself again in repurposing her work as an act of care. Okazaki lends the world around her an off kilter quirkiness that is at odds with the despair Kana feels and while never shying away from the difficulties of caring for someone with advanced dementia allows the two women to recover both something of themselves and each other through the simple act of reconnection.

Wash Away screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)