It has been a while since I last did a review round-up of any festival but fellow cinephile and Twitter-user FelixAguirre regularly collects links to reviews and alerts them to me and with such a treasure-trove of opinions from the most recent Cannes Film Festival on offer, I’d be mad to turn them down. Following on from Blade of the Immortal and Radiance is…
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is my favourite filmmaker. I’ll resist copying and pasting my reviews (since I copied and pasted my preview of this film) and just say that both his horror titles and his dramas like Tokyo Sonata and License to Live are my absolute favourite films of all time. He has transcended his horror roots and a controversial start to his career to become a major figure in the Japanese film industry and now teaches at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and tours the international festival circuit with his works. He has been a regular guest at the most high-profile European film festivals in recent years and his latest, a spin on The Invasion of the Body Snatchers has captured critic’s interest:
In between teaching the next generation of filmmakers at Tokyo University of Fine Arts, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has regularly been making films himself and his latest is based on a stageplay by Tomohiro Maekawa which was first performed in 2005. Its story has the feel of something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and while the first poster revealed looked innocuous enough the second one (which isn’t all that good) showcased an explosion so expect violence. It stars Ryuhei Matsuda (Nightmare Detective, The Great Passage, My Little Sweet Pea), Masami Nagasawa (Our Little Sister) and Hiroki Hasegawa (priceless as the mad director in Why Don’t You Play in Hell?). It has been selected to be screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival and it looks decent from the teaser.
Synopsis: Narumi (Masami Nagasawa) and her husband Shinji Kase (Ryuhei Matsuda) are having problems of the marital sort. Things may be bad but are they bad enough to justify Shinji disappearing for seven days? Masami is left wondering, especially because after his disappearance and return he seems like a totally different person, a kinder and gentler man who likes to go for a walk every day. This just happens to coincide with strange events in town and the brutal murder of a family. Masami begins to piece things together but Shinji surprises her again by telling her that he came to Earth to invade.
Some film critics lament the passage of time and the mellowing of the once-great horror director who has moved on from intense and original psychological and supernatural films to overlong sci-fi tales and adaptations of novels:
“Once upon a time, Kiyoshi Kurosawa made films like Cure and Pulse, which – depending on who you ask – were some of the best horror films of their time. But man, when a director lets himself go… Before We Vanish is an ambitious sci-fi drama with some good ideas, and someone who doesn’t really know how to handle them. It’s a mess, both tonally and structurally, with a few lingering remnants of promise that never blossom to fruition.” Sam Gray – The Upcoming
The film has garnered mixed reviews from critics, most of whom state that genre fans more familiar with Kurosawa’s horror works and those expecting a sci-fi action spectacle (as promisedby that explosion in that lacklustre poster) will face disappointment because the film lives up to its Japanese title as the paces relaxes into a stroll thanks to Kurosawa’s restrained direction and audiences are taken for a wander through an alien invasion and multiple genres whilst characters philosophise about life and love.
“Perpetually shifting gear between playful sci-fi pastiche, quirky rom-com and apocalyptic thriller, Before We Vanish might have worked better as a single dedicated genre, but it becomes a little scrambled trying to cover several at once. Kurosawa’s lackadaisical direction does not help, deflating any suspense and stretching audience patience with his snoozy pacing and baggy running time.” Stephen Dalton – The Hollywood Reporter
The running time becomes an issue when there is no dramatic propulsion vanishes after its exciting and scary opening it seems like there is little of interest happening…
“The sparks of dark humour within this awkwardly paced and overlong drama are not enough to sustain audience interest until the film’s laboured conclusion.” Wendy Ide – Screen Daily
But stick with it. Despite the harsh criticism of some, others say the film is redeemed by its conclusion:
“Playing frequently like an absurdist political satire with only flashes of violence, this low-tension, drawn-out work won’t gratify the chills or adrenaline rushes fanboys crave, but the ending strikes a romantic chord so pure that all but the most jaded cynics will be moved.” Maggie Lee – Variety
As far as I can tell, this film, along with all of Kurosawa’s most recent output reveal a director who has firmly become a grand old man of the Japanese film industry and one might argue that, like the industry, his fire is vanishing with each film he releases amidst money-spinning adaptations. You can’t stay angry when you are no longer an outsider like he was around the time of Charisma and he has matured but he feels like another example of the many Japanese filmmakers who aren’t tackling different and difficult subjects whether it is politics, corruption, misogyny and whatever else needs to be addressed in society and that is disappointing. Still, maybe you’d trade in controversy for acclaim if you get invited to Cannes and lauded in Japan…
Meanwhile, in Korea where filmmakers DO discuss and dissect difficult subjects in films and still get invited to festivals their films are still generating interest – I will have to review some soon…
This short will next be seen at Japan Cuts in New York.
According to Anime News Network (who are reporting about an article Eiga.com), the last time a Japanese film won the Cristal award “was 22 years ago, when Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko film won the award in 1995.”
That’s mind-boggling to me but I am biased since I have grown up on anime and work for an anime film festival, haha.
I want to say congratulations to the recipients of various awards. Having seen the above films and other anime from these directors, I can say that they are all worth watching and I am excited at the prospect that these will be seen in UK cinemas later this year. Perhaps they will be programmed at the festival I work for. I’m super-pleased for Sawako Kabuki since I have watched her develop over the years and it’s great that her perseverance and skill is getting rewarded.
Anyway, the anime festival I work for is later in the year. Right now, I have lots of live-action films to watch and review (I need to review so many films!!!).
It is one of the best places not in Germany (Nippon Connection) or Holland (Camera Japan) to see the latest and most interesting contemporary films with experimental indies programmed alongside big-budget titles, as well as documentaries, shorts and recently restored classics. Not only is this a place to view films, the festival also hosts special guest filmmakers and stars, post-screening Q&As, parties and more. I have covered it in the past to help people get in contact with great films and this year’s edition has lots of great titles on offer that show the diversity of talents operating in the country and reveal that, contrary to what I have felt recently, the Japanese film industry has the potential to tell more than the same stories over and over (if only Japanese financiers could see beyond adapting manga and anime and take risks). Here’s more from the organisers of the festival:
“For ten years, JAPAN CUTS’ richly diverse slates have offered audiences a window into the breadth and depth of contemporary Japanese cinema. This eleventh installment of JAPAN CUTS presents a wide-ranging selection of films across each programming section that reveal the multiplicity of identities and layers of culture that shape Japanese film today—including international co-productions and adaptations, new LGBTQ cinema, female directors, and deeply relevant histories of WWII and nuclear trauma.”
I have pulled together a preview of the full line-up from old previews I have written and from the festival’s website to show potential audience members that there is so much worth going to see. Thanks go out to the people at Japan Society New York for making things a easier and creating the event!
I hope this helps inform you about the films and inspires you to go and see some and if you do, please come back and tell me what you think. You might also want to check out the Japanese films screening at the New York Asian Film Festival. After a long period of writing news stories, I will be writing reviews for various films that have screened and will be screening at various festivals and ones in my collection.
Here’s the full line-up:
Opening Film:
Introduction and Q&A with director Yoshihiro Nakamura, followed by the OPENING NIGHT PARTY
Synopsis from the festival site: Raised suckling poison arrows among the sparring Iga ninja factions, Mumon (Satoshi Ohno, of idol group Arashi) is a carefree 16th-century mercenary. When the ninja council makes a power play to defeat the young Nobukatsu Oda struggling to step into his father’s warlord shoes as they expand rule across the country, Mumon jumps into the fray to satisfy his new bride Okuni’s (Satomi Ishihara of Shin Godzilla, Attack on Titan) demand that he make good on his promises of wealth. Yet Mumon soon finds what is worth fighting for beyond money or nation.
SOLD OUT. A waitlist will begin one hour prior to the screening at the Box Office. Being on the waitlist does not guarantee admission.
Highly experienced actor Hideo Sasaki takes the director’s position and casts rising international star Yosuke Kubozuka (Peco in Ping Pong!!!, he also appeared inn Go (2001)) and Kenji Furuya, a musician in the group Dragon Ash.
Synopsis: Hideaki Ashita (Yosuke Kubozuka) is a former champion boxer who quit the sport after sustaining a brutal head injury whichhas left him with aftereffects including depression. He leads a solitary life, working part-time for a security company and living alone.
Until he finds a stray cat!
He forms a bond with the cat but he isn’t the only one since Ikumi Umetsu (Kenji Furuya), a mechanic, has taken a liking to the wandering feline and takes her for himself, much to Hideaki’s annoyance. The two men join forces to protect single mother Saeko Tsuchiya (Yui Ichikawa) from her ex-boyfriend but when violence enters their livesthey head for Tokyo.
Sion Sono is one of the directors who took part in the Roman Porno Reboot and critics liked his insane feminist take on the infamous subgenre of softcore skinflicks.
Synopsis: Celebrity novelist and artist Kyoko (Ami Tomite) is feeling the nerves before an interview with a major magazine and so she decides to take insecurities out on her older eager-to-please assistant Noriko (Mariko Tsutsui), whom she sadistically humiliates through various acts. All is not as it seems in this relationship and the people in the dominant and subservient and voyeur positions switch places… and that includes the audience…
Sawako Kabuki is back with another short film focussed on the vagaeries of relationships as seen from a scatalogical perspective. This is a graduation piece from her time at Tama Art University and the film has been at various festivals around the world and it’s on YouTube. The story is described thusly:
Painful events become memories over time. Still, we vomit and eat again. Life is eco.
Synopsis: Naoko has just established an all-female theater troupe and is creating her first play whilst hopping into bed with various women. Her behaviour changes when she meets Haru and is drawn by a mixture of sexual desire and admiration of Haru’s acting and a stormy relationship is established amidst the broiling jealousies of the theatre-group.
Yuya Ishii was one of the first directors I started tracking on my blog thanks to his films getting UK releases thanks to the bravery and good taste of Third Window Films. Sawako Decides (2010), Mitsuko Delivers (2012), and The Great Passage (2013). He has gone from indie kid to award-winning adaptations and kept a certain level of quality in his incisive look at human nature, regardless of genre and who the stars are. Here, he works with newbie actors like Shizuka Ishibashi and Ryo Sato. He pairs them up with the more experienced Sosuke Ikematsu (How Selfish I Am!), Mikako Ichikawa (Rent-a-neko), Tetsushi Tanaka (Exte, One Missed Call, Quirky Guys and Gals, Cure), and Ryuhei Matsuda (Nightmare Detective, My Little Sweet Pea) who was the lead in The Great Passage. The actors all portray characters caught up in the brutal world of Tokyo, alienated, stressed, failing to cope and looking for relief from the everyday grind. It is shot with “lightness,” “enchanting visual ideas,” and “candour.” It’s only 108 minutes as well, so it shouldn’t drag. I’m definitely interested in this one.
Synopsis from the Berlin International Film Festival Site: Mika (Shizuka Ishibashi) works as a nurse by day; by night she works as a bartender in a girls’ bar. Having recently broken up with her boyfriend and lost her mother, she walks the streets of Tokyo and ponders on what she sees as the meaningless of life. Shinji (Sosuke Ikematsu) is blind in one eye and ekes out a living as a construction worker. Manically talkative, he accepts the label of being “weird” in order to cover up a deep sense of alienation. Young and grown-up at the same time, they both lead a lonely existence, but somehow their paths keep miraculously crossing under the Tokyo sky. Can loneliness be experienced together?
Playwright and director Kenji Yamauchi premiered his film At the Terrace during the 2016 edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival where it garnered positive buzz from critics for its mix of sensuous and caustic comedy of manners. Based on one of his plays, Trois Grotesques, Yamauchi refuses to cleave away too far from his source and keeps things simple with a film shot in a single location with a cast of seven actors, all of whom were players in the preceding play itself which explains why their comic performances are so perfect.
Synopsis:The film opens at a lavish house somewhere in the suburbs of Tokyo. The house is owned by Mr Soejima (Kenji Iwatani), the director of a company, and his wife Kazumi (Kei Ishibashi), both of whom are hosting a night-time party which drags on for a small group of guests because the more they drink the more they feel the need to linger behind and explore some bitter feelings and bad behaviour bubbling away underneath their polite Japanese exteriors.
This one was Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s first feature-length film shot outside Japan takes place in France but he returns to the realm of the supernatural which his early work mined for great stories such as Cure, Seance, and Pulse. His lead actor is Tahar Rahim who got his big-break in film with A Prophet. He is supported by good actors like Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
Synopsis:Jean (Rahim) is a Parisian who stumbles into a job in a crumbling manor on the outskirts of Paris as the assistant of reclusive photographer named Stephane (Gourmet). After the death of his wife, Stephane lives with his 22-year-old daughter, Marie (Rousseau), an otherworldly blonde who bears a spitting image of her mother. She poses for her father as he takes photographs of her using the daguerreotype process – models must spend hours standing still with the aid of metal bars behind their back and limbs to help her keep their body in place. As Jean falls for Marie, he discovers that her father is obsessed with taking life-sized daguerreotypes and it may be connected to resurrecting the spirit of his dead wife…
This film was produced by Shinji Aoyama (Eureka) and it is the debut film of Sora Hokimoto. It has been described as a “feverish musical dream that recalls Shuji Terayama” so if you have seen Grass Labyrinth you kind of get an idea of what this will be like. “Avant-garde aesthetics, theatrical artifice, music and humour mix to produce a spherical, tonal narrative reaching catharsis in movement and music on the border of life and death. Produced in the wake of the passing of his stage designer father and featuring a positively electric soundtrack, Haruneko is thoroughly alive.”
Synopsis from the festival site: Deep in a forest is a café run by The Manager, an elderly woman and a boy called Haru. The café is a refuge for everyone who wants to die. People go there and are taken by The Manager to a misty place deep in the woods, where they gradually disappear and are transformed into sound waves.
Who exactly these people are is left largely to our imagination, although brief bursts from their pasts are shown during a strange magic lantern show, which is always concluded by a musical act – including a children’s choir and pop band wearing white cat masks. Because, as the film decrees: “All that is left for us is to sing and dance.”
Synopsis:Rinko (Ayu Ayano), a bespectacled twenty-something who works in an office. She has been living with her ex-boyfriend Isamu (Kentaro Tamura), a graduate student, for three years. Indeed, the two have chosen to live together even after they broke up because their situation is comfortable. Although they separate their shared bedroom with a rack of clothes and sleep in different futons on opposite sides of the room, they interact with each other like a regular couple. One of Isamu’s classmates is attracted to him and this attraction forces Rinko to analyse whether she wants to stay with Isamu or not…
Synopsis from the Osaka Asian Film Festival Site: Sakura is a moody teenage girl living close to the US military base in the city of Yamato, a town north of Tokyo. She wants to become a musician like the American rappers she admires, but is held back by stage-fright when faced with performing in front of a live audience. Then she meets Rei, the half-Japanese half-American daughter of her mother’ s American soldier boyfriend. Rei has flown from California to visit for the summer. Sakura dislikes her immediately, but Rei’ s familiarity with American Hip Hop becomes a bridge between the two girls as they spend an unforgettable time together exploring, arguing over and bonding through the mix of Japanese and American culture in the unique landscape of Yamato. Though their adventures and quarrels may lead Sakura into danger, they may also let her face her fears and participate in the city’s music competition.
Synopsis from the: This film tells the true story of Satoshi Murayama, who devoted his life to his two greatest struggles: against shogi (Japanese chess) master Yoshiharu Habu and against an incurable disease. Through his love of shogi he developed an astonishing strength of will, but ultimately, it cost him his life.
Centrepiece Presentation: Joe Odagiri is the recipient of the CUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Performance in Film
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
After magnetic performances in television, award-winning actor Joe Odagiri made his breakout film performance in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Bright Future (2002). Earning Newcomer of the Year at the Japan Academy Prize for Azumi (2003), he soon made a reputation for taking on challenging and unexpected roles in Seijun Suzuki’s Princess Raccoon (2005), Sang-il Lee’s Scrap Heaven (2005), and Sion Sono’s Hazard (2007), winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at the Kinema Junpo Awards in 2006 and 2005. A major presence in Japanese film and TV, Odagiri has taken on many ambitious international productions such as Ki-Duk Kim’s Dream (2008), Zhuangzhuang Tian’s The Warrior and the Wolf (2009) and Junji Sakamoto’s upcoming Cuba co-production Ernesto(2017).
Introduction and Q&A with star Joe Odagiri, with CUT ABOVE Award ceremony, followed by the Home Run Party!
Synopsis: Shiraiwa (Odagiri) is a recently divorced man and newly arrived in Hakodate, Hokkaido. He attends a vocational college to learn carpentry to continue receiving unemployment benefits. He is trapped in a routine and he is not along as there are other students who are in the same boat as he. This connection leads his classmates to invite him to join them at a hostess club where Shiraiwa meets a strangewoman who is passionately imitating the courtship dance of an ostrich. It turns out that she likes Shiraiwa and although he is irritated with her at first, he begins to like him. Her name is Satoshi (Aoi) and the two fall in love.
This is a Japanese-French co-production about the real life artist Tsuguharu Foujita. Introduction and Q&A with star Joe Odagiri
Synopsis from JFDB: Paris in the early 1920s: the Japanese artist Tsuguharu Foujita (Joe Odagiri) is the darling of the capital. His very personal style, of naked women in delicate whites, surprises the Montparnasse art scene. In his relationships with many Parisiennes, and his friendships with Van Dongen, Kisling, Picasso, Modigliani and others, he lives a frenzied life in Paris. At the outbreak of WWII Foujita is back in his home country, Japan and producing propaganda. His life and beliefs shaken by the war, he lives modestly in Aomori, a small town in Northern Japan, with his new Japanese wife, Kimiyo (Miki Nakatani). Seeking refuge in the countryside, Foujita discovers a Japan he never knew.
This is a remake of a Korean movie of the same named from 2012. This one comes packed with stars like Tatusya Fujiwara (Battle Royale), Kaho (Our Little Sister), Anna Ishibashi (Kimi no Tomodachi), Hideaki Ito (Princess Blade) and Shuhei Nomura (who starred with Kaho in Puzzle).It looks good on paper but some critics have accused it of adding nothing but more melodrama to the original story and that melodrama detracts from proceedings.
“Though Memoirs of a Murderer doesn’t venture into any new territory in its first two acts, Irie manages a respectable level of tension and suspense, helped along by a suitably coiled performance by Ito and an oily one by Fujiwara.”
Synopsis: It is 1995 and a serial killer is on the loose in Japan. Detective Wataru Makimura (Hideaki Ito) is part of a team trying to solve the case but a deadly trap set by the killer leaves some of the team injured and their boss dead. The killer escaped justice.
22 years later, just after the statute of limitations has passed, amysterious man comes forward with a murder memoir, “Watashi ga Satsujinhan desu” (“I am a Murderer”). Free from the threat of prosecution, the author, the handsome and urbane Masato Sonezaki (Tatsuya Fujiwara), confesses to the crimes and begins a publicity campaign of apologising to the victim’s families. This boosts the sales of his books and he becomes a celebrity which infuriates Makimura who is determined to get justice for the victims…
Synopsis: In a perfect example of the saying, “two’s company, three’s a crowd,” this sweetly comic relationship drama features Aya (Juri Ueno), a woman who has a pretty simple life. She works part-time at a bookstore and lives with her 54-year-old boyfriend Mr. Ito (Lily Franky). After driving Aya’s sister-in-law up the wall, her cranky 74-year-old father (Tatsuya Fuji) moves in without warning. He’s not that impressed with her lifestyle or his daughter having a boyfriend nearly his age and isn’t she about criticising her but as the three negotiate living together they begin to appreciate the joys and troubles of their company.
Synopsis: Novelist Masaru Sakumoto (Atsushi Ito) was once a celebrated hotshot in the literary world but a severe case of writer’s block means he is now forced to churn out a zombie-themed serial novel to make ends meet. Panicked by feelings of failure, he seeks out an old house in the countryside to find inspiration and jumpstart his creativity. He thought he was the only person in the premises but he isn’t alone. One by one, neighbourhood cats start showing up and despite his desire for solitude to work in, well, who can resist cute cats?
Synopsis from the festival site: A secret biological weapon known as K-55 is stolen from a medical research lab by a disgruntled former employee who demands ¥300 million in exchange for its location. Unable to go to the police due to its illegal nature, research scientist Kazuyuki Kurabayashi (Hiroshi Abe) is tasked with recovering the anthrax-like weapon by the lab’s panicked director (Akira Emoto). Going off of a clue that K-55 is buried beneath snow, Kurabayashi heads to the nearest ski resort with his son on the pretense of a short vacation to begin his secret mission, enrolling the unwitting help of the local ski patrol (Tadayoshi Okura and Yuko Oshima). A slapstick comedy thriller with heart, Shippu Rondo delivers big laughs amidst exhilarating chase sequences and dramatic twists and turns.
I stayed in Hiroshima for a time to meet a friend and found the city quite charming. It’s compact but beautiful with lots of greenery and a scenic coast that are all easy to access. Despite being compact, I found myself walking around in circles as I searched for stores to get presents for relatives and friends in… Osaka and Tokyo were easier to navigate! Anyway, I can relate to the protagonist in this story as he gets lost in this city. I did meet a nice young lady who I had the chance to walk around with but I was so focused on getting those gifts… well. Anyway, this is an indie film from a French indie filmmaker who has worked in Europe and Japan and it looks splendid.
Synopsis: Akihiro is a Japanese filmmaker based in Paris. His next project is a documentary about atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the bombing. The interviews are deeply moving and so Akihiro takes a break and wanders through the city during which he meets Michiko, a merry and enigmatic young woman.
Synopsis from the festival site: Teiichi Akaba (Masaki Suda) has a singular dream: to crush the competition, become prime minister and rule his own country. But first he just has to get through high school. An absurdist satire of Japan’s elitist pathways to the seats of power, Akira Nagai’s adaptation of Usamaru Furuya’s manga finds Showa-era blue-blooded teens battling for the student council presidency. Sabotage, bribery, ritual suicide, fisticuffs and more than a few unspoken crushes charge the boys’ all out warfare, revealing the failures of hierarchical power systems and toxic masculinity. This achingly relevant, hilarious tale comes to a head when a working-class pro-democracy challenger questions the plutocrats’ factional wrangle and Teiichi is forced to recall the pure passion that drove him to his totalitarian bloodthirst.
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…
CLASSICS: REDISCOVERIES & RESTORATIONS (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)
Synopsis:Kei Shichiri is an experimental filmmaker who has tackled a manga by Naoki Yamamoto. He has a good cast in Tsugumi (Noriko’s Dinner Table, Exte) and Hidetoshi Nishijima (a big star who I have only reviewed in a lead performance in License to Live). Shichiri crafts a story full of diverse images and sounds and voiceovers that make this an interesting experimental voyage into the life of Aochi (Tsugumi), a woman who sleeps for long periods of time but feels the need to slumber longer.
Synopsis: I saw this trailer in my first month in Japan and it blew me away. Like, what did I just see, I need to see it. The trailer worked even though I had no idea what was going on. Shochiku had brought back and restored a film bymaster director Tai Kato (1916-1985), known best for his Toei yakuza films. This was his last film. Japan Cuts describes it as…
” a visually striking and sumptuously colourful documentary about the influential Ondekoza taiko troupe from Sado Island, Japan. Following the physically intense training of the young Ondekoza members and intercut with performance footage shot with gusto within elaborate set-pieces, the film pushes the limits of documentary into the realm of feverish imagination. Upon its completion, Kato had said that it was the first time in his life he was able to make a film exactly the way he wanted.”
Seijun Suzuki (1923 – 2917) made a series of films that subverted the yakuza genre through their surreal visuals and irreverent stories. Titles likeTokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill have gone down as classics but the studio that produced them, Nikkatsu, were royally annoyed and dismissed him from their stable of directors. He successfully sued them for wrongful dismissal but successffully challenging industry figures tends to get a person blacklisted (just ask Kiyoshi Kurosawa after his run-in with Juzo Itami). Suzuki, proving that creativity is everything, made a comeback ten years later and re-established his filmmaking career with his period drama series, the Taishou Trilogy. These films – Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991) won critical acclaim and awardsfrom the 1981 Japanese Academy Prize and Kinema Junpo Awards as well as box-office success. These films have been floating around on the net for a while but film fans who want the real deal will want to view this on the big screen at Japan Cuts or get the box set since it will be hi-definition. They are soon to be released thanks to Arrow Films.
Synopsis: A university professor at a military academy, his former colleague-turned-vagabond and an elusive geisha get involved in dangerous sexual games in a small town…
Synopsis: Tarugani and Papajo are two best friends who live in Patai Village in Okinawa, where those who failed to die continue to exist. Living with the undying makes being framed as thieves who stole an illegal substance from the local store seem positively normal and the two ageing friends set out on the road, chased by three dripping wet mysterious women.
Synopsis from the festival site: A dominant narrative of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans is that they behaved as a “model minority,” cooperating without protest and proving their patriotism by enlisting in the army. Konrad Aderer’s (Enemy Alien) documentary overturns this history, telling the story of the 12,000 Japanese Americans labelled “disloyal” who dared to resist the U.S. government’s program of mass incarceration at Tule Lake Segregation Centre. Through the voices of contemporary descendants on pilgrimages to the concentration camp memorial site, rare stock footage and photographs, lawyers and historians, and invaluable oral history from those who lived through it, Resistance at Tule Lake brings to surface stories of dissent and noncooperation marginalised for 70 years—ever more vital today amidst new threats to the rights of immigrants and minorities.
Synopsis from the filmmaker’s website: “IDOLS” has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. Tokyo Idols – an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet popularity.
This ever growing phenom is told through Rio, a bona fide “Tokyo Idol” who takes us on her journey toward fame. Now meet her “brothers”: a group of adult middle aged male super fans (ages 35 – 50) who devote their lives to following her—in the virtual world and in real life. Once considered to be on the fringes of society, the “brothers” who gave up salaried jobs to pursue an interest in female idol culture have since blown up and have now become mainstream via the internet, illuminating the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.
With her provocative look into the Japanese pop music industry and its focus on traditional beauty ideals, filmmaker Kyoko Miyake confronts the nature of gender power dynamics at work. As the female idols become younger and younger, Miyake offers a critique on the veil of internet fame and the new terms of engagement that are now playing out IRL around the globe.
Synopsis: Many documentaries, opinion pieces, and news articles have been generated because of the practice of whaling and dolphin hunting by Japanese fishermen but this one is billed as a “finely balanced film essay” that enters “the political fray of environmentalism versus tradition” by avoiding taking sides and focusing on “points of contact and communication between the two sides, foreign activists devoting years to the cause and agricultural workers who have developed a first-name familiarity.” The film aims to give context to the situations and arguments of local people who have grown up with the practice of whaling and those opposed to it by looking at the traditions and the global environmental and economic concerns. The filmmakers are experienced journalists who have worked both in Japan and America so there should be balance here.
SHORTS SHOWCASE (IN SCREENING ORDER)
A programme of wildly inventive and daring narrative short films from up-and-coming and well-established filmmakers from Japan varying in tone, style and genre. (Total running time approx. 84 min.)
Birds (Dir: Koji Fukada, 2016, 8 min)
This charming comedy by Koji Fukada (Harmonium) presents an awkward interaction between a wife, her husband and his lover that reaches an absurd climax.
We Are Shooting (Dir: Raita Minorita, 2017, 26 min)
Among the most stressful and thankless work done on a film set is undertaken by the production intern. It is no different for the plucky Reiko, who is reminded that “Moviemaking is a warzone!”
WHITE-T AND FEEBLE THINGS (Dir: Yun Su Kim, 2017, 30 min)
Takara only wears spotless white T-shirts, but lately can’t seem to keep any of them clean. Meanwhile, he meets a mysterious contract killer and struggles with insecurities about his girlfriend. International Premiere.
Breathless Lovers (Shumpei Shimizu, 2017, 20 min)
Suffering from heartbreak and asthma, 23-year-old Toshiyuki pushes the limits of his body to chase the ghost of his recently deceased boyfriend against the black-blue backdrop of Tokyo’s cityscape.
This is the UK premiere of an award-winning film that I had the pleasure of seeing in Hiroshima, the setting for part of the film, a couple of months ago. It took the Animation of the Year award at the 40th annual Japan Academy and I am not surprised since it is a beautiful and stately film about an absent-minded artistic young woman trying to survive the hardship of war. I wasn’t the only one impressed since the film won the Hiroshima Peace Film Award at the Hiroshima International Film Festival in November last year and the film magazine Kinema Jump named it the best Japanese movie of 2016 and it awarded Katabuchi the Best Director Award.
The film was orchestrated by Sunao Katabuchi who directed the awesome Mai Mai Miracle and the TV animeBlack Lagoon.It was animated by the studio MAPPA (Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis, Terror in Resonance).
Synopsis: Suzu Urano is a Hiroshima girl from a close-knit family but when she marries a naval officer, she has to move from Hiroshima City to Kure, the city which launched the battleship Yamato and the site of one of Japan’s largest naval bases. As a new housewife, she encounters uncertainty in her new family, her new city, and her new world but she perseveres and finds happiness even as the war grinds on and comes closer to home.
Maki is a film producer and the president of GENCO INC. He studied at Waseda University School of Law, and after graduation, worked at film production company Tohokushinsha. There, he worked on many television and feature animation films. Some of his renowned producing credits include Mamoru Oshii’s Mobile Police Patlabor the Movie (1989), Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress (2001) and Tokyo Godfathers (2003), the Sword Art Online TV series (2012, 2014), Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (2016) and Ryuhei Kitamura’s Downrange (2017). In 2016, he produced In This Corner of the World, which ranked 1st in the Kinema Junpo Awards.
It has been a while since I last did a review round-up of any festival but fellow cinephile and Twitter-user FelixAguirre regularly collects links to reviews and alerts them to me and with such a treasure-trove of opinions from the most recent Cannes Film Festival on offer, I’d be mad to turn them down. Following on from Blade of the Immortal and Before We Vanishis…
People have criticised the Cannes film festival in the past for not showcasing more female directors and in 2017 they increased the amount of women on the croisette and the amount of female-driven stories on the big screen. Let’s hope that trend continues and that they tap into the pool of female talent that Asia has produced. However, the Cannes film festival has supported one female filmmaker in particular and her name is Naomi Kawase.
I’ll be honest and say that, despite spending years (YEARS!) writing about festivals where Naomi Kawase shows up, and despite vowing to watch her films, I still haven’t watched any. I worked with people who have worked with Naomi Kawase and I admitted (mumbling in shame at the time) that I was still ignorant about her work… She was at this year’s Cannes film festival with her latest film…
Naomi Kawase is a native of the city of Nara and shot her latest film there in October and November. It seems she is also a native of Cannes since she is constantly either having a film screened or she is one of the judges. She reunites with the actor Masatoshi Nagase who worked with her on An (2015), a film that appeared at Cannes 2015 and a whole host of other festivals before getting released in the UK and US amongst other foreign territories. I have been told that her films are good and I have met people who have worked with her and so I really need to check out her work.
Synopsis: Masaya Nakamori (Masatoshi Nagase) is a genius photographer. Hemeets Misako Ozaki (Ayame Misaki), a woman who is involved in a voice acting project for the visually impaired. The two initially don’t get on because Masaya has a cold attitude but when Misako sees a photograph of a sunset shot by him, she is inspired to look into Masaya’s life and discovers that he is losing his sight and their relationship changes.
Many critics like to talk about her background with the festival to give context:
“In 1997, Naomi Kawase became the youngest winner of the Camera d’Or for her first feature Suzaku. She has returned seven times in total and this year enters the main competition for the fifth time with Radiance, a thoughtful meditation on seeing and cinema.” John Bleasdale – Cinevue
This background serves as a way to contrast her old and new work and exploring her place as a star in cinema’s art house firmament and how they feel her current work doesn’t quite measure up to her opening salvo of films:
“Making her fifth appearance in competition (and seventh overall) at Cannes, Kawase shows she’s sadly still nowhere near recovering that stylistic balance that propelled her to greatness in the first decade of her career: Suzaku (1997) and The Mourning Forest (2007), both prize-winners on the Croisette, remain two of the most artistically audacious and emotionally engaging films to have emerged out of contemporary Japanese cinema.
Radiance is as luminous a piece of filmmaking as Kawase’s previous work, but it also contains much less substance than its gleaming sheen suggests. Riding on the mainstream breakthrough success of An, the film is counting on the presence of Paterson’s Masatoshi Nagase and the story’s unfettered celebration of cinema as both art and salvation to garner prominent exposure on the festival circuit and, perhaps, niche releases in Asian and European markets. (Except in France, of course: Kawase is an art house icon backed by MK2, who are repping the film at Cannes.)” Clarence Tsui – The Hollywood Reporter
In terms of the actual content of the film itself, the critics were split as to whether it is profound or slight, the story powerful or hollow but all are agreed that it is beautiful and the script’s use of a character who performs audio-descriptions for films is a great way to explore Kawase’s interest in beauty and the ephemeral nature of life even if the impact of the story might lessen for those on the outer fringes of Kawase fandom.
“In using a quite ingenious concept – the process of creating film audio descriptions for the blind and partially sighted – Kawase shows us the intellectual and emotional sophistication involved in the usage of language, while emphasising the difficulty of deciding which words to leave in and which to leave out.” Joseph Owen – The Upcoming
“the film’s thematic preoccupation with the power of images — as perceived through any of the senses — is a worthy and thoughtful one. Yet the execution lacks the visual and emotional rigor of Kawase’s most imposing films, instead swaddling viewers in buttery lighting and blunt, earnest platitudes. Some will respond to such comforts, though “Radiance” is unlikely to significantly expand the international profile of a filmmaker still best loved on the Croisette.” Guy Lodge – Variety
“Typically delicate and as gentle as a balm, the film’s well-intentioned earnestness will not endear it to the more cynical end of the audience spectrum. But fans of Kawase’s small scale personal dramas will respond to the film’s wistful tone, as well as the plaintive prettiness of the photography.” Wendy Ide – Screen International
“What makes “Radiance” so intriguing for anyone working in the HI/VI space is that Kawase depicts not the nitty gritty technical details of how deaf and blind moviegoers get to enjoy films in cinemas, but rather their feelings, reasonings and ultimate reward for wanting to do so in the first place.” J. Sperling Reich – Celluloid Junkie
Some critics who were agnostic about her talents like Peter Bradshaw are slowly coming under her sway.
“But the seriousness of the ideas at stake and novelty of the story command interest and, for me, this film represents an advance on Kawase’s previous film at Cannes – An, or Sweet Bean – which was too sucrose.” Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian
It has been a while since I last did a review round-up of any festival but fellow cinephile and Twitter-user FelixAguirre regularly collects links to reviews and alerts them to me and with such a treasure-trove of opinions from the most recent Cannes Film Festival on offer, I’d be mad to turn them down. Following on fromBlade of the Immortal, Radiance, and Before We Vanish is…
I may talk good game about supporting female filmmakers and supporting Japanese films but when Oh Lucy! came up and I saw that it had AmericanImage may be NSFW. Clik here to view. backing I left it to write about last and then forgot about it. The director, Atsuko Hirayanagi, and actual genesis of the film itself seem really interesting and I regret not initially including it in my Cannes post (it was only after Felix Aguirre pointed me to the reviews that I realised my mistake) and I will endeavour to cover things more effectively.
Having just looked for the trailer, it turns out that I wrote about the short-film version of this when it was at the Toronto International Film Festival 2014 and I also wrote about it being at the Cannes 2014 festival… I will also file away Atsuko Hirayanagi’s name so when she crops up, I can point film fans to her reviews (here’s her IMDB page)…
Look at that cast! Shinobu Terajima, Koji Yajusho, Kaho Minami, and Josh Hartnett. Three great actors in Japanese cinema and Josh Hartnett (who is pretty good in the serial-killer movie, I Come with the Rain)! They all came together for Atsuko Hiryanagi who has made a film about an office drone who throws off convention and pursues her English teacher back to his native California.
Hirayanagi is a new director who went to NYU Tisch School of Arts in Asia as a mother of two children who had a blackbelt in karate and came out with a number of short films including the award-winning shortOh Lucy! (2014)which was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and was developed into this project that was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. You can read more here but it’s an inspiring story and the resulting film looks great. Here are two clips:
Synopsis from the filmmakers: The drama-comedy tells the story of Setsuko Kawashima (Terajima), a lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo who is past her prime. After deciding to take an English class, she discovers a new identity in her American alter ego, ‘Lucy,’ and falls for her instructor, John (Hartnett). When John suddenly disappears, Setsuko earnestly sets out on a quest to find him, eventually leading her to the outskirts of Southern California.
What did the critics think?
Consensus seems to be that while it’s far from slick like the works that other directors at the festival presented, it has heart thanks to the Atsuko Hirayanagi’s unique world-view which is dark. She knows when to revel in the darkness and when to pull back. The film may be rough in terms of its execution but it has substance in the way it depicts the lives of women and it has bite and that bite refuses to let go of the audience until the end. More importantly, it’s unique and not some cookie-cutter drama you may expect from Japan:
“while it’s uneven, and at times seems almost artless in its craft, the story has an idiosyncratic charm that pays off in an unexpectedly touching ending.” “David Rooney – The Hollywood Reporter
“There’s pleasingly little sentimentality and much honesty to be found in Hirayanagi’s screenplay, particularly in its acknowledgement that new experiences can make you lose, as much as broaden, your mind. It’s also sharp in its critical appraisal of the expectations placed on women of all cultures to be paired up.” Nikki Baughan – Screen Daily
A lot of critics thought that the main character was well-written and engaging and that was enough to keep the film interesting. The main reason for the attractiveness of the character came from the experienced actor Shinobu Terajima who is able to modulate her performance with such skill she wins plaudits in many of the reviews:
“No doubt it’s fitting that a film about transformation and reinvention should be so prone to that too. Oh Lucy!’s plot feels overthought. The tone see-saws wildly. What prevents it collapsing are the warm, heartfelt performances, together with Hirayanagi’s obvious affection for her chief protagonist.” Xan Brooks – The Guardian
“Terajima is irresistible in the lead role, shifting from painfully childlike vulnerability to rapier nastiness on a dime; in one late scene with Hartnett, she appears to age fifteen years in a matter of seconds. It helps that Hirayanagi’s loose filmmaking style gives her plenty of room to flesh out the character, sometimes lingering on the aftermath of a punchline for a few seconds too many, allowing the laughter to start to curdle into discomfort, rather than simply cutting away.” Andrew Barker – Variety
Ultimately, the script presents its main character and her world in a dark way which makes the sentimental ending more powerful. The material is good enough for critics to call Hirayanagi a director to watch:
“…“Oh Lucy!” betrays some rough edges in the transition, but Hirayanagi’s idiosyncratic touch marks her as a talent worth tracking.” Andrew Barker – Variety
This story is actually close to my experience as an English teacher in Japan (apart from the hugging and wig, haha). I met a painfully shy middle-aged female student who worked in an office Tokyo who believed in hiding her feelings. We formed a connection of sorts. I was taught that a teacher is shepherd who looks after their flock but I cared about nearly all of my students without having to remember that (although there were a few scary salarymen who I usually wanted to avoid, haha). She would make a bee-line for me and she would speak more with me than the other teachers who she chose to remain quiet with (much to my colleagues annoyance) and so we talked about various things. Towards the end of my time in the class I tried to give her as much encouragement as I could to pursue her dreams and ambitions and overcome her shyness and that included trying unconventional things such as using props and drawing on whiteboards and paper, making strange noises. I often wonder what has happened to her. In reality, she has probably moved on to another teacher to practice English with so there’s no sense in being wistful about things, haha.
I really want to see this film and the interviews with Josh Hartnett and Atsuko Hirayanagi make it look more interesting:
The London Korean Film Festivalwill have a special screening of Lee Soo-Yeon’s 2016 thriller Bluebeard at the Regent Street Cinema in London. This is the UK premiere and it will take place on Monday, July 10th at 19:30. The film will be screened at the Arts Picturehouse Cambridge on July 24th at 18:30. It is one of a series screenings in the lead-up to the next London Korean Film Festival held later in the year to tease audiences as to some of the great films that will be programmed.
It says a lot about Korea’s film industry that the London Korean Film Festival can keep screening a contemporary film every month as part of its teaser series and still be sure of having a great programme when it launches at the end of the year.
The visual style of this look slick and some scenes remind me of Japanese horror films from around 2000. It’s written and directed by a woman named Lee Soo-Yeon and this is her sophomore film. There is a big gap between her works so it will be interesting to see when she next makes a film and how far her career goes. I think, judging by reviews and visuals from screencaps, she’s a real talent to watch. While some people think her work is too complicated (Toronto Film Scene), others think the mystery is impressive (Hancinema). All are agreed that the visuals are top-notch:
Synopsis: Dr. Seung-hoon has lost his flashy clinic in Seoul and his marriage and finds himself living in a small town just outside the metropolis. He rents a cramped apartment above a butcher’s shop and his landlord is one of his patients. During a medical check-up, the heavily sedated old man mumbles a convincing confession of murder. Doctor Seung-hoon begins to become fearful of his downstairs neighbours after dismembered bodies show up close to home and an unsolved serial murder case emerges. Could his landlord be a killer or isSeung-hoon just being paranoid? He must try to find out before he loses his mind.
To find out more about the film and to book tickets, please visit the site through this link or visit the Regent Street Cinema website directly.
The Barbican is running a season with a fantastic title, Cinema Matters: Bigger than Lifeand it’s all about how cinema has changed the world and the stars on the big screen who become legends. Think about the mega-stars of Japanese film history and you will come up with Toshiro Mifune and Setsuko Hara, both of whom worked with the great directors of the Golden Age in many classics and both of whom, some might say, were profoundly Japanese in their behaviour and emblematic of their nation’s ideals on masculinity and femininity.
The two might be highly important in the way the wider world views Japan but only Setsuko Hara got an anime movie more or less made about her and that movie will be screened at the Barbican. It’s the Satoshi Kon classic Millennium Actressand it will be screened on July 03rd at 20:45.
Synopsis from the Barbican:One very obvious way the movies have changed the world is by giving us the movie star.
Issues of stardom – and fandom – are at the heart of this sweeping Japanese animation by Satoshi Kon (Paprika, Perfect Blue). Actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, an icon of 1950s cinema but now retired and living in seclusion, is visited one afternoon by a devoted fan wanting to make a documentary about her career. As they – and we, the audience – plunge back into her past, we hop between events in her real and her on-screen life in roles in a variety of genres and time-periods.
Conceived as a homage to the samurai epics, domestic dramas, space odysseys and monster movies of post-WW2 Japanese cinema, the film sets up further resonances in the character of Chiyoko herself who recalls both Hideko Takamine, an icon of hope for post-war Japanese filmgoers, and Setsuko Hara, one of Yazujiro Ozu’s favourite actresses, who disappeared from the public eye at the height of her stardom.
The Japan Foundation have put together a five-film programme dedicated to showing off some of the cinematic gems celebrating Japanese cuisine and culinary culture. It’s all totally free and more information can be found on this site. Trailers and information follow on below:
Part One: Saturday, 15 July 2017
Prince Charles Cinema, London – 7 Leicester Place, London WC2H 7BY
This two hour plus documentary ostensibly looks at life inside an oyster factory but takes in the lack of young people entering the works, the generational divide and Chinese-Japanese relations as Chinese workers are brought in to help keep an oyster factory running.
Synopsis from thefilm’s website:In the Japanese town of Ushimado, the shortage of labor is a serious problem due to its population’s rapid decline. Traditionally, oyster shucking has been a job for local men and women, but for a few years now, some of the factories have had to use foreigners in order to keep functioning. Hirano oyster factory has never employed any outsiders but finally decides to bring in two workers from China. Will all the employees get along?
Synopsis: Eikichi, a young tofu maker, ventures from Kyoto to Edo (present-day Tokyo) to open a tofu shop. It is in Edo where he meets Ofumi and the two marry and with the help of Ofumi’s father, the tofu shop dream becomes a reality/ Years later with the rock-solid business still going strong, Eikichi and his family are thrown into a critical situation that threatens to pull them apart.
Part Two: Saturday, 22 July 2017 BAFTA, London – 195 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LN
This day looks really good because on top of the free films are many different activities fit for all of the family. Here’s more from the site:
On Saturday, 22 July at BAFTA, join us for drop-in food-themed Japanese language activities between the films. The workshops are free and suitable for all ages.
Hiromu Arakawa is famous amongst anime and manga fans for Full Metal Alchemist but what some may not realise is that she has created other titles like Silver Spoon which has become a favourite amongst anibloggers a few years ago. I’ve read that she grew up on a farm which explains why she created a farm story… Anyway, the movie adaptation has some great named in the cast like Haru Kuroki, Mitsuru Fukikoshi and Sho Aikawa.
Yugo Hachiken (Nakajima) is an ace at studying and believes that he can attend any school around the country and succeed. Then he heads to Ooejo agricultural high school and finds that he’s completely lost while his classmates, who are from farming families, are totally fine. They know what they want to do with their lives while Yugo flounders. To succeed, Yugo begins to get to know the other students and rural life. As he must studies harder and interacts with others more, he grows as a person.
Seeking a change of pace in life, Mari (Kikuchi) moves from Tokyo back to her small hometown in Shizuoka Prefecture where opens a small store selling ice flakes with syrup. Mari runs the store with Hajime-chan (fMine) who has a large burn scar on her face.
Ao (Oizumi) returns to back home to Sorachi, Hokkaido, to take over his father’s vineyard after many years away. His younger brother Roku (Sometani) has never known him and their reunion is frosty but the two agree to work together try an create a special wine called “Black Diamond”, but it is a hard job and things look bad until a travelling camper named Erika (Ando) enters their lives and brings harmony.
These screenings are free to attend but booking is essential.
To book a place via Google Forms, please visit the following links:
The Japanese Embassy in London will screen the anime adaption ofBarefoot Genwhich was released in 1983. I have not seen the film or read the manga but I have visited Hiroshima and it is a wonderful city. The museum dedicated to the atomic bombing is full of heartbreaking exhibits. While I don’t discuss politics here, I think that nuclear weapons are evil and any nation that has a stockpile should decommission them. If anybody disagrees, perhaps seeing this film and seeing people who have suffered the consequences of their use might change their minds.
The event is free to attend but anyone interested in being part of the audience must book in advance to secure a place.
Synopsis from the Embassy:Hiroshima in the summer of 1945
Gen Nakaoka is in the second grade at the local elementary school. He is living with his parents, an older sister and a younger brother. His mother is pregnant and is expecting to give birth soon. Although the family is poor, their lives are happy and harmonious. On 6 August, the US bomber Enola Gay takes off from Tinian Base and chooses the city of Hiroshima as its target. At 8:15am, the bomb is dropped. After an intense flash of lightning, the city is destroyed, with burned corpses everywhere and thousands of people, horribly injured by pieces of glass, are bleeding and dying. Gen miraculously survives. Running back home, he finds his father, sister and brother trapped under the collapsed house. He and his mother desperately try to save them, but their efforts fail. Gen and a neighbour, realising it is hopeless, carry the mother away from the now burning house. They watch it in helpless horror. The baby is born prematurely.
On 15 August, the Japanese Government surrenders. Gen’s mother says ‘Why not sooner!’ The food shortage becomes so serious that the mother and the baby suffer from malnutrition. One day, Gen meets a boy who resembles his dead brother and who has lost his family in the A-bomb attack, and welcomes him as a member of his family. Gen’s little sister dies from lack of food. Stricken with A-bomb sickness and afraid it will get worse, Gen sees a ray of hope in the barren fields.
This film contains scenes which young viewers may find frightening. The British Board of Film Classification has rated the film as 12A, the category which indicates that no one younger than 12 may see the film unless accompanied by an adult.
The event takes place on July 25th and starts at 18:00. There is a special talk at 18:30 and the film starts at 19:00. The location is the Embassy of Japan in the UK, 101 – 104 Piccadilly, London W1J 7JT and you can find out how to book tickets withthis link.
The Kanazawa Film Festival will be taking place across Japan soon! It launches atImage may be NSFW. Clik here to view. the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (details) in Kanazawa city and its run will last from July 15th to the 17th. The film fest will then pop up in various city from July to November with venues in Yamaguchi, Kitakyushu, Hakui, Kyoto, and Sendai all screening films. It starts in Kanazawa this month and so I want to report on it now but if you live or are visiting any of the aforementioned cities this year then you can get some cinematic goodness from some indie films.
Apparently, there are 22 works selected from the 89 entries but despite the large amount of material on offer there are no female directors. Despite this reservation, the line-up consists of some incredibly intriguing-looking indie films with nearly all of them looking well-made. Also gratifying to see is my favourite film from the Osaka Asian Film Festival showing up. After complaining about a lack of stories in Japanese cinema a few weeks ago, I’m pleased to see a wide variety on display in these indie features and I hope I get to see some of them very soon.
Here are the details with trailers for some of the films and links to various websites and Twitter feeds dotted around. A lot of this information is rough around the edges so I encourage you to look at the festival’s official site and check the links I have provided:
I really want more people to see BAMY because it is brilliantly made and it has a fun story. It comes off like a pastiche of a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film since the director exhibits same exquisite horror atmosphere which he evinces from his precise control of his material and the cast and crew but then it goes off in a completely unexpected direction that made me give it a round of applause. Even before the ending, I was laughing over the fun scenes and shivering at the creepy scenes. It’s a great experience! My review for BAMY will explain more.
Synopsis: One day, Fumiko runs into Ryota – an old acquaintance from college – outside the library where she works. Brought together by a mysterious red umbrella, they find themselves drawn to one another, and before long they are set to get married but their relationship slowly ruptures because Ryota is troubled by his secret ability to see the dead. He soon becomes worn out by his daily encounters with ghosts, entities that Fumiko cannot see. One day, Ryota meets Sae Kimura, a woman with the same ability as him, who is terrified by the apparitions. Ryota becomes increasingly involved with Sae causing his relationship with Fumiko to head towards breaking point.
I saw this one at the Osaka Asian Film Festival as well and had a good time. It’s an easily accessible story that involves adults and children who dream of nothing but wrestling as a way of making sense of the world and it was filmed with support from the Dotonbori Pro Wrestling League – so real wrestlers and the real feel of pro-wrestling are on the screen. Solidly shot, easily accessible in terms of story, and with entertaining performances from the cast (especially the children – the one kid from Tokyo kept me laughing) this is an easy one to recommend.
Synopsis: Hiroto lives in the quiet city of Izumi in Osaka prefecture. He has no particular hopes or dreams unlike his classmates and this causes him to feel a deep sense of crisis. Consider the crisis over when he sees a wrestling match with popular masked fighter named Dynamite Wolf. Hiroto becomes a mega-fan and discovers that even Dynamite Wolf has failed dreams and he can help out.
Dokuro to Tsume (Skull and Nails)
髑髏と爪 「Dokuro to Tsume 」
Running Time: 35 mins.
Director: Shuhei Sugimoto
Writer:Shuhei Sugimoto(Screenplay),
Starring: Takuto Eisei, Yumiko Terradansu, Yuriko Tanaka, Yoshi Inaba
Synopsis: A normal man finds his life takes a dangerous turn when he meets a killer.
Synopsis: Ever seen the 2007 American horror-comedy Teeth(trailer)? If so, you’ll be right at home with this story of a woman with teeth in her lady-parts only this Japanese film is much more serious. Sex has never been so dangerous… for men, that is.
Synopsis:This one involves criminals locked in a Mexican stand-off.
Until the Day You Gain Freedom
自由を手にするその日まで 「Jiyuu o te ni suru sono hi made」
Running Time:112 mins.
Director: Yuji Amano
Writer:Yuji Amano(Screenplay),
Starring:Miyabi, Kyoko Miyauchi
Synopsis:Yuji Amano wants to explore negative feelings and he does so in a film where a woman seeks revenge over workplace bullying. This one looks pretty good with plenty of gore. Perhaps a Seven like atmosphere. I want to see more of this on the big screen.
Uri Futatsu
瓜二つ 「Uri Futatsu」
Running Time:14mins.
Director: Tomoki Yamakawa
Writer:Tomoki Yamakawa(Screenplay),
Starring:Haruki Hamaguchi, Shunzo Yamakawa,
Synopsis:In this fourteen minute thriller, there’s a foreigner hiding in some farmer’s barn!
Synopsis:A madman fights some yankees. That’s the story but the trailer makes it look like a lot of fun plus it has Trap music – Trap music has reached Japan…
White Wave
白波 「Shiranami」
Running Time:70mins.
Director: Atsushi Nagao
Writer:Atsushi Nagao(Screenplay),
Starring:Takuto Kawasaki, Ai Sekine, Shoji Omiya,
Synopsis:Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake in Japan and a group of people are trapped together on an island.
Filament
Running Time: 30 mins.
Director: Daisaku Takanaka
Writer:Daisaku Takanaka (Screenplay),
Starring: Kaoru Fujii, Muneaki Yoshimura,
Synopsis: A film about the belief in superheroes and the growth from childhood into adulthood, dood.
Mori no Kumasan
もりのくまさん 「Mori no Kumasan」
Running Time: 18 mins.
Director: Shun Ito
Writer:N/A(Screenplay),
Starring: Sachiko Mori, Shun Ito,
Synopsis: A female hitch-hiker is attacked by a man in a forest but she fights back! Awesome! I hope she wins.
Aho no Mai
阿呆の舞 「Aho no Mai」
Running Time: 10 mins.
Director: Takahiro Sakata
Writer:Takahiro Sakata(Screenplay),
Starring:Takehi Watabe, Nanami Honda,
Synopsis: Takahiro Sakata was inspired to create this dystopian sci-fi tale of people being monitored after the introduction of the My Number system in Japan. It’s possible to live there without one…
Weapons
ウエポンズ 「Ueponzu」
Running Time:31 mins.
Director: Kei Ichihara
Writer:Kei Ichihara(Screenplay),
Starring:Kazuko Wadam Yuji Nakane, Yasuhiro Kato,
Synopsis:Director Kei Ichihara has been working on indies for a number of years (as can be seen on this film production company’s website) and his oeuvre consists of sci-fi action movies with home-made CG. This one is set in a near-future Nagoya.
I’m not entirely clear on what is going on but apparently, he is inspired by Mamoru Oshii, the director of Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, and The Sky Crawlers so that’s a sign of someone with good taste in my book!
Amanojaku Puberty
アマノジャク・思春期 「Amanojaku Shishunki」
Running Time: 32 mins.
Director: Mitsuteru Okakura
Writer:Mitsuteru Okakura(Screenplay),
Starring:Haku Yamamto, Tomomi Kono,
Synopsis: This one is all about a schoolboy who is ostracised. The director has released another short film in the meantime called Goblin and the trailer can be found here.
Coward
腰抜け 「Koshinuke」
Running Time: 23 mins.
Director: Yasumi Terada
Writer:Yasumi Terada(Screenplay),
Starring: Lee Sun-yee, Suon Koushin,
Synopsis: Two outlaws wandering around Korea meet.
Synopsis: Police detectives have a humorus conversation in a car.
How Does Steel Shine?
鋼鉄はいかに輝くか 「Koutetsu wa Ikani Kagayaku ka」
Running Time: 91 mins.
Director: Makoto Inagaki
Writer:N/A
Starring:Masato Arimura, Masayuki Shida,
Synopsis:See the darker side of Tokyo-life. Not necessarily a new thing but this indie looks well-done. The lead actor has a cool set of eyes which are pretty distinctive. There are some stylistic things that are cool such as locales – is that the Red Room (Twin Peaks)? – and the dark parts of Tokyo I don’t recognise despite staying out until crazy 0’clock in the morning so that’s cool (not that I want to see bad things). Other than that it’s a modern-day psycho noir set in that miraculous metropolis that dominates Japan!
Synopsis:Daichi Sugimoto. Okay. Around this time last year, I reviewed his film A Roadand was impressed by what I saw. This one is his latest and went along the crowd funding route to get to the screen. Just like his award-winning debut, he asked friends and family to take part but there’s no trailer so you’ll have to make do with an image in a story about a guy drawn into a dangerous job.
This one got a theatrical release in Japan last year and looks really well-done. The trailer shows a film that appears to be visually unique in parts and well-shot, great characters and good musical choices. Toujii Sawamura made this while working in a car factory. How awesome is that? I’d love to see this one.
Synopsis:Shiro Shijima is a 40-year-old man who was inspired to become a detective as a child due to his love of the show “Science Detective Yagyu Jubei”. Alas, he’s not very good and is stuck doing low-end jobs but when a monstrous phenomenon occurs in the streets where Shima lives, he’s on the case!
The Korean Cultural Centre in London is hosting another series of free film screenings and this one is called, Patchworks: Unwrapping My Korean Cinema. It is the final season of 2017’s Korean Film Nights and apparently the title is “a play on Kim hong-joon’s My Korean Cinema (2002–2006), an 8-episode essay film that explored the director’s relationship with the history of Korean cinema. With each of the 8 episodes tackling a separate facet of the history of Korean cinema, our programme will focus on two episodes within the film: Smoking Women & For the March of Fools.”
This is the first of six films which will be screened on Thursday nights from July to September and these screenings will then be further separated into two mini-strands of three nights each. These two mini-strands will be comprised of five features and a short film programme.
Here’s information on the first film in this season as pulled from the website:
Synopsis: Produced during the ‘golden age’ of Korean cinema, It’s Not Her Sin tells the story of Seong-hui, wife of the diplomat Baek Sang-ho. After shooting at her husband’s mistress, Yeong-suk, Seong-hui is arrested by the police. With the media reporting a love triangle between the three, Yeong-suk is called in for questioning. With a prosecutor and Baek Sang-ho in attendance, Yeong-suk begins to talk about her past and her relationship with Seong-hui.
With a plot echoing Korean noir films of the 1950s, It’s Not Her Sin offers a more nuanced understanding of womanhood and its circumstances. What would at first glance seem to be another entry into the ‘femme fatale’ genre, Seong-hui is instead presented as a victim of circumstance, rather than an agent of her own demise.
The Korean Cultural Centrehosts this event, and others in the season for free. This is the final season of Korean Film Nights in 2017 so there will be a special drinks reception prior to the screening and it begin at 18:15, with the film beginning at 19:00. The website advises people to arrive early to avoid disappointment. You can order tickets here. The location is:
The Roman Porno label is back for a series of five films to celebrate 45 years since the Nikkatsu film studio launched the originals.
Over the last year or so this specific sub-genre of soft-core porn films has been resurrected and they have cropped up at various festivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam and Nippon Connection. Audiences have been able to see these newer entries in the series celebrate their antecedents by following the same rules of creation laid out by their predecessors – a short shoot of about a week to create somethinglasting 80 minutes with sex scenes every ten minutes or so. Writers and directors were free to explore various themes and settings whether it be sexual politics to historical tales to self-reflexive comedies based on the film world.
This audacious approach to the creation of the original films, though occasionally controversial, led to some critically acclaimed classics. As a whole, theRoman Porno label is regarded with some affection and film academics pore over this sensuous soft-core body of workanalysing the films. This surprisingly high regard for what are ostensibly skin flicks has led tothe newer titlessecuring established and respected directors and actors taking part with horror auteurs Hideo Nakata and Shion Sono being the biggest names.
With the freedom to create whatever they want, theonly question is whether any of the new Roman Porno reboot films stand up to the originals in terms of entertainment.
Wet Woman in the Wind is a sex comedy and because of this it is the easiest of the bunch to digest. It comes from Akihiko Shiota who is best known in the West for his 2007 fantasy adventure Dororo.His self-penned scriptcentres on Kosuke Kashiwagi (Tasuku Nagaoka), a thirty-something playwright who has fled Tokyo to live a quiet life in the countryside. He claims that it is all for work, because “if a person wants to think deeply, they’ve gotta be alone.” His alone time takes place in a forest populated by wild dogs and a tiger that has gotten loose from a nearby zoo.
However, Kosuke’s wish for a quiet life is soon interrupted when he is targeted by Shiori (Yuki Mamiya), a young woman who claims to be a love hunter. She cycles into his life (and straight into the river he was sitting by) from out of nowhere and latches onto him (quite literally in the opening scenes after she dries off) and demands to stay at his place.Somewhat bemused but mostly irritated, Kosuke attempts to dismiss her as a “stray dog” but his cruel indifference and arrogance sparks a somewhat vindictive but totallyerotic campaign of sexual shenanigans/taunting on the part of Shiori to draw Kosuke to her as she demonstrates she is no simple stray. “You know I’ve locked on to you. Don’t think you can escape me. You can’t.”
It turns out to be true as audiences who watch the remaining two thirds of the film will find out. What happens is a lot of belly laughs from the bawdy humour as Shiota’s script and direction initially sets up Kosuke as an intellectual and over the remaining two thirds of the film we see Shiori use her sexual wiles to ensnare both men and women (including a theatre troupe from Toyko) in an effort to make jealous and conquer the pretentious playwright from Tokyo and expose his base qualities, ultimately reversing the roles that Kosuke seemingly casts women in and ensuring he ends the film like a dog in heat.
Getting to this point is fun.Yuki Mamiya plays Shiori as a force of nature. She is seemingly something of an ingenue whose playful looks and athletic beauty gives itself over to sexual voraciousness and some funny physical comedy as she and Kosuke try to control each other and others who get caught up in their battle for domination. She causes havoc in and out of bed with most of the sizzling sex scenes captured in mid-shots. As well as being sexy, the sheer gusto the performers put in and the unexpected turns the actions takes will draw the most laughs.If there is a thread running through the film it is seeing her bring Kosuke down from exalted member of the intellentsia to a poser, revealing him as a male hussy keeping a low-profile in a self-made shack (complete with a rubber dinghy that acts as a bed perfect for sex). She is one of three women to bare it all in front of the camera although alongside Tasuku Nagaoka and the more performers that get on screenthe more the tempo of the film builds up until Shiori literally brings the house down and Kosuke is left picking up the pieces, reduced in status and contemplating his defeat at the hands of a woman he regarded as a stray dog.
The general tone of the film is fluid fun thanks to the increasingly outrageous behaviour of characters, the twists and turns of a script full of wry laughs, and the committed acting from all involved. This is definitely a film both men and women can watch and enjoy together as they see the absurd levels of energy and passion coming from people who enjoy sex. Indeed, whether it is weaponising sex or just giving in to their passions, Shiota’s film gives everyone their due and allows them to have a good time so proceedings have a bounce and humour which warrants rewatches.
Aroused by Gymnopedies is one of the five films commissioned by Nikkatsu to be part of its reboot of the Roman Porno genre. Isao Yukisada directs and co-writes a self-reflexive story about the craft of filmmaking involving a once-great director who finds himself on skid-row and carrying a sadness that seemingly not even sex with a series of beautiful women can relieve.
The has-been director is fifty-something Shinji Furuya (Itsuji Itao). He was once a rising star in arthouse cinema capable of making great works that won awards at places like the Venice Film Festival but over the course of time his taste for womanising ballooned and something happened to him that made him fall from the heavens of the film industry and into a hellish landscape of melancholy and self-pity. He is now reduced to directing pink films for money, a stony-faced chain-smoking presence on set and a silent solitary man juggling debts in private. His latest production has turned into a disaster because his lead actress Anri (Izumi Okamura) has dropped out and he’s going to lose a desperately-needed paycheck.
Thrown deeper into his mire of depression and with bills to pay he shambles around Tokyo over the course of seven days he alternately looking for money and slumps from one female acquaintance’s bed to another. Alas, he seems to get no joy from the sex he has with beautiful woman and he even rejects their offers of comfort. He soldiers on in being miserable because he carries an emotional burden too great for others to solve and it seems to be connected to a woman who plays the Erik Satie piano piece Gymnopedies in flashbacks he experiences…
The script from Isao Yukisada and Anne Horizumi takes its time to reveal the emotional baggageweighing Furuya down, the meaning behind flashbacks to the woman playing Gymnopedies and the film’s titles but it sprinkles the required amount of sex scenes (one every ten minutes) into the proceedings and they punctuate the personal and professional embarrassments of Furuya’s life which make up the story.
It is not a pretty picture. As we watch Itsuji Itao’s central protag stumble from one day to the next we see acts outside the bedroom so embarrassing that audiences will wonder what anyone sees in him that make them want to take him into the bedroom. He demonstrates selfishness and callousness in his private life that makes him an unpleasant presence from stealing the piggy-bank from his rich student Yuka (Sumire Ashina) after bedding her totaking money from hisequally cash-strapped ex-wife Rinko (Mayumi Tajima) after she prostitutes herself for him. Professionally, he is unrecognised by a new generation of actors and he burns his bridges with his producer through his bad behaviour. A supporter arranges a small retrospective of his works but Furuya ruins this by arriving dishevelled and unprepared to talk to a small but appreciative audience who he insults by spouting pretentious nonsense before getting chased out of the event and down the street by Yuka’s furious boyfriend in the film’s sole comic sequence.
Audience sympathy may be in short supply but this being a Roman Porno, there are women who need pleasuring and inside the bedroom (and a variety of other locations) Furuya has the ability to bring women to climax even if he treats them badly. The lead actresses bare a lot of flesh and moan and whimper with much enthusiasm, they have their own problems and ideas, but this film is all about the pain of Furuya and they merely serve to move his story along.
Isao plays his character distant and pained so while he beds a bevy of beautiful women connected to him in the frequent sex scenes he gets no joy and looks detached. Apart from one ugly scene of dominance at the end, it is always the womenwho initiate things and most of them hold a position of power over him but this doesn’t mean they are empowered in any way and it doesn’t explain Furuya’s sadness. It is all gradually revealed in a climax at a hospital and at Furuya’s home that verges on the ridiculous and overwroughtbut the film retains its balance and the climax almost manages to redeem the film by giving everything a much needed emotional context and explaining Furuya’s behaviour. Isao gives a good performance of a man with pent up emotions although some may find that frustrating to follow.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The technical aspects are more interesting with Tokyo feeling claustrophobic. Furuya is often hemmed in by the Chuo line and his week-long traipse through Tokyo is on foot so you get to see the twisting streets of the city. There are some great shots such as Furuya and Anri leaning against a wall with floral print wallpaper at a club as they talk about the industry they work in and Furuya’s moonlit escape from Yuka’s apartment.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The director is Isao Yukisada and he has flitted between a variety of film genres such as the psycho-drama Parade (2010), the weepy romance Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World (2004) and the teen action drama Go (2001) and he delivers another heartfelt film, a somewhat self-reflexive look at the vagaries of the pink film industry and a broken man looking for release. Whether audience members (particularly women) will be patient enough to stick around the presence of the miserablist Furuya is another question and it would be easy to imagine people not finding such a selfish and closed-off character engaging and dropping out before the climax of the movie. Those who stick around may find Furuya’s catharsis rewarding but the rewards are limited beyond that and admiring performances and locations. And the sex scenes.
My favourite Itsuji Itao role is still the ruthless teacher in One Missed Call Final (2006) and Izumi Okamura was one half of the powerful double-act in the incredible drama Shady(2013).
Summer Lights comes from the award-winning French filmmaker Jean-Gabriel Périot. His past work has focussed on non-fiction short films about war, human rights and political struggle. He continues to explore these issues here in his first fiction film about a documentary filmmaker in the company of a capricious young woman who guides him around the city of Hiroshima, the two discovering some of the stories and traumas of the past whilst life blooms around them.
Hiroshima. If you know that name then it probably conjures up nightmarish imagery of the city’s traumatic past when it was devastated by an atomic bomb. The centre was reduced to rubble and set ablaze by the blast and some people who survived the blast suffered radiation poisoning and developed horrendous physical maladies. Despite that horrific event the city recovered and remains to tell the tale. It is these tales that Akihiro (Hiroto Ogi), a Japanese director based in Paris, wants to capture for a television documentary. This background sets up the powerful cold opening as an elderly lady named Mrs. Takeda (Mamako Yoneyama) recounts her memories of the atomic bombing in an interview that lasts for nearly 20 minutes of screen-time and culminates with the heartbreaking recollection of the death of her older sister Michiko from radiation poisoning. Her testimony, despite being scripted and read by an actress, is so powerfully delivered and well-written it has the feeling of documentary accuracy, as if it would be one of the stories found in the different museums around Hiroshima’s Peace Park. Indeed, the interview was shot in the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims. The cloistered atmosphere of the museum with its low lighting and silent surroundings are perfect for making an audience focus on the harrowing account of war given by Mrs. Takeda since there is nothing to distract from her and Jean-Gabriel Périot films this sequence like a real interview with the very occasional reverse-shot on Akihiro to show the impact Takeda’s words have on him.
Her testimony proves so moving it leaves Akihiro upset and with his production running behind schedule he heads out of the memorial hall to the Peace Memorial Park where he sits on a bench in the summer sunlight and tries to get his mind and his film back on track. After a conversation with the film’s producer in French, he zones back into the park where life is abundant around him. Kids chat loudly, joggers are fleetingly glimpsed, tourists mill about, and the sun bathes everything with its healthy glow and cicadas emit their cry. Sat on the same bench as Akihiro is a young woman (Akane Tatsukawa) who is interested in the language he has spoken. Their spontaneous verbal exchange blossoms into something more as the two begin to talk about life and the difficulty in trying to capture the memories of the bombing.
Amused by the appearance of the young woman since she is dressed in a summer yukata and charmed by her lively character, Akihiro allows her to cajole him into taking a walk around the city streets where they continue to discuss the bomb but also move on to fashion and food, life and love. Despite knowing a lot about the history of the city, she claims to be as ignorant as Akihiro about some aspects which allows her to lead the filmmaker astray culminating in them taking a surprise train ride to a beach and participating in obon.
Despite the rambling nature of this journey, it is interesting to watch because of the sense of reality it develops. What the film does remarkably well is convey the life and vibrancy of the compact city with its bright shopping boulevards and parks that are bursting with colour because of the gorgeous foliage. Like some cinema verite movie, the camera is free flowing and offers up a view of Hiroshima that allows the lives of its people to be shown and for many truths to be seen on the screen with Akihiro and his new female friend uncovering everything together. She, being a Hiroshima girl, is proud of the local okonomiyaki and they end up in a restaurant where the elderly owner tells them of his memories of the bomb. It isn’t just old stories or lives but new and nascent ones such as an eight-year-old boy left in the care of his grandfather. This proves to be an interesting way of exploring history and reality.
The biggest charm the film has is the relationship between Hiroto Ogi and Akane Tatsukawa which has a natural flow from friendship to something more. Their sudden meeting sparked by her vivacious personality and his genuine desire to understand things is sustained by her curiosity and impulsiveness and his patience and good nature. They make a complimentary pair and it doesn’t hurt that they are both very photogenic. It is a pleasure to spend time in their company as they walk and talk or when they are silent and contemplating things. It is clear that the camera loves Akane Tatsukawa as it often comes to rest on her beautiful face and records her reactions to the different things that she sees. This means that when the film takes a turn for the mysterious and spiritual at the end, the tone isn’t broken and the story comes to a perfect end.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Summer Lights is a clearly and concisely told slice of life in Hiroshima with a bit of magic thrown into the mix. It is worth a re-watch to see the lines of dialogue and the acting which foreshadow certain things later on in the plot and to understand more about Hiroshima in the aftermath of the atomic bombing and the beautiful city it has become now and the link between the past and the present. Life truly has reasserted itself in the ruins but it is important to listen to voices from the past and this film conveys these ideas really well.
I stayed in Hiroshima for a time to meet a friend and found the city quite charming. It’s compact but beautiful with lots of greenery and a scenic coast that are all easy to access. Despite being compact, I found myself walking around in circles as I searched for stores to get presents for relatives and friends in… Osaka and Tokyo were easier to navigate! Anyway, I can relate to the protagonist in this story as he gets lost in this city. I did meet a nice young lady who I had the chance to walk around with but I was so focused on getting those gifts… well. If you have the chance to visit Hiroshima, then I highly recommend you do so. There is a lot of history to learn from but, as I stated in my review, there is so much life. It’s a wonderful city and I intend to visit it again.
Dawn of the Felines is another entry in the reboot of the Roman Porno series and it comes from Kazuya Shiraishi who has worked on the rather leaden dramasThe Devil’s Pathand Twisted Justice. The title is a signal to anyone who knows the Roman Porno movement since it seems to follow on from Night of the Felines, a somewhat light take on the sex lives of people in Tokyo as seen and felt by a group of sex workers in a bathhouse. Dawn of the Felines is the modern update set in the glimmering neon lights and shadowy back streets of Ikebukuro.
We follow three young women who work for Health Express Young Wives Paradise. This is essentially a glammed up name for a prostitution company that sends there workers to customers. The three workers have lives that women facing problems in modern Japan will definitely recognise. Masako (Juri Ihata), a former office worker who has fallen into debt and lives in an internet cafe. Yui (Satsuki Maue) is a single-mother desperate for money but she also mistreats her son Kenta. Then there is Rie (Michie), a woman trapped in a gilded cage of sorts because while her husband earns a good salary she is trapped a marriage where the love has gone. The three are given their assignments by their “manager” Nonaka (Takuma Otoo) who has a book full of clients willing to pay tens of thousands of yen for company.
As per the rules of the Roman Porno world, there must be a sex scene every ten minutes and these characters are shown in the act with a variety of male clients who each have different problems. Masako is the favourite prostitute of a hikikomori called Takada (Tomohiro Kaku), who owns and lives in a high rise he hasn’t left for the outside in over ten years. Yui, the more demanding and rebellious worker, latches onto a rising-star in the comedy world (Hideaki Murata) whilst leaving her son in the care of strangers. Rie has a strange relationship with an elderly client, a recent widower who carries a huge emotional burden that feeds into an obsession he develops with her. Through the interactions of the women and their clients, the personalities are developed and so are their situations. Audiences get glimpses into how easy it is to fall into the life of a prostitute and the social and financial burdens and freedoms that come with such a position.
The stories that develop are alternately downbeat and humorous and do not take ludicrous turns (apart from a trip to a bondage club) with a moment of magical realism to lighten the mood in Kenta’s subplot and wrap up neatly. It is easier to place it in the real world.
Indeed, unlike the other films in the Roman Porno reboot, Dawn of the Felineslow-key narrative development gives it a realistic flavour, a feeling reinforced bythe cinema verite style shooting on hand held cameras and using natural lighting and real locations that gives it a sense of immediacy.
The sex that’s involved feels of the places and people it comes fromand the frank depictions of sex and the many lives that intersect in Tokyo ensure that while the film does not reach for the dramatic and comedic heights of Aroused by Gymnopedies and Wet Woman in the Wind, it does feel real and easy to identify with, as if we could pass by any of these women whilst walking around Ikebukuro brought to life in all its neon glory with its station featuring prominently.
As we watch lives full of funny and tragic moments unfold on screen, one gets the sense that the characters may be stray cats but they will find some crumbs of hope to keep them fed and keep going. Maybe we’ll see them on screen again? It would be interesting to see where they end up. Day of the Felines, perhaps?
The Korean Cultural Centre in London is hosting another series of free film screenings and this one is called, Patchworks: Unwrapping My Korean Cinema. It is the final season of 2017’s Korean Film Nights and just like the last season, there are films being screened for free at the Korean Cultural Centre every Thursday.
The previous screening was It’s Not Her Sin, a black and white film from the ’50s. This week isShorts Night: “Women Now” and this is totally up-to-date in terms of the representation of Korea and Koreans on screen. Audiences will have the chance to see six short films looking at the experiences of females in Korea from childhood to old age. They have been made by men and women, Koreans and expats, international co-productions and an animation made in Britain and they offer a huge range of stories
Here’s information on the first film in this season as pulled from the website:
Like A B1
Hangul: 중급불어
Running Time: 15 mins.
Director: Yann Kerloc’h
This is the one that has caught my attention out of all of the films especially because I have worked as a language teacher.
Synopsis: In Seoul, a Korean girl is passing the French oral exam DELF. Yet the examiner’s questions lead her to speak unexpectedly about her difficult family story. With the stress, her low level of French gets worse, then unconsciously, she starts to express herself with gestures.
Sea Child
Hangul: 바다아이
Running Time: 07 mins.
Director: Minha Kim
Synopsis: A poetic, almost silent hand-drawn animation, Sea Child follows Sora, a young girl on the verge of coming-of-age in downtown Seoul. Woken by a nightmare, the young Sora decides to follow a group of men into the city, in the hope of finding her mother. This moving and atmospheric short powerfully argues that notions of femininity and sexuality are learnt qualities, passed down from generation to generation.
Synopsis: In this refreshing take on millennial relationships, Sohee meets up with her ex-girlfriend Areum who is about to set off to live abroad in Germany. Given custody of Momo, the cat they once shared, Sohee brings the pet home to her current girlfriend Yujin and it becomes a reminder of her former relationship. This film is testament to how feelings of love and loss have not changed over the years.
Synopsis: Mrs. Young-hee is a middle-aged woman who runs a corner shop with the help of her son. Her life is irreversibly changed when a young man who looks just like her first love walks in, bearing bad news. In this delicate tale director Bang Woo-ri paints a rounded picture of womanhood shaped by past experiences and real emotions.
Son’s
Hangul: 아들의 것
Running Time: 18 mins.
Director: Lee Su-jin
Synopsis: A gentle meditation on the role of aging women in society, Son’s follows the life of an older mother in rural Korea. Living alone by a mudflat, she waits for her son to visit. Echoing her isolation in the quiet, routine life she leads, director Lee Su-jin’s film is a love letter to forgotten women, redressing the imbalance of older women not seen on the big screen.
Plastic Girls
Hangul: 플라스틱 걸즈
Running Time:7 mins.
Director:Nils Clauss
Synopsis: An aesthetically experimental journey, sitting somewhere between Wong Kar Wai and Gaspar Noe, director Nils Clauss’ short personifies the erotic ‘plastic girls’: sexually suggestive mannequins that greet shoppers at the entrance of commercial establishments. The film also reads as a quiet protest, suggesting that society still has some way to go before women are no longer signifiers of sexual desire.
The event takes place on July 27th and starts at 19:00. Booking is free and so to reserve your place, please use this site. The location is:
Seeing someone suffer is rarely fun but this film all about a Buddhist priest who is cursed to be sexually irresistible to all around him is sure to amuse audiences.
Ninko (Masato Tsujioka) is a novice Buddhist monk living during the Edo period. He is based at Enmei-ji, a temple in the mountains. He is, in fact, a paragon of a monk, adhering to asceticism to learn his religion, dutifully cooking, cleaning, and praying every day.
Despite his diligence he has a problem – Ninko attracts females. Lots of them. Handsome though he is, his popularity is truly astounding. When he travels to the local villages asking for alms a cry goes out, “Ninko’s come!” and he is mobbed by many fawning female fans forcing their way past the other monks so they canget their paws onNinko.
From Ninko’s POV we see him swamped by a wave of beauties bounding in from the bathhouses and back alleys of the town and bucolic boundaries of the mountain’s forests and it looks great for anyone interested in the fairer sex. For a Buddhist monk, sex with women is a sin so it’s not so great for Ninko.
It isn’t just the ladies who have taken a liking to Ninko. It’s guys as well. Two monks have their sights set on bedding Ninko and this vexes him just as much. He blames himself for the lust and suffering he causes in others. “I need more training” and “I’m not virtuous enough” are two of his melancholy refrains. However, as the head of his temple notes – he has dark desires of his own which he must face and conquer if he wants to put others at ease. These dark desires attract a faceless demon who sets off a series of horrific visions full of carnal desires that force Ninko to act…
Indeed, his demonic meeting leads to a quest which takes the film from bawdy comedy to Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.dark horror as Ninko meets a ronin named Kanzo, the man-slayer, and takes on a demon hunting quest. Their mission is to kill Yama-onna, a sexy lady in red rags who lures men with her physical form into having sex during which she sucks their vitality out. The narrative brings Ninko face-to-face with this creature before neatly folding everything up in an ironic ending that suggests he needs to unleash his dark side. It all takes place in side of 70 minutes and goes even faster because of the competent editing and camerawork and the creativity and vision of the director.
This is the debut movie of Norihiro Niwatsukino which premiered at last year’s Vancouver international Film Festival. It’s a hilarious take on Japanese history that lasts a quick and clean 70 minutes and features a simple and fun story with many visual surprises that make this highly entertaining and different from most indie films from Japan which are relationship dramas set in contemporary times.
The film frequently flits from live-action to animation and draws upon traditional Japanese arts and crafts. Shoji screens, ukiyo-e, and Buddhist illustrations are some of the techniques used to deliver the story and atmosphereand it is done with ease because Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Niwatsukino, a director, writer, producer, special effects supervisor, and animator has worked in many mediums from film to animation. He brings visual flair here so that while the cinematography seen on screen might not be mind blowing, the film is still visually engaging. Ninko may not travel to too many different places (outdoor and indoor sets are limited on this indie – a forest and a village and a waterfall – but the landscape illustrations that depict Ninko’s travels are vividly drawn, clearly inspired by Utagawa Hiroshige’s works set along the Tokaido road. Animation is used quite often and it’s exciting at times such as a surreal sequences of slow motion chases led by lusty lasses in a village which is interspersed with interpretive dance that switches back and forth from live-action to animation. The faces of actors are beaming with lust before they are transformed into figures who look like they could have come straight from Kitagawa Utamaru’s “The Poem of the Pillow,” a steamy shunga. This merry dance back and forth between live-action and animation enhances the comedy.
That the film utilises animation, song and dance, and drama in such ways is just a few of the highlights of its genre breaking form that makes it so enjoyable to watch and even memorable at points. At a time when it seems that so many indie films are dedicated to depicting the emotional land sexual lives of people in contemporary Tokyo, having a title that dares to be different is a breath of fresh air. Audiences will want to know whether Ninko conquer his inner-demons and overcome the lust of others? I won’t reveal anything but the ending will take the audience by surprise as an epic animated battle erupts and our monk becomes a legend!
The Venice International Film Festival launches its 74th edition on August 30th and it lasts until September 09th and the line-up was announced earlier this week. I’ve missed the last couple editions of the festival because there have been few Japanese films (the last edition I covered was in 2014). Anyway, there are two Japanese films from current directors and three classics from the golden age present this year. One if the modern ones is a Hirokazu Koreeda film which is in the international competition section which has many world premieres. Takeshi Kitano has his latest film screened out of competition, a section dedicated to already-established directors.
There are a couple of other Asian movies. To find out more about them, head over to Windows on Worlds.
Everybody rumoured… Nobody believed… But you see, it’s true! Hirokazu Koreeda is making a murder mystery! It’s here folks and it’s at the Venice Film Festival but don’t expect thrilling chases since this is a talky character-driven drama. Judging by Koreeda’s past works, it will be brilliant (I cried at his latest one just like all of his other ones).
This one sees him bring together a great cast, some of whom he has worked with (Suzu Hirose was the eponymous little sister in Our Little Sister and Masaharu Fukuyama was the father to the son in Like Father Like Son… okay, that last one was overcooked) and there’s also the masterful Koji Yakusho who has worked with most of the great modern directors like Juzo Itami (Tampopo), Takashi Miike (Thirteen Assassins), and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) and Tetsuya Nakashima (director of the still totally mind-blowing film The World ofKanako – I met the director and had my picture taken with him, a really nice guy!!!). There is also the wonderful underused actor Mikako Ichikawa who took the lead in the utterly charming Rent-a-neko!
Synopsis:Shigemori (Fukuyama) is a hot-shot lawyer on a mean winning streak but when he is compelled to take on defending a man named Mikuma (Yakusho) he finds the first case which could cause the wheels to fall off his career.
Mikuma is accused of a murdering the president of a company and setting fire to the corpse. It looks like an open and shut case since Mikuma has confessed and he was convicted of a murder that took place 30 years ago. The death penalty is almost a certainty but the more Shigemori investigates and the more he talks to Mikuma, the less certain he becomes of the man’s guilt and the case itself.
The truth lies with the daughter of the murdered president, Sakie (Hirose)…
I have seen twelve of the films that Kitano has directed (there are nineteen in total according to IMDB) and I must admit that Outrage (the last one I watched) didn’t grab my attention. To be honest, I’m a big fan of his earlier films like Kids Return and Sonatine and less interested in his more recent output which packs in a lot of stars but feature stories that don’t interest me. That’s a personal thing though and I’m no expert so I need to be schooled because it seems everyone else is a fan of the Outrage trilogy which seems to be coming to an end with this one. It’s the polar opposite of the Koreeda movie because it features more violence – but there’s also plenty of old men talking as well… I’m going to watch a documentary about Japanese idol girls.
Synopsis:Otomo (Kitano) escaped Japan and his old Sanno-kai yakuza group after countless betrayals and gang wars and prison. He joined up with a South Korean gangster named Jang but he finds himself travelling back to Japan when a member of the Hanabishi-kai yakuza group named Hanada (Taki) kills a member of Jang’s gang and he has to settle some accounts. Otomo decides to reunite with his old clan and get revenge on the peoplewho put him in prison at the end of the first film and he’s going to use his Korean connections to get the job done…
Here are reviews for Kitano’s films I actually have on this site
I had planned a season of reviews of Kitano’s films five years ago after getting a box-set to go with my editions of Brother and Zatoichi and a bunch of posters for his films but my notes and hundreds of screenshots are stuck on a computer I have forgotten the password to and I don’t have the time to re-watch them…
There are three Japanese films in the Venezia Classici, two by Kenji Mizoguchi and one by Yasujiro Ozu. The Ozu was restored by Shochiku while Kadokawa and The Film Foundation handled the Mizoguchis.
Synopsis:I saw this in a double-bill with Ugetsu Monogatari when I was a teenager and cried my little heart out at the end. It’s a jidai-geki set in the Heian period and tells the tale of a virtuous governor who gets exiled to be the lord of a remote province. When his wife and children travel to meet him years later, they are betrayed and the mother is sold into prostitution and the children are sold into slavery. They battle to retain their humanity and will to live even under such awful circumstances.
Synopsis:Ishun is a wealthy, but miserly scroll-maker in Kyoto. He is married to a beautiful young woman named Osan who is only in the relationship for money. Things go wrong for Osan when she is wrongly accused of infidelity with one of Ishun’s apprentices. Osan and the apprentice flee from Ishun who is desperate to track them down to prevent the scandal from leaking…
Synopsis:Taeko (Michiyo Kogure) is bored with her husband Mokichi Satake (Shin Saburi) who is an executive at an engineering company. This middle-aged couple in Tokyo are the unhappy result of an arranged marriage do not have kids to distract them from their differences and so when Taeko’s niece is forced to go through the arranged marriage process, she rebels…
The Korean Cultural Centre in London is hosting another series of free film screenings and this one is called, Patchworks: Unwrapping My Korean Cinema.The latest film is a documentary about a knitting club but there’s more to it including the bonds that members of this club make and creating a union. The screening takes place on August 03rd from 19:00.
Here’s information on the first film in this season as pulled from the website:
Synopsis from the website: When a group of women working in an office get bored with the hardened angry faces that they meet on their way to work on the grey urban mornings of their city commute, they decide to do something about it. In an effort to make the city a happier place for all, they start a knitting club.
“Coming to work in the morning, everyone is stone faced in this cold grey city… wouldn’t it be great to do something to make people smile?”
As the women become closer friends they realise that they have more in common than they thought. With an inspiring soundtrack and presenting a beautiful way in which people can come together, this documentary is an inspiration for change and for creating alternative platforms for discussion.
“Going from knitting that changes the city, to knitting that changes lives.”
The Korean Cultural Centre hosts this event, and others in the season for free. This is the final season of Korean Film Nights in 2017 so make the most of the free films on offer. The film will begin at 19:00. so you had better arrive early to get a seat. You can booktickets here. The location is:
The UK premiere of A Taxi Driver will take place on Monday, August 18th at 18:30 as part of theLondon Korean Film Festival‘steaserscreenings in the lead-up to the next London Korean Film Festival which will be held fromOctober 26thto November 19th.
A Taxi Driver is a road-movie based on the true story of a taxi driver named Kim Sa-bok taking a German reporter named Jurgen Hinzpeter to cover the Gwangju Uprising (May 18th – 27th, 1980). The film stars Song Kang-ho (The Quiet Family, Joint Security Area, Thirst) and Yu Hae-jin (Public Enemy, Kick the Moon, The Flu, Veteran). It’s released on August 02nd in Korea so to have it released in the UK so soon is a great deal!
Synopsis from the website: It’s 1980, and the political climate of South Korea is tense. Just one year earlier the country’s authoritarian president was assassinated and the military seized power through a coup d’état. Now, democracy movements that were once firmly suppressed are on the rise, but a tragic event that will change the course of the country’s history looms on the horizon.
Oblivious to all of this is taxi driver Man-seob (Song Kang-ho, The Age of Shadows, The Host). Struggling to raise his daughter on a meagre salary, Man-seob jumps at the chance to take a mysterious foreigner on a trip from Seoul down to the southern city of Gwangju. His passenger, it turns out, is a German journalist (Thomas Kretschmann, Avengers: Age of Ultron) with a secret agenda to investigate the strange rumours emanating from the far-flung town…
To find out more about the film and to book tickets, please visit the cinema’s website.
Image may be NSFW.
