Villain (Akunin). 2010. Directed by Lee Sang-il. Written by Shuichi Yoshida and Lee Sang-il, based on the novel by Shuichi Yoshida. Produced by Tomoyo Nihira and Genki Kawamura. Cinematography by Norimichi Kasamatsu. Edited by Tsuyoshi Imai. Music by Joe Hisaishi. Production design by Yohei Taneda. Costume design by Kumiko Ogawa. Sound by Mitsugu Shiratori.
Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki (Yuichi Shimizu), Eri Fukatsu (Mitsuyo Magome), Masaki Okada (Keigo Masuo), Hikari Mitsushima (Yoshino Ishibashi), Kirin Kiki (Yuichi's grandmother), Akira Emoto (Yoshino's father), Kimiko Yo (Yuichi's mother).
One of my favorite recent Japanese films is the complex crime drama/lovers-on-the-run story Villain, screening as part of Japan Society’s film series “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at the 2010 Busan International Film Festival.
The finest film to date from Japanese-Korean director Lee Sang-il (69, Scrap Heaven, Hula Girls) is this tale of murder (based on a novel by Shuichi Yoshida, who also penned the screenplay) rendered in complex shades of gray. Villain gains its tremendous power from both its excellent performances (not only by the leads Satoshi Tsumabuki and Eri Fukatsu, but the stellar supporting cast), and its intriguingly ambiguous scenario, which challenges easy moral and character judgments. The “villain” of the title would at first appear to be Yuichi (Tsumabuki), who commits murder during one terrible night in a fit of rage. But as the circumstances of the night are slowly teased out during the course of the film, and the context surrounding the murder is gradually revealed, we come to learn than Yuichi isn’t the only one worthy of being tagged with that titular appellation. Two other possible candidates are the flighty, superficial Yoshino (Hikari Mitsushima), whom Yuichi pines for initially, but who herself pursues the rich playboy Masuo (Masaki Okada), who is contemptuous of anyone he considers beneath his station. All three of them figure into the murder at the center of the story. Yuichi is eventually forced to go on the lam, where he encounters Mitsuyo (Fukatsu), a shy and lonely woman who impulsively joins this fugitive, determined at all costs to see the goodness that exists at Yuichi’s core, convinced that his act of murder is not in his nature, but forced upon him by circumstance. The film itself appears to endorse Mitsuyo’s point of view, until an occurrence very close to the end seems to turn that completely on its head. Lee Sang-il throughout demonstrates an assured, compelling command of visuals and narrative flow, staging the chaotic maelstrom of events with a masterful hand. Fukatsu won a well-deserved best-actress prize at the Montreal World Festival; her performance is extraordinary, and her role proves to be the film’s most crucial one.
Villain screens at Japan Society on March 9 at 7:30. Click here to purchase tickets.
Vital. 2004. Written, directed, edited, photographed and production designed by Shinya Tsukamoto. Produced by Shinya Tsukamoto, Keiko Kusakabe, Koichi Kusakabe, and Shinichi Kawahara. Music by Chu Ishikawa. Sound by Yoshiya Obara. Special makeup effects by Takashi Oda.
Shinya Tsukamoto’s beautiful film Vital (2004), one of the great highlights of Japan Society’s film series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” continues his filmic exploration of the human body. Several of his other films (the cult classic Tetsuo the Iron Manand its twosequels,Tokyo Fist, Gemini, Bullet Ballet, A Snake of June[also screening in the series]) focus obsessively on the materiality of the body, and specifically on the various ways it can be smashed, violated, and exposed. However, in Vital, Tsukamoto goes deeper, literally, digging into the mysteries of human consciousness and what constitutes life.
Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano), a medical student, wakes up from a coma, caused by a traffic accident in which his girlfriend Ryoko (Nami Tsukamoto) perished. Hiroshi, described by Tsukamoto as a “modern-day Leonardo da Vinci,” returns to his anatomy studies, making detailed drawings of his dissections. Meanwhile, he struggles to piece together his memory, which was severely damaged by the accident. Asano, who is often quiet and nearly somnambulistic during much of this film, maintains a quietly brooding presence, which draws us into his character’s travels through his consciousness, gradually revealing more details of his life and his relationship with Ryoko before the accident. Through the crucial clue of a cadaver’s tattoo, Hiroshi comes to realize, in the film’s most perverse twist, that the body he is dissecting in his anatomy course is in fact that of his dead girlfriend. Ryoko, whom it seems nursed a desire for death, requested that her body be entrusted to the medical school for the students’ use.
Tsukamoto bathes his film in an icy blue palette and exhibits a striking sense of architecture and space, which is quite effective in exploring the contrasting spiritual realms his protagonist explores. During the time he is dissecting Ryoko’s corpse, he experiences frequent visitations from her, and in this way, he travels between the worlds of the living and the dead. When Ryoko was alive, they often flirted with this boundary through their kinky sex games of erotic asphyxiation. Hiroshi existed in the area between life and death during his coma, and ultimately he must choose whether he wants to be with Ryoko in her world, or remain in the world of the living.
Even though there is more than a hint of necrophilia in this scenario, Vital is remarkably free of exploitative elements and is quite restrained in its approach. There are many memorable and arresting images, such as superimposed cremation smokestacks, and the scenes of Ryoko’s visitations, especially one where she performs an anguished dance on a beach. One of the most moving passages in the film is the combined funeral and med-student graduation, where there is a deep respect expressed for the sacrifices the medical subjects and their families have made in the quest to expand human knowledge. “We owe them thanks,” the anatomy class professor intones before the students begin dissecting. And even though the essential question of the path Hiroshi ultimately chooses remains unresolved at the film’s conclusion, this is well in keeping with the deeper mystery the film poses of what constitutes human consciousness, a mystery which we are nowhere close to solving.
Vitalscreens at Japan Society on Saturday, March 3 at 7pm as part of its film series “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” an impressive selection of provocative films featuring twisted, obsessive, and extreme love stories from both Japan and Korea. Several celebrated auteurs are represented here; besides Tsukamoto (whose latest film KOTOKOopens the series), the series offers films by Koji Wakamatsu (his latest film Petrel Hotel Blueand two earlier films from the 60s and 70s), Hong Sangsoo (Tale of Cinema), Kim Ki-duk (Bad Guy, Dream, Time), Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses), and Lee Chang-dong (Oasis). Click here for more information on the series and to purchase tickets.
Cast Me If You Can (Wakiyaku monogatari). 2010. Directed by Atsushi Ogata. Written by Atsushi Ogata and Akane Shiratori. Produced by Atsushi Ogata, Eric Nyari and Eriko Miyagawa. Cinematography by Yuichi Nagata. Edited by Masahiro Onaga. Music by Jessica de Rooij. Art direction by Kazumi Kobayashi. Sound design by Yasushi Eguchi.
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)
The Japanese title of Atsushi Ogata’s romantic comedy Cast Me If you Can is “Wakiyaku Monogatari,” which translates as “Tale of the Supporting Actor.” The supporting actor in this particular tale, and the main character in this story, is Hiroshi Matsuzaki (Toru Masuoka), a long-time bit player currently playing a cop on a TV drama. He harbors dreams of finally becoming a leading man, and seems close to that opportunity, having been cast as the lead in a Woody Allen remake. He is very good at disappearing into his roles; in fact, he is so good at this that this ability bleeds into his real life, to the point that he is continually mistaken for other people, a running gag that this film makes potent and funny use of. His struggle to assert his own identity is made even more difficult by having to live under the shadow of his father Kenta (Masahiko Tsugawa), a famous playwright. One case of mistaken identity gets Hiroshi embroiled in a tabloid scandal that threatens his big role, and with the help his friend and wannabe spy Masaru (Tasuku Emoto), he sets out to clear his name. In the midst of this chaos, Hiroshi meets Aya (Hiromi Nagasaku), an aspiring actress; while they begin a tentative courtship, Hiroshi’s identity issues and many other distractions threaten their budding relationship.
With Cast Me If You Can, Ogata attempts a mode of filmmaking which is quite unusual in a Japanese context: an American-style romantic comedy. He employs much more subtle humor than the typical zany, variety-show style slapstick which is more common in Japanese comedies. Instead, Ogata grounds his humor in dialog and situations in which he both honors and tweaks romantic comedy formula, which make the humor that much more potent. One great example is late in the film, in which Hiroshi delivers his passionate confession to Aya in the convenience store where she works; while fulfilling its normal function in this sort of film, the location of the scene, as well as its priceless punchline, also cleverly parodies this often clichéd convention. The films of Woody Allen are an explicitly acknowledged influence, not only in the narrative but in several walk-and-talk camera setups. But similarly to the way Ogata handles the romantic comedy genre, this doesn’t at all feel derivative, but is instead nicely woven into the rich fabric of this film. Also remarkable is how exportable and cross-cultural the comedy is here (consciously so; Ogata originally wrote his script in English and translated it to Japanese), and the generosity with which all the characters are treated, which filters down into the smallest roles. The main characters are all surrounded with vivid supporting ones, all of whom make memorable impressions, from Hiroshi’s dwarf-like agent and a flirtatious female arresting officer, to a parallel romance involving a café waitress that plays out in pantomime in the background.
As with any romantic comedy, the success of such an endeavor rises and falls on the chemistry between its leads, and Cast Me If You Can certainly scores here. Toru Masuoka is nicely understated as the hapless victim of mistaken identity, and effectively renders his character’s transformation as love is introduced into his life. But the major standout is Hiromi Nagasaku, who is terrific as a plucky and energetic young woman who is relentless in the pursuit of her dreams, and who lights up every scene she is in with her warm, and irresistibly sunny persona.
Cast Me If You Can is now available on DVD from Seminal Films, and can be purchased at Amazon.
Also, if you're in the L.A. area, there will be a screening and Q&A with director Atsushi Ogata and producer Eriko Miyagawa on March 1, hosted by USC and the Japan Film Society. Click here for screening info.
Haru's Journey (Haru to no tabi). 2010. Written and directed by Masahiro Kobayashi. Produced by Muneyuki Kii and Naoko Kobayashi. Cinematography by Masamichi Uwabo. Edited by Naoki Kaneko. Music by Junpei Sakuma. Production design by Jun'ya Kawase. Costume design by Masae Miyamoto. Sound by Shin Fukuda.
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai (Tadao Nakai), Eri Tokunaga (Haru), Hideji Otaki (Shigeo), Kin Sugai (Keiko), Kaoru Kobayashi (Kinoshita), Yuko Tanaka (Aiko Shimizu), Chikage Awashima (Shigeko), Akira Emoto (Michio), Jun Miho (Akiko), Naho Toda (Nobuko), Teriyuki Kagawa (Shinichi).
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on VCinema.)
The masterful performance by legendary actor Tatsuya Nakadai is the most obvious central attraction of Haru’s Journey, the latest film by Masahiro Kobayashi.Nakadai plays Tadao, an ornery, cantankerous character close to the end of his life, who despite his age is as impulsive, foolish, and self-centered as any typical adolescent, a fact that is remarked on by other characters in the film.In the nearly wordless opening sequence, Tadao is furiously leaving his home, followed closely on his heels by his granddaughter Haru (Eri Tokunaga), who tries to keep him from leaving.Taking great offense to Haru’s expression of dissatisfaction with their home life – she has been taking care of Tadao by herself in the years following her mother’s suicide – Tadao sets out to look for his long lost siblings, in the hopes that one of them will take him in.Tadao, as portrayed by Nakadai, is a complex character: a man with many faults, a selfish man who has hurt nearly everyone around him, yet is not entirely unsympathetic.Nakadai brilliantly portrays the multifaceted nature of Tadao – the charm and humor that attracts others to him, as well as the many negative qualities that just as strongly repel them.
Haru’s Journey is essentially a road movie, one that begins in Hokkaido (the usual setting of Kobayashi’s films), and winds its way through the towns of Japan’s northern region, as Tadao and Haru visit his siblings, and are summarily rejected by them for various reasons, mostly dealing with the long family history that is gradually revealed in the course of their trip.Kobayashi recasts Ozu’s Tokyo Storyin a sense; his film similarly involves a search for familial shelter on the part of its protagonist.But while Tokyo Story concerned itself with intergenerational conflict, Haru’s Journey is more about conflicts within the same generation; Tadao’s siblings are still very angry with Tadao because of the selfish ways they were treated by him in the past and, in some cases, bitterly gleeful over his now humbled status as an impoverished supplicant.
Significantly, even though Tadao is the character we initially focus on, the film is not titled Tadao’s Journey.This is because the true evolution of character occurs within Tadao’s granddaughter Haru, who comes to learn more about him during their trip, and also because she is the catalyst for all that happens.A quietly wrenching scene occurs late in the film, when Haru confronts her estranged father (Teruyuki Kagawa) and demands answers to why he left her mother, an act Haru believes precipitated her mother’s suicide.
On the surface, Haru’s Journey seems to be much more conventional than Kobayashi’s previous austere, formally rigorous works such as Bashingand The Rebirth.However, his new film represents an intriguing marriage of potentially sentimental and melodramatic material with an aesthetic style that pulls back from overheated emotion.Kobayashi makes frequent use of long shots showing the forbidding landscapes he places his characters in, creating a distancing effect that is penetratingly observational.His detached stance toward the characters and events serve to make the more emotional and conventionally dramatic scenes stronger than they would be without the countervailing elements he places around them.Kobayashi makes full use of the talents of Tatsuya Nakadai, as well as the iconic presence he brings to this film, along with his association with such Japanese masters as Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, Kon Ichikawa, Masaki Kobayashi (no relation to Masahiro), Hideo Gosha, and others.Kobayashi, however, doesn’t allow Nakadai’s legendary status to overwhelm his film, and allows generous space for visual schemes and fruitful interactions with the other characters.Nakadai, with the aid of Kobayashi’s sharp, tough screenplay, never plays to audience sympathies, retaining his character’s hard edges and uncompromising stubbornness.Eri Tokunaga is a subtly powerful presence as Nakadai’s foil, and while she may initially seem to be overshadowed by her veteran co-star, her steadfast and steady presence, as well as the emotional journey her character takes, makes an ever greater impression as the film progresses.
Deeply humanistic yet unsentimental, harshly rendered yet beautiful, Haru’s Journey both draws inspiration from and subtly critiques the sentiments of classic Japanese cinema, and proves, once again, that Masahiro Kobayashi is more than worthy to stand alongside the master filmmakers who created those earlier works.Haru’s Journey, which deals with loss and survival among its themes, gains rather tragic resonance by events outside the film; it was shot in some areas that were devastated by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.Appropriately, 50% of the ticket sales from its screening at Japan Society will be donated to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.
Love and Loathing and Lulu and Ayano (Namae no nai onnatachi). 2010. Directed by Hisayasu Sato. Written by Naoko Nishida, based on the book "Women Without Names" by Atsuhiko Nakamura. Produced by Ryoji Kobayashi and Koichi Kusakabe. Cinematography by Kazuhiro Suzuki. Edited by Hiromitsu Yamanaka. Music by Jun Kawabata. Production design and art direction by Kaori Haga. Sound by Ataru Ueda.
Cast: Norie Yasui, Mayu Sakuma, Makiko Watanabe, Ini Kusano, Hirofumi Arai, Aya Kiguchi, Yuji Tajiri.
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on VCinema.)
This year’s New York Asian Film Festival and Japan Cuts festival is graced by new films by two of the “Kings of Pink,” directors who made their name in “pink films,” softcore Japanese sex films. One is Takahisa Zeze’s Heaven’s Story, a sprawling 4½ hour examination of the aftermath of two murders which leaves the pink genre altogether, brimming with passion and ambition. The other is Hisayasu Sato’s Love and Loathing and Lulu and Ayano, which is somewhat more connected to his sex-film roots, since it is set in the porn film industry. Sato’s film is a hard-as-nails examination of this industry, based on Atsuhiko Nakamura’s nonfiction book Women Without Names, a collection of interviews with porn actresses. Accompanied by vertiginous images of Tokyo’s streetscapes, and often peering into puddles and gutters, the film is a quietly disturbing look at how personas are given and created, and how they can be simultaneously liberating and imprisoning. Love and Loathing and Lulu and Ayano is a porn Pygmalion, in which sleazy recruiters and promoters exploit women and trade them as commodities for entertainment value. The women are very much aware of this, but they manage to derive some emotional value from this work and try to navigate through this sordid world and to find some personal space and freedom within it.
Mousy office girl Junko (Norie Yasui) has long been dominated by her sexually profligate mother (Makiko Watanabe), and is a withdrawn, shy presence at her office-drone job. She finds very unlikely liberation from this restricted existence by a porn promoter whom she encounters on the street, who asks her the key question that opens her up to a new world: “Wouldn’t it be fun if you could become someone else?” This someone else, suggested by the director of her first porn shoot, is a blue-haired, sailor suit wearing otaku character named Lulu. She takes to the work very quickly, reveling in the double life she leads and her secret satisfaction that she is not the worthless person her mother thinks she is; strangers watch her, desire her, and send her fan letters. Lulu has a rival in Ayano (Mayu Sakuma), a violent woman who immediately resents Lulu’s meek demeanor and naïveté; however, Ayano eventually warms to Lulu and comes to be protective of her. The stardom Lulu has gained from being in porn also brings its dangers, most pertinently in the form of an overweight otaku (Ini Kusano) who sends Lulu her first fan letter, along with many more, and begins stalking her. Lulu’s predatory promoter takes advantage of Lulu’s willingness to do anything on screen to steer her toward ever more physically dangerous, even life threatening, video shoots. All these situations threaten to completely implode Lulu’s existence.
Love and Loathing and Lulu and Ayano is a sort of a meta-porn, a film that deconstructs the makings of this sort of film, utilizing a plot which could be that of a porn film itself. The repressed woman’s awakening to her hidden sexual nature is a perennial plot of porn and many forms of erotic art. The film is anchored by two fine and convincing performances by Yasui and Sakuma, portraying the newbie and the veteran who both find their own ways of escape from, or at least freedom within, their prisons. Sato explores it all with a hard-edged, unsentimental eye, a nonjudgmental and non-stereotypical stance that makes this a film (mostly) not for titillation, and insistent of the dignity of its characters, and by extension, the real women who work in the sex-film industry. Alternating between steely near-monochrome and lurid color (especially in a very violent and bloody scene near the conclusion), Sato’s film departs from the more extreme imagery and subject matter of his previous work (which depicted bestiality, rape, and most notoriously, self-cannibalism) to deliver an emotionally and psychologically penetrating film.
Ringing in Their Ears (Gekijouban Shinsei Kamattechan: Rokkun roru wa nari tomaranai). 2011. Written, directed and edited by Yu Irie. Cinematography by Kazuhiro Mimura. Music by Shoji Ikenaga. Art direction by Naoko Hara. Sound by Osamu Shimizu.
(Note: This review has been cross-posted on VCinema.)
Yu Irie’s last two films, 8000 Milesand 8000 Miles 2, detailed the travails of aspiring Japanese underground hip-hop artists.With his latest, Ringing in Their Ears, Yu shifts to a rock milieu, an expansion of focus, and a leap of structural ambition, offering an Altmanesque multi-character narrative centering on Shinsei Kamattechan, a real-life rock band whose members play themselves.The narrative is driven by a musical ticking time bomb, counting down to an upcoming performance by the band; there is a bit of suspense concerning whether Noko, the band’s mercurial, reclusive lead singer, will even show up for the gig.As with many other details, this reflects reality outside the film; Noko assiduously avoids the press and refuses to participate in band interviews.The narrative strand directly involving the band finds the group at a turning point in their career, having signed to a major label after gaining a large following on the internet.Again, this has a real-life parallel; Shinsei Kamattechan was signed to Warner Music Japan last year after building their following with surreal homemade videos on You Tube, and a successful indie album release.In the film, the band faces the perennial dilemma that comes from being on the verge of mainstream stardom: whether to “sell out” by making a bid for broad audience appeal, or remaining true to the essence of what attracted their fans in the first place, even if this retards their progress in conventional career terms.This choice is presented to the band’s manager by an arrogant, bullying record company executive, who wants the band to change its image and rewrite one of their songs as a positive anthem to encourage hikikomori(pathological social shut-ins) to emerge from their rooms.The manager, almost certain the band won’t go for it, gingerly, and reluctantly, tries to bring up the subject with the group.
While the band prepares for its show, we are taken into the lives of other characters whose crises orbit the group, and who are all connected with this music in some way.Kaori (Kurumi Morishita), an office cleaning lady by day and an exotic dancer by night, is also a harried single mother driven to distraction by dealing with her son Ryota (Tatsuya Sakamoto), who won’t let go of the laptop given him by his estranged dad, and who horrifies his teachers by leading his kindergarten classmates in choruses of very morbid Shinsei Kamattechan lyrics.Kaori wants to take the night off from the club to see the band in concert, but her boss gives her a hard time, threatening to replace her with younger girls.Meanwhile, high-school girl Michiko (Fumi Nikaido) obsessively pursues her dream of becoming a shogi(Japanese chess) champion, which drives a wedge between herself and everyone around her, including her father – who increasingly resents her rebelliousness and who Michiko blames for turning her brother into a hikikomori – and her cheating boyfriend, who gives her a CD of the band’s music to listen to.
The film shuttles back and forth between the band and the parallel storylines, building to a crescendo with an impressively edited final sequence on the day of the show, in which all the narrative lines converge into an ecstatic explosion affirming the power of rock and roll, and most especially the passionate and idiosyncratic brand that Shinsei Kamattechan practices.Their music is a vessel that allows their fans to express their hidden feelings and desires, allowing them to experience epiphanies and to break out of prisons both self-imposed and created by society.
Irie gets major points for ambition and well-drawn characters, but the grand statement he is clearly going for remains elusive, since his style of filmmaking rarely rises above the functional.One hopes for more of a transcendent feeling from this film, for more poetry and less prose.Still, Ringing in Their Ears nicely captures the power of a song, and the myriad ways it can hit listeners in the deepest and most personal places.
Horny House of Horror (Fasshon heru). 2010. Written and directed by Jun Tsugita. Produced by Hideomi Nagahama and Shin Hayasaka. Cinematography by Shin Hayasaka. Edited by Katsutoshi Usa and Jun Tsugita. Music by Piranha Orchestra. Art direction by Ryuji Hayakawa.
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on VCinema.)
Jun Tsugita’s pink film/horror hybrid Horny House of Horror goes all Grand Guignol on us with its absurdly copious amounts of blood, which sprays with frequency and gleeful abandon. As such, the film makes full use of the talents of gore effects master Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police) to relate its tale of three hapless friends who fall into the clutches of the titular trap for randy male customers. There is a soupcon of social commentary here, mostly dealing with the euphemistic nature of the sort of sex parlor that the film satirizes; as the animated opening tells us, these happy-ending massage emporiums are called “fashion health” centers to get around Japan’s anti-prostitution laws. The film’s Japanese title, Fashion Hell, is a play on words: “hell”/”health.” The purpose of this down-and-dirty, quickie exploitation flick (albeit given a 21st century digital sheen), is fairly straightforward: to titillate with its abundant female flesh, and to keep us in awe at how creatively flesh can rend and tear on screen. As a horror film, it’s not really all that horrifying: there’s too much of a jocular air for that. Much of the carnage is directed toward the vulnerable male member, the special target of the homicidal sex workers of the massage parlor.
The three victims are friends and amateur baseball players Nakazu (Yuya Ishikawa), Toshida (Wani Kansai), and Uno (Toushi Yanagi). Nakazu has recently gotten married, and his friends incessantly rib him because of the cell-phone based short leash his wife keeps him on. He professes to be a loyal and devoted husband, yet he doesn’t argue too strenuously when his friends drag him to Shogun, the massage parlor that will in short order become an insane charnel house of atrocity. The three are matched up with Nagisa (Saori Hara), Nonoko (Asami), and Kaori (Mint Suzuki), the three girls of the house. The pre-credits sequence shows Nagisa in action with another unfortunate client, who is subjected to a variation of sushi roll dining involving the man’s penis. Think a variation of the denouement of In the Realm of the Senses(1976), but placed at the very beginning. The three women are tasked with collecting the penises of their clients by their boss who monitors them through closed-circuit TV surveillance, for a reason that is never specified. Much like Nakazu, who is slightly less of a pervert than his friends, Nagisa, the newbie sex worker, manages to retain the conscience and revulsion toward her work that her co-workers completely lack. As the men very quickly cotton to the horrible predicament they have gotten themselves into, Nagisa switches sides and battles to escape from her workplace/prison.
The playing is as broad here as one would expect; Shakespearean-caliber performances are definitely not called for. Hara, however, whose background is in hardcore pornography, gives some unexpected gravity to her character. Asami, a veritable veteran of these kinds of films by now, is the force-of-nature spitfire she usually is, her tough-girl pose and her guttural screaming always fun to watch. Tsugita, the screenwriter of Mutant Girls Squad(2010) making his directorial debut, delivers the sex-and-gore goods with maximum efficiency and minimum fuss.
A midnight movie if there ever was one, Horny House of Horror screens at exactly that time on July 1 (with a second screening on July 12 at 10:15pm), preceded by Makooto Ohtake’s short film Dark on Dark. For tickets, visit the New York Asian Film Festival or the Film Society of Lincoln Center websites.
Sabu made his first trip to New York to attend the first three days of his Japan Society retrospective "Run, Salaryman, Run," which continues until February 5. Below are video of his introductions and Q&A sessions for the screenings of Monday and Non-Stop (aka Dangan Runner).
And here's Yasu Inoue's great trailer for the retrospective:
The director, writer and actor Hiroyuki Tanaka, under his nom de cinema Sabu, has created a unique cinematic universe consisting of such types as salarymen, yakuza, punk rockers, samurai ghosts, and other assorted characters who collide in incredibly kinetic and fatalistic plotlines and situations.Sabu makes great use of these familiar types, often turning them on their heads (his yakuza are often bumbling and inept fools), injecting some freshness in these often stale archetypes.While not without their flaws, especially in the latter acts where he can’t quite sustain the pace and invention of their earlier sections, Sabu’s films are stylistically riveting, with plenty of inspired and hilarious passages, and they’d never be mistaken for anyone else’s.Five of Sabu’s ten features will be screened at a retrospective entitled “Run, Salaryman, Run!” screening at Japan Society from January 26 through February 5.Sabu will appear in person for three of the screenings (Non-Stop, Postman Blues, and Monday), and this series is an ideal introduction to a filmmaker whose work is very rarely screened in the US.
Sabu’s 1996 debut feature Non-Stop aka Dangan Runner (January 29, 7:30pm, Sabu intro/Q&A), as the title of Japan Society’s retrospective indicates, anticipated Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, which appeared two years later.Its looping narrative structure, a Chinese box of nested flashbacks and fantasy sequences, also drew many comparisons to Quentin Tarantino’s films.Perhaps this is the reason that Non-Stop, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one of Sabu’s features to be theatrically distributed in the US.Non-Stop is essentially a feature-length chase scene, consisting of three runners pursuing one another, all losers in their own way.Yasuda, a recently fired restaurant worker (Tomorowo Taguchi, best known for the Tetsuo films), attempts to follow through on his ex-girlfriend’s dismissive edict to “be a man” by robbing a bank, but is foiled by his failure to bring a mask to conceal his identity.He is caught trying to shoplift a gauze mask at a minimart by Aizawa, a junkie wannabe rock star (Diamond Yukai) working there as a clerk, who chases Yasuda out of the store after taking away his gun.Aizawa is chased in turn by Takeda (Shinichi Tsutsumi), who is owed money by Aizawa for the drugs he bought from him.As they run, the frequent flashbacks detail their connections to one another, and their respective failures in life that has led to this absurd, nearly endless chase.One of the most inspired passages consists of a sex fantasy among all three of them inspired by an attractive woman they pass by as they are running, which ends with a yakuza boss puffing on a cigar.Sabu’s stylistics are already fully in place, his scenario challenging itself to top what comes before in outrageousness and audacity, and while it doesn’t always succeed in doing so, the breezy pace makes it always fun to watch.The Tarantino comparison is also pertinent in the casualness with which it treats events which in other contexts would be tragic, for example a woman’s accidental shooting death during the chase.
Sabu’s next feature Postman Blues (1997) (January 28, 7:30pm, Sabu intro/Q&A) centers on Sawaki (Shinichi Tsutsumi), a postal carrier regarded by most as a faceless vessel for people’s mail, whose simple act of visiting his old school buddy Noguchi (Keisuke Horibe), now a yakuza drug runner, gets him unknowingly embroiled (in now established fatalistic Sabu fashion) in a pursuit by the police.A comic riff on a Hitchcockian Wrong Man scenario, the police wildly misread what they see during their surveillance, and such clues as the drug package Noguchi smuggles in Sawaki’s mail bag and his severed pinky that mistakenly falls inside, to buildup this worker drone into a fearsome criminal.Sawaki does indeed transgress the rules, though not in the violent ways the police imagine.He steals money from one of the envelopes to buy beer, and opens and reads people’s mail.This leads him to two fateful encounters: with Sayoko (Keiko Toyama), a beautiful and terminally ill woman, and another terminal patient, Hitman Joe (Ren Osugi).Postman Blues is less breezy and spare than its predecessor, and he slows down the action somewhat to allow Sawaki and Sayoko’s romance to blossom, and to allow for such episodes as the hitman audition sequence.Postman Blues is full of film references, ranging from a photographic nod to Japanese yakuza-film icon Ken Takakura to a woman who models herself on Brigitte Lin’s trench coat-clad blonde in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express.While Sabu does flesh out the characters much more than in his debut film, this does result in a somewhat overlong film and a less sound narrative structure.Still, Postman Blues does show a remarkable progression in just two features.
Sabu’s fourth feature Monday (January 26, 7:30pm, Sabu intro/Q&A) is the Sabu style refined to near-perfection, detailing the outrageous and outlandish lost weekend of salaryman Takagi (Shinichi Tsutsumi), who wakes up in a hotel room and struggles to piece together how he ended up there.As he finds such clues as funeral purification salt and a hostess club matchbox, he begins to recall a hilariously convoluted series of events that begins with an exploding body at a funeral, and includes a dead yakuza boss and more dead bodies.Monday is Sabu’s most fully sustained work that increases in audacity and hilarity without sacrificing its sense of internal logic, and contains perhaps the best sequence of Sabu’s oeuvre, Takagi’s impromptu dance scene in a club with a yakuza’s girlfriend.Sabu’s most frequent star, Shinichi Tsutsumi, turns in one of his best performances here, brilliantly conveying his confusion and gradual enlightenment in the increasingly perilous predicament he has gotten himself into.
Drive (2002) (February 2, 7:30pm) finds Sabu taking a step back artistically, reverting to his earlier chase antics, with the requisite bank robbers and other colorful characters.Shinichi Tsutsumi, one again, plays a salaryman, this time named Asakura, who suffers from painful stress-induced migraines.He is performing his normal afternoon ritual of watching a woman he admires (Kou Shibasaki), a bank teller who goes out for lunch each day at 1pm precisely.As Asakura watches from the curb, three bank robbers leaving the bank commandeer his car in pursuit of a fourth who double-crossed them and took off with their hard-stolen cash.Asakura foils their pursuit by stubbornly following all the traffic rules, driving them (literally) to distraction.Meanwhile, the fourth bank robber unluckily gets stranded by getting his arm stuck in a hole going after his car keys.Sabu, as usual, increases the outrageousness of the journey, including a punk-rock band, samurai ghosts and soldier ghosts.The bank robbers are also given unusual character touches; one of them turns out to be a Buddhist philosopher and proselytizer.There is much kinetic movement but not much resonance in Drive, resulting in a film which evaporates almost as soon as it is over.There is a bit of strain and exhaustion evident, with its “Can I top this” scenario stretched nearly to breaking.
My personal favorite of Sabu’s films, The Blessing Bell (2002) (February 4, 7:30pm) is, on its surface, the most atypical: the pace is slowed way, way down, and the film follows the journey of Igarashi (Susumu Terajima), a factory worker who comes to work one day to find that his plant has been shut down.In the single day of the film’s time frame, Igarashi wanders without speaking to anyone, and encounters a number of characters: a dying yakuza, a jailed murderer, a single mother, a suicidal salaryman, an elderly man (director Seijun Suzuki), who turns out to be a ghost.There is as much humor and strange incident as in any of Sabu’s other films, but he eliminates the chases and outsized antics of the previous features.What remains is mesmerizing, compelling, and rather beautiful.Susumu Terajima, a frequent Sabu actor, who usually plays memorable supporting roles, emerges as a contemplative and riveting lead character, his wordless performance contributing to a newfound lyricism that was submerged in Sabu’s other features but comes fully to the fore here.
Along with these five features, Japan Society's Sabu retrospective will conclude with the international premiere of his latest work, the made-for-TV Troubleman, screening on February 5 at 5pm. For more information on these films, and to purchase tickets, visit Japan Society’s website.
Sweet Little Lies. 2010. Directed by Hitoshi Yazaki. Written by Kyoko Inukai, based on the novel by Kaori Ekuni. Produced by Hiroshi Miyazaki and Junko Tanabe. Cinematography by Isao Ishii. Edited by Yoshiyuki Okuhara. Music by Takeshi Senoo. Art direction by Yasuyo Takahashi. Sound by Masayuki Iwakura.
“Whether you’re together or alone, it’s lonely.” This line delivered by an elderly woman (Akiko Kazami) could also have been spoken by any of the other characters of Hitoshi Yazaki’s Sweet Little Lies, as ruthless a dissection of marriage as Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. The film’s title expresses the deceptions necessary to keep up appearances for the outside world, especially when it comes to intimate relationships. The title also refers to the deceptions within these relationships, avoiding the painful truths that, if spoken aloud, can destroy cherished illusions. To all outside observers, Ruriko (Miki Nakatani), a teddy bear designer/gallery artist, and Satoshi (Nao Omori), an IT professional, is a happy, serenely blissful couple. But peer a little closer, and that illusion quickly shatters. They live basically separate lives, only meeting for breakfast in the morning and dinner in the evening. When they are home, Satoshi locks himself in his room to play video games. Their emotional distance is such that they communicate by cell phone inside their own home, and for the last two of their three-year marriage, they have not even had sex. So while outwardly they smile and are courteous to each other, their marriage is a mere façade, like the large windows that illuminate their apartment. So it is all but inevitable that they each begin pursuing outside relationships, Ruriko with Haruo (Juichi Kobayashi), an admirer of her creations, and Satoshi with Shiho (Chizuru Ikewaki), an old college friend. Much of the film follows the couple’s parallel affairs, and the psychological games necessary to maintain their marriage. The couple finds it very easy, disturbingly so, to deceive each other, and their broken marriage wreaks collateral damage among the outsiders pulled into the orbit of this dying star.
Sweet Little Lies, based on a 2004 novel by Kaori Ekuni, is assiduously anti-melodramatic, its eerily sterile compositions examining this married couple’s mutual adultery with a clinical eye. The effects of the adultery are not what one would expect; there are no screaming matches, no violent displays of torrential emotion. This paradoxically makes the sadness of what has happened to this marriage even more acute than it would be otherwise. But even though the surface visuals are precise and rigidly geometric, the actors are far from automatons, and give beautifully expressive performances. Miki Nakatani delivers one of her greatest performances as the wife who awakens to her own capacity for passion. Nao Omori matches her note for note, eliciting great sympathy for his seemingly remote, emotionally distant character. The rest of the cast is great as well, including Kobayashi as Ruriko’s lover, and Sakura Ando, who makes a great impression in the very few scenes she has as Haruo’s betrayed girlfriend.
Sweet Little Lies, the closing night film of Japan Cuts, screens at Japan Society on July 16 at 8:30pm. Director Hitoshi Yazaki will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A following the screening. Click here to purchase tickets.
About Her Brother (Ototo). 2010. Directed by Yoji Yamada. Written by Yoji Yamada and Emiko Hiramatsu. Produced by Suketsugu Noda, Hiroshi Fukasawa, Kenichi Tamura, and Ichiro Yamamoto. Cinematography by Masashi Chikamori. Edited by Iwao Ishi. Music by Isao Tomita. Production design by Mitsuo Degawa. Sound by Kazumi Kishida.
Yoji Yamada’s About Her Brother is his first contemporary drama in a decade, following his samurai trilogy (The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, Love and Honor) and his previous film, the WWII reminiscence Kabei: Our Mother. However, despite its modern setting, his latest film has the same feel as Kon Ichikawa’s 1960 classic Ototo (Her Brother); Yamada uses the same basic story for his film, which he dedicates to Ichikawa. As in the earlier version, About Her Brother focuses on the relationship between Ginko (Sayuri Yoshinaga), a long-time widow and pharmacy owner who has never remarried, and her incorrigible younger brother Tetsuro (Tsurube Shofukutei), who causes much embarrassment with his casual approach to personal responsibility and his penchant for drinking and gambling. Ginko has put up with Tetsuro’s antics ever since they were children, but Tetsuro severely tests the limits of her patience when he drunkenly wrecks the wedding reception of Ginko’s daughter Koharu (Yu Aoi), and later on when she has to bail him out of a debt he owes to a woman he has been seeing. Ginko finally cuts ties with her brother, but their familial bond and her sense of emotional indebtedness to him makes it very difficult for her to remain separate from him.
Yoji Yamada is a consummate craftsman of cinema, and he gets everything right in About Her Brother, displaying the skill and comfort that comes from many years of making films, showing considerable care and attention to detail. Yamada has learned the tricks of his trade as thoroughly as the young carpenter (Ryo Kase) who befriends Koharu later in the film. This is essentially a tearjerker, but Yamada never allows the material to descend into cheap bathos, respecting the intelligence of both the audience and his actors, ensuring that every emotion elicited from the film is fully earned. Yamada, best known for his beloved, long-running film series featuring the traveling salesman Tora-san (who, charmingly, makes a brief appearance here), is as old-fashioned a filmmaker as they come, which is a major part of his charm. Even though About Her Brother is set in a modern age in which people use cell phones and such, its milieu is virtually unchanged from Ichikawa’s original, with young women’s marriages being an Ozu-like central concern, and arranged marriages still very much the way things are done. There is, however, one very significant change Yamada makes to Ichikawa’s original: the siblings in About Her Brother are considerably older than the ones played by Keiko Kishi and Hiroshi Kawagichi in the earlier film. Ginko and Tetsuro have experienced much more of the world than the siblings in Ototo, and this allows Yamada to explore the theme of the effects of time’s passage that gives the film’s final scenes their powerful poignancy.
Yamada strikes a seamless balance between the old and new in About Her Brother, such that elements of his tale that may seem outdated do not come across as anachronistic or create logical dissonance. Yamada’s films envelop the viewer in a warm and generous embrace, emotionally satisfying as well as beautifully constructed, achieving this with an invisible style recalling classic Hollywood cinema as well as many earlier Japanese films. This loving attention to detail and craftsmanship extends to the film’s performances, especially those of Yamada regular Yoshinaga and Shofukutei as the siblings. Yoshinaga is compelling as the sister who is torn between her efforts to shake some sense into her brother, and her willingness to allow him to remain who he is. Shofukutei, a popular rakugo (storyteller) comedian in Japan (and who also appears in the Japan Cuts selection Dear Doctor), brilliantly conveys the garrulous and irreverent nature of his character, and is equally adept at handling the more dramatic scenes late in the film.
About Her Brother screens at Japan Society on July 16, 6:15pm. Click here to purchase tickets.
Parade. 2009. Written and directed by Isao Yukisada, based on the novel by Shuichi Yoshida. Produced by Mamoru Inoue, Testsu Kuchigouchi, Atsushi Sugai, and Ryuta Inoue. Cinematography by Jun Fukumoto. Edited by Tsuyoshi Imai. Music by Hirohumi Asamoto. Production design by Omatsu Yamaguchi. Sound by Hironori Ito.
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)
Isao Yukisada’s unsettling new film Parade at first plays like a sitcom about a bunch of roommates crammed into a tiny apartment, but eventually takes a much darker turn. The action mostly revolves around that apartment, illegally shared by a group of people who represent a cross-section of Japanese youth. The owner of the apartment is Naoki (Tatsuya Fujiwara), a straight-laced teetotaler who works at a film distribution company, and who by all appearances is the most stable of the inhabitants. Less so is the unemployed Kotomi (Shihori Kanjiya), who spends most of her time waiting by the phone for a call from her distant actor lover, obsessively watching the soap opera he stars in. Aimless college student Ryosuke (Keisuke Koide) pursues a doomed relationship with his best friend’s girlfriend, while Mirai (Karina), an illustrator with a seemingly permanent chip on her shoulder, spends her nights hanging out in gay bars, drinking until she blacks out. It is unclear how long they have been living together, but it is long enough for them to have fallen into a routine that accommodates their radically varying schedules and diverse personalities. Other events happening outside the apartment occupy their attention. Their neighborhood is menaced by someone who has been killing women at night, but oddly this doesn’t worry them as much as their suspicions of what may be some nefarious goings-on in the apartment next door. Their easy routine is upended when a mysterious blonde-haired stranger, Satoru (Kento Hayashi), suddenly turns up on their couch one morning. Hilariously, it takes them awhile to figure out that he is indeed a stranger, and not really connected to any of them. Satoru nevertheless is allowed to stay there, despite the other roommates’ suspicions about him and what he does when he is out of their sight.
More than simply a cheap and convenient living arrangement for this motley bunch, the apartment and its inhabitants form a universe in which all who live in it are symbiotically connected to and dependent on one another. One of the great strengths of Parade is how slowly, subtly, and carefully Yukisada builds up the world in which its characters live. Naoki at one point mentions a “multiverse,” a set of multiple universes, and the form of the film itself reflects this idea. By continually shifting the focus to give us each principal character’s perspective on events, Yukisada vividly details how each character’s personal universe converges to form the cosmos represented by their apartment, in which many secrets dwell. And in the conclusion, which demonstrates how thoroughly appearances can deceive, what seems at first to be mere friendship or economic dependence proves to be something much more disturbing: a conspiracy of silence that nurtures, shelters, and absorbs any sort of behavior, however destructive or violent.
Parade, based on a novel by Shuichi Yoshida, is a film that very gradually gives up its secrets, initially coming across as so loose and episodic as to be nearly formless. But Yukisada insinuates us into its world and keeps us intrigued with the sense that however light and airily comic this material may seem on the surface, things are just ever so slightly off kilter. The cast is uniformly excellent, and Yukisada’s visual style makes great use of its main setting, subtly varying angles and perspectives so that it seems to be a far bigger space than the tiny apartment it is supposed to be. Parade’s final scene, in which the camera slowly zooms out of the apartment window with all the characters seemingly frozen in place, leaves one with a chill from all that it implies about how the serenely “normal” surface of modern Japanese life covers something much more sinister.
Parade trailer:
Click here to see the Q&A with director Isao Yukisada at the screening of Parade at Japan Society on July 9, 2010.
Accidental Kidnapper (Yukai Rhapsody). 2010. Directed by Hideo Sakaki. Written by Hisako Kurosawa, based on the novel by Hiroshi Ogiwara. Produced by Takayuki Sugisaki, Haruo Umehara, and Kazufumi Asami. Cinematography by Masayuki Fujii. Edited by Hideki Seino. Music by Izumi Sakaki. Art direction by Shimpei Inoue. Sound by Hisashi Iwamaru.
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)
Hideyoshi Date (Katsunori Takahashi) is at his wits’ end when we first meet him in Hideo Sakaki’s Accidental Kidnapper. Deep in debt, with no job, no prospects, and no family, he’s ready to end it all, and tries to do so, but he doesn’t even have the nerve to commit suicide. Wacky events are set in motion when Densuke (Roi Hayashi), a grade school boy, gets into Hideyoshi’s cab and demands to be taken to his prep school. Hideyoshi at first tries to get rid of him, but when he learns that Densuke comes from a rich family, he seizes on the opportunity to get himself out of his financial hole. Recalling the advice of an old prison mate (Takashi Sasano) who pops up now and then to give fantasy pep talks, Hideyoshi hits upon the idea of demanding ransom from Densuke’s parents. Densuke is also on the run; he is impulsively running away from home because he hasn’t been getting along with his parents lately. A foolproof plan, right? Well, if you think so, then you must have not seen a film before. Myriad complications ensue when Densuke’s father turns out to be no ordinary business executive, but a yakuza boss (played by Sho Aikawa, who by now can do this kind of role in his sleep), who sends an army of underlings out to find Densuke and Hideyoshi.
Accidental Kidnapper, based on a 2004 novel by Hiroshi Ogiwara, is light and genial entertainment, which is not especially ambitious or demanding of the viewer. The film plays everything straight down the middle, so that while there are many incidents and complications that pile on top of one another during its course, there’s little sense of urgency or danger. Each event feels like a function of pre-determined plotting, rather than organically arising from the characters and their environment. That being said, one can’t discount the considerable charms Accidental Kidnapper does possess, the main one being the great cast Sakaki has assembled. Takahashi and Hayashi work together beautifully, making their initial personality clashes and eventual camaraderie feel natural and never less than believable. Sho Aikawa and Shun Sugata (as the boss’ right hand man) portray their yakuza roles with considerable skill and charisma, and the quirky baby-voiced actress/singer YOU also impresses in a more limited role as Daisuke’s mother. Accidental Kidnapper, appropriately enough for what is essentially a road movie, also contains some quite stunning scenery, and the natural beauty of the countryside is as easy on the eyes as the film itself is easy on the brain. So while Accidental Kidnapper isn’t a very substantial film, there are plenty worse ways to while away a couple of hours than in the presence of a bumbling criminal and the adorable tot he keeps in tow.
Accidental Kidnapper screens at Japan Society on July 8, 6:15pm. Click here to purchase tickets.
Electric Button (Moon and Cherry) (Tsuki to Cherry). 2004. Written and directed by Yuki Tanada. Produced by Ishiro Usui, Tadashi Ono, Nayoya Narita, and Yasuhiko Higashi. Cinematography by Kei Yasuda. Edited by Sumiyo Mitsuhashi. Music by Sei Komiyama. Production design by Chie Hori. Sound by Yukiya Sato.
(Note: this review has also been cross-posted on Twitch.)
Yuki Tanada’s 2004 erotic comedy/drama Electric Button (Moon and Cherry) is part of this year’s Japan Cuts section “Best of Unreleased Naughties.” This means, of course, the best unreleased (in US) Japanese films of the 2000s, but Electric Button is naughty in a very different way. Tanada’s film has been described as a distinctly female perspective on the Japanese genre of pinku eiga (“pink film”), which is a brand of soft-core sex film, but this isn’t quite accurate. Yes, there is copious sex in the film, but it isn’t as explicit or programmatic as in regular pinku eiga, the conventions of which usually demand five sex scenes per hour at roughly ten-to-fifteen minute intervals. Electric Button is closer to another genre of Japanese sex film called roman porno, which was similar to pink film but had a more literary, artistic bent and felt less formulaic than many pink films. Tanada, a female director, offers a startling inversion of the normally male-oriented perspective of these films, and calls attention to aspects that would normally not be closely questioned or examined.
The film’s protagonist and first-person narrator (a common pink film/roman porno convention, and appropriate to Electric Button’s literary milieu) is Tadokoro (Tasuku Nagaoka), a meek university student who is recruited to join an unusual literary group on campus called “Electric Button.” This group is devoted to studying and writing erotic literature, and they meet in an apartment festooned with erotic toys, novels, manga, and pornography. The name of the group is their cheeky reference to female genitalia. As one would imagine, the group consists mostly of a motley bunch of randy guys, including a workout fanatic, a white Westerner, and most oddly, a retired grandfather (the great veteran actor Akira Emoto), who is also a student.
Electric Button’s lone female member is Mayama (Noriko Eguchi), an established and published erotica writer who regularly churns out stories under a male pseudonym. She sits quietly as the guys welcome Tadokoro into their group, and as Tadokoro tries to impress them with his expert knowledge of female anatomy. But Mayama immediately, and accurately, identifies his true sexual status: “But aren’t you a virgin?” she asks Tadokoro. And while he tries to deny it, his secret is out. Tadokoro leaves the meeting mortified, but the next day is approached by Mayama, requesting his assistance. One thing leads to another, as they say, and soon Tadokoro finds himself summoned for regular sex sessions with Mayama. But there is an agenda: Tadokoro discovers that Mayama is using their sexual encounters as fodder for a novel she is writing. Rather than a literary muse, Tadokoro is more like a guinea pig for Mayama’s sexual experiments, which soon expand to include hired call girls and S&M torture artists. Tadokoro’s initial excitement turns to dismay as he becomes increasingly humiliated and aware that actual romantic feelings seem to only be on his side of the equation.
The drama and humor of Electric Button is mostly mined from the gender reversal Tanada performs on her sexual-awakening scenario. She casts Tadokoro in what would usually be the female role of the film’s central relationship. He is the shy, virginal character who is initiated into the world of sex by the considerably more experienced, and presumably older, Mayama. Tadokoro even bleeds the first time he has sex with Mayama in a clever parody of a girl’s first-time bloodletting. Mayama is a seemingly cold, manipulative user, unapologetically fabricating real-life scenarios for her fiction, assuming the more masculine role in her relationships, and disguising herself as a man for her readers. Tanada’s twisting of genre conventions heightens both the provocative eroticism of her tale and the volatile emotions on display. Tanada shoots Electric Button in the low-budget, functional style of erotic films, and this efficiency of form serves as dramatically powerful shorthand. Electric Button (Moon and Cherry) is an impressive debut film, and Tanada continued her explorations of young people’s sexuality, again featuring strong female characters, with Ain’t No Tomorrows (2008), which screened at last year’s Japan Cuts. Another recent Tanada feature, One Million Yen Girl (2008), also screens at this year’s festival.
Electric Button (Moon and Cherry) screens on July 7, 6:30pm at Japan Society. Click here to purchase tickets.
Bashing. 2005. Written and directed by Masahiro Kobayashi. Produced by Masahiro Kobayashi and Naoko Okamura. Cinematography by Koichi Saitoh. Edited by Naoki Kaneko. Music by Hiroshi Hayashi. Sound design by Tatsuo Yokoyama.
Cast: Fusako Urabe (Yuko Takai), Ryuzo Tanaka (Mr. Takai, Her Father), Takayuki Kato (Iwai, Her Lover), Kikujiro Honda (Ueki, Her Father's Boss), Teruyuki Kagawa (The Hotel Owner), Nene Otsuka (The Stepmother).
Masahiro Kobayashi's Bashing takes as its inspiration the ostracism experienced by Japanese humanitarian workers in Iraq after surviving kidnapping there. The film's protagonist, Yuko (played with quiet intensity by Fusako Urabe), an aid worker recently returned after being freed, is a withdrawn and sullen woman plagued by constant harassment by strangers and threatening anonymous phone calls at home. As the film begins, Yuko in short order loses her job as a hotel maid, and her boyfriend coldly rejects her, astonishingly telling her that if she had been killed, she would have been a hero, but having returned alive, she is now simply "an embarrassment to all Japan." Yuko's father (Ryuzo Tanaka) also loses his factory job of 30 years due to the negative attention his daughter’s return has caused. The film, set in the cold landscape of Hokkaido, hones in with laser focus on Yuko's oppression, aided by the roving, stalking camerawork that at times recalls the Dardenne brothers. Minute, repetitious details of her drab existence dominate: trudging up the steps to the apartment where she lives with her parents; making her soup order at the local minimart; lying in her bed, curled up in a fetal position; and staring wistfully at the ocean, contemplating a return to the place that, however dangerous, was the only place she felt useful and loved. Interestingly enough, the film, as harsh as it is in condemning Yuko's treatment by society, does not make her simply a helpless victim. Yuko is not entirely sympathetic. She often walls herself off even from those closest to her, especially her parents, who, unlike everyone else, are mostly supportive of her work. It is also clear that her aid work is not entirely altruistic; Iraq was an escape from a country where she felt a failure, and a place where she was adored by the children she worked with and fed sweets.
Kobayashi's film is a rather blunt but compelling critique of some of the intolerant and cruel elements of Japanese society. The film, other than an opening statement saying that the film was based on true events, does not attempt to put its scenario in a larger context (Iraq is not mentioned at all), which may make the film's oppressive sense of claustrophobia seem irrational and farfetched. Being aware, for example, that in 2004 (when the true events that Bashing takes as its inspiration occurred) then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made public statements blaming the hostages for their predicament, greatly enhances one's understanding of the situation the film presents. Nevertheless, Kobayashi, aided by Fusako Urabe's complex performance, and strong work by the supporting cast, intensely portrays the persecution suffered, especially in rigid and moralistic societies, by those who step outside of that society's constricted roles.
I am a writer on film based in NYC, whose work has appeared in Senses of Cinema, Offscreen, and other film journals. This blog is a forum for news and commentary on world cinema. Asian cinemas, especially Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Hong Kong cinema, are a major focus. However, this site will also frequently cover other notable happenings and trends across the globe. Also, this site will serve as a chronicle of my personal exploration of cinema.
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