On the day the Toronto International Film Festival launches, we get word from another great Canadian film festival! The Vancouver International Film Festival takes place from September 28th to October 13th and the organisers launched the programme today. The festival has long had a great love of East Asian cinema and supported various filmmakers both indie and mainstream and it continues to do so with this selection of films.

Close-Knit   

彼らが本気で編むときは、　　「Karera ga Honki de Amu toki wa」   

Running Time: 127 mins.

Director: Naoko Ogigami

Writer: Naoko Ogigami (Screenplay),

Starring: Rinka Kakihara, Toma Ikuta, Kenta Kiritani, Mimura, Eiko Koike, Mugi Kadowaki, Lily, Kaito Komie, Shuji Kashiwabara, Misako Tanako,

Website   IMDB

Naoko Ogigami is one of Japan’s interesting female directors, quietly working away making good films and many people are familiar with them. Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004), Kamome Diner (2006), Glasses (2007), and Rent-a-Cat (2012) could be described as quirky dramas that pack a powerful emotional punch but Close-Knit is a lot more serious as Ogigami looks at LGBTQ issues in Japan, a country that is still conservative in some ways.

Close-Knit may be serious but it features many well-rounded characters that will suck you into the world of the characters and show you that love is everything when it comes to family and through this you will definitely get you to understand the issues. Here’s an interview involving Naoko Ogigami which goes through the film a bit more. Expect a review soon.

Synopsis:  Eleven-year-old Tomo is pretty much left to her own devices by a mother who is flighty, to say the least. Unwashed dishes are piling up in the sink and supermarket onigiri are all she has to eat. Tomo’s single mother usually comes home late, and drunk. When she leaves her daughter for good one day the girl has to rely on help from her uncle, who takes in Tomo to live with him and his girlfriend Rinko. At their first meeting Tomo is flabbergasted to discover that Rinko is a transsexual. Rinko immediately sets about taking care of Tomo; not only does she lovingly prepare meals but she also succeeds in creating a new home for the girl. But before long cracks appear in their perfect nest.

Gukoroku – Traces of Sin   

愚行録  「Gukoroku」    

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Kei Ishikawa

Writer: Kosuke Mukai (Screenplay), Tokuro Nukui (Original Novel),

Starring: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Hikari Mitsushima, Keisuke Koide, Asami Usuda, Yui Ichikawa,

Website IMDB

This mystery unfolds slowly and moves at a sedate pace as a tale of class and abuse unfolds on the screen with shocks and twists sure to stun audiences.

Synopsis: Several years after the brutal, unsolved murder of a Tokyo family, an ambitious tabloid magazine reporter named Tanaka (Satoshi Tsumabuki) attempts to find the perpetrators of the crime. He investigates the father, a seemingly innocent salaryman, the mother, a highly educated woman, and step by step, he comes close to discovering what really happened…

Sweating the Small Stuff

枝葉のこと 「Edaha no koto」

Running Time: 114 mins.

Director:  Ryutaro Ninomiya

Writer: Ryutaro Ninomiya (Screenplay),

Starring: Ryutaro Ninomiya, Yuki Hirose, Tomoki Kimura, Yuki Miyoshi, Yasumi Yajima, Tetsuo Ninomiya, Daiki Matsumoto,

IMDB

The last time I wrote about indie director Ryutaro Ninomiya was when his film, The Charm of Others was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013. He’s back with another film that stars himself and Shinji Imaoka, the pink film director. This was at the Locarno Film Festival. Ninomiya has appeared at this festival in the past and won a Dragons & Tigers award for The Charm of Others. This film is his sophomore feature and he takes the lead role. No trailer.

Synopsis: Ryutaro is a 27-year-old guy who works as a mechanic in a garage in Yokohama. We follow his life over a single weekend where we witness him hanging out with useless friends, hooking up with a waitress, getting beat up and visiting Ryuko, the mother of an old friend, who is dying from Hepatitis C. His existence is not pretty and he is bubbling away with anger…

The Departure   

Running Time: 97 mins.

Director:  Lana Wilson

Writer: Lana Wilson, David Teague (Screenplay),

Starring: N/A

IMDB Website

This is an American documentary about a Japanese subject. It is Lana Wilson’s second film following one about abortion clinics that have come under attack in America.

Synopsis: Ittetsu Nemoto is a Buddhist priest with an interesting past. He was a punk rocker who used to work at a Tokyo McDonald’s. Despite taking on priestly vows, he still loves Prince, his motorcycle and dancing in clubs. He has become famous in Japan for his extraordinary success in inspiring suicidal men and women to keep on living but when a crisis hits Nemoto, will he be able to take his own advice and keep on living?

A Beautiful Star    

美しい星 「Utsukushii Hoshi」

Running Time: 127 mins.

Director:  Daihachi Yoshida

Writer: Daihachi Yoshida, Seitaro Kai (Screenplay), Yukio Mishima (Original Novel)

Starring: Lily Franky, Kazuya Kamenashi, Tomoko Nakajima, Ai Hashimoto, Yuichi Haba, Yurie Midori,

IMDB Website

Daihachi Yoshida is a director of many fine dramas and dramedies. I can think of two examples that I’d urge you to see: The Kirishima Thing is an ensemble piece that gently probes the feelings of a group of teens in school, Permanent Nobara is a fantastic look at different forms of love experienced by a group of close friends in a nowhere town in Japan and there are others. This is his latest and it’s based on a book by Yukio Mishima. It came out earlier this year and this is the film’s North American premiere.

Synopsis: The Osugi family could be considered pretty normal until they start believing they are aliens. It strikes the father, a weather forecaster named Shigeichiro (Lily Franky), first when he claims to be from Mars. The mother, Iyoko (Tomoko Nakajima), soon claims to be from Jupiter. Their freeter son Kazuo (Kazuya Kamenashi) is apparently from Mercury and their student daughter Akiko (Ai Hashimoto) says she is from Venus. They have one mission: to save mankind from nuclear weapons. Things get even crazier when they set out to achieve their goal…

Check back closer to the festival launch for more information and any updates.

Here’s my coverage of Vancouver from previous years:

Vancouver 2016

Vancouver 2015

Vancouver 2014

Vancouver 2013

Third Window Films will add Shinya Tsukamoto’s last film, Fires on the Plain to their catalogue of titles further making their releases the definitive editions! Fires on the Plain is an astonishing war film because of its relentlessly dwells on death and destruction and shows the pointlessness of war and the way it dehumanises people through a series of gruelling actions (gory battle scenes, murder, suicide, and worse) broken up by suspenseful periods of non-action in the beautiful jungle environs of the Philippines.

The film is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Shohei Ooka and Kon Ichikawa’s seminal 1959 war film and for director Shinya Tsukamoto it was a passion project he spent ten years bringing to life. It may be a war film but it fits in perfectly with his oeuvre since he has made films full of body-horror and he loves to explore the psychologically twisted aspects of human nature. Just watch his hyper-violent horror films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and dark dramas like Vital (2003) and A Snake of June (2003) and lets not forget Ichi the Killer and Nightmare Detective. Despite the fearsome reputation of the films… well…

I met Shinya Tsukamoto before this movie was screened and he was remarkably laid back. I didn’t get the chance to interview him but I did get my picture taken with him and an autograph which lies safely in a DVD case… I have reviewed a lot of his films and you can see which ones be looking at my profile of the director. I pulled this information from my review of the film and information from Third Window Films. I hope this helps!

Fires on the Plain        

野火   「Nobi」

Duration: 87 mins.

Release Date: July 25^th 2015 Seen at Raindance

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto

Writer: Shinya Tsukamoto (Screenplay), Shohei Ooka (Original Novel)

Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto, Lily Franky, Tatsuya Nakamura, Yuko Nakamura, Dean Newcombe, Yusaku Mori,

Website   IMDB

The film Fires on the Plain takes place during the closing stages of the war. The Americans are invading Leyte Island in the Philippines and are hot on the heels of demoralised soldiers of the Japanese army, all of whom are looking to evacuate from the island. We see their increasingly desperate struggle from the perspective of an army conscript named Tamura (Shinya Tsukamoto) who is sick with tuberculosis.

He is forced into the field with a grenade by a commander who cannot waste resources on keeping a dying man alive and suggests Tamura blows himself up. Tamura doesn’t want to give up so easily and clings to life. He wanders around the jungle and bounces between broken platoons and brutal battles as everybody heads to the port at Palompon to be evacuated to Cebu but it is a journey that will lead him down a dark path where he will have to hold on to his humanity as he encounters betrayal, extreme violence, and worse…

Japan / 2015 / 87 Mins / In Japanese with English subtitles / HD / Colour

The Japanese Embassy in London is continuing to screen Japanese films from the ‘90s and this one sounds absurd because it involves a guy who sells rocks. It’s based on a manga of the same name. The event is free to attend but anyone interested in being part of the audience must book in advance to secure a place (which you can do through this link).

Here’s the information:

Nowhere Man   

無能の人 「Muno no Hito」

Running Time: 107 mins.

Director:  Naoto Takenaka

Writer: Toshiharu Maruuchi (Screenplay), Yoshiharu Tsuge (Original Novel)

Starring: Naoto Takenaka, Jun Fubuki, Kotaro Santo, Miyako Yamaguchi, Ren Osugi, Yoshio Harada, Yoshiko Kuga, Tomokazu Miura,

IMDB

Naoto Takenaka has appeared in over 200 films but his directing career only has eight films and the last one was 2013’s Self-Bondage: All Tied Up with My Own Rope, which is a film I remember writing about quite clearly and regret Googling because now it’s in my search history and some of the results I have seen I cannot unsee. This particular film is a send-up of the art world and features great actors like Jun Fubuki (Seance, Charisma), Ren Osugi (Exte), and Yoshio Harada (Zigeunerweisen).

Synopsis from the website: Sukezo, once a well-known manga artist in the country, now sells rocks. He gave up his career in the comic world when he became sick of its commercialisation. Much to the chagrin of his family, he begins his new career by setting up shop in a shed at the riverside. The rock business suits his personality as he hates to throw anything away. After all, rocks are free and abundantly available along the river. Not surprisingly, the business does not go well. One day he reads about stone auctions taking place for amateurs and goes to meet the president of Japan’s Rock Appreciation Society. He takes his family stone-hunting in the mountains and tries to auction off their crops. With his family becoming steadily poorer, his marriage deteriorates as his wife is forced to make ends meet by taking a part-time job and even resorts to stealing vegetables from a neighbour’s garden…

The film is a parable about the perils and pressures exerted on those who resist the competitive atmosphere of modern Japan. A human drama portraying dropouts from society in a humorous manner.

The event takes place on September 27th and the doors open 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 with this link.

I have already retweeted this but I wanted to write a quick post about an Arrow Video Club presentation of Takashi Miike’s classic horror film Audition which will be screened at the Prince Charles Cinema at 20:45 on September 19th. Here’s a link to more information on the cinema’s site.

This film is incredible and I have already written a review full of praise so I want to hype this screening up because it deserves to be seen on the big screen! Also, scariest use of a sack in a film!

Audition   

オーディション 「O-deishon」

Release Date: October 06^th, 1999 (Japan)

Running Time: 115 mins.

Director: Takashi Miike

Writer: Daisuke Tengan (Screenplay), Ryu Murakami (Original Novel)

Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Jun Kunimura, Tetsu Sawaki, Renji Ishibashi, Miyuki Matsuda, Toshie Negishi, Ren Osugi, Ken Mitsuishi, Fumiyo Kohinata,

IMDB

Synopsis: Since the death of his wife Ryoko seven years ago, film producer Aoyama(Ryo Ishibashi) has raised their son Shigehiko alone. The two live a happy life but Shigehiko notices his father looking worn out so asks “why don’t you marry again?” Aoyama is taken with the suggestion but is unsure how to approach remarrying. His friend Yoshikawa, a film producer, suggests staging an audition to find a girl aged between 20-35 for a role in a film that is unlikely to be made. The plan is Aoyama won’t marry the successful girl but the audition will uncover gems. Despite misgivings over the process, Aoyama proceeds and discovers ex-ballerina Asami(Eihi Shiina) and falls for her. After initial contact, she warms to his advances and Aoyama becomes increasingly infatuated with her fragile nature and beauty ignoring the dark side to the girl of his dreams.

Japanese Girls Never Die  

アズミ・ハルコは行方不  「Azumi Haruko wa yukue fumei」

Running Time: 100 mins.

Director: Daigo Matsui

Writer: Mariko Yamauchi (Original Novel), Misaki Setoyama (Screenplay)

Starring: Yu Aoi, Mitsuki Takahata, Maho Yamada, Shono Hayama, Taiga, Kanon Hanakage, Ryo Kase, Motoki Ochiai, Tomiyuki Kunihiro, Akiko Kikuchi,

IMDB Website

In this film, Japanese girls are mad. Justifiably so if you look at reality. Despite Japan being a country on the bleeding edge of culture and cool, the way women are treated leaves a lot to be desired. Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan (I’m dating this review with a reference to him), has pledged to make Japan’s economy boom again and one of his methods is to get more women into the workplace and not just in menial positions but in leadership roles – womenomics. Rather contradictorily, he wants this whilst also trying to persuade women to boost the birthrate of a country with workplace environments that often penalise people for taking time off to look after family matters. Unfortunately, his grand plans have faltered and women still find themselves trapped in lowly positions never mind other issues such as stalkers and whatnot. Japanese Girls Never Die, based on the novel Haruko Azumi Is Missing by Misaki Setoyama, manages to tackle many issues of that women face in a bright neon blaze of righteous anger and anime-inspired visuals that will drive home the injustices that women endure.

One hot summer, cryptic graffiti, featuring information from a missing person poster begins to appear all over an anonymous suburban town. Haruko Azumi (Yu Aoi) is the missing person and her melancholy face stares out at people who pass by. Who is she?

We find out moments into the film as we flashback to scenes from the woman’s everyday life.

Haruko is a normal woman who works in a dead-end office job with two misogynistic bosses who pick on her and her colleague Hiroko Yoshizawa (Maho Yamada) over their appearance, age, and marital status. The two women endure a chorus of sexist cries every day: “At 37, Hiroko is letting Japan down by not getting married and having kids!” “Haruko should dress more feminine and get a boyfriend!” Things aren’t much better at Haruko’s cramped home where she lives with her parents and senile grandmother and has a one-sided romance with the ungrateful and reclusive Yuji Soga (Huey Ishizaki). It’s a pretty miserable existence and the pressure mounts. The audience begins to dread what will happen to Haruko but getting to the point of disappearance isn’t so straight-forward!

Her story is mixed-up with that of three wannabe grafitti artists who hijack Haruko’s image and spray it around town. These artists are old schoolmates who have just turned twenty. There’s the shy and artistic Manabu (Shono Hayama), brash university kid Yukio (Taiga), and glam gal Aina (Mitsuki Takahata) who thinks she’s in a relationship with Yukio. The guys take the lead in tagging and the pretty but pretty emotionally desperate Aina tags along until she finds her own inspiration. Until this awakening, she’s only used her artistic flair for job as a nail-art technician and making her smartphone as gaudy as she can by accessorising it.

If women reaching or past their 30s get a rough time of it, newly-minted adults like Aina are judged as useful to society solely by their looks and are pressured to look for husbands or work in girly bars. Yukio uses Aina for casual sex and even offers her to Manabu when a younger woman enters his life and this causes frictions amongst the trio, especially when the art world decide to pick up the boys for a big project once their spray painted images of Haruko goes viral across the news and social media.

While this is happening, a mysterious group of high school girls run a campaign of terror where they attack random men at night and that includes the guys making Haruko’s life a misery. These incidents seem to overlap and Haruko herself gets caught up in them and they take her out of her miserable existence and romance but are they part of the reason she disappears?

Getting to the answer is a hell of a lot of fun as we run a gauntlet of hyper-aggressive kawaii high-school girls and the misogynist pigs they are railing against.

Sitting through a “message film” about how bad men are might sound a chore (and dull men might cry misandry) but not here because the film doesn’t deliver its message in a straight-forward way. Daigo Matsui has written the script, characters and dialogue so he gives it to the audience in a non-linear fashion but it all slots into place even as the narrative bounces between three strands and two different timelines. Part of this is down to having Yu Aoi’s character of Haruko and Mitsuki Takahata’s Aina act as narrative lynch-pins since they are the focal points of sexism and female resistance for the narrative. Their experiences and reactions thus control and corral every seemingly chaotic aspect into a sequence that give the audience an idea of what a drag it is to be these women. The scenes and sequences are a series of sharp strikes of semi-comedic and semi-serious moments and the narrative all the more energetic for it.

Females from different generations are on display to show the insidious effects of misogyny and gender roles – a girl of about ten who is dressed like a princess is already conditioned to see 27-year-old Haruko as past her sell-by-date, an old lady. Haruko’s 50-something mother is slowly being driven insane as she has to run a house single-handed and look after a senile old woman while her husband ignores the chaos and reads a newspaper or eats food. Then there’s Haruko’s co-worker at the office, Hiroko, the most capable person who effectively runs the place but is paid a pittance by her incompetent male bosses and forced to endure sexist comments. Both Aina and Haruko are reduced to emotionally needy. Even the romantic idea of marrying a childhood friend is torpedoed with Haruko’s one-sided romance with Yuji who turns sour and callously discards her (not that she looked fulfilled by being with him) the moment another girl enters his life much like Yukio and Aina.

If there ain’t no romance in the air and the men are no good, perhaps it’s time to disappear and make things happen for yourself. Or burn the town down as a group of rebellious schoolgirls begin to do.

The criticism of the treatment of women comes in well-detailed and believable scenes of humdrum life and relationship dramas that Haruko and Aina go through but things liven up and get fantastical (revenge-fantasy fantastical!) as mobs of girls beat up men in amusing hit-and-run attacks before retreating to their cinema den to watch animated films. Matsui co-opts anime aesthetics in these sections and pours them into the cut-up narrative to provide a counterpoint to the everyday lives of Haruko and Aina, ultimately turning art on the very men who create and consume the sexualised schoolgirl imagery and so the film passes comment on social roles and privileges and the unfairness of a woman’s place while celebrating the durability, energy, and gutsiness of women through the school girl gang fighting back and the women holding families together who are on the verge of a nervous breakdown thus bringing a very political take to what is ostensibly a serious topic.

Flipping between animation and reality, different locations, time periods, and different characters may sound like hard work but Daigo Matsui manages things effortlessly and the film benefits from this flexibility since its rhythm bounces along and turns the narrative into a rollercoaster ride. At no points confusing and at every moment engaging, it feels like everything but the final third has been perfectly weighted and set in motion to hit the screen at the right time – more time could have been given to the final sequences and resolutions but that would risk the mysterious ending being blown.

The female characters may be in positions of weakness for most of this film but they are powered by fantastic actors. Yu Aoi, as Haruko, provides a stable centre and an every-woman quality with her equanimity and natural looks while Maho Yamada brings her dry sense of humour to the role of Hiroko (and she further cements herself as my favourite actress) and also glows with self-confidence – no man’s comment will stop her going where she wants to go. Mitsuki Takahata is a complete kawaii girl but her fun and loopy personality makes her heart-breakingly sympathetic when she is mistreated by the guys. The one decent male character is a gormless police officer played by Ryo Kase who is constantly (and hilariously) chewing on food and devouring ice cream outside his kouban whilst a gender war goes on around him.

Other writers and directors may well be heavy-handed in dealing with this topic but Daigo Matsui makes this enjoyable for all and I reckon he does this whilst also awakening men to some of the things that women go through by presenting different ways of male thinking on screen – neediness and desperation for love adulation from women. callousness and ruthlessness in the way we treat relationships. We’re better when we’re selfless and doing our jobs. If you’re the type of guy who thinks he’s immune to making a mistake, just be aware of the way your brain switches its way of thinking. This film will illuminate that.

So is the title true? Do Japanese girls never die? Well, they are pretty hardcore, born survivors and patient as hell, magic even (that’s not me exoticising them, that’s the ending of the film!). I don’t really know the reality but you better treat them with respect or they’ll cut you down.

Eureka have scored a coup by getting Tag as part of their catalogue following on from Tokyo Tribe. The release will be on dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition on November 20th 2017 after getting shown at festivals around the UK. One of those festivals is Nottingham’s Mayhem Film Festival (October 12th – 15th) on October 14th. The festival takes place at Nottingham’s Broadway cinema and there are a couple of other Asian films on show.

Here are the Japanese and Japanese-themed entries in the programme:

Tag    

リアル鬼ごっこ  「Riaru Onigokko」

Release Date: July 11^th, 2015

Running Time: 85 mins.

Director: Sion Sono

Writer: Sion Sono (Screenplay), Yusuke Yamada (Original Novel)

Starring:  Reina Triendl, Mariko Shinoda, Erina Mano, Yuka Sakurai, Maryjun Takahashi, Rin Honoa Cyborg Kaori, Mao Mita, Izumi, Mika Akizuki,

Website   IMDB

A high-school girl named Mitsuko (Triendl) narrowly avoids death and flees a massacre orchestrated by teachers. Over the course of her escape, she slips into an alternate reality where she takes on various forms in the shape of Keiko (Shinoda) and Izumi (Mano) and becomes involved in a fatal game of “tag”. They are all the targets of ghosts with various appearances including a groom with a pig’s face and female teacher with a machine gun.

The next one is an Australian-Japanese co-production:

Top Knot Detective  

Running Time: 87 mins.

Director:  Aaron McCann, Dominic Pearce

Writers: Aaron McCann, Dominic Pearce

Starring: Toshi Okuzaki, Masa Yamaguchi, Mayu Iwasaki, Kuni Hashimoto, Izumi Woods, Yoji Tatsuta, Guitar Wolf,

IMDB

Synopsis: Some time in the 90’s there was once a samurai detective series with a main character who kills monsters while trying to avenge his dead mother. It was monumentally bad in all the ways it matters – acting, editing, cinematography, subtitling, translating. It proved to be a cult hit in Australia. Now, a documentary film team investigates what happened to the people behind it including the lead actor who ended up in jail…

Third Window Films continue to release the newly restored films of Takeshi Kitano on sparkly blu-ray in the UK with Getting Any? on October 16th.

I remember watching this film for the first time around five years ago and just being stunned at how monumentally unfunny it was after the Ghostbusters sketch. It’s undisciplined and tries to do too much, the humour hasn’t dated well and there’s little that’s funny to begin with. But then maybe that’s the point and there’s a lot more going on than I realised:

In an interview Kitano actually draws parallels to Kurosawa, who, in the hindsight of Kitano, should have made a total bullshit film, instead of attempting suicide after “Dodes Kaden”. To Kitano, “‘Getting Any?’ is a beautiful disastrous failure and “suicide”.

Henrik Sylow (kitanotakeshi.com)

Whatever, of you’re a completionist or adventurous this is definitely for you. The material covers so much since it’s a send-up of the Japanese film industry and it certainly is memorable. Perhaps, after living in Japan, I might find more elements of this funny. It certainly has a good cast with Kitano leading familiar actors like Yurei Yanagi and Susumu Terajima astray and both Dankan and Ren Osugi appeared in the Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie Eyes of the Spider!

Here are the details:

Getting Any?   

みんな～やってるか！ 「Minna~ Yatteru ka」

Running Time: 108 mins.

Release Date: February 11^th, 1995

Director:  Takeshi Kitano

Writer: Takeshi Kitano (Screenplay),

Starring: Dankan, Moeko Ezawa, Takeshi Kitano, Susumu Terajima, Kanji Tsuda, Yurei Yanagi, Ren Osugi, Taka Guadalcanal, Hakuryu, Yojin Hino, Yoneko Matsukane,

IMDB Website

Synopsis: From the acclaimed director Takeshi Kitano [Fireworks, Kikujiro] comes a bizarre, over the top and absurd comedy full of slapstick silliness and never ending gags. A great satire of Japanese society and popular cinema, Getting Any?, embraces the spirit of Kitano s early stand-up and television work and as such it offers a genuine inside look into his true personality.

The story follows the nerdy middle age Asao, a professional daydreamer, whose one and only goal in life is – as the title suggests – to get laid. Asao embarks on a series of slapstick adventures in search of fulfilling his ultimate fantasy – making wild passionate sex with a woman. His holy quest for sex lands Asao in a series of absurd situations, involving robbery schemes, big movie productions, yakuza gang rivalry wars and scientific experiments.

Getting Any? may be very episodic and perhaps even pointless in the grand scheme of things, but for those willing to go for it, it’s a hoot from start to finish.

Zigeunerweisen

ツィゴイネルワイゼン 「Tsuigoineruwaizen」   

Running Time: 145 mins

Director:  Seijun Suzuki

Writer: Yozo Tanaka (Screenplay), Hyakken Uchida (Original Novel)

Starring: Yoshio Harada, Naoko Otani, Toshiya Fujita, Kisako Makishi, Akaji Maro, Kirin Kiki, Yuki Kimura, Nagamasa Tamaki, Sumie Sasaki,

Website IMDB

This is an unruly and long review for a great film! You have been warned.

Seijun Suzuki’s (1923 – 2017) career as a director is split into two parts – as one of Nikkatsu studio’s stable of salaried directors, he was tasked with making rather generic low-budget yakuza films but Suzuki’s output was different because he had a keen sense of style and humour that subverted the genre products he was hired to write and direct. Brave use of dissonance in terms of arty visuals, sounds and music, and penning irreverent stories with outrageous twists made his films more memorable for audiences but less palatable for the guys running Nikkatsu who were not so enamoured with creating art and more interested in making a quick buck. This period came to an end with Branded to Kill which proved to be a critical and commercial flop and so the head honchos at Nikkatsu fired him for making, and I quote Suzuki-kantoku himself, “movies that make no sense and no money.” Suzuki successfully sued them for wrongful dismissal but successfully challenging industry figures tends to get a person blacklisted (just ask Kiyoshi Kurosawa after his run-in with Juzo Itami) and so he spent ten years in the movie making wilderness formulating ideas with other creatives.

Suzuki, proving that creativity is everything, made a comeback ten years later and re-established his filmmaking career with his period drama series, the Taisho Trilogy – Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981), and Yumeji (1991). With the help of the theatre impresario Genjiro Arato, Suzuki made and screened Zigeunerweisen, the first of three pure arthouse feature films, with little to no assistance from mainstream studios and exhibitors. Zigeunerweisen, based on the novel, Disk of Sarasate by Hyakken Uchida, blew away expectations and went on to win four out of nine awards from the 1981 Japanese Academy Prize including best director and best film, and has been voted the number one Japanese film of the 1980s by Japanese critics. Not only that, it was a box-office success.

The reputation of Zigeunerweisen is pretty mighty and to coincide with it’s new hi-def re-release thanks to Arrow Films as part of the Taisho Trilogy box set, it was shown at the big screen at Japan Cuts. So, what of the film itself?

It’s pretty special. An imaginative supernatural adventure into the recent past of Japan, the Taisho era which ran from the 1910s to the mid-1920s. It was a time of decadence and political upheaval after Japan emerged from the rapid modernisation of the Meiji period and before the militarism of the Showa period. Westernisation and liberalisation began to take firm root in a land where traditional culture was still dominant (and still is despite surface appearance). This cultural split is examined through a number of dualities represented in the characters, locations, and set decorations, and props. Steam trains cut through landscapes full of small villages with wooden houses. They carry Modern Gals with their short Lucille Ball-style hair under cloche hats and gentlemen in suits with suspenders and bowler hats who rub shoulders with men and women wearing kimono and geta. These people go to gambling dens with Chinese and Americans or they go home to European-style or Japanese-style houses where telephones and gramophones are making an appearance but it is more than just changing times, it is the spirit of the age. Is it a simple case that Japan is becoming modern or is there more hiding behind a curtain?

It is with a gramophone that the action begins as the two lead characters, Aochi and Nakasago, listen to a performance of Zigeunerweisen (German for “Gypsy Airs”) by Pablo de Sarasate, a dramatic violin piece that conjures up Gothic imagery, an aspect enhanced by the presence of an indistinct but spooky voice captured in the recording. This voice is a ghostly echo captured on vinyl but it does have a rational explanation. What doesn’t have a rational explanation is where these two characters will end up and the way the supernatural impinges on the modern world of Japan as hinted at by that vinyl record which will have a key role in events later on…

The record sequence is a flash-forward and we are taken to an earlier part of the strange relationship between Aochi (Toshiya Fujita) and Nakasago (Yoshio Harada). Both lead characters are academics who have been friends from their university days but only Aochi continues his job at a military academy where he teaches German.

Aochi’s wardrobe is mostly slick suits and he grooms himself well, cultivating his professorial look with a neatly groomed moustache and quizzical almost permanently raised eyebrow that seems to invite the world to present something interesting to him. He is very much Westernised as is his wife Taeko (Kisako Makishi) who is a Modern Gal lost in bouts of hedonistic pleasure, taking more time to entertain herself at their grand house than patiently serve her husband. Taeko’s only responsibility is to visit a sick sister.

Nakasago presents a complete contrast. His dress is very Japanese and his style is wild. He has unkempt hair that covers the left half of his face, a cape that flows dramatically around him, and a tempestuous manner that sees him charge after whatever interests him – usually women. He has hit the road as an itinerant dilettante of the grisly, ghoulish, and erotic aspects of sex and the human body – including a fetish for skeletons (an embellishment added to the original story by Yozo Tanaka).

Nakasago is pure id, an unrestrained presence who is all about acting out his desires and he has the flair for the dramatic to seemingly get away with murder. He has a habit of attracting women and his latest one is a fisherman’s wife who has been washed up dead on the shore of a remote community. Fortunately, just as Nakasago is confronted by an angry mob, his much more intellectual friend Aochi arrives to bail him out of a brawl and the grasp of the law and the two make off to an inn where they call upon the only geisha in town who isn’t working, O-Ine (Naoko Otani).

Despite coming fresh from her brother’s funeral, this geisha bewitches the two men. With her Tokyo accent and her sophistication, she stands out amongst the locals but her beauty truly marks her out, an angel amongst humans. She is a febrile presence and an earthy woman with a lust for life and an interest in the supernatural that may equal Nakasago’s. Her story of her brother’s bones being pink in a cremation jar excites Nakasago who takes a lusty liking to her before she disappears from the scene.

Or does she… Some time later, Nakasago surprises Aochi by revealing he has married a noblewoman from western Japan named Sono (also Otani). She looks exactly like O-Ine but is much more docile, a traditional wife who waits in her husband. Her docility seems like a weakness but she also casts a spell on the two men who debate and supernatural occurrences happen around her and Aochi finds himself alone in her presence from time to time, especially when Nakasago leaves home for one of his sojourns. What soon develops is a strange love triangle as the emotional lives and desires of these characters lap at each other loins before the waves wash over them and their grips on reality come loose. Viewers will wonder at everything they see.

It is a delicious mystery to chow down on and since the film runs at nearly two and a half hours, there’s plenty to consume. The story is thick with events and not everything adds up but despite the running time, it never drags. Indeed, it has a stately pace that feels just about right for an examination of everything that Suzuki puts on screen.

Suzuki’s vision of the Taisho era is one of perpetual unease thanks to the pull of the forces of rationality and traditionalism, westernisation and irrationality, selfishness and lust and a death desire. The world on screen is an unstable hinterland where competing states of being seemingly meld into one reality without truly settling on anything definite. Whatever positions the characters take, they are dogged by some duality or other.

Dressed in the same dapper suit for most of the film, Aochi seems to be a moral pillar of logic for the viewer to follow events. He is constantly seen striding through the countryside or at a dinner table, legs crossed, sake cup in his hand, brows furrowed a look of distaste on his face for his brazen and crude friend but look carefully and there is always a glance or glint of hope that Nakasago will do something crazy and selfish that he can admire. He is like a greedy empirical scientist encouraging his friend Nakasago to indulge himself in his most wild behaviour – extramarital affairs make for great extracurricular reading of the human soul but what he doesn’t count in is his friend actually being crazy.

Whether of not Nakasago is genuinely insane or just some enfant terrible is up for debate but he gives an entertainingly bawdy performance (wife swapping) that veers into the terrifying when his fetish for the dead comes to life and begins (polishing human bones to see the real beauty). His influence rubs off on everyone and soon Taeko is quoting him. “Things are best when they begin to rot,” says the wild woman as she erotically licks an overripe to rotting peach and gets its juices everywhere. She seems an odd choice of wife for the seemingly stuffed-shirt that is Aochi but even she cannot contain Nakasago and his passions and, in one terrifying sequence, Taeko is pursued in her own home by him. The camera tracks her frantic run through the interior while Nakasago simply teleports himself (as in, after chasing her around on foot, he just appears) into different doorways and windows on different storeys in almost an instant.

And then there is O-Ine/Sono. Otani creates two wholly different characters through her physical movements and mental attitudes without the need to adopt varying physical appearances. Native Japanese speakers might be able to hear changes in dialect since her characters come from Tokyo/western Japan. Sono is physically fractious and disturbed and seems typify the idiom still waters run deep while O-Ine is smooth, confident, and seductive. Their natures meld together to create one figure who seems to be from a more supernatural realm, someone holding the door open for the weird events that eventually consume the screen and Suzuki’s flare for spectacle comes into play.

Non-diegetic music and sounds, lighting with no visible sources occur often. The use of lighting so that familiar environments become alien or maybe to isolate characters and make them disappear into darkness leads to shocks as arms suddenly jut out or the faces of people phase in from the darkness. Flames burn brilliantly and menacingly outside screen doors which open and shut without human intervention and Taeko’s sister has strange visions. Characters will have conversations but continuity goes out of the window as they find themselves talking in different locations from one second to the next. The sea and the sky will turn blood-red. Everything listed and more provides an apocalyptic feel which is added to by sets where the walls come tumbling down.

Suzuki, long known for filming indoors and controlling his environments through careful set design, chooses to film on location here but his style still makes a massive impact. His techniques all suggest the calamitous states of mind at various moment for characters and the ruptures in normality as different ideas, feelings, and fears are realised. Suzuki skilfully uses visual and aural dissonance to show how notions of the erotic and death clash together with the supernatural to form different mindsets and warp the world. Rationality goes out of the window. If this were a conventional love-triangle, well, there wouldn’t be so much controlled chaos and so many surprises on screen leading to a bloody carnal sea where bones are all that matter.

Is O-Ine/Sono a fox or a woman using these techniques to play tricks on weak-minded men who are themselves playing at being enlightened but intellectually bored? Whatever the case, she has them in her thrall and seeing them gradually float to their final destinations is absorbing.

When the story comes to its end and the credits role the spell cast by the characters and places is not broken. Audiences may start researching Japanese folklore to understand events but they will surely spend more time re-watching the film to get lost in the cinematic landscape that Suzuki created, speculating about what just happened. Have these two learned men encountered a fox spirit while on the road and are they trapped in its den? Could more one or more than one of these characters be a ghost? The answer is possibly there but it is hard to intuit through pure logic which the audience will bring into a first viewing – a leap into the irrational and imaginative might be needed to delve deeper into this glorious and mysterious film to find out what secrets Suzuki has embedded in a world of amazing sights and sounds and some fantastically fascinating characters. All the more reason to watch the film again!

This review was a long one. Thanks for reading!

Anyway, the actors all put in fantastic performances. They crop up in some interesting films where they couldn’t be more different.

Yoshio Harada who plays the wildman Nakasago crops up in three Koreeda films: Still Walking, I Wish and Hana. He also appears in Nightmare Detective and Disciples of Hippocrates.

Kisako Makishi has worked on only two films according to IMDB – Zigeunerweisen and Disciples of Hippocrates.

Naoko Otani can be seen in more films such as Blue Christmas and the utterly brilliant Wild Berries.

Toshiya Fujita joined the Nikkatsu studio in 1955 and worked as a publicist, screenwriter, and assistant director prior to directing his first film in 1967. He won many awards for films that range from Roman Porno titles to cult-hits like Lady Snowblood: Blizzard from the Netherworld (1973).

The London Film Festival is just around the corner and I’ve already got a post about that detailing things such as screenings and A Conversation with Takashi Miike. Here’s something really interesting that has just been announced by the Japan Foundation: Naoko Ogigami will be in conversation with Jasper Sharp during the festival.

The event will take place on October 14th, 2017 from 15:00 at La Médiathèque (Institut Français), 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT. This event is free to attend but booking is essential. To book a place, head over to the Eventbrite website.

Here are more details from the Japan Foundation:

Naoko Ogigami is an award-winning director and scriptwriter, and is considered one of the most commercially successful female filmmakers in Japan. An auteur with a huge domestic following, Ogigami writes and directs all her films with a renowned calming cinematic approach and her films feature recurring themes of culture clashes and characters thrown into unusual circumstances, epitomised in her hit dramas Kamome Diner (2006) and Glasses (2007). Outside of Japan, Ogigami’s work has also been recognised by many international film festivals and her debut feature, Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004) was a winner at Berlin International Film Festival, inspiring many triumphant returns to the festival since.

In celebration of the UK premiere of her latest feature Close-Knit at the BFI London Film Festival, the Japan Foundation has invited Ogigami to reflect on her unique cinematic style and career to date. Having worked on a number of productions both in Japan and the United States, Ogigami will discuss how her experience of diaspora influenced her approach to filmmaking and the current climate for female filmmakers both in Japan and overseas. Ogigami will be joined in conversation by curator and writer Jasper Sharp.

Close-Knit   

彼らが本気で編むときは、　　「Karera ga Honki de Amu toki wa」   

Running Time: 127 mins.

Director: Naoko Ogigami

Writer: Naoko Ogigami (Screenplay),

Starring: Rinka Kakihara, Toma Ikuta, Kenta Kiritani, Mimura, Eiko Koike, Mugi Kadowaki, Lily, Kaito Komie, Shuji Kashiwabara, Misako Tanako,

Website   IMDB

Naoko Ogigami is one of Japan’s interesting female directors, quietly working away making good films and many people are familiar with them. Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004), Kamome Diner (2006), Glasses (2007), and Rent-a-Cat (2012) could be described as quirky dramas that pack a powerful emotional punch but Close-Knit is a lot more serious as Ogigami looks at LGBTQ issues in Japan, a country that is still conservative in some ways.

Close-Knit may be serious but it features many well-rounded characters that will suck you into the world of the characters and show you that love is everything when it comes to family and through this you will definitely get you to understand the issues. Here’s an interview involving Naoko Ogigami which goes through the film a bit more. Expect a review soon (because I have been scribbling notes down whilst in work).

Synopsis:  Eleven-year-old Tomo is pretty much left to her own devices by a mother who is flighty, to say the least. Unwashed dishes are piling up in the sink and supermarket onigiri are all there is to eat again. Tomo’s single mother usually comes home late, and drunk. When she leaves her daughter for good one day the girl has to rely on help from her uncle, who takes in Tomo to live with him and his girlfriend Rinko. At their first meeting Tomo is flabbergasted to discover that Rinko is a transsexual. Rinko immediately sets about taking care of Tomo; not only does she lovingly prepare meals but she also succeeds in creating a new home for the girl. But before long cracks appear in their perfect nest.

Close-Knit (2017) will screen as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2017, supported by the Japan Foundation. The film will be shown following the talk at Ciné Lumière, Institut Français on Saturday 14 October 2017 at 18.00 and again at Rich Mix Cinema on Sunday, 15 October 2017 at 13.00, with Ogigami attending both screenings. To purchase tickets for either screening, please visit the BFI London Film Festival website.

Double Life   

二重生活　「Niju seikatsu」

Running Time: 83 mins

Director:  Yoshiyuki Kishi

Writer: Yoshiyuki Kishi (Screenplay), Mariko Koike (Original Novel)

Starring: Mugi Kadowaki, Hiroki Hasegawa, Masaki Suda, Lily Franky, Setsuko Karasuma, Naomi Nishida, Yukiko Shinohara, Shohei Uno,

Website IMDB

Double Life is the debut feature-film from Yoshiyuki Kishi but it is done with such control you would have no idea. It is based on a novel by Mariko Koike and features a strong cast that bring audiences an interesting drama of a student who becomes obsessed with her neighbour ‘s life.

The student at the centre of the story is Tama (Mugi Kadowaki in her first lead role). She is a philosophy student who lives with her video game designer boyfriend Takuya (a low-key Masaki Suda) in a comfortable apartment.

When we first see her, she’s slogging through her masters thesis and even questioning the meaning of her own life when her inspirational professor, Shinohara (Lily Franky playing his role in a physically and emotionally constricted manner), gives her some guidance by telling her to follow in the footsteps of the French writer Sophie Calle and follow, in turn, in the footsteps of some random stranger on the street to discover their life.

People watching the film may not be familiar with Sophie Calle and while it isn’t important to know who she is, it is interesting. She is a French philosopher/photographer/artist/writer who is probably best known for stalking random strangers and finding out things about their lives and publishing said things. Personality-wise she comes off as a daredevil and boundary-pusher who challenged convention. Mousy student Tama is nowhere near the forceful personality and has doubts about her own existence but Shinohara encourages her to tail one person with one proviso, “you can’t let them know you’re tailing them.”

Tama is intrigued and, while at a bookshop, spots her seemingly perfect neighbor Ishizaka (an alternately aggressive and smooth Hiroki Hasegawa) in an act of pure impulsiveness. As a nosey neighbour informed her in a piece of exposition earlier, he is a senior editor at Eirin Publishing and every book he handles is a hit. His cute daughter is at a university prep school and his wife is a beauty. In other words, he has it all and yet when Tama starts tailing him she discovers that he is leading a double-life full of steamy sex with a secret lover and midnight assignations.

Tama, notebook in hand, gets sucked into Ishizaka’s private life but the more the closeted student gets involved the more her behaviour become strange and worries those around her…

Audiences will probably guess that the academic and her test subject are going to get close. The film’s director does well to make the audience feel the draw that Ishizaka’s illicit relationship and sexual assignations have for Tama.

Tama’s constant investigation and the film’s voyeuristic camera ensure we see and feel the same things that she does. As she stalks her prey, we stalk the characters, the camera pretty much hovering over Tama’s shoulder or taking her POV. As she breathlessly runs after Izhizaka and his lover through streets, sneaks into hotel lobbies and restaurants to monitor her prey and make notes in her pad, and hops in taxis to chase them home, we feel the titilation of diving into a juicy love affair and the thrill of the chase itself. Just like Tama, we are living vicariously through her test subject.

The film’s rhythm is slow (lots of static shots), the atmosphere clinical (emotions and visual/aural flourishes are restrained), especially when Tama is in Academia-land or with her loyal boyfriend Takuya but the film picks up at these exciting moments outdoors, especially when Tama is almost caught or almost lets her subjects slip through her grasp because of real life things such as trying to hop on a subway train with an IC card with no money on it. The nervousness of getting up close but never personal (that’s against the rules) or excitement of evading being rumbled by observant bystanders is even more thrilling but the ultimate emotional highs come when she witnesses the twists and turns in Ishizaka’s love-life – never mind her being discovered, will he be rumbled by his wife and what are his motivations?

The more Tama investigates Ishizaka’s double-life, the more she leads one of her own but she also comes into contact with another form of living which leads her to an academic and personal spring of inspiration – finally, she can fill the hole she thinks she has inside of herself. As is to be expected in a story like this, the person running the experiment becomes influenced by her subject and its due to some hidden emotional problems.

Tama is no Sophie Calle, she is no force of nature and admits that she is incomplete as a person and through Mugi Kadowaki’s restrained performance we see a young woman who is seemingly all surface and purely absorbed in her work become amusingly obsessed in the drama that she observes. Kadowaki’s acting appropriately veers towards hollow. It lacks an emotional core and there is a restraint in her physicality which prevents her from connecting with others and this in turn sets up a dramatic turn of events in her own life as she comes to identify with Ishizaki and thus comes to understand herself a little better. Alas, will it cost Tama the relationship she has with her boyfriend? Audiences will find out. No spoilers but the ending is strangely satisfying and even transcendent on an existential level as we see the progress that Tama has made as an individual.

The 2017 edition of the London East Asia Film Festival takes place from October 19th to the 29th. This is the second year of the festival and it features a great selection of films from Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan. The Japanese selection features some films fresh from Cannes, Camera Japan, Kotatsu, and other festivals and there are two new titles for me to write about, one live-action film and one anime.

Mind Game

マインド・ゲーム 「Maindo Ge-mu」     

Running Time: 104 mins.

Director: Masaaki Yuasa

Writer: Masaaki Yuasa (Screenplay), Robin Nishi (Original Manga),

Animation Production: Studio 4°C

Starring: Sayaka Maeda (Myon), Koji Imada (Nishi), Seiko Takuma (Yan), Jouji Shimaki (Yakuza Boss), Takahashi Fujii (Ji-san),

MAL      IMDB

Masaaki Yuasa took a manga by Robin Nishi and filtered it through a number of experimental styles to create a surreal tale of love that has gone down as a cult-classic. It recently had a successful Kickstarter that will see it released worldwide on Blu-Ray. I recently saw it at a film festival and it. IS. BLOODY. INCREDIBLE. If you can only see one film at the London East Asian Film Festival, SEE MIND GAME!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD-TIER FILM!!! Ahem, sorry. It was so awesome I’m still recovering.

Synopsis: Nishi is a twenty-something with a simple dream: to become a manga artist and marry his childhood sweetheart Myon. Reality is much more complicated. She’s already been proposed to and she thinks Nishi is too much of a wimp. This changes when he visits her family’s diner and encounters a couple Yakuza. This leads to an epic adventure that involves meeting God and being trapped in the belly of a whale.

Cleopatra

クレオパトラ 「Kureopatora」     

Running Time: 112 mins.

Release Date: September 15^th, 1970

Director: Osamu Tezuka, Eiichi Yamamoto,

Writer: Shigemi Satoyoshi (Screenplay),

Animation Production: Mushi Production

Starring: Chinatsu Nakayama (Cleopatra), Hajime Hana (Julius Caesar), Osami Nabe (Marcus Antonius), Nachi Nozawa (Octavian), Jitsuko Yoshimura (Lybia), Tsubame Yanagiya (Rupa),

MAL      IMDB ANN

Ozamu Tezuka is famous for creating beloved characters/anime like Astro Boy but he also made anime for adults. Animerama was a series of three anime films he was involved with and they were based on classic tales with a unique take on history. The titles were 1001 Nights, Cleopatra, and Belladonna of Sadness. In fact, some say they were the first feature-length anime movie directed towards adults. Belladonna of Sadness had recently been restored and gone on tour around the world and now Third Window Films has picked up the distribution rights to Cleopatra and it will be screened at the London East Asia Film Festival. Here’s a trailer:

Synopsis: Some time in the far future, an alien race called the Pasateli launch an invasion of Earth. Three friends named Jiro, Harvey, and Mary discover this danger and find out that the Pasateli are using the “Cleopatra plan” so, in order to stop it, the three people use a time machine to transport their minds into the bodies of members of the historical Cleopatra’s court to discover and stop the plan. Alas, Harvey goes off-script and vows to use the opportunity to secure the title of the greatest lover who ever lived by having sex with Cleopatra…

Tokyo Sonata   

トウキョウソナタ   「Toukyou Sonata」

Released:  September 27^th, 2008 (Japan)

Running time: 119 mins.

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix, Sachiko Tanaka (Screenplay),

Starring: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, Kanji Tsuda, Yu Koyanagi, Haruka Igawa, Kai Inowaki, Koji Yakusho

IMDB

Hands down, the best film Kiyoshi Kurosawa has ever made (or maybe it’s Cure), I gave this one a glowing review. This has to be seen!

Synopsis: When Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is laid-off from his admin job his life as a salary-man is over and his family life is put at risk. The shame of unemployment means that he keeps his situation a secret from everybody including his wife (Kyoko Koizumi) and two sons, Kenji (Kai Inowaki) who wants to learn to play the piano and Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) who he barely speaks to. This means that each morning he dons his suit, picks up his suitcase and heads off to look for work and eat free soup with the homeless and other unemployed salary-men. Soon the lies and suspicion begin to take its toll.

Blank 13    

ブランク１３ 「Buranku 13」

Running Time: 70 mins.

Release Date: February 03^rd, 2018

Director:  Takumi Saito

Writer: Mitsutoshi Saijo (Screenplay), Koji Hashimoto (Original Story)

Starring: Issei Takahashi, Mayu Matsuoka, Takumi Saito, Misuzu Kanno, Lily Franky, Jun Murakami, Riku Ohnishi, Sairi Itoh,

Website IMDB

We all know Takumi Saito as an actor from roles such as Ai to Makoto and For Love’s Sake but how about as a director? He has worked on two short films and this is his feature-film debut. It is based on the true story of a journalist named Koji Hashimoto who found out about the life of his estranged father 13 years after the man went missing.

Synopsis: A father (Lily Franky) disappears from his wife and two sons. 13 years later, he shows up. However, his life expectancy is short since he has cancer. With only 3 months left to live, the father and his family must come to terms with their short reconciliation. It’s not enough time but at the funeral ’13-year blanks are filled up by a number of fathers’ friends and acquaintances who all have tales to tell…

Outrage Coda    

アウトレイジ 最終章 「Autoreiji Saishusho」

Running Time: 104 mins.

Release Date: October 07^th, 2017

Director:  Takashi Kitano

Writer: Takeshi Kitano (Screenplay),

Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Nao Omori, Pierre Taki, Toshiyuki Nishida, Ken Mitsuishi, Hakuryu, Ren Osugi, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Yutaka Matsushige

Website IMDB

Kitano returned to the director’s chair for a return to the world of yakuza in Outrage. If you thought there were no more middle-aged men in suits who could do more talking and shooting, think again! There’s plenty of talking about gangster politics until the final sequences when Kitano blows everyone away and offers up his sardonic grin. Expect more of what the last two films offered.

“…though it ramps up to an enjoyably definitive ending (impressive given that the series’ ultimate moral, about the cyclical futility of the yakuza lifestyle, means it could easily be reset for another go-round) the final outrage of this final ‘Outrage’ might just be how little real outrage there is within a constant, repetitive coda.” Jessica Kiang (Variety)

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 people who 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…

Before We Vanish (English Title) / Strolling Invader (Literal Title)   

散歩する侵略者 「Sanpo suru Shinryakusha」

Running Time: 129 mins.

Release Date: September 09^th , 2017

Director:  Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Screenplay), Tomohiro Maekawa (Original Stageplay),

Starring: Ryuhei Matsuda, Masami Nagasawa, Mahiro Takasugi, Yuri Tsunematsu, Hiroki Hasegawa,

Website IMDB

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 stage-play by Tomohiro Maekawa which was first performed in 2005. Its story has the feel of something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 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?). 

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.

Millennium Actress

千年女優 「Sennen Joyuu」

Release Date: September 14^th, 2002

Running Time: 83 mins.

Director: Satoshi Kon

Writer: Satoshi Kon (Screenplay),

Studio: Madhouse

Starring: Fumiko Orikasa (Chiyoko Fujiwara), Shouzou Iizuka (Genya Tacibana), Masaya Onosaka (Kyouji Ida), Kouichi Yamadera (Man of the Key),

IMDB MAL ANN

Synopsis from the Barbican screening a couple of months back: 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.

Mourning Forest    

殯の森 「Mogari no Mori」

Running Time: 97 mins.

Release Date: June 23^rd , 2007

Director: Naomi Kawase

Writer: Naomi Kawase (Screenplay),

Starring: Machiko Ono, Makiko Watanabe, Shigeki Uda, Yoichiro Saito, Yusei Yamamoto, Shigeki Uda,

Website  IMDB

Naomi Kawase is a native of Nara and most of her films are either autobiographical as they touch on her turbulent early life living with a great-aunt after her mother and father split, or connected to Nara and the surrounding region in some way. She became the youngest winner of the Caméra d’Or award which is given to best new directors at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for her first 35mm film and ten years later, she returned to Cannes and won the Grand Prix for The Mourning Forest.

As mentioned previously, she is a regular fixture of the film festival circuit and one of the few women to be regularly seen amongst the likes of Michael Haneke and others. Her latest film, Radiance, was at Cannes 2017 and Toronto 2017. Mourning Forest was released in the UK by Masters of Cinema.

Synopsis from Masters of Cinema: Machiko (Machiko Ono) is a young nurse who still carries the burden of her young son’s death. Shigeki (Shigeki Uda) is an elderly widower and a resident at the nursing home where Machiko works. After celebrating Shigeki’s birthday, Machiko takes him for a drive in the countryside, but their car breaks down and Shigeki absconds into the nearby forest. Machiko has no choice but to follow, and they become lost in the dense woodlands, before their fates eventually become entwined.

Our Little Sister   

海街 Diary 「Umimachi Diary」

Japanese Release Date: June 13^th, 2015

UK Release Date: April 15^th, 2016

Running Time: 126 mins.

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda

Writer: Shin Adachi (Screenplay), Akimi Yoshida (Original Manga)

Starring: Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, Suzu Hirose, Shinobu Otake, Shinichi Tsutsumi, Ryo Kase, Jun Fubuki, Ryohei Suzuki, Oshiro Maeda, Lily Franky, Kirin Kiki

Website

This is a sweet film about family. I wrote a pretty lengthy review which goes into why this is good.

Synopsis: 29-year-old Sachi Kouda (Haruka Ayase), 22-year-old Yoshino Kouda (Masami Nagasawa), and 19-year-old Chika Kouda (Kaho) live in a house once owned by their grandmother in Kamakura. Their parents are divorced, their father having left them fifteen years ago. When they learn of their father’s death they decide to attend his funeral where they meet their 14-year-old half-sister Suzu Asano (Suzu Hirose) who has nobody to care for her. Sachi invites Suzu to join the in Kamakura and the three women gain a younger sister.

The Night is Short, Walk on Girl

夜は短し歩けよ乙女 「Yoru wa Mijikashi Aruke yo Otome」

Release date: April 07th, 2017    

Running Time: 93 mins.

Director: Masaaki Yuasa

Writer: Masaaki Yuasa, Reiko Yoshida (Screenplay) Tomihiko Morimi (Original Novel),

Animation Production: Science SARU

Starring: Kana Hanazawa (Kurokami no Otome), Gen Hoshino (Senpai), Kazuya Nakai (Seitarou Higuchi), Yuuko Kaida (Ryouko Hanuki), Nobuyuki Hiyama (Johnny), Aoi Yuuki (Princess Daruma), Junichi Suwabe (Nise Jougasaki),

MAL     IMDB    Website

The Night is Short, Walk on Girl is the latest film from anime auteur Masaaki Yuasa and his studio Science Saru. One of two award-winning movies he has released in 2017 (the other being Lu Over the Wall which took top prize at Annecy), this film is the very definition of the word exuberant in terms of story and style and should cement Yuasa as one of the best anime directors around.

The narrative is simple: A black haired girl (voiced by the ubiquitous and super-talented Kana Hanazawa) is attending the wedding reception of a friend. As far as she is concerned, the party doesn’t have to end there and she walks around the streets of Kyoto at night from the alleyways and izakayas of Pontocho to the university campus, following the Komagawa river and making detours along the way. She is pursued by a male admirer, Sempai (voiced by the musician Gen Hoshino who also played the hapless lover in Why Don’t You Play in Hell?), who tries to catch her attention by appearing before her as often as possible. As this rather one-sided romantic dance unfolds, they experience surreal magical-realist moments that grow increasingly absurd thanks to a cast of unique characters, all of which tests Sempai’s resolve in love and the girl’s capacity for drink and fun because all the while, everyone keeps drinking and having a good time.

Bar crawls are only fun in the right company and the cast of fun and fantastical characters are a joy to be with. The girl with black hair is the locomotive engine taking us from parties full 60-something salary-men and ladies to fresh-faced university kids and crazy shunga collectors. Cross-dressing wannabe spymasters with an army of goons chasing second-rate stage actors performing guerrilla plays across divert her journey while a tengu and a god of used-books seemingly hijack the ride. At first, it feels chaotic and random but the drink-fuelled hi-jinks and merriment, emotional confessions and ridiculous philosophical discussions and epic eating and drinking contests with demi-gods keep the film lively and it ALL comes together at the very end of an insane sickness-fuelled fever dream to make a fantastical love story powered by the magical city of Kyoto and its inhabitants.

Masaaki Yuasa made his feature film directorial debut with Mind Game (2004), a film that wowed critics and audiences alike thanks to his audacious approach to animating a single story with a multitude of styles in different sequences ranging from using live-action actors to scrappy and experimental hand-drawn creations. As his projects have gotten bigger, his works have retained that ability to be surreal, warped, energetic, and daring in design, direction, and art.

Yuasa’s film takes the distinctive character designs of Yusuke Nakamura and brings them to life in a Looney Tunes manner through imaginative and lively animation which makes the cast burst to life with funky and funny rhythms, their malleable bodies and thinly-sketched faces ready to be deformed or change colours in funny ways by the food and drink they consume and the emotions they feel. Actions flow smoothly in the set-up of some physical gag before exploding with exaggeration as the punchline hits. The characterisation is strong because of these elements before the fantastic voice actors are even heard.

The magic that Yuasa works on bringing people to life on screen extends to the city they inhabit as colours and designs pop and fizzle with such vibrancy that it is hard not to feel awe of the various locations, a pull of the heart for the romanticism of seeing Kyoto. The trees with their cherry-blossom pinks against the midnight blues of the night skies with warm arcs of yellow from the lanterns of Pontocho, the intense furnace-hot red of a hellish fire boiling a huge pot containing nabe and the radioactive green of mucous from an especially brutal cold.

The more surreal and emotional things become, the more inventive the visuals as thoughts and ideas come to life. The world is doused in blue as the girl enters a sea of books and clothes float around. She steps on islands of books and climbs the rickety scaffolding of someone’s neuroses to get closer to them. The stark blocks of custard yellow and pinks that characterise a flashback to a moment of love at first sight, the funereal tones of a city experiencing a fierce storm of sadness and loneliness, the bright colours of the girls clothes (collected from other people) being the thing that draws our eyes across the fantastically designed and drawn backdrops as she journeys to a character who doesn’t feel loved. Of course, as the metaphysical poet John Donne said, no man is an island and the film shows that everyone is connected and the girl is vital in this as she brings all the events and people of Kyoto together and things remain light and fun as the girl with her positive attitude brings joy to others. It is always full of heart and orchestrated to perfection with a lot of depth as the beautiful locations and Japanese mythology blend perfectly to make the film surreal at points but believably and naturally so.

This sort of design is seen in all of Yuasa’s titles even when he’s working on adaptations of manga and books with strong character designs already in place. Just look at his work on Ping-Pong: The Animation (based on a manga by Taiyo Matsumoto) and Tatami Galaxy (also based on novel by Tomihiko Morimi and with cover art Yusuke Nakamura). Indeed, Tatami Galaxy is key work connected to this film and there are many callbacks to that in terms of characters reappearing though you don’t need to have watched it to have fun here. A sense of humour and adventure is all that is needed for this deeply universal story of love, friendship, and excitement. A knowledge of Japanese culture gives it a HUGE amount of depth – the red string of fate, gods and demons, but what carries all of this along are the foolish and emotional mortals with distinct personalities animated to have so much life you’ll be charmed by them and their comic romantic escapades.

At its base level, the film is a celebration of the connections between people. Those we meet purposefully and those we meet seemingly at random at a bar or book-fair. They are the people we are destined to meet. The acts we perform, hopefully positive, will find their way to others and back to us. As anarchic and absurd as things seem, there is a logic to everything so just sit back and enjoy the ride as our girl with black hair takes us on a tour of a wonderful city full of people having a good time. You will be glad to have made the acquaintance of all these characters.

6/5 – God Tier Filmmaking

Mind Game

マインド・ゲーム 「Maindo Ge-mu」     
Release Date: August 07th, 2004

Running Time: 104 mins.

Director: Masaaki Yuasa

Writer: Masaaki Yuasa (Screenplay), Robin Nishi (Original Manga),

Animation Production: Studio 4°C

Starring: Sayaka Maeda (Myon), Koji Imada (Nishi), Seiko Takuma (Yan), Jouji Shimaki (Yakuza Boss), Takahashi Fujii (Ji-san),

MAL      IMDB

Mind Game is God-tier filmmaking. It is incredible. It is inventive. It is inspirational. It is imaginative. Its visual and aural aspects are deliberately crude yet beautiful. Its story is intricate yet delivered in a madcap way that you may miss the genius plot device behind the whole narrative and the basis of a whole host of directorial tricks. Its animation is full of life itself. Indeed, Mind Game IS life itself!

I have started with this hyperbole because the experience of seeing it in a cinema is life-affirming. It reminds me of why I fell in love with anime and how full of joy life is.

It is hard to believe that Masaaki Yuasa made his feature-film directorial debut with Mind Game because this film is a stunning example of unlimited and daring creativity where not a second, not a cel, not a camera movement is wasted. Nay, everything has purpose and energy. So maybe it is believable because it would take a director with a fresh imagination free from the restraints of convention to bring this tale to life.

The film is powered by Nishi, a twenty-something living in Osaka who has a simple dream: to become a manga artist and marry his childhood sweetheart Myon. Reality is much more complicated. She has already been proposed to by someone else and she thinks Nishi is too much of a wimp. This changes when he visits her family’s yakitori restaurant and encounters a couple Yakuza. Events take a shocking and hilarious turn which leads to results in a chase along the Ajigawa River to Osaka Bay and an epic adventure that involves meeting God and being trapped in the belly of a whale for nearly all of the rest of the film.

The film is based on a manga by Robin Nishi which Yuasa has filtered through a number of experimental styles to create a surreal tale of love and life that has gone down as a cult-classic. A number of styles? Yuasa uses so many different animation techniques in the same story, the same sequence, even the same scene, that it becomes a breathless whirl of wild creativity. It ranges from starting with a simple character-model based on Robin Nishi’s work and changing them into garish scribbles to changing things up by utilising a face shot in live-action and melding it onto the regular character model via compositing and switching between them at various moments. Direction and editing are sharp from the use of montage to filming a car chase with extreme angles and then throwing in cut-aways/smash-cuts to conversations happening off-screen (entirely relevant) and even the memory of a film that provides inspiration for a getaway.

Every character is distinctly styled and behaves in memorable ways from the lead characters to the yakuza goons who have stitches on their faces. Masaaki Yuasa has had a long career as an animation director since the early 90’s on family-friendly titles like Chibi Maruko-chan and Shin-chan and the design of the characters and the way they move is reminiscent of the simple and rough sketches you would find in those shows or in a gag manga. The low-budget of this film means that not everything looks polished. Indeed, it is deliberately styled to look rough to give the impression that not much effort went into things but the effort is there on the screen such as the buildings and signage around Osaka and most especially when character designs fluctuate, sometimes wildly as they become deformed or over-exaggerated. The changes in character-models, the movements, the colours, everything maintain a lively and rhythmic metier that maximises the comedic impact of scenes, the emotional journeys of fear, hope, and love that characters experience and it is all captured with a lively camera that jumps to multiple positions and angles to increase a viewer’s enjoyment.

It is fantastic visual design and it had me from the word go when it opened with a delirious super-fast montage showing the history of Osaka from the Meiji period to the 2000s and the rest of the film which takes place inside a whale as imaginatively utilised by people as you could get and the antics the character’s get up to which are artful and fun to say the least. While all of this is a visual tour-de-force, it has deep philosophical meaning. That first montage is there to show the choices made by people that led them to their present full which is depicted as a negative reality. Regrets can be felt in the early scenes where characters cannot express themselves, Nishi’s internal monologues reeking with insecurity and dreams radiating sincere hopes punctuate scenes that take him away from the people in his world which is painted a melancholy blue. Once inside the whale they are in a colourful playground, safe and free from society’s demands but that montage and elements from it will be used again to help articulate and punctuate character development, give context to action and behaviour, everything explained as props from the past show up in the whale and facilitate emotional growth as they make the characters see what is important in life.

It is then they find the will to escape a seemingly impossible situation and the montage will be used in full at the end with wild variations as the world undergoes a drastic change in colour with things becoming brighter, where what was once negative becomes positive as we see the hopes and possibilities that power the character’s lives comes to life in a tear-inducing sequence that mirrors the first montage. It all melds into their escape which is a hilarious and exhilarating ten-minute time-jumping physical marathon with so much going on with each of the characters you will be left breathless. It is also the wild, exuberant, and heartfelt visualisation of the film’s message and philosophical message – life is for living so put some effort into things – animated with so much flamboyance it sears itself into your mind.

Seeing all the changes and all the people doing things relays the human endeavours involved in everyday life and celebrates heroes in everything from the extraordinary – artists and astronauts – to the everyday – housewives holding a family together, kids taking care of pets. Since the story takes place where I stayed, somewhere in Nishinari/Shinsekai with its Tsutenkaku Tower, it was easy for me to feel part of the city’s story. These sequences are something that could only be done in an animated film and it is hard to think of an animator other than Yuasa who would deliver it with so much joy and verve.

Now, the day is saved with the sheer determination to live, to pick the brave choice. Seeing the infinite possibilities open to the characters remind viewers that there are so many options for those brave enough to take them when they come around. So what are you waiting for? LIVE YOUR LIFE!!!

10/5 – God tier filmmaking!!! SEE THIS!

What can I say? At the end, I am an anime otaku at heart.

I’m writing this the night before I age another year… Back, way back, way way back in the past, when 2014 was about to turn into 2015, I made many New Year’s resolutions. I actually hit every one of my resolutions. Except one:

• I will investigate the Japanese indie film scene much more,

I didn’t do much in terms of indie films. In fact, reviews of films in general have been dropping to all-time lows. This year, I was gifted the chance to get involved in the Japanese indie film scene when I was at the Osaka Asian Film Festival and had access to a whole bunch of indie titles and filmmakers. However, when it came time to network, I didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm and just stood in the background with a bemused expression because I was deep in thought (strange for a shallow person like me). I did make a couple of connections after film screenings and one has turned out to be a film-friend of sorts. The really indie stuff, as in the kids still in university or freshly graduated, the people who have ascended from the foothills to the slopes as they scale the mountain of a movie-making career, well, I briefly talked to a few but mostly just watched the films and sat in on a couple of Q&As. This happened at National Museum of Art in a really cool area of the city which I enjoyed walking through every day.

The venue was pretty cool, the relaxed atmosphere of a small lecture hall in the quiet museum being conducive to thinking about a film without distraction. A decent-sized screen was enough to convey the cinematic visions of a bunch of talented creatives to a dedicated audience who seemed very interested in what they had watched (that was the impression I got from the Q&As where people asked probing questions). As was the case for every film at the festival, every screening had subtitles and the ones I saw were perfect. For my part, I sat back and wrote, laughed, and was entertained and informed by new stories of life in Japan and visions of communities and individuals that were unique. I even asked a question at a Q&A. Also, all of the screenings were totally free. Free films. I mean, what a deal!

I’ve got notes on each film and will be publishing reviews for them individually. This post is a bit like a statement of intent and a contents page. The Osaka Asian Film Festival sort of revitalised me as a film-blogger at a time when I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing except having fun. I have a direction to go in now. I’ve also rediscovered anime with Mind Game, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, and A Silent Voice and with the new Kino no Tabi series out it’s time to get hype!

So what were the indie films I saw? They were part of the Housen strand.

Hosen Cultural Foundation: Support for film study and production

What is Housen? Based in Osaka, the Housen Cultural Foundation supports film study and production in graduate schools across Japan with the aim of preserving and helping grow film culture in Japan. This year’s crop of directors came from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Kyoto University and each shot a film that was technically great or near enough. Every film screening with the exception of Icarus and the Son was a world premiere and one of the Housen-backed films – Breathless Lovers – was selected for a screening in the Indie Forum section. Two of the films later made it to festivals like Nippon Connection and Japan Cuts.

Everybody watches a film differently due to their mindset and emotional baggage and I found I got wildly different responses from other people who saw the same thing. Since I’m usually the odd man out, whatever.

Insecurities out of the way, here are a few brief thoughts before I post reviews over the next week.

1. COOPERATION AND COMMUNITY [績（う）みの村] Dir: IKEDA Keishiro/2015/Japan

This one was a fascinating documentary that looked at the revitalisation of a tiny village thanks to an influx of new people from bigger cities. Audiences were taken into the lives of a variety of people from new residents learning how to farm, to elderly residents thankful that they have new neighbours. Having lived in a community a little like this, I found it engaging.

2. ICARUS AND THE SON [イカロスと息子] Dir: SANADA Kohei/2015/Japan

This was a simple tale of a father reuniting with his estranged son during the run-up to a wedding ceremony. Well-shot by its Director of Photography, Katsumi Yanagijima, the technical merits outshine the story. Personal taste and experience meant it left me cold but others found it entertaining. More information can be found here.

3. PROMISES [子供たち] Dir: ENDO Mikihiro/2015/Japan [WP]

I’m going to pre-empt my review here… I am a big fan of Tomodachi 友達　(2014) (more info in Japanese here), Endo’s debut feature-length film. It had a dry atmosphere (I use this term to mean unemotional and subtle) and the actors gave brittle performances that highlighted the artificiality of some human interactions. Promises gave more of the same as it follows an English teacher who finds the people around him succumbing to some kind of madness. It’s slow, something that may divide audiences, but I found it fascinating.   

4. BRIGHT NIGHT [レンコーンの夜] Dir: KONNO Yasumasa/2016/Japan [WP]

This one was fun and my second favourite film from the Hosen strand. It was about a freshly-minted salaryman forced to join the R&D department of a failing company and given the difficult task of saving it from imminent closure through inventing some new contraption. Cue the introduction of weird characters and a quest to find a magical renkon (lotus root) that could be a panacea for everyone. The story allowed for some broad comedy and a sentimental ending combining magic and technology.

5. SWEETEST TRUTH [スイーテスト・トゥルース] Dir: Evdoxia KYROPOULOU/2015/Japan, Greece [WP]

Two women, one a model, the other a university grad working as a cleaner, face lives of relentless pressure. Well-shot and visually interesting, the script balances two distinct narratives but eventually becomes overbalanced as events pile up.

6. BREATHLESS LOVERS [息ぎれの恋人たち] Dir: SHIMIZU Shumpei/2017/Japan/Supported by Housen Cultural Foundation [WP]

This short film was shot in a way that made it visceral and it was pretty engaging. It’s story of a guy mourning the loss of his lover through boxing is delivered in an interesting way that eschewed out and out melodrama.

That’s about all I’ll write for this introduction. I’ll get cracking with the reviews.

I’m still a little flabbergasted and somewhat proud that I lived and worked in Osaka but when it came time to do film stuff… I missed my chance with 2017 but missing one chance opens up another. I just need to keep working and improving my writing.

More Kino no Tabi!!! GET HYPED!!!

Sweetest Truth 

スイーテスト・トゥルース 　 「Sui-tesuto Turu-su」   

Running Time: 58 mins.

Director: Evdoxia Kyropoulou

Writer: N/A

Starring: Emiko Nakai, Efstathia Tsapareli, Ryo Tsujikura, Giota Festa,

Sweetest Truth is writer/director Evdoxia Kyropoulou’s graduation work for the Kyoto University of Art and Design graduate school’s master’s course. She has written and directed short films and documentaries in Japan, the UK and Greece on young women coping with modern, urban reality and Sweetest Truth is her most ambitious film yet since it takes place in two countries.

There are two characters at the centre of the film. The first is Sissi Nakamura (Emiko Nakai), a young model living and working in Kyoto. She tries to balance a career entering overdrive and a relationship with her difficult boyfriend, Hideo (Ryo Tsujikura), who is also a model. He has a cold attitude to her and he has financial problems but she persists in loving him.

Meanwhile, in Athens, we see Katerina (Efstathia Tsapareli), a middle-aged woman who works as a cleaner. She is drifting far away from her youthful ambitions. She lives a suffocating existence with her selfish and overbearing mother Athanasia (Giota Festa) in a small apartment. The internet is her only escape and it is how she briefly makes contact with Sissi.

Kyropoulou’s script effectively balances two narratives in distinctly different locations with characters who go on similar journeys.

Despite living different lives on different sides of the planet, there is little dichotomy between the protagonists. Their problems are common to many young women. They live in circumstances that almost choke them both mentally and physically – Sissi lives a rigid life for her modelling work and emotionally cold boyfriend but has no one to turn to when she needs help with a medical scare, Katerina feels duty-bound to look after her infirm mother who is constantly argumentative and causing mental anguish. Society’s demands can be overwhelming – they need to earn money, people on and off social media are judgemental, the constant pressure and the absence of love they both feel hurts them. Despite living in beautiful cities and comfortable apartments, these are not compensation for the psychic pain that these two women share and the incredibly important desire they feel: to find a way love themselves.

Their stories progress at the same time and almost mirror each other and the lead actors do a good job of slowly caving into the despair they feel, Katerina’s combative facade warping into anger from her frustration while Sissi’s smiles give way to mournful looks and a deluge of tears at her most stressed.

Their dramatic foils are also good. Giota Festa’s performance as the mother is suitably overwhelming in the cramped set but she, too, radiates a certain level of despair as a parent worried about her child. Ryo Tsujikura’s performance as Hideo as a man who has just fallen out of love and is himself lost is interesting to watch, just the right side of disengaged.

Where the film falls down is that there is not enough exploration of the emotions each character has so it comes off as slightly flimsy rather than a full-throated investigation and too many subjects are broached. Indeed, Sissi’s medical emergency deserves a film of its own and there is no explanation as to why she finds the woods she runs through menacing despite so much being made of it. There is the issue of the symbolism being overdone. Both the moment when Sissi takes a red felt-tip pen to a poster of a woman and scribbles over the breasts and Katerina’s puzzle breaking apart are heavy-handed. This is a minor quibble since this is a student work and what has been captured is solid. Kyropoulou’s editing perfectly bounces between the two stories to maintain a steady rhythm and reinforce connections between characters, inter-cutting between sequences and even using match-cutting to make links between Sissi and Katerina.

Kyropoulou choices in location and cinematographer Ippei Nakamura’s work do a good job of differentiating the two locales of Athens and Kyoto with light and surroundings. The former is bright Mediterranean with blindingly white buildings and azure blue skies located near equally blue seas that highlight the scorching heat. The sense of a city trapped in the past and stifling its young can be felt and is reinforced by the fact that Katerina is the youngest person to be seen in much of her story. This is contrasted with the muted light of Kyoto’s downtown and more urban areas with the hills that surround the city acting as a backdrop. The humid atmosphere is highlighted by Sissi’s trips to the woods and the endless cries of the cicadas.

Kyropoulou has made an engaging feature with just a small crew, three staff-members in Athens working with local university students and her fellow students on the course in Kyoto. It fulfils its brief as a look at the pressures of life faced by some young women. Too much may be bitten off story-wise but it still works and the audience will sympathise with the characters.

The film hints that they overcome their mental and physical stumbling blocks to achieve some sort of self-actualisation but everything is left open. There are no easy answers just like in real life but you get the sense that they are travelling again and travel means experience. Experience means growth. Growth means becoming stronger and being able to recognise new potential and achieve fulfilment.

Evdoxia has Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Evdoxia studied Film at the School of Film Studies in Aristotle University. She also holds a Master’s degree in Filmmaking from Goldsmiths, University of London and a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts, majoring in Film from Kyoto University of Art and Design.

Breathless Lovers

息ぎれの恋人たち 「Ikigire no koibito-tachi」   

Running Time: 20 mins.

Director: Shumpei Shimizu

Writer: Shumpei Shimizu (Screenplay)

Starring: Kaito Yoshimura, Fusako Urabe, Daisuke Kuroda, Atsushi Shinohara

Breathless Lovers is the latest work from Shumpei Shimizu. It came into the festival with positive word of mouth, something to be expected from someone who has been educated at Tokyo University of the Arts. Indeed, his career features a directorial debut, Fuzakerun Janeeyo (2014), produced by Shinji Aoyama and work Martin Scorsese’s film, Silence. Shimizu’s short explores a pathological relationship between a man and the ghost of his lover.

The story concerns Toshiyuki, a 23-year-old guy who recently lost his boyfriend Tatsuya in a motorcycle accident. While he physically survived the accident, Toshyuki has been mentally wounded and is unable to ride or drive any vehicles. If he needs to go anywhere, he walks or runs and he does this despite having asthma. To try and connect with Tatsuya, Toshiyuki visits the boxing gym his ex-lover used to train at and performs the same emotionally and physically draining routines over and over as he follows the ghost of Tatsuya. Throughout the film, Toshiyuki is constantly breathless from his desperate attempts to connect with Tatsuya whose lifeless corpse… well, you get the picture. These are two of the breathless lovers of the title.

Someone who is holding her breath (just to run with the analogy) is Tatsuya’s resentment-filled mother, Chieko, who has travelled the best part of a day from Hiroshima to Tokyo to meet Toshiyuki for the anniversary of her son’s death. She stoically goes through the motions and polite formalities expected by society but this year will be different. Chieko has cut her hair short after their last meeting and has kept it that way. When Toshiyuki sees her, he feels like he is seeing his former lover. The two mourn in their own way and the rocks of sorrow begin to shift under the weight of resentment and empty passion as their shared mourning takes a predictable turn.

The film’s strongest aspect is the atmosphere created on screen. It is harsh, bitter. Shimizu depicts Tokyo as a choking cauldron of bleak and claustrophobic urban spaces made rather forbidding by a soundscape comprised of clanking construction work and constant traffic. Katsumi Yanagijima’s cinematography is strong in this film. His use of high contrast film to emphasise the blacks of the shadowy areas like underpasses and claustrophobic apartments with whites of the lighting in places like the boxing gym and the use of jump cuts to suggest Toshiyuki’s fragmented and desperately muddled psyche.

The story is told very well and benefits from being as spartan and short as it is, letting the audience do a lot of the thinking and connection of themes. Kaito Yoshimura and Fusako Urabe’s acting are pitch-perfect. Snatches of dialogue show the mind states of the central characters and their committed performances deliver the raw emotions. The film takes on an unpredictable and ambiguous ending that could have fit in with a film like Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tokyo Fist (1995) and anything that could fit in with that film is worth watching, in my opinion.

Promises

子供たち 　 「Kodomotachi」   

Running Time: 85 mins.

Director: Mikihiro Endo

Writer: N/A

Starring: Shugo Oshinari, Tatsuki Ishikawa,

Promises, one of three films from graduates of the film course at Tokyo University of Fine Arts, was the only film in the Housen strand at the Osaka Asian Film Festival that would qualify as feature-length in terms of duration. Much like the other entries, it was professionally shot and featured great performances from its cast and it used its extra time to ask big questions about identity. This is a somewhat intriguing but fuzzy existential tale about false masks worn in society and authenticity and the creeping madness that emerges in people when there is a gap between the two.

A young man named Masaru Fukada (Oshinari) begins working as a teacher at an English cram school. His big selling-point as a teacher is that he has lived and studied in America but it’s all a lie. He didn’t go to America to learn English, he used reference books and online tutorials. Despite this, his English is pretty good – far more natural and easy to understand than some professional teachers in state schools. He may not have the experience but he can act like he does. Thus, his employers encourage him to teach and ready the students to perform at a speech contest.

He strikes up a friendship with one student named Kota Watanabe (Ishikawa) and the two form a connection outside of school when he helps Kota and his mother out with a lift home. Kota’s father has been in hospital for six months under mysterious circumstances and it seems like the boy is left to his own devices so Fukada lives up to the principal of teacher as guardian and steps in to offer help, perhaps taking a shine to Kota’s mother as well.

Other than entering this domestic drama, it seems like Fukada’s everyday life is smooth sailing and without any problems on the horizon. His only other personal connections are a pet and a call-girl named Mika. However, his new life is all built on a lie and Fukada finds that lying in the school to his students hurts him. Things become strange when students exhibit eerie behaviour including one young girl who builds up a fantasy about dating a teacher. The more this strange behaviour spreads amongst the children, the more it seems like a disease epidemic with everyone, including Fukada and his worries over his authenticity, set to go crazy…

Going into this film I had high expectations because I am a big fan of Tomodachi 友達　(2014) (more info in Japanese here), Endo’s debut feature-length film about actors hired by lonely people coming to believe in the role they were hired to play out of a basic human need to connect to others. Tomodachi‘s story convincingly showed characters believing in the fantasies and becoming addicted to them until their true feelings poked through at the end. It had a dry atmosphere (I use this term to mean unemotional and subtle) and the actor’s performance gave their characters brittle facades underneath which existed hungry hearts but it also offered the glimmer of hope that people could become attached to each other and eventually connect. It was a slow burn drama with a quiet ending that I found powerful and positive.

We get more of the same here in terms of of atmosphere and subject-matter with a film shot with lots of static shots coloured in with funereal tones of blacks and greys and a desolate soundscape with a lot of silence. It feels like the story takes place in a vacuum due to the lack of life but shorn of distractions, the narrative doubles-down on exploring the way people come to be a particular kind of person through the goals that they pursue and how the lack of authentic values makes an individual unstable. This is done through a disturbing war between the adults, people conditioned into allowing their personality to be subsumed into wider society and adopting false masks, and the kids, who let their id run free and act authentically according to their desires.

In the centre of this battle is Masaru who projects possessing a fun self-image but does so through complete and utter control. He leads his class with ease but is keen to maintain his distance with students, failing to intervene in some matters of mistreatment. His pet Marco is caged and under tight control while Mika’s time is bought on a date plan. With clear parameters for relationships, he is seemingly untroubled but the absence of an authentic background leaves him feeling insecure and he begins to question what his own goals are when the children start acting strangely, most prominently with Kota.

It starts off slowly. Some bizarre attachment to thanatos grips the kids who look at strange websites showing dead or tortured animals, they keep a pigeon trapped in a cage, they dig up the corpses of dead animals. Children testing the limits of their empathy may flirt with morbid issues and treat living creatures in ways not sanctioned by society to actualise their personality but the levels here are raised to disturbing levels. Indeed, the imagery of dead animals and the way their corpses are dealt with may have the power to shock some audiences out of a stupor especially when this treatment is extended to people. One stomach-churning sequence involving the young girl with the fixation on her teacher is sure to upset viewers as much as seeing Kota’s wrecked home full of menacing pictures drawn with crayons on the wall. Finally, the look of horror on his injured mother’s face and seeing the father at the end, it raises disturbing implications. The film ably provokes the intellect before subtle social horror is introduced to stir visceral reactions.

Change happens because of these incidents that make the world uncanny but not all of it is negative. Crucial moments include Mika who offers a genuine relationship not based on commerce but on real emotions. I was practically screaming at Fukada to accept her offer of romantic companionship especially since it seemed like the perfect escape from the encroaching madness and she offers it in a romantic location, a huge field covered in multi-coloured lights shot in such a way that it looks stunning especially after all of the dull tones used for the rest of the film. It was beautiful and like being able to breathe after what had come before. Whether Fukada can grab on to her offer or not is for the viewer to find out but it is clear that Fukada is struggling with his own issues of authenticity and the children keep challenging him to break out of his cage. Indeed. a scene in a church confessional box radically alters the screen which shows Fukada behind bars like that of a cage.

The film is sedate, even more so than Tomodachi, and it risks becoming soporific. One sequence in particular, a long car ride with Fukada that seems to act as an exploration of space illuminating the theme of artificiality in big cities, goes on too long. However, the ideas broached by the script and shown on screen are insidious and crescendo at the end with a direct to camera speech given by a student who exhorts the audience both on and off screen to live authentically. Is this the healthiest option? That’s left for the audience to decide.

We get there thanks to good acting. Tatsuki Ishikawa, one of the few professional child actors (there were a lot of amateurs) on the film has appeared in big films such as Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (2016) and A Liar and a Broken Girl (2011) and gives a suitably menacing performance as a child who is out of control – give him psychic powers and he’d be a horror film villain. Shugo Oshinari is something of a journeyman actor, having appeared in Battle Royale II and the awful, awful White Panic and Kabukicho Love Hotel (2015) and provides a stable foil for Tatsuki and a way into seeing the battle for identity. They ably lead the rest of the cast through this drama and have good chemistry together.

You have to be fully committed to examining the spaces and performances on screen. Nothing is handed to the audience easily but then the most worthwhile things in life require us to work hard for them and that’s why we dream, to get the motivation to achieve things. As one character says, “Let’s dream until it becomes real.” Let us hope everyone has nice dreams and Fukada gets peace. And Mika.

Director Mikihiro Endo completed a course at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts and his graduation film, Friends (2013), which he directed and co-wrote, was nominated for Best Debut Feature by the 2013 Raindance Film Festival in London. Endo also directed a segment of the 2013 film Rakugo Eiga.

Bright Night 

レンコーンの夜 　 「Renko-n no yoru」   

Running Time: 43 mins.

Director: Yasumasa Konno

Writer: N/A

Starring: Yuji Komatsu, Toru Kizu, Hidetoshi Kawaya, Akana Ikeda, Suguru Onuma, Atsushi Yamanaka,

This one was fun and my second favourite film from the Housen strand and at only 43 minutes, it flew by with a flurry of laughs. Its story about a freshly-minted salaryman forced to join the R&D department of a failing company and given the difficult task of saving it from imminent closure through inventing some new contraption is delightfully whimsical since it features a cast of good-natured if odd characters and a script that warmly embraces them. Yasumasa Konno, already something of an experienced writer and director, further shows his skills with this.

The story starts with 28-year-old Shinji Hanayama visits a small company named Nakata Cyber desperate for a job. They are famous for making 3D glasses and televisions but have fallen on hard times. After a cursory interview where the boss assures himself that Shinji will just be a yes-man, he is hired and given control of the company’s R&D department to come up with a new gadget to make sure that a bank invests in the project. There’s a deadline and it’s next week or the company will go bankrupt without that financing.

Hanayama goes to the company’s building near Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture and meets his new colleagues, a cast of kooky characters. Shinji Hanayama is bewildered by his huge brief and the staff he has joined point him in various directions. At first, he has no idea what to do but this drifting young man is told about a magical hope by Lake Kasumigaura, a phantom lotus root named Giant Lotus Root which can grant wishes or, thanks to a competition, 80 million yen. For the characters living in the facility, both options are good.

The hunt is on!

The comedy comes naturally from the quirky characters and it’s of the good-natured sort. It starts almost immediately with lots of verbal sparring based on character traits – Shinji has to fool a bank employee by pretending to have attended MIT to assure the man he isn’t some random off the street (which he is) – to more broader physical comedy such as a delivery driver named Igarashi who is a bit slap happy and likes to knock Shinji about. At the facility itself is Mr Hashiguchi from Tsukuba University, a straight-man amidst all of the clowns and someone looking for the magical renkon and providing some context to the narrative, a morose suicidal researcher named Ogata and his two children, high school girl Izumi and her younger brother Ryobo who likes to lurk around the facility with night vision goggles and a BB gun shooting various people.

This clash of characters is fun to watch especially as the character playing Shinji makes his character sympathetic and easy to relate to. Seeing his confused face as he’s hounded by his new “housemates” at the facility, particularly the charming little tyke named Ryobo who wanders around with his goggles and gun, is fun to watch.

The film was a four day shoot with two days on location at lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture and the locations chosen, especially Kasumigaura, were scenic and the film was pretty cinematic especially in Konno’s use of different shots to capture scenes from POV shots from various characters exploring the R&D facility mixed with more familiar medium shots to catch the action. Maybe its the warm colours and clean lighting along with the snappy editing that gave the film a refreshing feel or maybe it was the fact that the only thing this film wanted to be was silly, it was a joy to watch.

Konno cuts all unnecessary action out with the narrative and keeps the rhythm flowing smoothly with twists and turns coming thick and fast, the jokes packed into each scene and a decent amount of characterisation to make everyone feel like individuals with connections to each other. There’s a warmth and familiarity in their interactions which speaks a lot about their chemistry. Even Ogata is charming in his own way and fits in with this group. It would be great to spend more time with these actors and their characters since they capture the fun tone of the story. That written, the film is already at a perfect length and everything wraps up cleanly.

The ending was a little too sentimental for me but it fit in with the narrative as magic and technology combine to instil some family values in the characters. Whimsical and charming, this is a true crowd-pleaser that can be shown at any festival.

Born in 1989, Konno and graduated from Waseda University Faculty of Literature and completed graduate school video course at the Tokyo University of the Arts. He has worked as a director, screenwriter and editor on indie titles such as the drama Happy Toy (2015), the omnibus film Listener (2015) to feature-length horror films like Halloween Nightmare 2 (2015) and Valentine’s Nightmare (2016). I’ve written about each in my trailer posts and I expect to keep writing about his films since he has moved on to other projects.

Cooperation and Community

績（う）みの村 　「Isao (u) minomura」   

Running Time: 51 mins.

Director: Keishiro Ikeda

Writer: N/A

Starring: N/A

One of the more interesting trends in documentaries made in Japan over the last decade is the number that are dedicated to tracking the movement of people from the major cities back to small villages as they take up farming and find their place in smaller communities. This focus on settlers in smaller villages and on communitarianism is here in Cooperation and Community, my favourite film from the Housen strand since it gives an insight into a village undergoing a fascinating revitalisation and offers a possible answer to the much-publicised issue of the falling population and the stresses of modern life in Japan.

This particular documentary takes place in a small mountain village near Miyazu city in the Tango Peninsula which is located in Kyoto Prefecture. It is here that twelve households reside. It had been dying since most of the youngsters had left for the bigger cities but recently, more and more people disillusioned with life in capitalist society have arrived seeking a new way of living. These new settlers are only allowed in through introductions from friends and family ensuring some harmony as these newcomers and the original population of mostly elderly people must learn to get along.

Harmony is important. The people who live in this village must depend upon each other for help if they are to survive living off the land. As beautiful as it is, it is also a physically tough lifestyle as can be seen from the constant work and talk of work on screen. Natives persist in farming but having new blood offers a boost to spirits and a bond can be seen forming on screen as people cooperate in working with the land. The native villages tell us that there is a special word to describe this bond, “ko-ryoku”, which means mutual support. It is a phonetic word that has sprung from the local dialect. There is no kanji. Say it to an outsider and they may not know what it means but through this documentary we get a taste of the cooperation it takes for this community to exist as the original residents and settlers get along.

We know who is a settler and who is a resident through on-screen text and plenty of direct to camera interviews that give us interesting background of everyone involved but difference doesn’t matter. When we arrive we see everyone helping each other, everyone wanting and finding a purpose as they plant and reap rice, raise fences to stop wild boars digging up food, take part in alcohol brewing and vinegar production and adopt customs that make a community one such as exercising together.

Working together fosters socialising and we see the two groups, previously separate in terms of the spaces they lived in, get to know each other and talk. Groups of women take part in wisteria weaving with the elderly taking the lead and recounting their wedding days and working hard on the land, men dealing with rice crop talk about the wild animals nearby and life in the past. As they do this the original residents reflect on the traditions of their environment and relay social memory and family histories through teaching the newcomers how to maintain the landscape, the village shrine and conduct festival as well as working in traditional industries. Autobiographical stories are traded and a real bond forms.

As one of the natives remarks, “we worked too hard in our youth and when we got older we couldn’t stretch and bend.” Seeing their smiles as kids run around and make music to serenade people farming and seeing them interact with settlers who take on work and listen to their teachings, you can tell that they are happy to share their lives and space and that this community will grow.

Director Keishiro Ikeda filmed this over the course of two years, riding a motorbike for four hours between his school and the village where he stayed, getting to know the people in the village and living a similar lifestyle in order to truly understand the word “ko-ryoku” and he ably shows it on screen by documenting the interactions taking place between people in this formerly underpopulated village. We see the changing seasons in the stunning shots of verdant nature, rain falling and mist rising from fields, and the celebration of the natural world in many static shots that give the landscape a character of its own.

Cooperation and Community provides a contemporary insight into a whole host of issues with the incredibly beautiful landscape acting as the stage. Seeing the revitalisation of a tiny village thanks to an influx of new people from bigger cities and hearing about the lives of a variety of people from new residents learning how to farm, to elderly residents thankful that they have new neighbours was satisfying for me, a person interested in Japanese culture. Having lived in a community a little like this, I found it engaging and hopeful. I have a feeling anyone interested in different forms of life will find this equally interesting since Ikeda has created a fascinating documentary that should have broad appeal.

Ikeda was born in Kagoshima city in 1990 and completed a Masters Degree in Video Department, Ritsumeikan University Graduate School of Image Sciences.

There will be a season of films dedicated to the female actors who dazzled as stars during the Golden Age of Japanese cinema at the BFI Southbank from October 16^th to November 29^th It is called, Tears and Laughter: Women in Japanese Melodrama. Billed as “an opportunity for audiences to explore the cinema of Japan’s ‘Golden Age’, with a distinctly female focus,” there are thirteen films programmed and several of those titles are rarely screened in the UK so this is a good opportunity to get acquainted with them.

The season opens with a double bill of films by Kenji Mizoguchi and that will followed up by a season introduction on October 17^th, – Women in Japanese Melodrama – during which experts including Alexander Jacoby and Alejandra Armendáriz will discuss the work of the female stars who dazzled at the heart of mid-century Japanese cinema. Following that will be the rest of the films from directors such as Yasujiro Ozu. Keisuke Kinoshita, Mikio Naruse and others who made powerful female led dramas such as Setsuko Hara, Hideko Takamine and others who are now becoming well-known across the world.

I’ve only seen one of these films so I’m using the synopses from the BFI’s site.

It’s a great line-up! Here is what has been programmed:

Women of the Night 

夜の女たち  「Yoru no onnatachi」

Release Date: May 26th, 1948

Running Time: 75 mins.

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Writer: Eijirô Hisaita (novel), Yoshikata Yoda (story)

Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Sanae Takasugi, Tomie Tsunoda, Mitsuo Nagata

IMDB

Synopsis: Returning to film in the now-devastated Osaka in the wake of World War Two, Mizoguchi made his rawest and most despairing film, shot with a stark, neorealist immediacy. Kinuyo Tanaka gives a performance of animalistic ferocity as a woman whose life is torn apart by the conflict, and in desperation turns to prostitution on the chaotic, rubble-strewn streets to survive.

Osaka Elegy  

浪華悲歌 「Naniwa hika」

Release Date: May 28th, 1936

Running Time: 71 mins.

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Writer: Tadashi Fujiwara (Dialogue), Kenji Mizoguchi (Story), Saburo Okada (Story “Mieko”), Yoshikata Yoda (screenplay)

Starring: Isuzu Yamada, Yoko Umemura, Chiyoko Okura, Kensaku Hara, Eitaro Shindo, Takashi Shimura,

IMDB

Synopsis: A tragic tale of entrapment and compromise that established Mizoguchi’s reputation as the greatest director of the plight of women in Japanese society. Isuzu Yamada is superb as a switchboard operator who sees her own dreams fade after she agrees to a scandalous relationship with her boss in order to pay off her wastrel father’s gambling debts.

Wedding Ring 

婚約指輪 「Konyaku yubiwa」

Release Date: July 01st, 1950

Running Time: 96 mins.

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita

Writer: Keisuke Kinoshita (Screenplay),

Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiro Mifune, Jukichi Uno, Nobuko Otowa

IMDB

Synopsis: Hailed in the West as ‘Japan’s Bette Davis,’ Kinuyo Tanaka was one of Japanese cinema’s best-loved stars and finest actors. The chemistry is electric in this yearning tale of forbidden physical attraction, in which Tanaka gives a playful, exuberant performance as a woman who falls for the dashing, strapping doctor (Mifune) who’s treating her sickly and bed-bound husband.

Clothes of Deception 

偽れる盛装 「Itsuwareru seiso」

Release Date: January 13th, 1951

Running Time: 103 mins.

Director: Kozaburo Yoshimura,

Writer: Kaneto Shindo (Screenplay),

Starring: Machiko Kyo, Yasuko Fujita, Keiju Kobayashi, Emiko Yanagi,

IMDB

Synopsis: Glamorous and sensual, Machiko Kyo was a new kind of female star in the 1950s. Shortly after starring in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, she gave a superb performance in Yoshimura’s story of the contrasting fate of two sisters in a post-war Japan caught between the old and the new; one a geisha in Kyoto’s Gion district (Kyo), the other (Fujita) employed by the tourist board

The Mistress (aka Wild Geese) 

雁 「Gan」

Running Time: 104 mins.

Release Date: September 15th, 1953

Director: Shiro Toyoda

Writer: Masashige Narusawa (Screenplay), Ogai Mori (Original Novel)

Starring: Hideko Takamine, Hiroshi Akutagawa, Choko Lida, Eijiro Tono, Jukichi Uno,

IMDB

Synopsis: Hideko Takamine’s peerlessly expressive face was capable of registering the deepest emotion in merely a glance – qualities vividly displayed in Toyoda’s heartbreaking film. Takamine plays a lowly divorcee who is tricked into becoming mistress to a despised moneylender, but she dares to dream of love and escape from the confines of her position when she falls for a kind-hearted student.

An Inlet of Muddy Water 

にごりえ 「Nigorie」

Release Date: November 23rd, 1953

Running Time: 130 mins.

Director: Tadashi Imai

Writer: Yoko Mizuki, Toshiro Ide (Screenplay), Ichiyo Higuchi (Original Short Stories)

Starring: Chikage Awashima, Haruko Sugimura, Yoshiko Kuga, Nobuo Nakamura, Natsuko Kahara

Synopsis: Based on stories by the great 19th-century female writer Ichiyo Higuchi, Tadashi’s sensitive, beautifully observed anthology beat even Ozu’s Tokyo Story to be named best film of 1953 by the Japanese film magazine Kinema Jumpo. It presents three devastating portraits of women trapped by injustice and circumstance, with outstanding performances by some of the finest actors of the time.

The Eternal Breasts 

乳房よ永遠なれ 「Chibusa yo eien nare」

Release Date: November 23rd, 1955

Running Time: 106 mins.

Director: Kinuyo Tanaka

Writer: Sumie Tanaka (Screenplay),

Starring: Yumeji Tsukioka, Ryoji Hayama, Yuko Sugi, Junkichi Orimoto, Choko Lida, Masayuki Mori, Hiroko Kawasaki

IMDB

Synopsis: Not only one of Japan’s greatest actresses, Kinuyo Tanaka was also the director of six features, including this powerful, frank film about the poet Fumiko Nakajo, who died of breast cancer aged 31 in 1954. Tanaka brings an unmistakeably female perspective to recounting Nakajo’s life – from divorce through single motherhood, illness and her growing independence in life and love as her literary reputation grows

Floating Clouds

浮雲 「Ukigumo」

Release Date: January 15th, 1955

Running Time: 118 mins.

Director: Mikio Naruse

Writer: Yoko Mizuki (Screenplay),

Starring: Hideko Takamine, Masayuji Mori, Mariko Okada, Isao Yamagata

I have seen this one, almost a year to the day, and it’s a good one.

Synopsis: Hideko Takamine was Naruse’s great muse as Setsuko Hara was Ozu’s and Kinuyo Tanaka was Mizoguchi’s, and this searing tale of amour fou is their most famous collaboration. Shifting back and forth in time, the film reveals the tumultuous love affair between Yukiko (Takamine) and married Kengo (Mori), who meet during the war, but find they can live neither with nor without one another in peacetime.

Elegy of the North

挽歌 「Banka」

Release Date: 1957

Running Time: 130 mins.

Director: Heinosuke Gosho

Writer: Toshio Yasumi (Screenplay),

Starring: Yoshiko Kuga, Mieko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Fumio Watanabe

IMDB

Synopsis: An actress who worked with many of the greatest directors of Japanese cinema’s Golden Age, Yoshiko Kuga gives a performance of great sensitivity in Gosho’s exquisitely shot melodrama. Swooning romance meets Modernist alienation as handicapped Reiko (Kuga) becomes infatuated with an architect (Mori) whose marriage has grown cold, and whose wife (Takamine) is having an illicit affair with a student

Tokyo Twilight

東京暮色 「Toukyou Boshoku」

Release Date: April 30th, 1957

Running Time: 140 mins.

Director: Yasujiro Ozu

Writer: Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda (Screenplay),

Starring: Ineko Arima, Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Isuzu Yamada,
Haruko Sugimura, Nobuo Nakamura

Synopsis: Long immortalised as Japan’s ‘eternal virgin,’ Setsuko Hara shows another side to her acting in Ozu’s unusually downcast and melodramatic masterwork, which spans teenage pregnancy, abortion and maternal abandonment. Hara plays Takako, the elder of two sisters abandoned by their mother (Yamada) as children. As she deals with her faltering marriage, her younger sister Akiko (Arima) falls into serious trouble.

The Blue Sky Maiden (aka The Cheerful Girl)

青空娘  「Aozora Musume」  

Release Date: October 08th, 1957

Running Time: 88 mins.

Director: Yasuzo Masamura

Writer: Yoshio Shirasaka (Screenplay), Keita Genji (Original Novel)

Starring: Ayako Wakao, Keizo Kawasaki, Kenji Sugawara, Ryuji Shinagawa, Yuko Yashio, Keiko Fujita,

Synopsis: The influence of Douglas Sirk’s contemporary melodramas is unmistakeable on Masumura’s fresh, colourful and sharply satirical Cinderella story, the first in a string of collaborations with the beautiful Ayako Wakao. Here Wakao embodies Japan’s new youth, playing an illegitimate daughter who travels to Tokyo to live with her father, only to find his house a seething nest of suspicion and resentment.

An Affair at Akitsu

秋津温泉 「Akitsu Onsen」

Release Date: June 15th, 1962

Running Time: 112 mins.

Director: Yoshishige Yoshida

Writer: Yoshishige Yoshida (Screenplay), Shinji Fujiwara (Original Novel)

Starring: Mariko Okada, So Yamamura, Hiroyuki Nagato, Jukichi Uno,

Synopsis: Mariko Okada’s career bridged both the Golden Age and the New Wave she helped to define in the films she made with her director husband Yoshishige Yoshida. But first came this full-bodied, hauntingly intense melodrama of unrequited love and post-war disillusion, shot in lush widescreen colour, which observes the faltering relationship between a sickly soldier and an innkeeper.

The Shape of Night

夜の片鱗  「Yoru no Henrin」

Release Date: November 01st, 1964

Running Time: 106 mins.

Director: Noboru Nakamura

Writer: Toshihide Gondo (Screenplay), Kyoko Ohta (Original Novel)

Starring: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira, Keisuke Sonoi Tayo Iwamoto, Misako Tominaga, Koji Matsubara, Shinji Tanaka,

Synopsis: This intoxicating rediscovery follows Yoshie (Kuwano), a woman pushed into prostitution by her violent yakuza boyfriend, in a mode that filters the emotion of Naruse through the daring of Imamura. Gorgeously shot in widescreen, with bold compositions and editing, Nakamura’s revelatory film absorbs Douglas Sirk’s expressive use of colour, while pointing forward to the lyrical modernism of Wong Kar Wai.