Jimami is the Okinawan dialect word for peanut and jimami tofu is a simple but much-loved speciality of the islands. This is one of the ingredients that Singaporean directors Jason Chan and Christian Lee use to cook up a tale of history, lost love, and fusion cooking with varying results.
The story follows Ryan (played by director Jason Chan), a Chinese Singaporean chef learning to make traditional Okinawan food through apprenticing with a crotchety old chef named Sakumoto (Masane Tsukayama) in Okinawa. Ryan finds it hard to fit into the community but the place and some of the people are beautiful, especially Nami (Rino Nakasone), a ceramacist who is sweet on him but he has a certain sourness due to a past relationship that prevents him from tasting the delights of his present surroundings. Meanwhile, over in Singapore, a Japanese woman named Yuki (Mari Yamamoto) works as a food critic for a magazine. Her sophisticated sense of taste and smell lead to sharply-worded reviews that make or break restaurants and she has earned a fierce reputation based on spicy words she writes after she tears into some of the finest cuisine that South East Asia has to offer. Beneath her perfect shell is a bitter past that is connected to Ryan.
Audiences find out more about what happened to make them that way through a series of neatly handled flashbacks to happier times in their lives that show everything is inextricably linked to cooking. Certain incidents, some stretching back decades for one of the two, led to a painful breakup and Ryan’s efforts in cooking set in motion a sort of redemption arc as the characters face their guilt over what happened.
This is how the film avoids being overly sweet, by having Yuki and Ryan be genuinely unlikeable, their personalities congealed thanks to a degree of self-doubt and past experiences that are annunciated by flashbacks which dive deeper into Yuki’s story which is mixed together with that of other characters in Okinawa. The drama that arises with these people is made to be more affecting through food film tropes which are utilised to bring a long-lingering emotional aftertaste to the present-tense narrative.
Food and its preparation are used to evoke memories of happier times filled with the tenderness and care that both the person making and receiving the meal will feel at the moment and remember long after. In this context, the seemingly simple jimami tofu comes to represent something greater and more complex than Ryan’s attempts at learning to cook and this proves to be where the emotional meat of the film lies, leading the narrative to a heart-warming resolution complete with recipe book acting as a love letter to days gone by as well as a legacy. Indeed, flashbacks to community memories prove really beautiful at times and add sentimental resonance. This works better than the romantic element of the film.
The love-triangle feels a little undercooked because Jason Chan doesn’t sell his role as a passionate chef who women fall in love with. He often speaks in a monotone and there is often a lack of expressiveness in his face and body. He has good self-control and the lines are there but the exchanges with characters sometimes lack chemistry so the romantic subplot doesn’t quite come to a boil. His female lead actors do a good job to fill in the gaps. Rino Nakasone, a dance choreographer who works with pop acts around the world, brings a physical expressiveness to the film that is easy to enjoy, and Mari Yamamoto does well which is important because her character’s journey gives the film emotional heft that will bring a tear to the eye. Also good is Masane Tsukayama as the old chef who reveals that cooking can be the heart and soul of a community.
If the acting doesn’t quite hit the sweet spot, the rest of the film is almost flawlessly presented to emphasise the beauty of Okinawa. Jason Chan takes the lions share of visual and musical credit as cinematographer, colourist, and the composer of the score. Aside from some choppy editing, everything is handsomely lensed as befits a film shot with support from Okinawa’s film and tourism organisations. Okinawa looks stunning with dramatic clifftop scenes framed by a dusk sky blending gold and amber, and walks along beaches and old forts with narration acting as a series of touristic highlights of the island’s beautiful landscape as well as stirring moments of free diving. The visuals also lend just enough emphasis on the cooking with the sights and sounds of the kitchen and the occasional close-ups of food highlighted. There are not many saliva-inducing shots of food but the sights of restaurants and potted histories of certain dishes give a good sense of food culture. More importantly for the narrative, there are shots of people brought together and enjoying food and how it can build a community.
Jimami Tofu is only the second feature from Chan and Lee’s BananaMana production house which is focused on creating English-language Asian content for global distribution and it shows a production house making promising content. The results are a cross-cultural movie which joins together the stories of lovelorn adults in a handsomely lensed tourist ad for Okinawa with enough drama and food to make the film an easy confection to enjoy.
This review was originally published on V-Cinema on May 09th.
I’m at the end of my 12 day work week (it starts again next Monday) and the sunny weather has also taken a break and it’s now raining in the UK. Everybody heaves a huge sigh of relief because climate change has led to health problems, droughts and bad harvests, increased damage to food supplies and dangers from invasive species from tropical countries and what not. Most of all, it allows me to justify watching lots of films. I’ve watched around nine since the last weekend. I wrote about the Venice International Film Festival and posted an old review of the film Jimami Tofu (2017).
Synopsis:The first time Haruka has sex, she killed the person she loved when she had a sudden physical change. After fleeing the scene she lives a life filled with fear and self-loathing but becomes attracted to a man who speaks to her gently…
Shuumatsu no Kemonotachi
終末の獣たち「Shuumatsu no Kemonotachi」
Running Time:69mins.
Release Date:August 11th, 2018
Director: Yudai Sasaki
Writer:Yudai Sasaki (Screenplay),
Starring:Maki Yoshihara, Mai A, Maki Nishiyama, Shun, Katsuya Maiguma, Tetsuro Mihara, Haruka Kubo,
Synopsis:Told through a series of still photographs and the narration of various actors, this sci-fi tale looks at a world where a virus that only kills men has spread across the world. Now, only women live on the planet and it looks like it’s curtains for the human race. A woman named Tomoko recalls former lovers…
Hopefully the animals and plants can flourish because humanity has done a rubbish job of caring for the planet.
Synopsis:In this sci-fi film, the inhabitants of a small town full of nostalgia-inducing things found their habitat surrounded by a mysterious phenomenon called “zon” 20 years ago. Now they live in a dream-like village where it is as if time has stopped. This is down to “zon” because the weird atmosphere represented by the strange flickering patterns in the air act as a barrier. People who cross it, never come back, and now there is nobody willing to go beyond “zon” and nobody knows what the outside world looks like. Things begin to change when a mysterious VHS tape arrives in their little world.
Synopsis:A short stop-motion animation created over the course of eight years, this tells the tale of a group of animals in a port city. A rabbit escapes its box and encourages an elephant to leave its cage so they can explore the city during the night. This comes from the director Hiroyuki Mizumoto who previously made Passage of Jomon and Pakur(2015).
Adult magazines are big business worldwide, including in Japan where it is still possible to walk into some convenience stores and see them on open display although in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, this is getting cleaned up. Masanori Tominaga’s biopic Dynamite Graffiti tells the history of raunchy magazine mogul Akira Suei, starting from childhood to the peak of his infamy in the 1980s when his publications had a circulation of over 300,000 copies a month and he publicly challenged censors with his magazine’s content.
Tominaga aims big and scores some smiles with behind-the-scenes looks at the smut trade but the scale of his script’s ambitions in trying to capture changing times delivers a cast of characters who are little more than cyphers while Suei remains a joker.
The film starts with a sceptical and prurient police detective named Morohashi (a hilariously deadpan Yutaka Matsushige) leafing through pages of Shashin Jidai (Photograph Age) seeing images of fornicating, fondling, and posing people. Morohashi flags up problems. Pubic hair is visible. Penetration is obvious. Smut. Obscenity etc. Sat to his side is the magazine’s founder and editor, Akira Suei (Tokio Emoto), snickering away whilst trying to dodge censorship with feigned ignorance. Morohashi looks at the man, “Do you think this is art or something?” Suei looks stunned and replies, “Not at all. Definitely not art.”
Adapting Suei’s autobiographical essays, Morinaga’s film shows that a one point Suei did have pretensions to be an artist but changed thanks to the vicissitudes of having to make a living. Suei is a man breaking through the class-boundaries of post-war Japan as a boy from a rural mining village in Okayama who manages to make it to the design colleges and editorial rooms of Tokyo by way of the factories of Osaka and Kawasaki during the economic miracle of then 50s and 60s. As he ascends to the chattering classes, his fashion sense changes and so do his ethics as he goes from naively spouting high ideals about communicating emotions through art to just making money to support mistresses and play the stock market in the 80s. On a more technical level, the film stock matches the ages so it mimics along with set-design and costumes to show the changes.
The majority of the time is centred on the 70s and 80s when Suei launched Weekend Super, originally envisioned as a movie mag that balanced porn and subculture, and Shashin Jidai which was photography, subculture and… yes, porn. The film comes to life as the helter-skelter world of pulling together the racy content is shown to the audience and the police raid offices and investigate panties. We see a motley bunch of intellectuals, gravure idols, and shady “talent scouts” help Suei round-up women through dubious methods such as claiming their work is “art”, argue over the layout of the magazine in cluttered offices, perform the shoots at awful locations, and run the phone sex lines using stationary like sellotape for sound-effects. The reality is both mundane for all involved and played for laughs as people deal with outrageous situations. Throughout this, Suei maintains creative control and his skill is undeniable as he leaves his imprint whilst also managing to work with influential photographers like Nobuyoshi Araki who was recently accused of exploitation by a model, something which is impossible to forget while watching the film.
The business side of things is where there is a sense of a fun attitude to sex and also the troubling treatment of women as Tominaga takes a “have his cake and eating it” approach. The jokes are there but he makes the link between the machine-part factories Suei graduated from to the flesh factories of orgies and sexy photo shoots but doesn’t offer any profound analysis. Women are “scouted” into the work, paraded on screen and given a line before they are forgotten about with no attempt to understand who they are. It seems they have no real impact on the main character except as steps Suei uses to ascend to the top. Aside from Suie’s first girlfriend Makiko (Atsuko Maeda) and the tragic fallen woman Fueko (Toko Miura), whose story is worth a film in itself, there are no other strong women in play apart from Suei’s mother Tomiko (Machiko Ono) who blew herself and her lover up with dynamite. Her death haunts Suei but how it informs his actions is unclear other than it makes him seek a true form of expression through art and gives him a self-destructive impulse he fears during his career.
As the decades slip by, side characters enter and leave but they are underwritten so tragedies happen to them but there hardly seems to be any impact on our Suei who impishly manages to survive by using others. The personal and the professional clash but the lack of detail in characters prevents the film from making dramatic hooks out of these moments. Despite this, Suei’s character, in the hands of Tasuku Emoto, is fun to watch as he mischievously bounces from scene to scene. He holds the film together as we get is a portrait of an entrepreneurial man making the most of the changing times, creating trends and thumbing his nose at prurient authorities.
Director Kazuya Shiraishi follows his Roman Porno, Dawn of the Felines with this blistering film.
Hiroshima is a prefecture with lots of natural beauty but filmmakers do like to find drama in the dark underbelly of the place, perhaps most famously with Kinji Fukasaku’s 1970s crime film series Battles without Honour and Humanity which was based on the experiences of a post-war yakuza boss from Hiroshima. Kazuya Shiraishi takes audiences into the same world with The Blood of Wolves, a film which feels like a throwback to an earlier time due to its raw violence, emotions, and the character archetypes in play. Shiraishi is no stranger to the crime genre thanks to his previous films The Devil’s Path (2013) and Twisted Justice (2016) but this is his best crime film yet and it is all down to a magnetic performance from lead actor Koji Yakusho and his character’s no-holds barred attitude to policing.
It is the summer of 1988 in the fictional city of Kurehara, Hiroshima Prefecture. The disappearance of an employee of a financial company signals that a dormant gang war between the Odani-gumi and the Irako-kai is about to come to life again with the Irako-kai seeking help from the Kakomura-gumi in Hiroshima city.
It’s a powder keg situation ready to blow as hot-headed gangsters invade each other’s territory with only the Criminal Investigations Division of Kurehara East Police Station ready to stop them. In steps twenty-something squeaky-clean cop Shuichi Hioka (Tori Matsuzaka). He may be a graduate of Hiroshima University but he has to earn his stripes with his new partner, the veteran detective and rumoured-to-be corrupt cop Shogo Ogami (Koji Yakusho) who is investigating the disappearance. Hioka views the old hand, twenty years his senior, as a loose cannon while Ogami views the “elite scholar” as a hindrance to real policing. He states to the very by-the-books Hioka, “a scholar can’t be no gang cop”, but the two men will have to learn work together as time runs out and gangsters start getting bodied out in the streets. Ogami is willing to do anything to bust the case wide open and stop a bloody turf war from happening. As Ogami states to one yakuza thug objecting to his rough treatment, “We’re cops. We can do any damn sh*t we like.”
By the time Ogami says that, audiences have seen plenty of violence as Kazuya Shiraishi doesn’t shy away in showing it. Based on Yuko Yuzuki’s novel, the film is easily comparable to Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage series, specifically, Beyond Outrage where Kitano’s script has police and yakuza politics intersect as wily detective Kataoka played yakuza gangs off against each other, only here the humour is less mordant and the brutality and bloodshed toned up and the colours and action more vibrant.
A film of two halves, The Blood of Wolves uses fresh-faced Hioka (Tori Matsuzaka) as the audience’s eyes into the criminal underworld and how old-school cops police it. He tags along with Ogami who seemingly only knows how to play rough and this causes the two to come into conflict regularly. There is a charming confidence to Ogami as a man of the streets who uses largesse, his silver tongue and his connections to cajole people into acting for him and clearly there’s something of a thrill to it all for the grizzled veteran who gleefully uses the law to trick and threaten his way into getting information from people and, when that fails, gets pretty physical. Not that this should be a problem in many cases since the yakuza here aren’t honourable or admirable in the least.
The Blood of Wolves uses power-driven methamphetamine addicted thugs and far-right ultra-nationalist groups who lack a code of chivalry as the antagonists. They hover around the mizushobai or hospitality in the form of hostess bars before committing acts of violence. With hidebound and arrogant old men who just want to settle grudges leading knuckleheads, things are going to get messy. So, when Ogami prowls the streets and chases leads, there is a lot of entertainment to be had watching him pick off yakuza and close in on the truth and with Koji Yakusho’s nonchalance and air of gleeful humour, the violence, while hard to stomach at points, has some entertainment as well as plot thrills.
The second half turns things completely on their head and gets both Hioka and the audience to question everything they know about Ogami as the full length and breadth of his imagination and commitment to the job is revealed. His cunning, his daring, and his mental acuity prove to be his deadliest traits and it is hard not to admire the way he pulls together different criminal, police, and civilian elements to orchestrate what turns out to be a far more deeper strategy than the violence we seeinitially suggests. Channelling a little of his wild-man performance fromThe World of Kanako (2014), Yakusho proves to be an entertaining character to follow. He is defined by his use of knowledge and connections within the Japanese underworld to protect civilians. Questions as to how corrupt he is, where his heart lies and his place in the world make the film become more introspective towards the end for a surprisingly powerful finish that opens the way for a sequel which would be very welcome.
I’m pushed for time. I have to write. I have to practice Japanese. I have to work every day. I’m happy. I need to improve in all areas and so I’m going back to Japanese language classes in September. I’m going to study before then. Also, I’ve got a lot of films to watch as part of Donation Theater since the site went live with the films for people who donated. Friends and the families of friends in western Japan are safe but for those who had to be evacuated or lost their old lives, Donation Theater is providing assistance. Why not donate something and help out?
There are a lot of films I’m watching outside of Donation Theater but that is a long-term thing. I posted reviews for Dynamite Graffiti and TheBlood of Wolves this week.
Synopsis: Aoyama is an elementary school student who makes notes in his diary every day. His town is quiet but his heart races every so often because he has a crush on a mysterious older woman who works as a dental assistant. One day, a group of penguins appears in his quiet suburban neighbourhood and Aoyama and the older lady want to discover the reason for their appearance.
Aragne: Sign of Vermillion
アラーニェの虫籠 「Aragne no Mushikago」
Release Date: August18th, 2018
Running Time:75 mins.
Director: Saku Sakamoto
Writer:Saku Sakamoto (Screenplay),
Starring:Kana Hanazawa (Rin), Ayana Shiramoto (Nasuha), Yosuke Ito (Tokiyo), Fukujuurou Katayama (Saion), Shuogo Batari (Mikaya)
Saku Sakamoto has taken on direction, writing, composing the music, CG and more roles to get this film made. It’s an epic undertaking that looks different from the usual anime so make Saku Sakamoto feel welcome and ask questions when you see this because he is hosting the screenings!
Synopsis:Rin (Kana Hanazawa) is an 18-year-old university student who is shy and anxiousand a new arrival at her apartment complex. It’s a rundown and unfriendly place where crimes are occurring. There’s something darker stirring in the place, something supernatural and sinister and Rin begins to investigate instead of moving the heck out.
Gintama 2
銀魂2 掟は破るためにこそある「Gintama 2: Okite wa Yaburu Tame ni soko Aru」
Synopsis:Gintoki Sakata (Shun Oguri), Shinpachi Shimura (Masaki Suda) and Kagura (Kanna Hashimoto) are forced to do part-time work when they go broke and they meet Shogun-sama. They aren’t the only ones with problems because, the Shinsengumi is split between different factions and it may be because of Shogun-sama.
The director of the next three films has a new one released next week so a cinema is playing three of his shorts in preparation.
This short won Takayuki Ohashi the grand prize in the domestic short films at the 2014 SKIP City International D Cinema Film Festival.
Synopsis:An angel who watches over humans lives in a closet of a house owned by a normal family. A man delivers meals to her but is forbidden from speaking to her, however, one day, he talks to her…
Synopsis:A teenage girl named Eri likes to write novels. She has her work read by friends and an older friend at the neighbourhood bakery, Pansy, and an encounter with a woman gets her to see her future and novel writing in a new way.
The Seven Deadly Sins the Movie: Prisoners of the Sky
劇場版 七つの大罪 天空の囚われ人 「Nanatsu no Taizai: Tenkū no Torawarebito」
Synopsis: While searching for the legendary “sky fish”, The Seven Deadly Sins head to a far-off land where there is a Sky Palace that exists above the clouds. The inhabitants all have wings which is great but they are threatened by a ferocious beast that has been unleashed by a group of villains called Six Black Knights. Our heroes could just skip the city but then they wouldn’t be heroes. That and Meliodas is mistaken for a boy who committed a crime and is thrown in prison…
Synopsis:Astudent named Yuki makes money acting as a chat lady. She is drawn to a person who calls her using the handle “Kanon” and a piece of piano music draws the two to a piano competition while they are exchanging messages through chat.
Chotto no ame nara ga man
ちょっとの雨ならがまん「Chotto no ame nara ga man」
Running Time:N/A
Release Date:August 18th, 2018
Director: Junji Yasuda
Writer:N/A
Starring:GAUZE, G.I.S.M., THE EXECUTE, THE COMES, THE TRASH, CLAY, GASTUNK, Misami, Sayoko,
Synopsis:A documentary about the Japanese hardcore punk scene of the 1980s and the Tokyo Rockers who were in operation since the 1970s. It was originally released in 1984.
Synopsis:A film featuring punk rockers and novelists. They portray various people who are linked together including one person person who studies living things on the island on the Seto Inand Sea and a band that roams around Tokyo.
The L’Etrange Festival runs from September 05 to 16 in Paris and it continues in its mission to show rare and unusual films that might be passed over by other festivals and it also shows classic films that fit that criteria. I saw a previous edition of the festival which had a special focus on Kiyoshi Kurosawa and, just for a little while, I wanted to be French. This year’s festival has a feast of 60’s and 70’s Nikkatsu movies, like whole series of films not normally shown on screen together at the same place, as well as contemporary films that have cropped up on the festival circuit this year ranging from geki-animation to live-action.
What Japanese films are programmed at L’Etrange this year?
Shinya Tsukamotois back writing, directing, editing and producing his own films after a short spell acting in features like Shin Godzilla and Over the Fence. I’m a big fan of his works thanks to Nightmare Detective(2007),Tetsuo: The Iron Man(1989), Tokyo Fist(1995), and Vital(2003) and his film A Snake of June, whichwas given the Special Jury Prize at the 2002 Venice Film Festival. It seems like Venice has become his home away from home since he has been invited to the festival nearly ten times.
Synopsis:This is Tsukamoto’s first period piece and it concerns Sosuke Ikematsu’s character who is a ronin. He is alive during the end of the Edo period where many like him are finding their way of life dying out as the country modernises. He lives in the suburbs of Tokyo and is acquainted with a farmer’s daughter played by Yu Aoi who comes from the same farming village.
Kyoto Saga Art University graduate Uji Cha is a talented animator. His last work was The Burning Buddha Man(2012) which I wrote about back in 2013. It went on a festival tour because of its impressive creation. Ujicha used hand-made and painted paper cutouts, animated by hand, to tell a horror story. He has dubbed it “Geki-mation” and directs, writes, draws, edits, his own work and it is clear to see his skill is undeniable. It’s good to have him back with Violence Voyager. This played at Japan Cuts this year.
Synopsis: An American boy named Bobby and his friend Akkun head to the mountains to build a secret base but when they encounter a group of scared kids stuck in a mysterious amusement park called Violence Voyager, they soon find themselves under attack by robot-like humanoids!
Rensuke Oshikiri is the creator of the popular manga Hi Score Girl, a fun comedy. This one is decidedly more serious. A revenge drama using the theme of school bullying, it is directed by Eisuke Naito, the guy who did Puzzle .
Synopsis: Haruka Nozaki (Anna Yamada) has moved from Tokyo to a school in some backwater town. She is the victim of bullying which escalates to her house being burnt down and her family being burnt alive. She has an emotional breakdown and takes revenge…
Capturing the fervour of 1960s counterculture in Shinjuku, Tokyo, this representative Japanese queer film is delightfully chaotic. Bar Genet’s new star hostess is the transgender icon Eddie, whose confidence and sexuality threaten the bar’s long-time madame Leda, but attract Gonda, the bar’s owner. While Eddie becomes entangled in this love triangle, she spends her time with joint-smoking drop-outs, watches experimental films, dances to distorted rock music and occasionally gets involved in protests. Matsumoto described the film’s structure and form as like dropping a mirror on the floor and picking up the broken pieces.
This is dedicated to some of the earliest works from some of the best directors of this generation back from when they were operating in the ‘70s and ‘80s as student filmmakers wielding 8mm cameras and young indie directors. We’re talking about Sion Sono, Shinya Tsukamoto, Sogo Ishii and more. Few of their early films are available legally in the West and when they do appear it’s always fascinating to see the sheer amount of imagination and raw talent on display. With film archives and distributors digitising and releasing these films which have been given 2K restorations. This was at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2016 which is when I originally wrote this piece. I had the chance to see it in Japan but missed it because I was unaware it was running…
A Man’s Flower Road Film Image
Sion Sono is the big highlight here with two films getting screened. The first is I Am Sion Sono!! (1984, 37 min) which was made when he was 22-years-old. It’s an uncompromising self-portrait/introduction to the man and it is described as “a disarming, sometimes funny, sometimes raunchy, hugely energetic self-portrait which became the manifesto of a wild, uncompromising, uninhibited cinema.”
The second Sono film is his first feature A Man’s Flower Road (1986, 110 min） and it is split into two parts. The first sees him running around Tokyo in a red rain cape while being pursued by men in white before he encounters a Kappa in a park. The second is more autobiographical as it details his family life and struggle to become an adult. He roped in his family for this part.
The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo Film Image
The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo by Shinya Tsukamoto (1988, 47 min), I have reviewed on this blog thanks to its inclusion on the Tetsuo: Iron Man/Body Hammer DVD set. It’s a great little cyberpunk time-travelling story where a schoolboy with an electricity pylon on his back must save humanity from vampire.
Isolation of 1/8800000 (1977, 43 min) is by Sogo Ishii (Angel Dust, Isn’t Anyone Alive?) and is a story about an isolated sexually frustrated young student burned out from his university entrance exam is on the verge of exploding in a violent mess.
UNK (1979, 15 min) is by Makoto Tezuka (grandson of legendary manga-ka Osamu Tezuka) and the short film is a remake of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He also directed High-School-Terror (1979, 6min) which sees ghosts haunt some schoolgirls.
Akira Ogata’s cult film Tokyo Cabbageman K (1980, 59 min) imagines what happens when a young man named K wakes up one morning to find is head has been replaced by a giant cabbage.
The Rain Women (1990, 72 min) by Shinobu Yaguchi looks really interesting. It is described as a melancholy film and is split into two parts with the lives of two women on the screen, the first showing madcap adventures like racing bikes through convenience stores while the second sees the dynamic duo suffering tragedies. When the rain returns, the fun starts again.
The Rain Women Film Image
Director Katsuyuki Hirano originally wanted to be a manga artist but when he picked up an 8mm camera he made Happiness Avenue (1986, 93 min) and thus began his career in films. His film is based on a manga by Katsuhiro Otomo and features fellow director Sion Sono amongst a group of friends roaring around town and rebelling against their more staid fellow citizens in a small town in Shizuoka.
Hanasareru Gang Film Image
Masashi Yamamoto brings a tale of violence and disillusion from 1980s Japan in Saint Terrorism (1980, 127 min) where the main character, a school girl, shoots random people and hooks up with a poisoner with whom she terrorises a building full of people in Shinjuku.
Last but not least is Hanasareru Gang (1984, 85 min) which is by Nobuhiro Suwa which looks like a substantial one since it’s inspired by French New Wave director Alain Renais’s film Hiroshima mon amour. It’s about a gang of petty criminals with a car full of cash and the tone changes from slapstick comedy to tragedy as these disengaged kids go on an adventure.
Founded in 1912, Nikkatsu is the oldest Japanese film production company and it has a history of innovation and exploitation of different formulas and genres like the Roman Porno movies and b-movie crime thrillers to adapt to changing tastes audiences have in terms of entertainment. Working in this environment were some Japan’s best directors like Shohei Imamura and Seijun Suzuki who turned in some films that are astounding, even by today’s standards. Nikkatsu’s catalogue is now full of genre films that are getting new life every year thanks to adventurous labels scooping up these cult classics.
The festival has assembled some of them for audiences with a focus on Yasuhara Hasebe who learned the ropes of filmmaking as an AD with the likes of Seijun Suzuki. Influenced by French films and American B-movies, we see his works here.
Teruo Ishii is a pretty famous V-cinema director and he helped make Meiko Kaji a superstar with this film.
Synopsis:Akemi (Meiko Kaji) is leads an all-girl yakuza gang known as the Tachibana clan. This fearsome girl with a dragon tattoo slashes the eyes of an opponent whose blood is soon lapped up by a black cat appears setting in motion a supernatural curse as which leads to a trail of dead Yakuza girls, their dragon tattoos skinned from their bodies.
Synopsis:Daisuke Honda, a war photographer returning from Vietnam, gets involved with an air stewardess named Yuriko Sawanouchi who is the target of a criminal organisation who want a WWII-eratreasure that was hidden on an island by her father. He has to rescue her from ninjas, gangsters and more!
STRAY CAT ROCK SAGA
Inspired by Toei’s Delinquent Boss series, Nikkatsu created a low-budget series of films based on the adventures of a girl gang. It was meant to be a star vehicle for the idol Akiko Wada but Meiko Kaji took over the later instalments of the series. Director Yasuhara Hasebe and writer Hideichi Nagahara were inspired by the protest movements springing up around the US-Japan Security Treaty and moulded the characters around the protesters. The five films are presented at the festival.
Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss
女番長野良猫ロック「Onna banchō nora-neko rokku」
Running Time:80mins.
Release Date:May 02nd, 1970
Director: Yasuhara Hasebe
Writer:Hideichi Nagahara (Screenplay),
Starring:Akiko Wada, Meiko Kaji, Koji Wada, Tatsuya Fuji, Bunjaku Han, Yuka Kumari, Mari Koiso, Miki Yanagi,
Synopsis:Ako (Akiko Wada) is a biker girl in Tokyo who meets Mei (Meiko Kaji), the leader of a girl gang known as the Stray Cats. They are about to have a knife fight and helps them beat a rival girl gang and their boyfriends. Ako becomes something of a leader for the Stray Cats and gets involved with saving Mei’s boyfriend from a gang of right-wing nationalists.
Synopsis:Made three months after the first, this one tells the story of a group of wild young people having fun in a jeep who kidnap a wealthy woman who turns out to be the mistress of a cult leader. The gang decide to dig up a stash of WWII-era weapons and raid the organisation.
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter
野良猫ロック セックスハンター「Nora neko rokku Sekkusu Hanta-」
Running Time:93mins.
Release Date:September 01st, 1970
Director: Yasuhara Hasebe
Writer:Yasuhara Hasebe, Atsushi Yamatoya (Screenplay), Ai Kennedy (Translation)
Synopsis:Mako (Meiko Kaji) and her gang, the Alleycats, are near Yokosuka which plays host to a US naval base. They are about to fight a gang known as the Eagles who are led by Baron (Tatsuya Fuji). These guys hate mixed-race people and when a member of the Alleycats turns down one of the Eagles in favour of her half-black boyfriend, Baron attacks all mixed-race people including a guy who has attracted Mako’s attention.
Synopsis:Two Japanese guys try to help a Vietnam war deserter escape to Sweden but to do this they need to sell LSD. This attracts the attention of different gangs including the Alleycats.
Synopsis:The gang have given up being delinquints and are all about peace and love as hippies. Furiko (Meiko Kaji) and her squeeze Ryumei (Takeo Chii) are especially about the good vibes but his father ends up framing her and getting her locked in the slammer. Will Furiko get out?
THE WOMAN GAMBLER TRILOGY
This trilogy was created by Haruyasu Noguchi and stars Yumiko Nogawa who was fierce in her role as Maya in Seijun Suzuki’s Gate of Flesh. The series “mixes elements from yakuza movies, noir films, romantic comedy, revenge movies with an added erotic twist, all filmed in a superb black and white scope format.”
There’s not much information available on these films in English so pardon any mistakes.
Synopsis:Yukiko (Yumiko Noguchi) is the daughter of a legendary gambler who died a strange death. She’s out for revenge and the stakes are high as it looks like gangsters from the Arikawa gumi and cops are involved.
Cat Girls Gamblers: Naked Flesh Paid Into the Pot
賭場の牝猫素肌の壷振り「Toba no mesu neko: Suhada no tsubo furi」
Synopsis:Yukiko (Yumiko Noguchi) is nursing a broken heart as Ito, the man of her dreams and the one that gave her an elaborate tattoo, died in the last film. Yukiko gets involved with a guy who has left Abashiri prison in Hokkaido and is being pursued by yakuza.
Synopsis:This film depicts the true story of the serial killer Akira Nishiguchi and is told in a series of flashbacks as he murders and steals his way across Japan.
I have had it on DVD for over a decade but haven’t watched it yet so the synopsis is a bit thin on details. Sorry.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 06th to the 16th and it has a good selection of films that have cropped up in other festivals and one brand-new title so putting this post together was easier than in previous years.
Hirokazu Kore-eda is a legend who has appeared at Cannes with films seven times in the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, picking up the Jury Prize for Like Father, Like Son (2013). Due to his focus on families in films likeI Wish (2011) and Our Little Sister (2015), he is often called the Ozu of modern Japanese cinema by critics and this one features an unconventional family by normal Japanese standards and it wowed critics. He then went on to win the prestigious Palme d’Or. Congratulations!
Synopsis:Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) live with their son Shota (Kairi Jyo) Nobuyo’s younger sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and their grandmother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki) in a home behind an apartment. Osamu works as a day labourer but they rely on Hatsue’s pension and the ill-gotten goods they have from their shoplifting antics. They may be poor but they are happy.
One winter, Osamu and Shota finda girl named Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) in the freezing cold and take her home with them much to Nobuyo’s ire but she soon starts taking care of their new family member. However an incident occurs and a family they were on good terms with falls out with them causing secrets to be revealed…
Synopsis: Juliette Binoche plays Jeanne, a French writer who has travelled to Nara to explore Yoshino Forest in Nara to find a rare medicinal plant that grows only once every 997 years. She encounters Satoshi (Masatoshi Nagase) who lives in the area and the two encounter various people.
Shinya Tsukamoto’s latest film moves on from Venice International Film Festival to Toronto because it has been programmed for the Masters section and Tsukamoto is a master!
Shinya Tsukamotois back writing, directing, editing and producing his own films after a short spell acting in features like Shin Godzilla and Over the Fence. I’m a big fan of his works thanks to Nightmare Detective(2007),Tetsuo: The Iron Man(1989), Tokyo Fist(1995), and Vital(2003) and his film A Snake of June, whichwas given the Special Jury Prize at the 2002 Venice Film Festival.
Synopsis: The ronin Mokunoshin Tsuzuki (Sosuke Ikematsu) is alive during the end of the Edo period where many samurai like him are finding their way of life losing its edge as the country exists in a state of peace. He lives in the suburbs of Tokyo where he helps out farmers and is acquainted with one farmer’s son named Ichisuke (Ryusei Maeda) who dreams of being a samurai. Tsuzuki spends his days farming and sparring with Ichisuke but, despite the tranquillity, Tsuzuki’s heart is in tumult because he is concerned about the questions of whether he could follow a lord’s orders and kill a man and, more importantly, passions are brewing as he is falling in love with Ichisuke’s sister Yu (Yu Aoi). Passions from further afield are also growing as the country is on the verge of a civil war when a mild-mannered and skilful ronin Jirozaemon Sawamura (Shinya Tsukamoto) arrives in town looking for warriors to take to Edo.
In the Discovery section is Kei Chikaura who has a couple of films under his belt, one of which I watched.
This China-Japan co-production seems to be a continuation of the director’s short film Signaturewhich also stars Yulai Lu. That short featured him playing a Chinese immigrant wandering around Shibuya.
Synopsis:A Chinese man named Chen Liang (Lu Yulai) left China and his ill mother and elderly grandmother to livein Japan. He wanted to escape his responsibilities and have a new life but he finds himself experiencing the hardships that come with living illegally in Japan but it looks like things might change for the better when he takes a phone call meant for someone else and accepts a job at a traditional Japanese soba restaurant run by an elderly chef (Tatsuya Fuji). He takes to learning the art of soba-preparation, however, his illegal status could put things in jeopardy.
Synopsis: It is the era of the Tang Dynasty and Kukai (Shota Sometani) is a Japanese Buddhist monk who has travelled to China to learn about its culture. While living in Chang’an city, he meets Rakuten Haku (Huang Xuan), a poet who he becomes friends with. This duo investigate when Concubine Yang and then powerful men connected to a historical case start dying. The deaths are attributed to a demon cat but is this just superstition or reality?
Synopsis:Asako (Erika Karata) is a 21-year-old woman who lives in Osaka with her boyfriend Baku (Masahiro Higashide), a free-spirited man, but when he disappears he leaves a permanent shadow in her memories.
Two years later and Asako now lives in Tokyo where she meets a salaryman named Ryohei (Masahiro Higashide). He looks just like Baku, but he has a completely different personality with sincerity being the biggest difference. Asako falls in love with Ryohei, but tries her best to avoid him because of her memories of Baku.
There are two shorts from Japan in the Wavelengths section which is dedicated to experimental and boundary-pushing works:
The film “locates faces and bodies within superimpositions, zooms, a lightning-fast montage of brick structures and verdant trees”.
The Air of the Earth in Your Lungs (Dir: Ross Meckfessel, 11 mins.) is a Japan-USA co-production that ” is a kinetic and provocative consideration of the way we look at the world.”
Reneepoptosis (Dir: Renee Zhan, 9 mins) is an animated short described like this:
“Three different Renees head out on a quest for God (who’s also a Renee) in a bewildering, hilarious, and inventive combination of self-analysis, self-mythology, and self-topography by one more Renee… animator Renee Zhan.”
That’s it for now. I’ll update it if any other films are added.
This is the first of a two-part trailer post because there’s a lot of films getting released over the next three days due to a horror festival and a soft-core porn label showcasing some works. Titles from those two will be shown tomorrow. Today will be anime and live-action dramas.
My week was spent binge-watching Nobuo Nakagawa films and then Camera Japan released its programme and Nakagawa features prominently. I had a day off yesterday after working for 11 days straight and tried to watch a three hour thirty minute drama from the 60s, but ended up only watching 40-odd minutes because I got caught up doing press work Kotatsu, a British festival, and enjoying the sunshine for a spell. I posted about the Japanese films at the L’Etrange Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, this week.
What is released in Japan this weekend?
Ponoc Short Films Theater: Volume 1 – Modest Heroes
劇場版 七つの大罪 天空の囚われ人 「Chiisa na Eiyū – Kani to Tamago to Tōmei Ningen」
Starring:Fumino Kimura (Kanini), Rio Suzuki (Kanino), Joe Odagiri (Invisible Man), Machiko Ono (Mama). Min Tanaka (Blind Man), Sota Shinohara (Shun), Kentaro Sakaguchi (Doctor, The Father),
Synopsis: This is the first in three OVA projects that retells the story of the franchise’s top matches. Tezuka and Atobe from the Kanto tournament are on court.
Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head: Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu Movie
Synopsis: This is the movie continuation of a TV anime. The story concerns Go Kuramada and others who become drivers in the mobile police emergency Hyper Rescue unit and they control cars that can turn into humanoid walking vehicles.
Non Non Biyori Vacation
劇場版 のんのんびより ばけーしょん 「Gekijouban Non Non Biyori Bake-shon」
Release Date: August 25th, 2018
Running Time:71 mins.
Director:Shinya Kawatsura
Writer: Reiko Yoshida (Script), Atto (Original Creator)
Synopsis: This story has been told in two TV anime and some OVAs and now it has a big-screen adaptation. Hotaru Ichijo has transferred from Tokyo to a school in the country where the nearest bookstore is 20 minutes away by bicycle, the nearest video rental store is 10 stations away, and life is generally slow. Her fellow schoolmates are Natsumi, Komari, Renge, and Komari’s big brother Suguru in the third year of middle school.
Synopsis: Keiichiro Okino (Kazunari Ninomiya) has just started working at the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office as a Public Prosecutor and he is working with Takeshi Mogami (Takuya Kimura) whom he admires. They are on a case where an elderly money lender is killed but it seems open and shut becausea suspect, Shigeo Matsukura, is quickly identified because he borrowed money from the victim in the past. Mogami also knows that Shigeo Matsukura was involved in a female middle school murder case and tries his best to prove Shigeo Matsukura’s guilt.
Synopsis: Aberu Wagatsuma (Rei Fujita) ends up killing a yakuza who was threatening his colleagues at a garage and is targeted by the gangster’s younger brother, Kyosuke (Akihiro Oguni).
Synopsis: Four young Tokyo-ites find love through a dating site. They are connected by Akihabara but have different jobs. Asuka (Ryoo Kobayashi) is an office lady with no private life, Kaede (Kayo Noro) is a maicurist and an otaku, Kosuke (Terunosuke Takezai) is a doctor) and Shinnosuke (Kazuma Sano) is an idol group fan.
Takayuki Ohashi’s short films were screened last week.
Synopsis: There is a disease ravaging the world, a beautiful one that sees the afflicted play host to cherry blossoms that bloom on their bodies before they die. There is no cure and no clue as to its cause. A young woman named Saya (Izuho Ohta) and her friend Shota (Sho Mineo) head to Saya’s mother’s house to look for her after she goes missing.
Synopsis: Five young adults who have been friends since school, finally face their turbulent lives. Miki (Ryo Sato) finds her future in jeopardy when her father flies the coop with her college admission fees. Yuto (Riku Hagiwara) has a bad relationship with his father who is a mechanic. Hiroko (Maya Okano) wants to get married but doesn’t trust him. They, and the others, feel hope and anxiety about their future.
I write “still” because, if you read yesterday’s trailer post, you’ll know this is a two-parter because there was a lot released over this weekend. Yesterday was anime and dramas, today is politics, porn, and horror. More porn is getting released over the next week but I’ll round them up with next week’s trailer post. Uuuhhhh, right. I’m going to watch three films over the weekend and take a trip to the sea. I’m counting down the days to a London trip next week and also a sushi party with work colleagues. I’m also looking into a new writing style.
Synopsis: Honjo in Saitama is pretty far away from Tokyo. Famous for its history and silkworm industry, it’s hardly the place for rock stars but it is here that Daisuke (Kazuya Takahashi) returns to and meets Hajime (Koki Okada), a former friend from school who works for the city council. They are preparing a concert with a youth choir for a cherry blossom festival.
The next bunch of films are showing as part of a horror film festival.
This one was at last year’s Kanazawa Film Fest. It is being shown as part of a horror film festival.
Synopsis: A Fukushima family consisting of a grandfather, father, mother, eldest daughter, second daughter, eldest son, and second son seem happy to outsiders but when the grandfather, Shinsuke, develops dementia and kills a child while driving, the facade falls away and violence ensues.
Kaidan shin mimi bukuro G men boken-hen zenpen
怪談新耳袋Gメン 冒険編 前編「Kaidan shin mimi bukuro G men boken-hen zenpen」
Synopsis: A group of people taking the form of gravure idols go into haunted areas and… Wait… There’s a choice between middle-aged men and sexy gravure idols wandering around haunted areas? They are competing to find an envelope that contains tasks that will give them points and… gravure idols… Sorry.
Synopsis: Saeko (Mao Hamasaki) lives with her husband but has lost her memory. She suffers strange visions and phenomena that are connected to a curse Shinichi’s grandfather started when he did something at the end of the war…
Synopsis: A former police officer named Yoshii (Yota Kawase) works to remove landmines on an island near Okinawa. He runs into a woman named Mikayo (Ayane Suzukawa) who is connected to him from due to a past incident.
Synopsis: Moon Road is a popular shopping street in Nakano distrit of Tokyo. The locals are warm people but they are about to be thrown out into the cold when a redevelopment plan threatens to change the entire area, including chopping down iconic cherry trees. The locals band together to stop it.
Synopsis: A manga artist who looks like Osamu Tezuka has created a sexy devil girl manga character who he wishes it was real and then, what do you know, the devil girl pops out. She also turns him into a woman. Lesbian antics ensue.
Anti-War 2 Department
Two films from Kyuya Nakagawa about the legacy of World War II. He worked as an assistant director on Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005).
Synopsis: Unexploded ordinance from World War II is discovered in Tokyo and a man (Nishimura) is hiding it. Local officials try to remove the man and the house he lives in to extend a road which causes him to feel great anger, which reaches its peak while Shinzo Abe is giving a talk in Akihabara. He takes it out on a local official.
America
アメリカ 「Amerika」
Running Time:23mins.
Release Date:August 25th, 2018
Director: Kyuya Nakagawa
Writer:Shuya Nakagawa (Screenplay),
Starring:Hiroki Jahana, Koji Tanaka, En Matayoshi, Iku, Ikoi Takenouchi,
I occasionally write about the odd film screening outside of festivals when something I grew up with will get played and there are two titles which will be screened in New York in September and October that are dynamite.
This song is so well-known in Japan that I could sing it in a bar and get a chorus going. This film is also super-popular inside and outside of Japan. Nobuhiro Yamashita, his familiar writing partner Kosuke Mukai along with Wakako Miyashita craft a charming drama with an infectious song at its core. I’ll review it one day.
Synopsis:A high school is about to stage its festival and am all-girl band who hope to perform finds itself falling apart when members depart. Those that are left scramble to fill in the empty slots and a Korean exchange student named Son (Doona Bae) finds herself being asked to provide lead vocals. Their mission is to master the 1987 hit song “Linda Linda” by Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts and their performance is truly something to enjoy.
Starring: Koji Yakusho, Tsuyoshi Ujiki, Masato Hagiwara, Anna Nakagawa, Ren Osugi, Denden
I love this film. I reviewed it years ago. It is part of Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s Apocalypse Trilogy (reviews: Cure, Charisma, Pulse) which features creeping dread building up due to injections of subtle horror into a police procedural format until it reaches a fantastic finale that I find myself thinking about every so often. I’m still operating off of an old DVD version and need to get the Masters of Cinema release.
Synopsis: Detective Takabe (Koji Yakusho) is investigating a rash of gruesome murders in which a large X is found carved into the base of each victim’s throat. They happen to random people at random places in Tokyo and the only link between them seems to be a drifter with amnesia who possibly possesses hypnotic powers. The more Takabe investigates, the more he finds himself influenced by the suspect and his own mind changing over time.
Tickets for both films are on sale right now and cost $14/$11 seniors & students / $5 Japan Society members
This year’s Raindance Film Festivaltakes place from September 26thtoOctober 07thand it takes place at the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square. There are a selection of Japanese films that are sure to capture the interest of anybody including Room Laundering which caught the attention of many film fans when it played at Fantasia Film Fest in Canada. We also see Aya Igashi who was at Cannes in 2017 and an award-winning film from this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.
Tsutaya, the film rental company are involved with backing this title from a newbie director. It looks quirky as heck and features a fantastic cast.
Synopsis: Miko Yagumo (Elaiza Ikeda) has a strange job: she stays in the apartments of people who have just died in them. Murder, suicide, she’ll stay there. Why? Landlords must tell potential tenants if someone has died in the property they are planning to rent but the law is a bit fuzzy as to how many people down the line landlords need to inform. So in steps Miko, at the behest of her uncle Goro (Joe Odagiri) who got her into the gig, and she spends time at these places. Lately, she has begun to see ghosts. It kinda makes sense because Miko’s recently-disappeared mother had the same ability. Miko begins to act as an exorcist and a councillor for a variety of people who aren’t quite ready to give up the ghost on their apartments…
Synopsis: A school girl named Yo makes a connection with a nurse named Yayoi when she is hospitalised but they lose contact. Some time later they meet again and things have changed: Yayoi is depressed and earns money as a prostitute while Yo suffers abuse from her step-father. Yo seeks refuge with Yayoi and a friendship develops as the older woman becomes a friend to her young house-mate. Things become complicated when Yayoi develops feelings for a paraglider, who can take her away from the harsh realities of life and soar through the skies…
Bad Poetry Tokyo is a stunning human drama with a tone reminiscent of The Light Shines Only There (2014). It is lead by a powerful performance from lead actress Shuna Iijima who has to deal with heavy issues with a grace that is breathtaking and won her the Best Actress award at the Osaka Asian Film Festival. Here’s my review of the film and an interview with the director and cast. Highly recommended.
Synopsis: Jun Fujita is 30 years old. She majored in English at Tokyo University. That is the lie she tells people when she applies for acting jobs. In reality, she works as a hostess at a shady club. Life hasn’t turned out the way she wanted when she escaped home back in Nagano Prefecture five years ago. Still, she dreams of being an actress and is about to touch her dream when she is betrayed by her lover and things go wrong at the club. Broken and made savage by the experience, she heads back to her sleepy hometown in the countryside to lick her wounds. Things haven’t changed much there and she reconnects with an old flame but there are ugly truths about her past that lurk beneath the surface …
Synopsis: Yasuko (Shuri) is a hikikomori and unemployed. She has trouble staying awake due to her hypersomnia andalso has difficulty controlling her emotions and can be verbally aggressive. She lives with her boyfriend Tsunagi (Masaki Suda), who works as an editor for a gossip magazine. He seems indifferent to her behaviour which leaves her frustrated but when Tsunagi’s ex-girlfriend Ando (Riisa Naka) appears with plans to break up the couple, Yasuko is forced to change and leave her room.
Synopsis: This documentarylooks at the world of geisha through the career of Matsuchiyo, a geisha for six decades who is still working. It is directed by her son, Ken Nishikawa, who delves into his mother’s life story and we hear her speak about her childhood during the war, her lengthy career to the present-day and how both she and the profession have changed over time. Ken Nishikawa also gets involved and talks about what it’s like to grow up as the child of a geisha. Ken Nishikawa was at last year’s film festival with the supernatural tale Ghostroads: A Japanese Rock ‘n’ Roll Story.
There are two short movies of interest to Japanese film fans. Each short movie will be shown before a feature.
Full Moon(Dir: Yukihiro Shoda, 9 mins, IMDB) is a US-Japan co-production that follows a compilation of intertwined snippets featuring various characters of diverse backgrounds from different parts of the world leading unique liveswhich are all shown to be tied together with the underlying message that we are all connected.
Selfie-Stick(自撮り棒, Dir: Rory O’Donnell, 6 mins) describes its story as… “Taking selfies around Tokyo can lead to some strange attachments.”
So the pink film label OP PICTURES have booked out a cinema in Tokyo and are screening their latest works under the title OP PICTURES+FEST 2018. There is a lot to cover and not enough time. I had to split up last week’s trailer post into two because of the amount of content and I have raced through things here. The same bunch of directors and actors have worked on these titles and they will all be screened until mid-September. These aren’t my cup of tea.
Synopsis: Saeko (Mao Hamasaki) lives with her husband but has lost her memory. She suffers strange visions and phenomena that are connected to a curse Shinichi’s grandfather started when he did something at the end of the war…
Synopsis: A former police officer named Yoshii (Yota Kawase) works to remove landmines on an island near Okinawa. He runs into a woman named Mikayo (Ayane Suzukawa) who is connected to him from due to a past incident.
Synopsis: Moon Road is a popular shopping street in Nakano distrit of Tokyo. The locals are warm people but they are about to be thrown out into the cold when a redevelopment plan threatens to change the entire area, including chopping down iconic cherry trees. The locals band together to stop it.
Synopsis: A manga artist who looks like Osamu Tezuka has created a sexy devil girl manga character who he wishes it was real and then, what do you know, the devil girl pops out. She also turns him into a woman. Lesbian antics ensue.
Synopsis: A “youth love comedy” about a famous sex detective who operates in Tokyo. The case being investigated is the abduction of an AV star from a pink film set. It looks like there’s a mysterious organisation at work…
Synopsis: A “youth love story” about a woman who falls in love with a guy but he gives her the cold shoulder and moves to the country. She pursues him. We have to indulge male vanity and pretend this is entertaining.
Synopsis: Life on an island seems blissful for a couple and their daughter but appearances can be deceiving and an incident unleashes the inner darkness of characters.
Synopsis: A young woman named Mikayo was kidnapped at the age of 6 and hasn’t grown up. She retreats into the world she makes in her colouring books where heroes and monsters emerge. This is beyond awful as a concept.
Synopsis: The story revolves around the lives of people who frequent the snack bar, Himawari, including a woman who works there who was raised in an orphanage, an important detail because characterisation.
Aishi no dekotora tenshi
愛しのデコトラ天使「Aishi no dekotora tenshi」
Running Time:82 mins.
Release Date:August 31st, 2018
Director: Toshiyuki Kakihara
Writer:Ryuta Kawasaki, Yu Todo, Yosuke Kimura (Screenplay),
Synopsis: A story about a lady who drives dekotora trucks by day and works as a hostess at night. Can we all thank this film for bringing dekotora trucks back into cinemas.
Synopsis: Society is tough so a Non-profit organisation hires out women to help people (read: men) through their awful times. Sex ensues. Other things as well but the audience is only here for one thing.
There’s one film to be screened next week so we’re not quite out of the woods yet.
I’ve had a busy week what with overtime at work, going down to London and then a get-together at a Japanese restaurant but it has been fun.
I’ve also been working through films on Donation Theater and other titles and it has been a varied selection of titles from CG anime about a kid jetting through space to save a planet populated by robots to live-action dramas about a young woman and a young musician finding confidence in themselves. There is so much to watch, it’s great. It’s fantastic seeing the film community stepping up to help others in their time of need. You can still donate to the site and help the people of western Japan recover from the floods.
This special gem won the Audience Award and Hikari TV Awardat the Pia Film Festival and was featured at the Berlin International Film Festival and it will be at Japan Cuts this month as well. It’s an excellent debut film from Yoko Yamanaka and shows a filmmaker who is unafraid to use the camera and her actors in distinctive and, crucially, fun ways to deliver a quirky comedy about a sucky first love. My review for this film was published some time ago! All I have to say is…
SEE THIS FILM!!!
Synopsis: 16-year-old Amiko is convinced that “the Japanese are unable to dance spontaneously.” She’s just tried it out herself, with some strangers in a Tokyo underground passage. Believing that she’s had more than her fair share of days where she’d do absolutely anything, she’s left behind the provincial city of Nagano to head to the capital and take her heartthrob Aomi to task. A year before, she took a long winter’s walk with him and thought she’d met her soulmate, someone else like her who wonders in which phase of life there’s actually room for being happy. But then he disappeared, headed for Tokyo, together with Amiko’s nemesis Miyako of all people, the very “epitome of mass culture”, quite unlike her anti-bourgeois and wildly romantic self.
Synopsis:Asako (Erika Karata) is a 21-year-old woman who lives in Osaka with her boyfriend Baku (Masahiro Higashide), a free-spirited man, but when he disappears he leaves a permanent shadow in her memories.
Two years later and Asako now lives in Tokyo where she meets a salaryman named Ryohei (Masahiro Higashide). He looks just like Baku, but he has a completely different personality with sincerity being the biggest difference. Asako falls in love with Ryohei, but tries her best to avoid him because of her memories of Baku.
Synopsis: Nami (Ryoko Shinohara) and her old high school friend Serika (Yoko Maki) are in their 40s and dealing with real life. Nami is a housewife and Serika has cancer. Serika has a request: she wants to get her friends from the “Sunny” club they had in high school back for a reunion. Nami hunts each person down.
Kimi no tori wa utaeru
きみの鳥はうたえる 「Kimi no tori wa utaeru」
Running Time:119 mins.
Release Date:September 01st, 2018
Director: Sho Miyake
Writer:Sho Miyake (Screenplay), Yasushi Sato (Novel)
Starring:Shota Sometani, Tasuku Emoto, Shizuka Ishibashi, Makiko Watanabe, Ai Yamamoto,
A film based on a novel by Yasushi Sato is usually something to take notice of after a series of good to great adaptations. Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Over the Fence is good, while Sketches of Kaitan City by director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, and Mipo Oh’s The Light Shines Only There are great. The three are set in the author’s native city of Hakodate in the north of Japan but this film was originally set in Tokyo before being relocatedone has been The Japan Times review sounds like this film doesn’t quite fly. That’s a shame because there’s a great cast with Shota Sometani (Himizu), Shizuka Ishibashi (The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue), and Tasuku Emoto (Dynamite Graffiti).
Synopsis: The unnamed protagonist (Tasuku Emoto), simply referred to in the credits as “Boku” is a slacker who works at a bookstore while sharing an apartment with his unemployed friend, Shizuo (Shota Sometani). “Boku” begins dating his co-worker Sachiko (Shizuka Ishibashi) and she gets roped into his hang-about life, but Shizuo soon gets involved and a love triangle develops…
Synopsis: A local community FM station in Nasukarasuyama has been set up to help revive the town and two chaps, Natsuo (Shunsuke Daito) and Ryuji (Takara Sakumoto), have arrived to run the radio station. What they need are local stories and two high school girls help them out. The big issue is a local festival, the “Yamaage Matsuri”, is in trouble, but the girls are here to save the day.
Kaidan shin mimi bukuro G men boken-hen kouhen
怪談新耳袋Gメン 冒険編 後編「Kaidan shin mimi bukuro G men boken-hen kouhen」
Synopsis: A group of people, including director Yoshihiro Nishimura, go to haunted spots and look for ghosts. The haunted spots are ruins, mountains, and abandoned factories. This is the second part of their adventures.
K SEVEN STORIES Episode3 「SIDE: GREEN Uwagaki Sekai」
Synopsis: Nagare Hisui is the Green King and lurks in the shadow using a phone app called JUNGLE to give users of the app power. Gojo Sukuna and Mishakuji are both using JUNGLE and will eventually clash.
Synopsis: An unnamed protagonist finds the diary of a sick girl in a hospital one day. The owner is his classmate, Sakura Yamauchi, and she is suffering from a terminal illness in her pancrease. She only has a few months left to live. Sakura reveals that the protagonist is the only other person who knows about her situation. The protagonist resolves to be together with Sakura during her last few months.
Laughing Under the Clouds Side Story: Cherry Blossoms, the Bridge to Heavenly Wishes
曇天に笑う 外伝 桜華、天望の架橋 「Donten ni Warau Gaiden: Ouka, Tenbou no Kakyū」
Synopsis:The Meiji era is underway and the ban on samurai is in full effect. The common people are disturbed by rapid Westernisation and the sweeping away of the old order. The government is concerned with the increased crime rate that has resulted from this dissatisfaction and has built a new prison and commissioned the three brothers of the Kumo family with the duty of transporting criminals there. Of course, the three lads get into adventures and these adventures happen before and after the main storyline.
This year’s BFI London Film Festival is going to run from October 10th to the 21st and various cinemas across the city will be screenings films from around the world. There are three Japanese films listed and I have brought them together here. The only one I have seen is Of Love and Law and, in an era that is often marked by nationalism, division, and hate, it’s a refreshing and heartwarming film that reminds us there are good people trying to build bridges and protect others. There is also the anime film Mirai from Mamoru Hosoda which looks swell.
Probably film of the week by a long-shot. The reviews from this year’s Cannes film festival paint this to be a home-run for Mamoru Hosoda.
Synopsis:A family living in a small house in a corner of a Yokohama dotes on a spoiled four-year-old boy named Kun-chan. When he gets a little sister named Mirai, he feels that his new sister stole his parents’ love from him. Jealousy and resentment well up until he meets an older version of Mirai, who has come from the future and takes him on an adventure.
Hikaru Toda is a documentary director/editor based in London and Osaka who has had her worked screened on BBC Storyville, France Televisions, NHK, The Guardian and at major international film festivals, including Hot Docs, CPH DOX and Melbourne International Film Festival. Hikaru moved back to Japan for the first time in 22 years to make Of Love & Law. Here’s my review.
It was premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year before it went on its global journey, heading to Ireland, the Philippines, Germany at Nippon Connection, America at Japan Cuts and now London. Here’s the Kickstarter trailer I used for Tokyo:
Here’s a trailer released last week:
Synopsis: Fumi and Kazu are partners in love and law; they run the first law firm in Japan set up by an openly gay couple. Together for 15 years, the lawyers want to raise a family of their own in a country where their partnership has no legal recognition or protection. Driven by their own experience of being ‘outsiders’, they attract a range of clients who reveal the hidden diversity of a country that prides itself on its obedience, politeness and conformity. Tired of being silenced and made to feel invisible, the lawyers and their misfit clients expose and challenge the archaic status quo.
Synopsis:Asako (Erika Karata) is a 21-year-old woman who lives in Osaka with her boyfriend Baku (Masahiro Higashide), a free-spirited man, but when he disappears he leaves a permanent shadow in her memories.
Two years later and Asako now lives in Tokyo where she meets a salaryman named Ryohei (Masahiro Higashide). He looks just like Baku, but he has a completely different personality with sincerity being the biggest difference. Asako falls in love with Ryohei, but tries her best to avoid him because of her memories of Baku.
You can never truly know another person, the old existentialist saying goes. It’s not necessarily that people hide various aspects of their character and history, it’s also that people change all of the time. With that in mind, Daihachi Yoshida’s movies dwell in that gap between the fixed persona and the shadows his characters hide and we see the sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic actions that barely repressed desires and fears make people perform. The Kirishima Thing looked at the politics of high school life with longed-for and thwarted romances between members of various cliques while Pale Moon looked at the weight of expectation from society through the tale of a normal woman and her desire to escape into fantasy in order to feel desired. They all operate with varying tones of drama and comedy and it is much the same in The Scythian Lamb where tight-knit community is asked to accept a group of outsiders with troublesome pasts and hidden intentions.
Uoboka is a small picturesque port town on the decline due to depopulation so its council has decided to accept six new citizens from outside as part of a government plan to relocate certain people. All are under the supervision of local government official Hajime Tsukisue (played by pop star Ryo Nishikido) who meets each person and gets them settled in their new homes and jobs.
Our kind-hearted official is able to offer a warm welcome and the assurance to each tight-lipped person that the people of Uoboka “are nice and the seafood is great” but when he finds out that each of the mysterious six are all convicted murderers on parole it coincides with a dead body being found in the harbour. With orders to prevent the former convicts from causing trouble, Tsukisue has his work cut out for him. As if that wasn’t enough, the return of his high school crush Fumi (Fumino Kimura) adds another layer of distraction.
Within the first 30 minutes, the film cleanly and concisely establishes the location and characters and it seems that Tsukisue is going to be the straight man in a black comedy as our mild-mannered civil-servant tries to keep the criminals from causing trouble but it proves to be more thoughtful.
Screenwriter Masahito Kagawa takes Tatsuhiko Yamagami and Mikio Igarashi five volume manga and crafts a story that smoothly transitions from dark comedy to serious drama built upon the characters dealing with guilt with Tsukisue acting as a sort of tent-pole around which the action is arranged. There are the expected teething problems in terms of integration especially for the silent and disconnected Kurimoto (Mikako Ichikawa) and the ex-yakuza Shigeru (Min Tanaka) with his fierce visage and a scar that runs down his face, but others seem to settle in much better with Rieko Ota (Yuka) adding a sensuous aspect to the film with her tight tops and busty frame, sultry and her doe-eyed looks that get hearts racing at the old people’s home she works at. If the murderer is one of the six, it seems the most-likely culprit is the hardman from Tokyo, Sugiyama (Kazuki Kitamura), with his devilish grin and impish sense of humour but the amiable and slightly naive Miyakoshi (Ryuhei Matsuda) could be an ally to Tsukisue as he opens up to the charms of Ubuoka.
With six potentially loaded weapons ready to go off, one would expect a thriller to develop and it sort of does but not in the way audiences might expect. Yoshida couples that narrative thrust with heavy drama as the story zeroes in on the idea of life after committing murder and whether a person can be accepted by others as well as accept themselves.
It has a long running time but not a second is wasted as sprightly rhythm is kept by bouncing between the many characters whilst building up the town and its inhabitants with a natural escalation of details based on character traits and background and interactions and through this, the different personalities change the course of the narrative and keeps audiences guessing invested in the drama.
Going from guarded to open is a tough process for the six and ripe for drama as Yoshida shows the flow of energy between characters, how they harmonise and clash, how they deal with their shadow selves, their guilt and their anxieties as they partake in community life and find some acceptance. The characters are different enough that it is engaging to watch. Each one plays a part in showing how a person can change (or not) and each deals with their shadow selves in convincing ways to make this a solid drama. The development of some of the characters leaves something to be desired, as in, more scenes to colour their personalities in, particularly Mikako Ichikawa’s Kiyomi Kurimoto as this fine actress is a little wasted. However, the film reaches a satisfying conclusion with a thrilling denouement and it is down to a great cast of actors working off a good script and with a director who knows how to frame things perfectly with the actors all given the space required to make their roles work well together, the emotions meshing well and revealing some profound truth about life whilst keeping things light.
This week has been spent doing overtime in work and overcoming exhaustion and illness at the same time. I had help from relaxing at home with lots of films, a yakuza film from 1958 and lots of shorts on Donation Theater. The campaign period is up and there’s just a week left to watch the remaining films so I’ve got my work cut out but I will do it! I also have work on an otome game and I have to get back into regular reviews again. I have started Japanese practice again, which is good. Prep for going back to the course at the end of the month. I have also done press work for the Kotatsu Japanese Animation Festival which launches at the same time. It’s all happening but I will make it!
Synopsis:Shoji Segawa (Ryuhei Matsuda) was on the path from being a quit kid to a Shogi champion butwhen he hits the age of 26, he finds his time might be over and a new generation of shogi players are about to take over. However, with the support of his peers, he makes a comeback and a miracle happens…
Synopsis: Kasane (Kyoko Yoshine) is the daughter of a famous actress and while she has impressive acting talent she has none of her mother’s good looks because her face is deformed by a giant scar. This led to the girl becoming extremely shy and hiding away. The situation changes when her mother dies and she leaves behind enchanted lipstick that allows the wearer the power to switch faces with whomever they kiss. Around this time, an old colleague of her mother, Habuta (Tadanobu Asano), connects Kasane with an extremely beautiful but extremely arrogant and talentless actress named Nina (Tao Tsuchiya) who seems to be the perfect person to use but the man has other plans...
Synopsis:Kenta (Jun Murakami) is a manga artist living in Tokyo. When he’s contacted by his friend Kinzo (Kazumi Ikeda) who informs him that their high school will be demolished, the two head back to their home town where they get involved with a group trying to save the school and thinking about memories of their former teacher Machiko (Reimi Osawa).
Synopsis:Chiyori (Aina Yamada) was raised by a single-mother who runs an izakaya in Niigata but left to attend a high school in Tokyo with some bitterness left behind. When her mother Reiko (Yumiko Takahashi) disappears, Chiyori returns home and begins working at the izakaya with the chef Asada (Soko Wada).
Synopsis: The reboot of the FLCL series starts with this film, the first of two OVAs which tell the story of 14-year-old Hidomi, her classmate Ide, and two otherworldly beings, “Jinyu” and “Haruha Raharu,” who will unlock their hidden potential whilst dodging an all-powerful force known as “ATOMSK” by way of a gorgeous vintage car and a certain Vespa Scooter.
This is an American documentary about a Japanese subject. It is Lana Wilson’s second film following one about abortion clinics that have come under attack in America.
Synopsis: Ittetsu Nemoto is a Buddhist priest with an interesting past. He was a punk rocker who used to work at a Tokyo McDonald’s. Despite taking on priestly vows, he still loves Prince, his motorcycle and dancing in clubs. He has become famous in Japan for his extraordinary success in inspiring suicidal men and women to keep on living but when a crisis hits Nemoto, will he be able to take his own advice and keep on living?
Synopsis: Two secret agents, Naomi (Allen Ai), and Cobra (Michael Fanconi), are busy infiltrating a secret base when they decide to infiltrate each other’s pants. When their genitals get stuck together, the clock refuses to stop, and the pressure mounts because the mission has to continue. Can they overcome their sticky situation and reach a successful climax?
Eiga Okaasan to Issho Hajimete no Dai Bouken
映画 おかあさんといっしょ はじめての大冒険 「Eiga Okaasan to Issho Hajimete no Dai Bouken」
Synopsis: The NHK children’s programme, Okaasan to Issho gets its first film since it began broadcasting in 1959. Yuichiro-oniisan, Atsuko-oneesan, Yoshio-oniisan, and Risa-oneesan leave the studio and go to various places on a big adventure.
Gekijouban Hontou ni atta kowai hanashi 2018
劇場版ほんとうにあった怖い話2018 「Gekijouban Hontou ni atta kowai hanashi 2018」
Synopsis: This is a film with three vignettes based on scary internet posts including one about a student who lives next to anapartment where people committed suicide. She hears music and voices from that room…
The Vancouver International Film Festival 2018 runs from September 27th to October 12th and it has a selection of Japanese films seen at festivals such as Cannes and Udine but there is one new title which hasn’t been picked up by any festival that I have seen thus far. Just like last year, it has a film starring Ai Hashimoto and one directed by Daihachi Yoshida. It’s a good line-up so if you cannot attend Toronto or Fantasia, go see the films here.
Hirokazu Kore-eda is a legend who has appeared at Cannes with films six times in the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, picking up the Jury Prize for Like Father, Like Son (2013). Due to his focus on families in films likeI Wish (2011) and Our Little Sister (2015), he is often called the Ozu of modern Japanese cinema by critics and this one features an unconventional family by normal Japanese standards.
Synopsis:Osamu (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) live with their son Shota (Kairi Jyo) Nobuyo’s younger sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and their grandmother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki) in a home behind an apartment. Osamu works as a day labourer but they rely on Hatsue’s pension and the ill-gotten goods they have from their shoplifting antics. They may be poor but they are happy.
One winter, Osamu and Shota finda girl named Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) in the freezing cold and take her home with them much to Nobuyo’s ire but she soon starts taking care of their new family member. However an incident occurs and a family they were on good terms with falls out with them causing secrets to be revealed…
WebsiteIMDB
Daihachi Yoshida of The Kirishima Thing fame is back with this murder mystery which is a strong dramedy about secrets and redemption. Here’s my review.
Synopsis: Thanks to a government program, the small seaside town of Uobuka gets six strangers into the community. They include a scary fisherman (Kazuki Kitamura), a methodical cleaning woman (Mikako Ichikawa), and a simple-minded deliveryman (Ryuhei Matsuda). All are under the supervision of local government official Hajime Tsukisue (Ryo Nishikido) who gets reports of suspicious behaviour. When he finds out who these people are and their criminal backgrounds, a body is discovered in the harbour and Tsukisue suspects one of the newcomers committed murder…
I (Ai Hashimoto) has returned to her home town after 10 years in Tokyo and has moved back in with her parents. She works as a freelance writer and spends her days meeting ol high school friends. She also contacts Shiina (Ryo Narita), her high school crush, There is also Me (Mugi Kadowaki) who stayed in her home town and dated Shiina. They broke up but she finds him hard to forget. A love triangle develops.
Mamoru Hosoda’s new Mirai no Mirai (Mirai of the Future) will screen at this year’s Directors’ Fortnight, an independent section held in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival which will be held from May 9-19. The film is said to be closer to the human drama of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children rather than the more action-packed Summer Wars and The Boy and the Beast. It is reportedly based on Hosoda’s own experiences of being a father in a family where a newborn took the attention of the parents away from the elder sibling and the emotions that radiated from that feeling.
Synopsis:A family living in a small house in a corner of a Yokohama dotes on a spoiled four-year-old boy named Kun-chan. When he gets a little sister named Mirai, he feels that his new sister stole his parents’ love from him. Jealousy and resentment well up until he meets an older version of Mirai, who has come from the future and takes him on an adventure.
Great to see the ENBU Seminar guys are still going. Seven years on and there are two this weekend. The first looks like the Romero film Diary of the Dead. It will be released in the UK later this year.
Synopsis:A film crew shooting a zombie movie in the mountains finds that their work turns real when honest to goodness zombies start showing up and chowing down on the crew. Does the director stop? Hell no! He keeps on shooting.
Making his Cannes debut is Ryosuke Hamaguchi who has had a long career as a film-maker but many people will probably know him for Happy Hour (2015). He has a good cast including Sairi Itoh (Love and Other Cults).
Synopsis:Asako (Erika Karata) is a 21-year-old woman who lives in Osaka with her boyfriend Baku (Masahiro Higashide), a free-spirited man, but when he disappears he leaves a permanent shadow in her memories.
Two years later and Asako now lives in Tokyo where she meets a salaryman named Ryohei (Masahiro Higashide). He looks just like Baku, but he has a completely different personality with sincerity being the biggest difference. Asako falls in love with Ryohei, but tries her best to avoid him because of her memories of Baku.
Shuichi Okita, director of A Story of Yonosukeand The Woodsman and the Rain brings a gentle dramedy about an elderly couple. It looks relaxing and you can’t go wrong with Kirin Kiki.
Synopsis from Nikkatsu International:He lays among the shrubs and trees in his garden and observes the scurrying ants. This 94-year-old bearded man is Morikazu Kumagai, aka Mori, and he is a painter. For the last 30 years he’s hardly left his property. Most of his day is spent tirelessly observing his garden and all living things in it, which he renders into paintings. He paints every evening in a studio he calls the “school.” While he goes about his business, his wife Hideko attends to a string of visitors. In the garden there are the critters and insects and on the porch, birds in cages overlook the garden. Mori and Hideko live peacefully, surrounded by the things they love. But then some developers decide to build a condominium next door which puts their small paradise at risk. It will block the sun and the garden will be uninhabitable. Mori and Hideko decide to take action to protect the garden they cherish… The film is a humorous depiction of a summer day in the life of an old couple who’ve been together 52 years, in the more affable social atmosphere of the 1970s.
Here’s my coverage of Vancouver from previous years:
Documentarian and visual anthropologistHikaru Toda is based in London and Osaka and has worked on manyfilms to explore the differences between people and society. Love Hotel,a 2014 film she co-directed,was a look at the lives of the customers of a love hotel in Osaka. It eschewed going down the cheap route oftitillating and alternative sex to look at the pressures, inner-desires,and memories that drive the people who escape to such a private place. The film also offered a look at the creeping draconian politics of Japan’s government which is shutting down love hotels whilst alsotaking awaypersonal freedoms as it re-militarises the country. Two of the customers were gay lawyers Kazu and Fumi who lived out their love behind closed doors and reappear in this documentary out in the open.
Kazuyuki “Kazu” Minami and Masafumi “Fumi” Yoshida are partners in the first law firm in Japan set up by an openly gay couple and have been professional and romantic partners for around 15 years. They want to raise a family of their own but Japan is a country where their relationship has no legal recognition or protection. Driven by their own experience of being “different”, they work tirelessly for clients who come from a variety of situations. Their personal lives and professional work are used by Toda to reveal the hidden tensions in a country that isa place where “tradition” and the demands to conform to the will of the majority trump an individual’s happiness.
Toda keeps dry facts to a minimum. On-screen text at the start tells how minorities are denied social and legal representationand then she follows with the stories of the people Kazu and Fumi representto prove her assertion by showing what happens when people don’t conform. Clients range from teachers fired for not standing during the national anthem to families devastated by the suicide of someone because of the threat of being outed as gay. Toda fortuitously found herself filming during an internationally famous case which focussed onthe vulva-inspired art created by Rokudenashiko, real name Megumi Igarashi, who fell foul of obscenity laws.Igarashi used 3D scans of her own vagina to craft a range of things from a kayak to dioramas and a mascot in a celebration of normal part of the human anatomy and to provoke conversation about the representation of female bodies but was arrested and her work seized by the police. This, despite there being a festival all about the penis. What is art and what is porn? These issues are discussed in the film and, in one amusing sequence, Kazu goes to an anime theme store to buy real sex toys to show that Igarashi’s works are not in the same market. There are many more cases threaded through the film of real people affected by unfairly implemented laws based on narrow readings of the Japanese constitution, the most sobering beingpeople battlingarchaic laws that prevent the legal registration of people born outside of the traditional family structure and driven to despair over not being recognised as real people. The whole thing is held together by Kazu and Fumi.
What Toda does well is to bring the viewer into the lives of the people on screen as a contrast to the serious moments of each court case and social protest. Sharp observation, excellent direct-to-camera interviews, and generosity of screen-time adds a fine texture of intimacy to absorb viewers. Toda shows small details such as family portraits of the two as young men together as well as capturing how their unique personalities fit together as they support each other emotionally and physically. Kazu, a singer-songwriter, serenades Fumi who does the cooking. Kazu’s family have accepted Fumi who dotes on others. One brilliant moment is a simple focus pull where Kazu performs a song and a crying Fumi mouths the lyrics but a focus switches to Kazu’s mother who watches her son’s lover and lets slip her own emotion.
The two men are playful with each other, full of love and care, and that love spills over to their family and friends and you get the feeling Toda is part of things. There are occasional moments when her voice can be heard as her subjects interact with her and they are not afraid or flustered by her presence which feels unobtrusive. Seeing the beats of everyday life, whether it is a walk from around the streets of Umeda in the couple’s home city of Osaka, a night out at a bar in Tokyo, or filming a music video, helps the audience to understand everyone on screen is a person while the twists in each case pin up the wider picture of normal people working hard for each other.
Of Love and Law is, without a doubt, a thoroughly thoughtful, entertaining and revealing documentary and achieves a strong sense of intimacy by taking the time to get deeper into the lives of Kazu and Fumi. Their cases expose the fault-lines in Japanese society that are invisible to many outsiders but far from being a stuffy legal film, this is a documentary full of witty and intelligent people and Toda is a filmmaker who connects with her subjects because she truly cares for each individual. The film is a vital reminder in our age of divisive politics, prejudice, and hatred that love, empathy, care, and civility are important strengths and kind-hearted people are out there and willing to help and defend others.
It has been a long journey for this film as it tours the world.
It will be playing at the forthcoming London Film Festival on October 20th and 21st, a year after it debuted at Tokyo. My review was first published on July 18th on V-Cinema.
Synopsis: Kei (Hanae Kan) is a melancholy young woman whoworks in a cafe in Tokyo cafe and in an uncertain relationship with her girlfriend, a model named Ai (Yuka Yamauchi). When Kei meets an exchange student from Tehran studying art, Naima (Sahel Rosa), they instantly connect despite cultural and religious differences. This connection, however, sparks the jealousy of Ai…
Synopsis: A literary magazine has launched a web competition to find a new voice to save the publishing industry. They get many submissions but the one that excites an editor named Hanai is a handwritten manuscript written by someone named Hibiki Akui. There is no contact address but the work is so revolutionary Fumi Hanai (Keiko Kitagawa) is desperate to track her down. Meanwhile an eccentric and introverted girl named Hibiki (Yurina Hirate) has entered her high school’s literature club and meets a collection of interesting characters…
3D Kanojo Real Girl
3D彼女 リアルガール 「3D Kanojo Riaru Ga-ru」
Running Time:114 mins.
Release Date:September 14th, 2018
Director: Tsutomu Hanabusa
Writer:Minato Takano, Tsutomu Hanabusa (Screenplay), Mao Nanami (Manga)
Synopsis: High school boy Hikaru Tsutsui (Hayato Sano) is a bit of an anime and game otaku and, as you can guess, he’s a bit of a nobody in school. However, one girl likes him and her name is Iroha Ikarashi (Ayami Nakajo) and she confesses her feelings to him.
Also, his father is played by Riki Takeuchi and I cannot imagine how cool/irritating that would be…
This one looks good. A great character-actor in Ken Yasuda and direction from Keisuke Yoshida (My Little Sweet Pea) who does great family dramas.
Synopsis: Ken Yasuda plays Iwao, a man who never fell in love until the age of 42 and while working abroad. With his Filipina bride named Irene (Nattsu Shitoi), he returns to his home town but arrives just as his father’s funeral is underway. Iwao’s mother is not best pleased…
The Hungry Lion
飢えたライオン 「Ueta Raion」
Running Time: 78 mins.
Release Date: September 15, 2018
Director: Takaomi Ogata
Writer: Takaomi Ogata, Fujio Ikeda(Screenplay)
Starring: Urara Matsubayashi, Atomu Mizuishi, Mariko Tsutsui,
Takaomi Ogata has been around since the early 2010s and he has always dealt with tough social issues. I watched three of his early feature films but only reviewed one, Sunk Into the Womb, a brutal story of a woman who abandons her children. This one has a story that looks equally harrowing since it portrays an innocent person having their reputation murdered by the media, the lies and scandals that people mindlessly consume. It was at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year and Rotterdam and the New York Asian Film Festival this year. Here’s my review on V-Cinema.
Synopsis: When Hitomi’s homeroom tutor is taken away by the police for suspected child prostitution and child pornography she has no idea that her life will also be affected. A sex video is leaked and a rumour starts that Hitomi is the girl in the video. It’s all a lie, but it spreads like wildfire and Hitomi kills herself. This is griss for the scandal mill that is the media and reporting intensifies, creating a false image of Hitomi.
NETSTAR Saisei Kaisu no muko-gawa
NETSTAR 再生回数の向こう側 「NETSTAR Saisei Kaisu no muko-gawa」
Synopsis: The Kindan Boys were/are (I don’t know) YouTube “celebrities” and they became a big hit with young people who loved their antics. This is them telling their own story.
Synopsis: Voice actors do some competitive bowling with punishment games involved. There’s a DVD release which this film is meant to act as hype for.
No joke, I find it endearing that there are people who like voice actors so much that they’d go to a cinema to watch a film about them bowling. It’s innocent. I’m being naive. Ignorance is bliss.
Synopsis: This comedy depicts two fools, one male and one female. The female is Ayako, a wannabe actress, and her boyfriend is an AV director. The male is Tatsuo and, although they are kinda friends, he fails to understand her feelings and the two vent their irritations over some drinks.
Synopsis: A lonely subway worker named Tachibana (Hiroto Kanai) buys a used book and finds a business card between the pages and an underlined sentence that moves his heart. He decides to call the person whose details are on the card and he meets a lady named Akane (Chizuru Ikewaki) who can see things sparklingly…
The Hungry Lion is the fourth feature from Fukuoka-born indie filmmaker Takaomi Ogata. Each of his films addresspressing social issues faced by modern Japan. Never Ending Blue(2011) showsa teenage girl enduring child abuse and self-abuse and was potent enough to win the Runner-up Grand Prix at the 2010 Okinawa Motion Picture Festival. Body Temperature (2011) featured the story of an intensely lonely man too focussed on a life-sized doll to make a connection with other humans. Sunk Into the Womb(2013) features a Nobody Knows type of storyabout a single-mother who abandons her children. The Hungry Lionhas the harrowing story of an innocent person having their reputation murdered by liars,gossip-mongers, and the media.
The scandal here isa high school homeroom tutor arrested by the police for suspected child prostitution and child pornography. As the film opens, the kids are sneaking glimpses of a leakedsex video via a smartphone. It all seems like fun and games to them but one pupil in that class, the popular and friendly Hitomi Sugimoto (Urara Matsubayashi) has no idea that her life will be so drastically affected as she manages her own online persona. Somehow the rumour that Hitomi is the girl in the video starts to spread like wildfire. It’s all a lie butthis is grist for the scandal mill that is the media and social networks. As the lies intensify, people in Hitomi’s life start to doubt her. First it’s classmates and her boyfriend Hiroki and then even her mother Yuko (Mariko Tsutsui). Soon, it seems it is everyone with an internet connection believes this false image of Hitomi and she finds herself powerless to control the direction events are taking.
The narrative is simple in its execution as we see the gradual warping of an individual. In telling a story like this, The Hungry Lion takes on subjects that have become prevalent since the rise of video sharing sites and SNS such as revenge porn and anonymous online bullying which makes it an extremely relevant tale for today’s times.
The central idea is that social media’sability to connect us all can be used to isolate and destroy us especially if we are addicted to it. Ogata paints a picture of people influenced too much by online life to the detriment of reality. Herd mentality seems to reign as characters are always attached to their phone or never far from a screen. Arguments and moments of malicious mockery in public spaces are usually incited by someone who has just looked at something online and others join in. Hitomi cannot even get a break at home as her family blame her for the shame she bringsand Hitomi herself adds to the crushing weight of things by constantly checking her status online. There is the sense that nobody wants to question the lies or believe Hitomi. The social bonds that should support Hitomi are shown to be frayed to the point of breaking due to the way her family members and her boyfriend are so easily susceptible to the online lies and too concerned about their own reputations so it feels like victim-blaming when Hitomi’s pleas for help are met with criticism and disbelief. This leads to dire consequences as Hitomi has nowhere to turn and finds herself vulnerable to others.
Through this linear narrative arc, the power of social media seems overwhelming as the audience is let into kind-hearted Hitomi’s life and see her betrayed. A knot will form in stomachs as the lies build up and we see how devices and services we take for granted can be weaponised or turned into traps. Intimacy and trust means little online where such notions can be manipulated. As this isolation and defamation occurs, the bullying Hitomi goes through escalates.Cruel taunts based on a phrase spoken in the video, graffiti and pranks are used against her, and her ruined reputation makesits way into popular culture and she is hounded everywhere she goes.
To essay the humiliation of it all, Ogata chooses to film with littlefuss. Editing and shot composition are kept simple and movement in scenes is minimal save for a couple of handheld and POV shots during intimate moments between Hitomi and her boyfriend. There is also switching between recording on digital cameras and smartphone to highlight the ubiquity of recording devices and the way we consume media.People are often framed by a screen, either as part of a news report or on a phone. Takaomi’s camera is, for the most part, observing the naturalistic interactions of the characters and Hitomi’s gradual breakdownbrilliantly essayed by Urara Matsubayashi who sinks from being physically outgoing and all smiles to moving like a zombie and withdrawn from events, a shadow of her former self.
The cruel sting in the tale comes at the end as Ogata critiques wider mediaand how it adds to this culture. If there is a message at the end of the film, it is that the media is an amoral and destructive beast that, if you get sucked into its maw, will chew you up and spit you out. Audiences will hopefully not fall for fake news and be more analytical about things and kinder to others after watching this…
This review was first published on June 29th, 2018 on V-Cinema.
choreographer who works with pop acts around the world, brings a physical expressiveness to the film that is easy to enjoy, and Mari Yamamoto does well which is important because her character’s journey gives the film emotional heft that will bring a tear to the eye. Also good is Masane Tsukayama as the old chef who reveals that cooking can be the heart and soul of a community. 
So the pink film label OP PICTURES have booked out a cinema in Tokyo and are screening their latest works under the title 
