Takeshi Kitano the director and Beat Takeshi the performer meet together in a manic film about a young man’s increasingly desperate attempt to get laid which becomes a series of prurient slapstick sketches that push the boundaries of good taste.
The story follows middle-aged layabout Asao (Dankan). His one and only goal in life is to have sex. To do this, he embarks upon a series of misadventures ranging from buying a car to impress a woman enough for car sex to becoming an actor to get a seat in first class on a jet because, in his narrow-minded world, he thinks sex is one of the services on offer from air-hostesses. His antics get bigger and bolder and wackier the more desperate he becomes. Pretty soon they involve armed robbery, becoming the next Zatoichi in a movie production, a yakuza hitman, and an invisible man and worse because of crazy scientific experiments.
Getting Any? uses an episodic structure to launch a scattershot satire of Japanese society and popular culture through the lens of Kitano’s unique sense of humour which he takes to extremes in terms of the inanity and stupidity. Every situation start off at some reasonable level of idiocy initiated by Asao before becoming a series of bizarre, over the top and absurd slapstick gags at the expense of the central character and a cast ranging from serious actors to Kitano’s army of fans, his Gundan who appear in many of his films and TV shows, all of whom throw themselves into the skits with gusto. Even Kitano shows up to take part.
Kitano finds comedy in every situation thanks to Asao being of a character with a one-track mind with a brain straight out of dullstown. This leads to tremendous sight gags especially in the first part of the film. In order to get money Asao figures he needs to rob a bank. So he needs a gun. Who has guns? Cops. Asao imagines stealing a gun and getting blown away. When he acquires a gun, one of his targets is a bank run by cops.
As the film ticks along, his imagination gets only slightly bigger but his luck get much better. Seeing Asao graduate from being a bit-part player stuck full of arrows in a samurai movie to playing Zatoichi by way of accidentally getting the original actor to almost drown is hilarious and then taken to the next level as the central fool plays the blind swordsman by closing his eyes and engaging in physical slapstick such as dousing people with manure and much more dangerous liquids while in the presence of a naked flame.
Kitano managed to work in references to and mock films as diverse as Ghostbusters, Branded to Kill, Ultraman, Mothra, Zatoichi, Michael Jackson’s song Beat It and Akira Kurosawa as Asao travels across Tokyo and gets into misadventures. Having a knowledge of Japanese pop-culture adds a lot of depth to the gags and makes them funnier, the laughs last longer, but towards the end of the film, many of them have a habit of going on way too long (especially the tokusatsu stuff), past the point where the joke is funny. This was deliberate on Kitano’s part since he made the n’est plus ultra of bad jokes to scandalise the Japanese entertainment industry and also to destroy his own career.
This a film with which some Japanese fans of Kitano feel he tried committing suicide as public figure since he went to such great lengths to be absurd audiences wondered if he had lost the plot. It was filmed at a time when he was at the height of his fame and fortune in Japan as Beat Takeshi, the comedian, radio star, writer and so forth but not taken seriously as Takeshi Kitano, the film director and serious actor. With so many TV shows, books, and other projects he was working on and an eventful private life to say the least, he was finding it difficult to manage the stress of fame and public interest as well as his excessive work and partying. This was compounded by the box-office failure of the 1993 gangster film Sonatine, which he personally saw as his first major artistic achievement as a director. With fame and pressure mounting, he let the comedian, Beat Takeshi tear up the screen with this film and the results are scandalous. Further adding to the dramatic context of the film, Kitano finished production on it before the motor-scooter accident which left the right side of his face paralysed. No wonder some interpret Getting Any? as something he made unconsciously to help him deal with his career frustrations and anxiety over his fame as well as being a rebel yell against an industry not taking him seriously.
Getting Any? may have been made out of frustration but there is enough comedy and shock value and bizarre prurient humour here to justify viewing it. It is easy to imagine fans at the time being scandalised by some of the scenes packed full of nudity and violence but also there’s a sense of dangerousness and liberation in seeing people gleefully engaging in the anarchy on screen. Kitano is pushing back against good taste and does so effectively.
Kitano leads actors and his Gundan who he worked with in previous films astray as everyone throws themselves into this nonsense. It is fun seeing the likes of Yurei Yanagi, Susumu Terajima, and Ren Osugi from Boiling Point and Sonatine reprise roles as gangsters and weirdos who only show up to get bumped off or take part in sight gags based on societal quirks and erotic games that will lead to audience-members doing spit takes. Leading the cast is Dankan who plays Asao with a vacant gaze perfect for a man so shallow he is unable to see where his disastrous schemes go wrong and why women don’t like him. He would come off as a sexual predator of the worst kind if he wasn’t so inept at everything he put his hand to and Kitano didn’t keep slapping him in stupid situations that break off his ardour or totally subvert it.
Getting Any? is a solid comedy and interesting to engaging with when you consider this as Kitano’s mid-career crisis film. We should be glad he survived it and his accident because he went on to make even more films and gain a serious following in Japan as an auteur and we are now able to watch his films get re-released in wonderful 4K and enjoy his idiosyncratic sense of humour and direction. Even if it doesn’t always work, most of it is amusing to watch and a great time-capsule of pop-culture hits from the 80s and 90s.
Third Window Films continue to release the newly restored films of Takeshi Kitano on sparkly blu-ray in the UK with Getting Any?. Prior to this release, it was only available in the UK via Second Sight Films and their Kitano box-set. The Third Window Films release is a massive improvement in terms of visuals and sound and the subtitles have been given a unique UK spin with money translated from yen to pounds and there’s an interesting interview with Kitano.
Getting Any? みんな～やってるか！ (1995) Dir: Takeshi Kitano is erotic nonsense of the highest order and presented perfectly here so if you have to get any version, then this is the one.
Naoko Ogigami is one of Japan’s most commercially successful female directors. She has built up a large audience at home and abroad following her debut feature film Yoshino’s Barber Shop (2004) which was a winner at Berlin International Film Festival. She followed that up with Kamome Diner (2006), Glasses (2007), and Rent-a-Cat (2012). Her oeuvre could be described as quirky dramas about outsider characters in unusual circumstances 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, and she does so through the perspective of a child.
Said child is eleven-year-old Tomo (Rinka Kakihara). When we first meet her she is all alone in an apartment where unwashed dishes are piling up in the sink and onigiri wrappers and cup noodle containers are overflowing from the bin. Indeed, a meagre meal of store-bought onigiri is her only option on the menu as she dines solo. She has a mother named Hiromi (Mimura) but when Tomo does see her it is usually when she comes home late and drunk after a day at the office and, presumably, a night at an izakaya. Hiromi is a single-mother struggling to cope with the role but when she finds herself a man she quits her jobs and takes off for who knows how long and little Tomo is pretty much forgotten about.
At times like this, Tomo needs someone to take care of her and that is when she relies on her gentle bespectacled uncle Makio (Kenta Kiritani).
Makio is familiar with his older sister’s antics and has had to look after Tomo in the past. The two have something of a routine – Wii games and bachelor’s food. This time, things will be different. Makio has a girlfriend by the name of Rinko.
At their first meeting Tomo is astonished to discover that Rinko (Toma Ikuta) is a transsexual and Tomo is pretty wary about dealing with her, maybe out social stigma or maybe because she has developed a hard shell due to her upbringing but Rinko overcomes this by showing Tomo love and understanding.
Rinko lovingly prepare bentos and family meals like a mother would, she comforts her when she is sick or lonely and she takes the time to understand Tomo who is finally given the attention she needs. In return, Rinko gets closer to being what she thinks of as a real woman through acting as a mother.
Toma Ikuta, something of a matinee idol, proves that beauty comes from within because he captures what some believe to be the feminine ideal. He is gentle in both words and actions and moves like an idealised version of a woman would. You feel from his calmness and selflessness that his mind is beautiful and he has a pure heart but there is complexity beneath the surface as the story shows Rinko using knitting to control anger and sadness over prejudice she suffers, something she teaches to Tomo. The two knit together physically and emotionally as they talk to each other whilst creating various woollen things and these connections and actions makes Rinko’s character work as a surrogate mother.
We see Tomo grow and become happy as her home environment is finally stable and she (and the audience) get to know her new “parents” which is key to her overcoming her uncertainty about a transgender woman. Ogigami shows Tomo going from living in an apartment with a cold atmosphere of stillness and icy silence to the noisy and warm surroundings of Makio and Rinko’s home which is stuffed full of woollen objects. Tomo’s time is now spent with adults eating food and performing hanami in beautiful surroundings and looking happy rather than defensive. Ogigami also contrasts this with the prejudice others face as a subplot involving a classmate named Kai arises.
Kai has developed feelings for a fellow boy. Other students are somewhat aware of his nature and cruelly bully him. Tomo, previously desperate to avoid contact with this outcast lest she be the target of bullies because of her family situation, begins to see him as a younger Rinko and a genuine friendship builds outside of school. The film contrasts the love and support on offer from Tomo’s unconventional family and the cruelty and thoughtlessness of others including Kai’s mother, played by Eiko Koike who is given the one-note character of prejudiced woman.
There are no real “antagonists” in here, just people who need to be more empathetic. Upbringing and society colours their mindsets and so accepting transgender people is hard for some. Key to understanding this is Tomo’s encounter with Rinko’s mother Fumiko and hearing how she supported Rinko’s transition from male to female (something we see in flashback). This offers a positive view of mothering and family life as well as humanising Rinko for the audience. Rinko was showered with love and Rinko does the same for Tomo. Hiromi, we learn, suffered because Tomo’s grandmother likely took out her frustrations with her cheating husband and fears of life on Hiromi.
The film shows how desire shapes our actions. Rinko’s mother wants to protect her son and raise him to be happy and so that means embracing his true female nature. Tomo’s mother is uncomfortable being in that role and wants to escape but if she had to be support, maybe things would be better. The end shows that everyone has grown to accept the role they are in and there is potential for happiness but getting there required patience and understanding.
Ogigami addresses LGBTQ issues in such a natural way with a narrative that shows love is paramount in a relationship that it becomes a touching drama and not a lecture or political film. As Tomo’s journey shows, having a supportive family is the most important thing for happiness and sometimes family can come in different forms.
The 30th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) runs from October 25th – November 03rd in Roppongi and it’s the best event to see films with English subtitles in Japan at this time of the year since nearly all will have them and there will also be English interpretation at Q&A sessions with filmmakers. Another great thing about the festival is that it nearly all takes place in one location which means that getting to venues is easy.
There are a heck of a lot of films programmed and just as many events and it looks as if there are over 300 things for people to attend. Tickets are sold-out or selling-out fast but I wanted to cover this because it has an exciting line-up and Japanese indie cinema and the shorts looks strong. Heck, Japanese cinema in general looks to be in rude health.
There is a lot to get through and it will be difficult for anyone not using a computer with a decent internet connection to view this (apologies) but I wanted to do this in one post because it is impressive. Accuse me of maximalism if you want but I hope people find something to enjoy thanks to reading this. Click on a title to be taken to the festival page. Here’s what’s on offer.
The opening film is Fumihiko Sori’s Fullmetal Alchemist, which anime and manga fans have been eagerly awaiting for quite some time.
This fantasy/action film has the potential to be huge since Warner Bros. Japan are backing it and the original manga by the super-talented Hiromu Arakawa is quite possibly one of the most popular franchises around. Bringing it to the screen is Fumihiko Sori, director of the live-action Ping Pong (2002) movie, a visual effects man who has done lots of CG films and he will be conducting a masterclass at the festival.
Synopsis: Edward Elric (Ryosuke Yamada) and younger brother Alphonse’s mother passed away from the plague when they were little children. The two attempted to bring her back from the dead by performing a human transmutation which is taboo in alchemy. Their attempt fails disastrously. Edward loses part of his body and Alphonse loses his whole body. Edward sacrifices another part of his body to bind Alphonse’s soul to a suit of armour and then goes on to become an Alchemist. He sets out on a journey to find the “Philosopher’s stone,” which has the power to get back what they lost.
There are a lot of other films in the Special Screenings section such as a rock documentary, vibration: THE YELLOW MONKEY which tracks the popular group after they reformed and toured in 2016. Stephen Nomura Schible’s documentary, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda traces the singular musician’s journey from his start in the 1980s pop world through to the major composer and performer today and his current battle against cancer and nuclear energy and his return to creating a major new work. It is fresh from being lauded at festivals in Europe and Canada and audiences in Tokyo will also get the chance to take part in one of the many special events at TIFF is a special talk called Visuals and Music: A Special Talk Event with 4th SAMURAI Award Recipient Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Speaking of samurai, there is a screening of the Shigemichi Sugita samurai movie,A Duel Tale.It is based on a story by writer Shuhei Fujisawa, writer of period tales such as The Hidden Blade, The Twilight Samurai, andLove and Honor, this one sees Tatsuya Nakadai plays Shoji an old samurai who merely lives with his brother’s family, but when his niece Yoshinari (Nanami Sakuraba) turns down a marriage proposal the guy doing the proposing is furious and calls on a male to fight in a duel. The old samurai in Shoji comes back to life to defend Yoshinari and as he begins dusting off his old skills he relives old memories.
The French-Japanese co-productionMutafukazwill be shown off at this year’s TIFF. the animation, which is based on a comic-book series, has been brought to life by Studio4°C (Batman Gotham Knight, Tekkonkinkreet, the three BerserkCGmovies) and Ankama (WAKFU series). Mutafukaz is full of pop-culture references to things such as John Carpenter’s They Live and Batman as it brings a story of weird characters living in alternative LA seeing monsters.
Also fresh from foreign acclaim is director SABU’s Mr. Long, which premiered at Berlin earlier this year. It stars Taiwanese star Chang Chen as a gangster who hides out in Japan and rediscovers his heart as he becomes a cook in a working class neighbourhood. The GARO franchise picks up from its last live-action entry with Keita Amemiya’s GARO – KAMINOKIBA – which should ensure those looking for fantasy fighting fans can sate their appetites. Far more realistic and down-to-earth is Shashin Koshien Summer in 0.5 Seconds, which is based on the true tale of school kids in Hokkaido taking part in a photography contest. Then there is this amusing-looking gem:
This comedy comes from the director of Hard Romanticker. It was filmed in Fukuoka City.
Synopsis from the festival site: The daughter of a Shinto priest, the shrine maiden Shiwasu takes care of 5-year-old boy Kenta under extraordinary circumstances. This is the story of Shiwasu’s growth as a woman, intertwined with the rules and etiquette of the shrine, and its behind-the-scenes workings.
This is a film adaptation of Yuki Ibuki’s novel of the same name, which was nominated for the 151st Naoki Prize. It sensitively depicts the moving story of a family struggling to find their way to begin again.
Synopsis: Toshikazu Takamiya is the driver of a late-night high-speed bus which travels back and forth between Niigata and Tokyo. It’s a long distance and that was how he met his wife Miyuki, who journeyed from Tokyo to Niigata to take care of her injured father. They have a son, Rieji, and a daughter, Saiki,but the family have drifted apart. As the years elapsed, the distance grew but there’s always a way to turn a relationship around and head down a road to a happier future. They just have to face each other and then try.
Synopsis: Fumi, who works at a bakery, accidentally bumps into Yuasa, a bus driver. He was her first love in junior high school but they were unable to make a connection back then. However, with their current love lives looking bleak, maybe now is the moment to make the leap…
And every man in the audience shouts, “ASK HER OUT!!!”
The Godzilla Cinema Concerts features two screenings of Godzilla (1954) accompanied by live symphony orchestra at the Tokyo International Forum. Meanwhile, over in Ginza at the Kabukiza theatre, kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa will put on a live performance of Otokodate Hana no Yoshiwara before a screening of the digitally remastered classic, The Gate of Hell (1953).
Synopsis: Hajime seems like a mild-mannered guy. He has a welding job and a cute girlfriend but everyone has secrets. However, behind that polite exterior and charming smile is his mysterious past as a robber and it comes to haunt him when is compelled by a former associate to rob a mansion. He is caught red-handed by the owner but all is not lost because he is not recognized as a criminal, a mistake which he desperately tries to keep intact.
In recent years, there have been scandals surrounding women being forced into the Adult Video world and the police have been prosecuting people over the issue. Does Takahisa Zeze, a man with a background in AV brings a book by Mana Sakura, an AV actor, to the screen and shows the complexity of the issue.
Synopsis:Three people in Tokyo have one thing in common. A 34-year-old housewife named Miho (Ayano Moriguchi) wants to break free from her dull life, a girl named Ayano (Kokone Sasaki) who comes from a small townwho wants to become a star, and a 17-year-old schoolgirl named Ayako (Aina Yamada) who has a domineering mother, theyall get involved in the world of Adult Videos…
A person obsessed with ammonites? How quaint. However, I can’t ready the synopsis for this and not think about the Junji Ito manga Uzumaki.
Synopsis: Yoshika (Mayu Matsuoka) is 24-years-old with a fairly unique hobby: she likes researching ammonite fossils and collects them. Perhaps this explains why she doesn’t have a boyfriend in her life. Or maybe the lack of a man is down to the fact that she pines for her first love, a guy from school named Ichi. One day, Ni, a guy who works at the same company, confesses his feelings for her.
There is one Japanese film in the Asian Future section:
Synopsis from IMDB:Passage of Life is based on a true story in the beginning of the 2010s. It was shot in 2014 by a production team of both Japanese and Burmese people. *Passage of Life shows the reality of a Burmese family living in Tokyo that immigrated to Japan with no visa, like many others did after the 8888 Uprising occurred in Myanmar. They spend their days wondering when the right time to return home is. *Passage of Life shows life in Myanmar in the middle of rapid economic change. *Passage of Life is about a family that just wants to be together, but is separated by two countries. *Passage of Life depicts the inner struggles of a 7 year-old boy who has two national identities and is struggling with a great change in his environment. *Passage of Life was born through intimate communication between a Burmese family and a Japanese director. This is what Passage of Life is about.
Japanese Cinema Splash is dedicated to supporting arthouse films and the new filmmakers making them. You can imagine many of these travelling around the world.
There are 9 films in the Japanese Cinema Splash section and these indie films come from newbie directors and familiar faces. All are equally exciting. Titles include a new film from Eiji Uchida of Lowlife Love fame, a dark tale of a love-triangle gone rotten, Hirobumi Watanabe, director of Poolsideman, who brings another quiet dramedy about Beatles fans on a road-trip to Tokyo for a McCartney concert and a documentary by Hikaru Toda about a gay couple who run a law-firm that protects people who are different.
Hikaru Toda is a documentary director/editor based in London and Osaka who has had her worked screened on BBC Storyville, France Televisions, NHK, The Guardian and at major international film festivals, including Hot Docs, CPH DOX and Melbourne International Film Festival. Hikaru moved to Japan for the first time in 22 years to make Of Love & Law. Here’s the Kickstarter trailer:
Synopsis from the festival site: Fumi and Kazu are partners in love and law; they run the first law firm in Japan set up by an openly gay couple. Together for 15 years, the lawyers want to raise a family of their own in a country where their partnership has no legal recognition or protection. Driven by their own experience of being ‘outsiders’, they attract a range of clients who reveal the hidden diversity of a country that prides itself on its obedience, politeness and conformity. Tired of being silenced and made to feel invisible, the lawyers and their misfit clients expose and challenge the archaic status quo.
Eiji Uchida (The Grateful Dead, Love and Other Cults) has made one of a trilogy of films dedicated to and based on the works of Junichiro Tanizaki. He reunites with actors from his 2016 film Lowlife Love, to bring a tale of a trio in a love triangle that goes very, very sour. The harsh tone suggested by the synopsis totally fits the style of Uchida so expect cynicism of life and black humour.
Synopsis:Hozumi, a town doctor, has a close friend named Soeda who works as a cartoonist. The two fall in love with Asako but Hozumi steps back and gives away Asako to Soeda who marries her. Alas, Soeda becomes rotten and takes a mistress, turns into a sadist and abuses Asako. Soeda despises Hozumi who never stopped loving Asako. His love turns into hate after an incident…
CM director Yukihiro Morigaki takes a step into features with this drama that stars a lot of great actors who play members of a dysfunctional family brought together by the death of the patriarch.
Synopsis: The heat is on for Yoshikoduring a sultry summer night in more ways than one as she is having sex with her boyfriend. Alas, she has the steam taken out of her when she receives a phone call about her grandfather’s death. She attends the funeral and meets with her slovenly uncle, nagging aunt, shut-in cousin, and grandma who has dementia. No one cries at the funeral but through a series of accidents, Yoshiko notices the feelings of her family-members and starts to think about “life” and “death”. The cold hand of death brings the warmth of family and stokes her passion for life, since she is inspired to visit the Ganges River in India.
Hirobumi Watanabe and his small crew have been cranking out black-and-white films that find the humour and melancholy that characterise small-town life in Japan. Poolsideman was a big hit at last year’s TIFF and travelled around the world. This one is billed as another hit.
Synopsis: Hikaru Honda works at a small electronics factory in a suburban town in the north of the Kanto region. He leads a quiet life with his dog Ringo but one day, he decides to go to a Paul McCartney concert at Tokyo Dome with his fellow Beatlemaniac, Takafumi Hirayama. Thus, a road-trip movie is born!
Michio Koshikawa has an extensive filmography as a producer with titles like The Wife of Gegege, Sketches of Kaitan City (both 2010), Our Homeland (2012) and “A Band Rabbit” and a Boy (2013), and Asleep (2015). He has directed films himself and his last one, Life and Death on the Shore is also getting screened at TIFF.
Synopsis: Set in a town in Tohoku region after the March 11th disaster, we follow a woman named Yumi who has lost everything and moves to her aunt’s construction shop in Fukushima. She takes up work in a small bar in a back alley where she meets a shopkeeper named Sugitani who has lost his memory of the past. Everything that is except one memory, his hands were cooking. Despite being surrounded by warm people, the two feel a strong sense of isolation and loneliness. Could it be this that draws the two together?
This work is the second feature directed by Kyoshi Sugita, following A Song I Remember.
Synopsis from the festival site:Based on four tanka poems, selected from 1,200 submissions to a contest with the theme of light, this film illustrates the meaning of light in the lives of four female protagonists. Shiori, Yukiko, Kyoko and Sachiko continue to live each day with untold feelings inside. Unable to forget a colleague on a trip, a father who is ill, a friend who works at a store that is about to close, and a long-lost husband, each woman takes a step forward. There is a light that sometimes embraces them, calmly and gently.
Daigo Matsui is a regular guest at the Tokyo International Film Festival with Japanese Girls Never Die(2016) premiering there.
Synopsis: In 2017, a stage performance is scheduled in a small town. The young actors are to present British playwright Simon Stephens’ “Morning” for the first time in Japan. The savage play has been attracting attention in the theater world for its story of a violent act by two best friends. The performance is suddenly cancelled, but one actress suggests they continue rehearsing. For a month, the young actors struggle between reality and fiction, as well as between film and the stage, and their story is captured in a single 74-minute shot. The music is played live in the film by rap group MOROHA.
Starring: Urara Matsubayashi, Atomu Mizuishi, Mariko Tsutsui,
Takaomi Ogata has been around since the early 2010s and he has always dealt with tough social issues. I watched three of his early feature films but only reviewed one, Sunk Into the Womb, a brutal story of a woman who abandons her children. This one has a story that looks equally harrowing since it portrays an innocent person having their reputation murdered by the media, the lies and scandals that people mindlessly consume.
Synopsis: When Hitomi’s homeroom tutor is taken away by the police for suspected child prostitution and child pornography she has no idea that her life will also be affected. A sex video is leaked and a rumour starts that Hitomi is the girl in the video. It’s all a lie, but it spreads like wildfire and Hitomi kills herself. This is griss for the scandal mill that is the media and reporting intensifies, creating a false image of Hitomi.
Synopsis:A woman named Konoko wakes up on the beach and finds she has an insect stuck on her head. Unable to get if off, she looks for a barber. Meanwhile, Doi, a father to be, wants to make a pair of gloves for his wife as a gift, Kazuko who has gone missing. Much like Konoko, she wakes up inastrange place, a theatre, and goes home where she finds a blue monster. She goes to a shop to get rid of the monster. A strange drama drama unfolds amidst ordinary scenery in this magical and mysterious fantasy by Akira Ikeda.
As well as current filmmakers, the festival looks towards future ones as well with the TIFF 2017 section, Teens Meet Cinematographer which shows the results of a filmmaking workshop for junior high school students which was held in Daikanyama, Tokyo during the summer holidays. With director Nobuhiro Suwa as the lead mentor, the students developed a script, shot and edited a film.
SHINPA vol.6 in Tokyo International Film Festival sees up-and-coming indie directors like Rikiya Imaizumi (Sad Tea, Same Old, Same Old) and Tatsuo Kobayashi (Gassoh, Country Girl) as well as fresh grads from film schools get their works screened.
Search for this drama and you will find old entries dating back to 2011 and that is because the director Shoji Hiroshi made a short film of the same name and it travelled to different film festivals. From that short came this feature about two friends who deal in drugs. This has been picked up by Third Window Films for world sales. There is a connected event at TIFF called Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award Film Screening and Symposium. I guess that means there’s a talk involved.
Synopsis from JFDB: Ken (Kato Shinsuke) and Kazu (Maiguma Katsuya) are partners in crime who use a car repair shop as their front for dealing stimulants. Ken tries to make a clean break after his girlfriend Saki (Iijima Shuna) gets pregnant, but Kazu has a secret…
The indie films from different organisations are also given a platform at the festival with the winners of this year’s Pia Film Festival and Skip City International D-Cinema Festival.
Yui Kiyohara is a graduate student at the Tokyo National University of the Arts and has studied with Kiyoshi Kurosawa. This film took top prize at the Pia Film Festival. Her previous film was A Certain Bagatelle (2015).
Synopsis from the festival site: A mother named and daughter live on a boat in the city of Kure. They exist in two separate worlds in their house but as the two worlds start to merge, confusion develops.What will happen when they connect to each other?
Yoshio Kato, director of PLASTIC CRIME. He was inspired to become a movie-maker after watching Family Game (1983).
Synopsis: A group of four people gather together to commit suicide with a giant firework. However, after the explosion, the four are returned to just before their meeting. And it keeps happening. Three start to get the idea that the school girl in their group is actually from the future and try to persuade her not to join in…
Japan Now has a distinctly female focus since amongst the large range of films on offer there has been the inclusion stand-out titles in the filmographies of four celebrated and internationally famous female actors, the Muses of Japanese Cinema, which sees Sakura Ando, Aoi Miyazaki, Yu Aoi, and Hikari Mitsushima get some of their most important and latest works screened. The inclusion of some smaller but excellent titles like 0.5mm and Dear Etranger from female directors shows that Japanese cinema has fostered female talent. All that remains is for audiences to support it so these talents can keep producing great films.
Naomi Kawase is a native of the city of Nara and shot this film there. It won a lot of praise at the Cannes film festival earlier this year and has been picked up for distribution in many countries. See it at TIFF and then attend a master class with Kawase during which she will host a special screening of The Wolves of the East, for which Kawase served as executive producer, and a talk session with star Tatsuya Fuji.
Synopsis: Masaya Nakamori (Masatoshi Nagase) is a genius photographer. Hemeets Misako Ozaki (Ayame Misaki), a woman who is involved in a voice acting project for the visually impaired. The two initially don’t get on because Masaya has a cold attitude but when Misako sees a photograph of a sunset shot by him, she is inspired to look into Masaya’s life and discovers that he is losing his sight and their relationship changes.
Yuya Ishii was one of the first directors I started tracking on my blog thanks to his films getting UK releases thanks to the bravery and good taste of Third Window Films. Sawako Decides (2010), Mitsuko Delivers (2012), and The Great Passage (2013). He has gone from indie kid to award-winning adaptations and kept a certain level of quality in his incisive look at human nature, regardless of genre and who the stars are. Here, he works with newbie actor Shizuka Ishibashi (daughter of Ryo Ishibashi) and pairs her up with the more experienced Sosuke Ikematsu (How Selfish I Am!) and Ryuhei Matsuda (Nightmare Detective, My Little Sweet Pea) who was the lead in The Great Passage. The actors all portray characters caught up in the whirlwind world of Tokyo, alienated, stressed, and looking for relief from the everyday grind. It is sleekly shot with visually inventive moments and beauty and captures life in Tokyo.
Synopsis from the Berlin International Film Festival Site: Mika (Shizuka Ishibashi) works as a nurse by day; by night she entertains covetous men at a girls’ bar. Shinji (Sosuke Ikematsu) is blind in one eye and ekes out a living as a construction worker. Young and grown-up at the same time, they both lead a lonely existence, but somehow their paths keep miraculously crossing under the Tokyo sky. Can loneliness be experienced together?
The Night is Short, Walk On Girl is based on a best-selling novel by Tomihiko Morimi, author of other books adapted into anime such as The Eccentric Family and The Tatami Galaxy. The staff who created The Tatami Galaxy reunited for this film which was released in Japan in April. I saw posters of it plastered all over Kyoto while I wandered around the city and it’s no wonder since the novel is set there much like the rest of Tomihiko Morimi’s works.
The director is Masaaki Yuasa, the visionary director behind Mind Game, Ping Pong: The Animation, and The Tatami Galaxy who is finally being recognised by the international film festival circuit. He’s winning awards for his movies Lu Over the Wall and this one around the world. His direction is God-tier. How do I know?
I saw this at a film festival I work for and I was surrounded by an audience who, like me, enjoyed every minute of the film. It’s a fantastic party film with lots of magical touches. We all laughed and whooped and cried throughout the film. I felt high energy throughout it all. Here’s my review.
Synopsis:A black haired girl is walking around the streets of Kyoto as she goes bar-hopping, searches for a book from her childhood, and makes friends and enemies. She is being followed by a guy from her class, her senpai, who tries to arrange “coincidental meetings” in order to declare his love but as the night drags on, the city presents weird sights for the two from Tengu to a scooter-riding monkey…
This is a good drama that captures the difficulties in raising a family. It’s powered by great acting from Asano and Terajima as well as Tanaka and Kudo. It’s the sixth film from Yukiko Mishima (A Drop of the Grapevine), a female director I hope we hear more from based on this work.
Synopsis:Dear Etranger is an intimate drama about one man trying to balance two families and be an ideal father at a time when others give him or are going through crises. Free from melodrama and idealism, it paints a believable picture of the stresses and strains of maintaining a loving family unit built from the scraps of past relationships.
The film is based on a novel by Kiyoshi Shigematsu and tells the tale of 40-year-old Makoto Tanaka (Tadanobu Asano), an assistant manager at a company.
When we first meet him, he’s meeting his daughter from his first marriage. He and Saori (Raiju Kamata) are having a dream day out in a theme park but it’s soon to end because this is one of four visits he gets to see her in a year. She has to return home to Makoto’s ex-wife Yuka (Shinobu Terajima) and he has to return to his second family. This new clan consists of a younger wife named Nanae (Rena Tanaka) who went through a messy divorce herself because her ex, Sawada (Kankuro Kudo), was a brute who beat her and their daughter Kaoru (Sara Minami) and threatened their baby Eriko (Miu Arai).
YU AOI
Yu Aoi gave two stand-out dramatic performances in films released and shown at/around last year’s TIFF (Japanese Girls Never Die and Over the Fence) so the programmers went and picked two light-hearted films. She has physical grace and these films should show that well.
This film is utterly charming and a lot lighter than Shunji Iwai’s other works. This is arguably Yu Aoi’s breakout work despite her appearance in Harmful Insect and Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou (both from 2001 and both about bullying) and she would go on to appear in more of Iwai’s dramas. I had the pleasure of being at a screening of one of his titles at last year’s festival and sitting in on a Q&A and he was fascinating to listen to.
Synopsis from IMDB: When two best friends develop a crush on the same boy, they develop a plan to trick him into dating them.
It’s a comedy based on the characters from Tokyo Story. Yoji Yamada is making a third one of these films due out next year.
Synopsis from the festival site: Several years have passed since Shuzo Hirata and his wife Tomiko came within inches of getting divorced. Shuzo loves driving and going out even if this causes accidents, but his family are against him roaming about…
SAKURA ANDO
Sakura Ando does those edgy outsider roles that appear in dark films which draw on her ability to project heavy emotional weight. TIFF has picked two of her best films including one directed by her sister.
This movie was at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival where it won the CICAE prize. It is a partly autobiographical tale that draws on the director’s life and also tells the story of the emigration of over 90,000 Koreans from Japan to North Korea after being promised a better life. Review shows that it is a strong dramatic film. It stars Sakura Ando (Love Exposure, Crime or Punishment?!?), Arata (After Life), Kotomi Kyono (Takeshi’), Jun Murakami (Himizu, The Land of Hope, Blazing Famiglia), Taro Suwa (Ju-On: The Curse, Reincarnation), Yoshiko Miyazaki (Villain).
Synopsis:From 1959 to 1979 the North Korean government implemented a policy to attract Korean living in Japan to the idea of immigrating to North Korea. One of those who went was Son-Ho (Arata) who left his younger sister Rie (Ando) behind in Japan. 25 years later the two meets again when Son-Ho returns to Japan for three months for an operation. The film looks at the clash of feelings and cultures.
In 0.5mm, Sakura Ando’s sister writes and directs a darkly funny take on Japanese society, confronting ageing, class and patriarchy.
Synopsis:Sawa, a home helper for a middle class family with an elderly infirm grandfather, is forced to stretch her morals to keep her job. As a result, she finds herself broke and out on the street. She survives her first night by striking up an ambiguous friendship with a kindly old man, gaining access to a portion of the immense wealth held by Japan’s aging population. She continues with similar encounters, and while these begin as scams or revenge on rampant sexism, they ultimately become vulnerable intergenerational exchanges.
Aoi Miyazaki
Aoi Miyazaki has been reviewed here in a number of films from The Great Passage to Su-ki-da and Petal Dance. She can be cool and distant, an elusive and sensual presence but in Rage she plays manic and in Eureka devastatingly damaged.
Aoi Miyazaki and her brother made a big impact playing siblings in this film which is considered a modern classic and it’s Shinji Aoyama’s best work by far. Shot in a sepia tone and with little dialogue, it’s a deeply moving tale of overcoming a traumatic incident with great performances from Koji Yakusho and Aoi Miyazaki in the leads.
Synopsis:Two years after a gruesome bus hijacking, the three remaining survivors come together to try and cope with the traumatizing memories. Among them is bus driver Makoto, who faces suspicions over his role in the tragedy. He tries to track down the brother and sister who also survived. A deeply moving, slow-burning drama set in the countryside of Kyushu, where time moves significantly slower than in other parts of Japan.
When I first arrived in Tokyo just over a year ago, posters for this film were everywhere:
A shot of the posters for “Nanimono” and “Ikari” taken at Shinjuku Station
I watched it after returning to the UK and found it to be a powerful drama (review over on VCinema) fascinated with the idea of evil and people hiding their true identities. It is based on a novel by Shuichi Yoshida and he has had many of his books turned into films and they are almost all available in the UK thanks to Third Window Films: A Story of Yonosuke (2013), Villain (2010), Parade (2010) The Ravine of Goodbye (2013) isn’t one of them but it was at the London Film Festival. Sang-il Lee handled the big-screen adaptation of Villain (2010) and crafted a good drama. Rage looks to be on a par. It contains a stellar cast who have been in many films including Aoi Miyazaki.
Synopsis: A a married couple is brutally murdered by someone. The only clues are that the murderer is a man and he wrote the word “Ikari” (“Anger”) with the blood of the couple. The killer undergoes plastic surgery and flees and Japan is gripped by the crime and whenever a male stranger appears in a community, the people there suspect that the stranger might be the murderer.
People such as Yohei Maki (Ken Watanabe) who works at a harbour in Chiba. He is concerned that the man his daughter Aiko (Aoi Miyazaki) is dating, Tetsuya Tashiro (Kenichi Matsuyama), might be the killer, because Tetsuya is not his real name.
An advertising executive named Yuma Fujita (Satoshi Tsumabuki) falls for a man named Naoto Onishi (Gou Ayano) and they begin to live together but Yuma soon develops suspicions that Naoto is the killer.
Izumi Komiya (Suzu Hirose) and her mother (Urara Awata) move to an isolated island in Okinawa and Izumi meets a backpacker named Shingo Tanaka (Mirai Moriyama) who is hiding a secret.
Three different communities across Japan, three different stories involving different people, all linked by one murder.
HIKARI MITSUSHIMA
There are many films that could have been picked to represent Hikari Mitsushima like Sawako Decides and Love Exposure but these two are her latest and pretty strong. Capable of being punkish and vulnerable at the same time, she takes centre stage in both films at TIFF and shows her acting chops. Her turn in Traces of Sin will be sure to have audiences sympathising.
This is Michio Koshikawa’s sophomore film but he has an extensive filmography as a producer with titles like The Wife of Gegege, Sketches of Kaitan City (both 2010), Our Homeland (2012) and “A Band Rabbit” and a Boy (2013), and Asleep (2015). This is a war movie and it was the second film made by Hikari Mitsushima in 2017 (the other is Trace of Sin) who has worked with Koshikawa on one of his films. She is paired up with Kento Nagayama in this romantic war-time melodrama.
Synopsis:It is 1945 and World War II is about to reach its end. Saku (Kento Nagayama) arrives on the island of Kakerojima, just south-west of the coast of Kyushu, to take command of navy special forces. His entry enlivens the place as the children on the island admire him and he sets the pulse of the elementary school teacher Toe (Hikari Mitsushima) racing. As the war winds down, she develops feelings for him until, one day, Toe receives a letter from Saku with a simple message, “please come to the beach around 9PM tonight.”
Hikari Mitsushima and Satoshi Tsumabuki play siblings in this shocking exploration of class-warfare and murder. There are some surprise deaths and great acting turns that will leave audiences reeling.
Synopsis from the Nippon Connection: Several years after the brutal, unsolved murder of a Tokyo family, ambitious reporter Tanaka attempts to find the perpetrators of the crime. Step by step, he comes close to discovering what really happened.
There are other titles that are fresh from touring the international festival circuit such as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s critically-acclaimed murder mystery, The Third Murderand Daihachi Yoshida’s sci-fi family tale A Beautiful Starwhich is about a family who believe they are aliens with a mission to save the Earth from nuclear weapons.One of the big highlights has got to be seeing the grand-old man of Japanese arthouse cinema Nobuhiko Obayashi of House fame who has made another film. This one is Hanagatami, an anti-war tale that looks as colourful and imaginative as some of his earlier titles.
Synopsis: It is the spring of 1941 and the setting is Karatsu City, Saga Prefecture. Toshihiko, a 17-year-old, lives life to the full and has a close group of friends including a cousin named Mina who suffers from lung disease but the war is drawing closer and their lives will be changed forever…
This was at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year and reviews like this one paint a picture of a great family drama thanks to the actors Rie Miyazawa (Pale Moon, Twilight Samurai), Joe Odagiri (Bright Future, Mushishi), and Hana Sugisaki (Pieta in the Toilet).
Synopsis: Futaba and her daughter Azumi live in a house connected to their family-run bathhouse in a small town. Their used to be three people in their family but husband and father Kazuhiro left them for another woman and since then, the bathhouse has been closed. Everything changes when Futaba is diagnosed with terminal cancer, giving her only months to live. The approach of death fires her up to make the most of her remaining time. She develops a head of steam and becomes determined to reunite her family, reopen the bathhouse, and take care of her daughter. Her journey will uncover new friends and secrets as she makes peace with the world before leaving it.
Synopsis:A mysterious man shows up at a family-run a print shop in downtown Tokyo and worms his way into the business and then the family after which he learns everyone’s secrets and begins to manipulate the people around him.
According to Akirakurosawa.info, the new print was scanned from the film’s original negatives and restored frame by frame under the supervision of the film’s original distributors and the colour grading has been approved by Masaharu Ueda, one of the three cinematographers who worked on the original film.
Synopsis from indepdentcinemaoffice: ‘Ran’ stands for chaos, turmoil or fury in Japanese; all befitting Shakespeare’s vision of a nihilistic world turned upside down and revolting against its natural order; dramatising the pain and rage of ageing and its inevitable loss of control.
Borrowing narrative elements from the legend of Mōri Motonari (a 16th century Japanese warlord) as well as the Shakespearean tragedy, Ran stars Tatsuya Nakadai as the vain, arrogant Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, who at seventy decides to abdicate and divide his domain amongst his three sons, with catastrophic results.
Spectacularly beautiful, with gorgeous, colour-saturated frames, it is an undoubted masterpiece; the product of a breathtaking artistic vision that works as an historical epic and Shakespearean adaptation as well as a bloody, action-packed war film with a silent central battle scene that must be seen to be believed.
Shuichi Okita caught my attention last year with two film releases: The Woodsman & the Rain (2012), TheStory of Yonosuke(2013), two gentle bittersweet comedies with strong ensemble casts. Ecotherapy Getaway Holiday is his latest film and it features another ensemble but they are a bunch of unknowns. This was at the Tokyo International Film Festival and Mark Schilling’s review in The Japan Times indicates that this is a solid dramedy.
Synopsis:Seven middle-aged/elderly women go for a tour of a mountain to see a picturesque waterfall. Their trip is pleasant until their male guide disappears and leaves them stranded deep in the mountains and with no cellphone service.
This film is based on a true event that took place in an elementary school in Osaka Prefecture. It was premiered at the 21st Tokyo International Film Festival.
Synopsis: The film revolves around the story of an elementary school teacher who proposes that his class raise a piglet at school with the aim of eating it once it has grown up.
Synopsis: In a jury room, jurors deliberate on the guilt or innocence of a bar hostess accused of pushing her ex-husband into the path of an oncoming truck. Most of the jurors are nice folks unwilling to believe a women could do such an evil act. Juror #2, (Kazuyuki Aijima), then takes the initiative to convince his peers otherwise.
For anyone looking for more anime than the single (amazing) title programmed in Japan Now, there is The World of Keiichi Hara, a career restrospective which will showcase his early anime works, two episodes of the TV anime Mami the Psychic and a movie spin-off, and his two Crayon Shin-chan films, The Adult Empire Strikes BackandThe Storm Called: The Battle of the Warring Statesand Summer Days with Coo, a fantastical adventure about a schoolboy who befriends a kappa. There is also his live-action feature!
Synopsis: When you think of Japanese art, chances are that you are familiar with the celebrated ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai whose woodblock prints of subjects such as Mount Fuji have become representative images of Japan. His most famous is “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” that features a huge wave of blue surging water topped by white foam framing Mount Fuji. It is an image that can be found in galleries, on posters, and other types of merchandise and it is images like these that inspired some of the stylistic techniques of the French Impressionists. Would it surprise you to hear that Katsushika Hokusai had a daughter who was also an artist? That she created works in her own right? That some scholars suggest she was more than just her father’s assistant but a close collaborator who played a major role in his art as he neared 90 and had palsy? Like many a female artist it seems that her contribution to art has been forgotten about by history, something which the anime “Miss Hokusai” seeks to redress.
Colorful is an award-winning movie adapted from a novel written by Eto Mori. It won the award for Excellent Animation of the Year at the 34th Japan Academy Prize and received the Audience Award and Special Distinction prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2011. It’s a great drama that is sure to make people cry.
Synopsis: Upon reaching the train station to death, a dejected soul is informed that he is ‘lucky’ and will have another chance at life and is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. Watched over by a neutral spirit named Purapura, the soul must figure out what his greatest sin and mistake in his former life was before his time limit in Makoto’s body runs out. He also has a number of other lesser duties he must complete, such as understanding what led Makoto to commit suicide in the first place and learning how to enjoy his second chance at life.
This film was made to commemorate the 100th year anniversary of Keisuke Kinoshita’s birth and it follows his early life from his days as a lively youth to his entry into Shochiku movie studio. The trailer is pretty earnest and some of the themes seem to be the loyalty of a son to his mother and the mother’s belief in him. Wipe away the tears and you will see that footage from Kinoshita’s films has been interwoven into the new film. Aoi Miyazaki leading those children along the riverbank is a clear nod to Twenty-Four Eyes.
Keisuke Kinoshita was a contemporary of Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi and yet he is pretty unknown to a lot of cinephiles in the west. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration because his films Twenty-Four Eyes and The Ballad of Narayama are available in the west and pretty famous but a lot of his other titles are only now getting screened at recent film festivals like Berlin and Venice. To be quite frank his work is unknown to me but from writing up about him I can see how he is important since a lot of those titles sound different to the films of Ozu, presenting interesting new stories that must have challenged the views of audiences of the time. Wikipedia makes him sound like he has an interesting visual style as well:
He refused to be bound by genre, technique or dogma. He excelled in almost every genre, comedy, tragedy, social dramas, period films. He shot all films on location or in a one-house set. He pursued severe photographic realism with the long take, long-shot method, and he has gone equally far toward stylization with fast cutting, intricate wipes, tilted cameras and even medieval scroll-painting and Kabuki stage technique.
Synopsis: I saw this in a double-bill with Ugetsu Monogatari when I was a teenager and cried my little heart out at the end. It’s a jidai-geki set in the Heian period and tells the tale of a virtuous governor who gets exiled to be the lord of a remote province. When his wife and children travel to meet him years later, they are betrayed and the mother is sold into prostitution and the children are sold into slavery. They battle to retain their humanity and will to live even under such awful circumstances.
Shohei Imamura is one of the New Wave directors that came after the golden age of Kurosawa and Ozu. Indeed, he worked with Ozu on a number of films such as on the films Early Summer (1951), The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952) and Tokyo Story (1953) before he blazed a trail of his own with fiction and documentary films that offered a critique of Japanese society – Pigs and Battleships (1961), The Profound Desire of the Gods (1961) and Vengeance is Mine (1979), and Black Rain (1989). He won a Palme d’Or for this film and The Eel (1997). My personal favourite of his works is the more laidback and funny, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001).
Synopsis: The film is set in poor rural Japanese village some time in the 19th century. It is tradition that everyone who reaches the age of 70 has to climb a nearby mountain to die. An old woman named Orin resolves not to be a burden on her family and spends a year wrapping up affairs and helping her family before she makes her own journey. We see her efforts.
This Kurosawa title which won the Palme d’Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival is the 4K Digitally Restored Version which gives rise to the hope that, like Ran, it will tour different cinemas around the world. Watch the trailer and imagine it looking a lot better.
Synopsis from Wikipedia: In Japanese, kagemusha is a term used to denote a political decoy. It is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history and tells the story of a lower-class criminal who is taught to impersonate a dying daimyō to dissuade opposing lords from attacking the newly vulnerable clan. The daimyō is based on Takeda Shingen, and the film ends with the climactic 1575 Battle of Nagashino.
Synopsis:Ishun is a wealthy, but miserly scroll-maker in Kyoto. He is married to a beautiful young woman named Osan who is only in the relationship for money. Things go wrong for Osan when she is wrongly accused of infidelity with one of Ishun’s apprentices. Osan and the apprentice flee from Ishun who is desperate to track them down to prevent the scandal from leaking…
DOCUMENTARIES
Bunka-Cho Film Week 2017 will award excellent documentaries and individuals in recognition of their many years of distinguished contributions to the film industry. The project will also hold screenings and symposiums to offer opportunities for people involved with film in different capacities to meet and converse. Here are the docs on display:
Synopsis: This is about a junior high school in Tokyo for the elderly who were unable to complete their compulsory education because of the war. The documentary follows the school and its students for 5 years.
Synopsis: This one sounds epic in terms of the commitment of everyone involved. We see 22 years of the lives of nine people who run an udon noodle restaurant on the Goto Islands in Nagasaki prefecture. Toru Inuzuka (Tora-san), is the proprietor of the restaurant and makes famous noodles with his family. Everyone gets up at 05:00 every morning before school/work to prepare the noodles. The children get paid pocket money according to their efforts which are recorded on time cards! We see the lives of everyone unfold through graduation, marriage, and childbirth, homecomings and farewells.
This theatrical version is a re-edited version of a TV program by director Masaru Ohora.
Synopsis from the festival site: 90-year-old architect Shuichi Tsubata and his 87-year-old wife Hideko live in Aichi Prefecture. Their garden is bursting with 70 types of vegetables and 50 types of fruits, and they live in harmony with nature.
AND THAT’S IT.
If you made it all the way down to the bottom of this post and read even a little of it, thank you for your effort. I hope this helps you in some way or proved entertaining.
Yamato (California) is a coming-of-age tale from Daisuke Miyazaki, a graduate from Waseda University with a varied filmography consisting of indie films and experience working as an assistant director on commercial movies such as Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s family drama Tokyo Sonata (2008). Much like that film, he looks at people left trailing by the economic problems and the split in identities caused by different forces in contemporary Japan and he does so through one teenager’s rebellion against cultural apathy through the medium of Hip-Hop.
Yamato is a suburban town north of Tokyo. It is a place far from the bright lights of Tokyo, a place where the working class are still suffering from the economic hangover of the lost decade, a place where a small mall and a Don Quijote discount store are the teens hang out spots, and a place dominated by the US military because of the base there. Despite the money that comes from hosting the Americans, there is the whiff of living with the occupier in the film, a point made clear through the inclusion of a news clip about protests against the US base in Henoko, Okinawa. Indeed, the roar of planes and helicopters flying around offers a disturbing soundtrack to everyday life and security patrols roll near the fences and menace locals away. The cinematography from Akiko Ashizawa (she has worked with Kurosawa on Loft and Tokyo Sonata and Retribution / Sakebi) amply shows the working-class neighbourhoods, the faded glory and blandness of the town (a rusting Yamato Ginza sign in the shopping district), and the scar on the landscape that is the military base.
Reflecting the fractured landscape are the children growing up in the shadow of faulty economics and the military presence. Streetwise Japanese teens who take their fashion cues from Hip-Hop stars and congregate in public spaces to freestyle. However, just because they use an American art-form, it doesn’t mean they aren’t Japanese. Hip-Hop is beautiful like that. It is music that allows anyone anywhere to express themselves so long as they have the confidence, vocabulary, and imagination. These youngsters rap about their everyday lives in Japan, being caught in tough circumstances, and their roots. They find a way through combining two cultures to make their existence heard. Sakura is one of those teens.
Sakura is a moody teenage girl. She wants to become a musician like the American rappers she admires. Her room is adorned with posters of the Wu-Tang Clan and Hanae Kan plays up to the role well as she walks around with a cool-girl strut and a sullen expression. Her half-mumbled freestyles paint her as a “yellow thug” and she picks fist fights with girls she used to know at school. She isn’t truly a thug, just lashing out at the world since she’s stuck in dullstown and refuses to conform like others and while she does not have any idea how to get out she is determined to sing. She’s angry and rebellious and spends most of her time by herself in a junkyard where she pens rhymes or an internet cafe where she uploads beats.
That would be enough for some films but Daisuke Miyazaki makes her believably more complex as a character. She may like to hang out in a junkyard, have working-class roots, and come from a household run by a single-mother but there is little deprivation and while there might not be much space in the family home (Sakura’s room is separated from her brother Kenzo’s by a blanket), there certainly no squalor. It looks comfortable. Sakura’s mother Kiko (Reiko Kataoka) works two jobs, a clothes shop during the day and ORIGIN, a bento place during the night and still provides love as well as emotional and financial support to her children while her older-brother Kenzo (Haruka Uchimura) is a good-natured otaku with a thing for models and vocaloids and a hit app that could bring money in. Uchimura makes him funny to follow, especially the way he physically shies away from Sakura’s Hip-Hop friends. Sakura also works in a traditional Japanese restaurant rather than McDonald’s and she knows where the shrines are.
Hip-Hop could be the thing that gets her to become confident and when she meets Rei, the half-Japanese half-American daughter of her mother’s American soldier boyfriend who is visiting from San Francisco for the summer, things start falling into place plot-wise and in terms of character arcs.
Sakura dislikes her immediately, but Rei’ s familiarity with American Hip-Hop becomes a bridge between the two girls as they spend fun times together and we see a little of what is going on under Sakura’s tough exterior as Rei coaxes out Sakura’s dreams as they argue over things. Nina Endo plays Rei as an ingénue, all polite and cute exterior with an American accent but reveals there’s a fire to that girl that comes out in an argument.
The key to Sakura’s growth is understanding herself and key to getting in touch with her authentic self is Hip-Hop (and some psychedelic rock) and she goes through trials and tribulations that get her to see what is going on around her and her place in the world. Hip-Hop allows her to express herself and talk to the world and the world talks back. Through telling her story she makes a connection with others and beats her anger and we know she is in a happier place.
Overall, this is an earnest and empathetic look at a teenage girl trying to discover herself through music. It’s a universal tale and easy to access thanks to Miyazaki’s direction/writing and it gives a unique take on modern Japanese youth and issues surrounding US bases, neatly combining a personal story with a national one whilst throwing in some real rappers. The fantastic performances of the actors sell the film and make it enjoyable.
The 11th Five Flavours Film Festival takes place from November 15th to the 22nd in Poland and the programme was announced at the end of October. It’s packed with a great selection of films for people who will be in Warsaw for the event.
I watched this at the Osaka Asian Film Festival and quite recently and was impressed. I didn’t have the nerve to talk to the director but would have congratulated him on making a great coming-of-age tale that combines Hip-Hop and international politics and getting great performances from his actors. Here’s my review!
Synopsis from the Osaka Asian Film Festival Site: Sakura is a moody teenage girl living close to the US military base in the city of Yamato, a town north of Tokyo. She wants to become a musician like the American rappers she admires, but is held back by stage-fright when faced with performing in front of a live audience. Then she meets Rei, the half-Japanese half-American daughter of her mother’ s American soldier boyfriend. Rei has flown from California to visit for the summer. Sakura dislikes her immediately, but Rei’ s familiarity with American Hip Hop becomes a bridge between the two girls as they spend an unforgettable time together exploring, arguing over and bonding through the mix of Japanese and American culture in the unique landscape of Yamato. Though their adventures and quarrels may lead Sakura into danger, they may also let her face her fears and participate in the city’s music competition.
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.
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.
Shunji Iwai has made many films across many genres but many of them deal with loneliness and this one is little different as it details the situation of a painfully shy teacher who finds her life becomes intertwined with actors who people hire to play family and friends. It was a great character piece which I reviewed on VCinema. I had the good fortune to see Shunji Iwai at the Tokyo International Film Festival at a screening of his film, Vampire, and the Q&A that followed.
Synopsis from the Festival Site:Nanami is a shy and lonely school teacher who meets Tetsuo online. The pair decide to get married, but Nanami’s lack of friends or relatives proves a source of frustration for her husband-to-be. She is put in touch with Amuro, who runs a business which offers ‘extras’ to pose as friends and fill out crowds at social events. Even though that allows the wedding to proceed, it turns out to be a short-lived marriage, and soon Nanami finds herself alone again. She herself decides to become one of Amuro’s actors, and at one event befriends Mashiro. It’s a friendship that will open up a new world for Nanami, and she is surprised to find herself as an unexpected caretaker for a lavish but vacant mansion…
Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Love Exposure) is back. Adapted from the Amazon series, Tokyo Vampire Hotel sees two vampire tribes go to war as the world faces an apocalypse of sorts. The series is based on an original screenplay and stars actress Kaho (Puzzle), Ami Tomite (Antiporno), Yumi Adachi; and Megumi Kagurazaka, the director’s wife who practically stars in most of his films post Cold Fish. It was filmed in Japan, and also in Transylvania and Romania, including Dracula’s Castle. Here’s an article over at The Japan Times.
Synopsis from The Japan Times: A vampire clan holes up in an impregnable hotel, with trapped humans as a food source, as civilization collapses outside its doors.
A terrified young woman named Manami (Ami Tomite) ends up inside the hotel, though she finds a defender in the mysterious K (the singularly named Kaho) and her cohorts, vampires from a rival clan.
Writer/director Katsuya Tomita has been busy working on the indie scene making a couple of films with Saudade (2011) being an award-winner (here’s an interesting review over at the Hollywood Reporter. He has a fascination with Thailand considering the influences the country and its people seem to exert on the story of that film and this current one.
Synopsis: Deep in Bangkok’s red-light district is a woman named Luck. She lives a lavish and luxurious lifestyle while also providing for her family in a rural province. One day she meets Ozawa, a Japanese ex-soldier with whom she once was in love and their worlds intersect again.
This one was at the Locarno Film Festival where it collected reviews like this one that paint this as an entertaining film to watch! I found it a lot of fun watching the characters engage in a battle of wits, sex, and verbal sparring. Here’s my review.
Synopsis: Kosuke Takasuke (Tasuku Nagaoka) is a former playwright who has fled Tokyo to live a quiet life in the country after becoming romantically burnt out. His wish for a quiet life is soon interrupted when he is targeted for sex by Shiori (Yuki Mamiya) and a theatre troupe decamp at his place…
Having lived in Ikebukuro, I recognise some of the locations shown in the images and the trailer so it’s pretty exciting. The director, Kazuya Shiraishi worked on The Devil’s Path and Twisted Justice. I actually preferred this film to his weightier serious dramas. Here’s my review to give you a better picture.
Synopsis: Masako, Yui, and Rie are three prostitutes who service all sorts of people from hikikomori to widowers. Through their eyes we see a variety of men from Tokyo and how prostitution has changed from the first film to this with the impact of the internet in what turns into character studies of the women.
Synopsis: The sex lives of a variety of people, from yakuza to salarymen, in Tokyo are seen through the eyes of three sex workers in a bathhouse who experience fleeting relationships and different emotions.
This film critiques censorship through the use of the tools that censors’ use purposely to ridicule the practice. Kumashiro purposefully scratched the film to cover up genitals in certain scenes and created a ridiculous look which actually draws attention to what the scratches should be hiding. Story-wise, it’s about loneliness and erotic relations between people with nihilistic outlooks.
Synopsis: A young man named Katsu returns to the small coastal town he grew up in after years of wandering around Japan and getting in trouble with the yakuza. Despite it being his hometown, he constantly denies his identity and starts to cause trouble especially after he befriends the owner of the cinema where he starts working, and her three unusual friends. The behaviour of the five of them challenges social norms…
See the film that got Seijun Suzuki fired from Nikkatsu for being too arty. This landmark yakuza flick parodies the genre mercilessly while its low-budget forced Suzuki to be visually inventive, combining modernist aesthetics with visuals straight from traditional Japanese theatre. It has gone down as a classic that has inspired filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Takeshi Kitano, Jim Jarmush, and John Woo.
Synopsis from IMDB: After his gang disbands, a yakuza enforcer looks forward to life outside of organised crime but soon must become a drifter after his old rivals attempt to assassinate him.
Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo, Snake of June, Vital) crafted this psychological horror film with the singer Cocco. It’s emotionally bruising stuff thanks to the story of a single-mother going through post-natal depression and with body horror that is grimly realistic rather than fantastical. Quite the title to end the horror movie marathon at the festival. Here’s my review!
Synopsis: Kotoko (Cocco) is a young single mother who lives alone with her baby son. Suffering from an unknown illness that makes her see doubles of people and not knowing which version of the person is real, it severely impacts her day-to-day life, often leading to her lashing out violently. The only time she does not see double is when she is singing. As her situation worsens and she becomes a liability her son Daijiro is taken from her and put in the care of her sister. Kotoko is left alone with her own thoughts and is at a loss as to how to get Daijiro back. Then a man named Tanaka (Tsukamoto) enters her life when he hears her singing on a bus trip and finds something awoken inside himself. Tanaka is a novelist with a hit title called The Man Who Brightened the Moon in bookshops but he leads a lonely life. Despite initial rejections he persists but Kotoko’s mental state is not getting better.
Hello dear reader. I am bringing back my trailer weeklies as the film resurgence begins. Inspired by my stay in Japan, recent films I have watched, and seeing the works listed at the Tokyo International Film Festival, I’m super-excited about what the Japanese film industry is producing. I’ve also been inspired by my stint working at an anime film festival and writing recent reviews such as:
Kazuya Shiraishi has moved from heavy crime dramas like The Devil’s Path and Twisted Justice on to the light-hearted Roman Porno Dawn of the Felines in terms of his career as a director. This one looks like a return to the drama and it stars Yu Aoi (magnificent in Over the Fence and Japanese Girls Never Die) and Sadao Abe (Dreams for Sale) among others.
Synopsis: Towako (Yu Aoi) is in a relationship with an older man named Jinji (Sadao Abe). She hates him because he has a deadend job and no social grace but she needs him because of the money. However, she pines for an ex-boyfriend despite the fact he physically hurt her badly. When she meets Mizushima, a married man with a kid, he reminds her of Kurosaki and they begin an affair. Then the police visit Towako and tell her that Kurosaki has vanished…
My Teacher / Teacher! Is It Okay for Me to Love You? (literal title)
先生！ 、、、好きになってもいいですか？ 「Sensei! 、、、Suki ni Natte mo Ii Desuka?」
First love is always a powerful force but it’s problematic when it is between an adult and a teenager and one hopes that the subject is handled responsibly in this film because while we shouldn’t avoid the subject, there’s no need to normalise or idealise it even if there are fine actors like Toma Ikuta (Close-Knit) and Suzu Hirose (Our Little Sister) doing the romancing. It’s based on a long-running manga and has been adapted for the screen by Takahiro Miki, an expert in bringing josei manga to the screen, and the writer Mari Okada, someone who is super-prolific in the anime world with titles like Hanasaku Iroha and Anthem of the Heart.
Synopsis: Kosaku Ito (Toma Ikuta) is a history teacher and one of his students, Hibiki Shimada (Suzu Hirose), has a crush on him. For her, it is her first experience of being in love and due to being young and naive, she is honest to Kosaku about her feelings. Kosaku faces a crisis because he is unable to express his feelings freely due to his position as a teacher.
And as a teacher he should take his role as a guardian seriously and guide Hibiki away from making a mistake. Especially if he wants to avoid jail!!!
This film is released just before the dorama airs on Fuji TV. Lead actor Shuri has been in some great indie films like Signal (2012), Tadaima, Jacqueline (2013), and The Voice of Water (2014).
Synopsis: Risa (Shuri) works as an interior designer and has always been interested in her colleague Shinsuke (Ryuya Wakaba) but she fantasises what would happen if he had an affair with a married woman she met the day before. As her imagination runs free, it gets her into serious trouble in reality…
Considering the film I reviewed this week, this documentary is timely since it’s about transgender people. Forgive me if I use the wrong terminology here.
Here’s a news programme segment on the film with the director talking about the subject:
Synopsis: Prolific documentarian Yukio Tanaka tracks the journey of a college student who underwent a gender reassignment operation because of a sexual identity disorder. Before the operation, she was a boy who dreamt of being a woman. She came out to her family around her high school graduation and began dressing as a woman in university and during her third year she underwent surgery and became a woman. We get to see this story thanks to Tanaka spending half a year with the subject and her family, friends, college teachers, doctors, lovers, and other people.
Synopsis (information from here): Four years in the making, “Hibaku-ushi to Ikiru” (Living with irradiated cattle) shows what happened to cattle farmers affected by the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that year. Director Tamotsu Matsubara, 57, became acquainted with a farmer caring for more than 300 cattle on his land in the 20-kilometer no-entry zone set by the government. Residents in the zone were ordered to evacuate, but the farmer stayed on to look after his animals and even though the government wanted to kill them off, some of the farmers did not want to put their livestock down. Keeping them alive costs 200,000 yen ($2,000) a year in feed per head. Why do they persist?
About 350 hours of footage was edited into the 104-minute documentary about the farmers who refuse to kill their cattle and their supporters who are struggling to keep the cattle alive and the scientists who are helping the farmers. This documentary aims to show what some of the victims of the disaster are still contending with.
It’s fun watching music videos made by idols from the 80s and 90s. It’s like a more innocent age. Ignorance is bliss. Shusuke Kaneko, probably still best-known for the two live-action Death Note movies, is a journeyman director who has takes his hand to this tale based on the internet novel Linking Love by Hiroshi Hagishima. It stars Yuka Tano of AKB48 fame.
Synopsis: University student Miyu Mashio (Yuka Tano) hopes to become an idol, but it’s a hard road to travel and it gets even harder when her mother leaves her father. That’s when a man dressed as a genie steps in and tells her he will grant her 3 wishes.
Sounds great. Then he sends her back in time to 1991 and to the university her parents attended. Miyu meets the two and finds out that her father doesn’t like her mother so Miyu Mashio forms an idol group with her mother.
Dawn Wind in My Poncho
ポンチョに夜明けの風はらませて 「Poncho ni Yoake no Kaze Haramasete」
Running Time: 90 mins.
Release Date: October 28th, 2017
Director: Satoru Hirohara
Writer: Satoru Hirohara, Kota Oura(Screenplay), Kazumasa Hayami (Original Novel)
Director Satoru Hirohara has been mentioned on this site before when I wrote up the trailer for Home Sick (2013). He was also involved with Hold Your Breath Like a Lover (2015) which I was super-excited about. This is his latest film and it stars Taiga (Japanese Girls Never Die) and Shota Sometani (Himizu) amongst a decent cast in this coming-of-age tale.
Synopsis: Matahachi (Taiga), Jin (Aoi Nakamura) and Jambo (Yuma Yamoto) are high schoolers who will soon graduate. They have yet to find a path in their life and decide to take one last trip as high school students.
Free! -Take Your Marks-
特別版 Free!-Take Your Marks-「Tokubetsuhan Free! – Take Your Marks –」
Synopsis from ANN:Haruka visits Tokyo to look for a place to live for when he starts his college life there next month. Coach Sasabe recommended a real estate agent to Haruka, but when he arrives at the agent’s office, he meets an unexpected character. Aiichirō and Momotarō are considering what to give Rin and Sōsuke as a graduation present. As they try to think of something that might surprise Rin and Sōsuke, Momotarō wins a premium lottery. The Iwatobi High School Swim Club members plan a surprise party to say goodbye to Rin before he goes to Australia. But Rin happens to see Gou and Momotarō as they run errands together all around town for the party.
Yama no Susume: Omoide Present
ヤマノススメ おもいでプレゼント 「Yama no Susume: Omoide Present 」
Synopsis from ANN: Aoi and Hinata look at photographs of their memories together and recall their previous mountain climbs. Hinata opens a treasure box in Aoi’s room to find a handmade and clumsily shaped accessory. After seeing the accessory, Hinata thinks back on a certain day the pair spent together when they were young.
Kirakira☆Precure A La Mode Movie: Paritto! Omoide no Mille-Feuille!
映画キラキラ☆プリキュアアラモード パリッと！想い出のミルフィーユ！ 「Kirakira☆Precure A La Mode Movie: Paritto! Omoide no Mille-Feuille!」
Release Date: October 28th, 2017
Running Time: N/A
Director: Yutaka Tsuta
Writer: Isao Murayama (Screenplay) Todo Izumi (Original Work),
Animation Production: Toei Animation
Starring: Saki Fujita (Yukari Kotozume), Tomo Muranaka (Aoi Tategami), Nanako Mori (Akira Kenjou), Karen Miyama (Ichika Usami), Inori Minase (Ciel Kirahoshi – what a great name!),
Synopsis:The Kirakira girls head to France for a sweet contest and meet Jean-Pierre the Patissier, a famous guy. The whole of Paris is turned into cakes and a sweet monster is attacking. I think…
My yearly Halloween post is back! Last year, when I was in Tokyo, I reviewed Hideo Nakata’s mid-90s chiller,Don’t Look Up! (soon to be released in the US with a sparkly update thanks to Tidepoint Pictures). That very same week, I went to see Snow Woman at the Tokyo International Film Festival thanks to a friend. Here’s my review!
Kiki Sugino is an adventurous talent. She is famous as an actor, a career she began when she was in university in 2005 and since then she has gone on to star in multiple films across Asia but during that time she has also produced and directed films of her own. Her first two features, Kyoto Elegy (2014) and Yokudo (2015) are thoroughly modern tales of couples in rocky relationships but Sugino shows her bravery and ingenuity by creating Snow Woman (Yuki-onna), her third directorial feature and a film which sees her continue to push herself by making a supernatural tale with an atmospheric twist.
People interested in Japanese culture may be aware of the supernatural beingYuki-onna (snow woman), a yokai who has transcended Japanese mythology to become an immensely popular figure in mainstream film, literature, anime, and manga. She has normally been portrayed as a mysterious and malevolent spirit who appears during snowstorms and is so stunningly beautiful she can lure unwary people to their death from exposure to the cold. Her story has most famously been retold by Lafcadio Hearn in his book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things(1904) and Masaki Kobayashi’s omnibus horror film Kwaidan (1965). Sugino’s film follows on in the horror genre but she takes a different course, one less obvious and one more adventurous as she moves away from pure scares into something more contemplative.
The story remains mostly the same. It all begins with two hunters, the young Minokichi (Munetaka Aoki) and his mentor Mosaku who are beset by a fierce snowstorm while on a mountain. They take shelter in a hut as night falls because Mosaku is in bad shape due to the cold. The two soon sleep but some time later Minokichi is woken up by a presence and it is the beautiful Yuki-onna taking the life of Mosaku. It happens quietly and peacefully. She turns to the younger man and flashes him a deadly look and says, “I shall spare you because you are young, but if you tell another soul about this I shall take your life.” After that she drifts off into the shadows outside the hut and Minokichi is left alone and stunned.
This is a quiet and simple introduction to Yuki-onna, not a jump-scare in sight. Sugino’s choice to shoot in stark black and white and her effective camera placement shows Yuki-onna in dominant positions compared to Minokichi and portrays her as strong but not monstrous. She is more of a mystery linked to nature. The lack of colour emphasises the traditional look of her robes and skin which are stunningly white like the snow and she stands out as a luminescent beauty. The soundtrack, which is mostly ambient sounds like the winter wind howling, links directly to her and her ties to the natural world. The focus is clearly on her, her power and connection to nature. All of this sets the marker for the chilling yet gentle horror tale.
Despite being labelled horror, Snow Woman eschews any fascination with grisly frostbitten death and portrays Yuki-onna in a more sympathetic and intriguing light by exploring the conflicting cultural and emotional spaces that open up between the world of the supernatural from which Yuki-onna blows in from and that of humans, the world inhabited by her husband.
As we enter the second part of the film we see the forest in a glorious riot of colours that signals the onset of summer. Scarlet and green leaves dance in the wind and cover the ground. A year has passed and Minokichi is back on the mountain and he is accompanied by a man who is wearing a modernish suit, an indication of the time period which is somewhere after the 1950s. That man is Ogata (Takeshi Yamamoto), the nephew of Mosaku. He has journeyed from the city to the forest where they are performing a memorial service at the hut. On his way back home Minokichi travels down a peaceful path pondering life when he meets a beautiful young woman named Yuki (Kiki Sugino) sat alone in a kimono and with no belongings. She states that she is heading for a river crossing and Minokichi offers to walk her to it. It is clear that an unspoken attraction blossoms between the two and they soon marry she bears him a daughter, Ume (Mayu Yamaguchi) and the three live in Minokichi’s home with his mother.
The audience will know that Minokichi has married the very person who took Monsaku’s life and are waiting for the moment in the film when he realises or admits to himself what he has done and when Yuki will reveal her true nature, something teased by the director.
Throughout this middle-section Sugino’s script and direction continues to be steady as she allows fourteen years pass in the story and spends considerable time building up the dichotomy between the natural and artificial world. She lets us see the family’s life together in their forest home and contrasts it with the city where Minokichi takes a job in a factory and Ume attends school where she grows into a beautiful and talented young lady. The city is a competitive male-dominated space where drudgery and suspicion of outsiders is prevalent while the resplendent nature of the forest, truly supportive of those who inhabit it, is shown through four Japanese seasons and there is some light exploration of the mysteries of the natural world, a place where foxes and boars and other creatures with supernatural significance are heard or talked about and women perform beautiful mysterious ancient ceremonies. Meanwhile, the peaceful lives of Yuki-onna and Minokichi are further mirrored by Ogata and his family in the city which is beset by sickness and worry.
These contrasting views mix together with the mystery of Yuki-onna. Her haunting presence begins to hang heavily over the family, especially as people begin to die in the forest and this is something people surrounding Minokichi and Ume comment on like a Greek chorus whenever anything bad happens. Unease builds but doesn’t overwhelm the atmosphere, even as we see Yuki spend time outside on long walks and has surreal dreams of a lights in twinkling above a river, relaying some message to her. Meanwhile Ume has strange dreams of her own and learns of her mother’s and her own mysterious nature. We know she has power but the full extent is kept off-screen, as if hidden behind a veil along with the rest of the supernatural world. There are no terrifying moments, just the supernatural impinging upon the world of man. Magic is present but waiting for the right person to open the door. Minokichi could be that person because Yuki-onna has chosen to love him but the audience will have to see whether he wastes his chance or not and as the doubts linger in his mind, the really terrifying thing is whether he will ruin his chance of love. Indeed, instead of horror this is a love story.
With no fast editing, loud bangs, or jump-scares, Sugino has dragged the legendary Snow Woman from the realms of J-horror and into a more quiet and contemplative realm that favours gentleness and coolness. It’s a unique take on a familiar character and those patience enough to wait out the snow storm will glimpse what lies in a more fantastical realm where love is as important as superstition.
Following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011,Director Masakazu Sugita put into production a film dedicated to the orphans left behind after natural disasters. It was something he had long planned since hehimself was a survivor of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake and was only 14 years old at the time. The result isJoy of Man’s Desiring, a gentle yet deeply powerful human drama which received Special Mention at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, as well as being nominated for the Best First Feature Award in 2014.
The story revolves around two siblings, twelve-year-old Haruna (Ayane Omori) and her brother, five-year-old Shota (Riku Ohishi). When an earthquake strikes their town, their house collapses and buries their family alive. Haruna was able to escape but was unable to save her parents while Shota survived by some miracle.
The extended family rallies around the children briefly at the funeral but disagree over how to handle their care. An aunt named Masako (Naoka Yoshimoto) steps up and takes the children in. Devastated by the loss of her sister, she offers them a safe home on an island with her family but Haruna and Shota find it hard to fit in not least because Shota doesn’t know that their parents are dead. Nobody can bare to tell him the truth and Haruna struggles with this.
The film quietly documentsthe acclimatisation of the children to their new reality and their new environment. Shot in Hirado and Unzen city, Nagasaki Prefecture, these are idyllic location where the quiet streets are orderly and clean, doors are left unlocked and everyone has a vegetable patch and access to beautiful green spaces and a beach. It seems like the perfect place to recover but while the children are outwardly fine there is emotional trauma and guilt over surviving they have not been allowed to process, something that the adults have failed to address.
Whether out of forgetfulness or a misguided sense of care, the older characters gloss over what the kids feel. They are too disconnected having not experienced the tragedy first-hand or they have their own grief to come to terms with. Duty of care for many simply means housing Haruna and Shota somewhere but the protracted negotiations over who takes responsibility and the instability they bring to their new home is quietly observed with guilt by Haruna, a feeling adding to an increasingly crushing guilt over not being able to tell Shota the truth and not being able to save their parents.
This guilt eats away at her. While little Shota bubbles away with cheeriness and the expectation that they will reunite with their parents soon, his every question and spoken hope pricks the conscience of Haruna who keeps a tight lid on her emotions.Her experience in the disaster, told in short, simple scenes where she is searching amongst the rubbleof her home, reoccur in flashbacks later, nightmares that shows the powerlessness of these children and the feeling of being lost and her emotional scars.This gives the simple narrative its depthand informs the sudden emotional violence in a heart-breaking yet hopeful set of final sequences at the end.
The film is a simple tale with unfussy, minamilist direction which is part of what makes it so special because Sugita shows he has fantastic control over the emotional beats of the story and gets fine performances from his child actors. There are long passages without dialogue, just ambient sound of the wind blowing and the sea’s waves crashing against a cliff. When words are spoken, they have massive power and their true intent and emotion are plain to hear. The small town landscape and the domesticity of Masako’s home is captured with simple framing and long sequences that puts the actors at the centre and leave free audiences to observe the facial expressions and body-language of this fine cast – the infinite compassion Haruna and Shota have for each other, the aunt’s concern and gradual tiredness over strained family dynamicsetched on her face. Thegentle zooms on people’s faces are massively effective thank to this environment especially as Ayane Omori, Riku Ohishi, and Naoko Yoshimoto give powerful performances that display their interior selves.
Haruna’s journey is what the film follows, her isolation fuelled by her grief and her guilt over lying to Shota. Ayane Omori shows a stunning maturity and depth to her character with perfect stillness that shows her self-control, the way she shows her characters observant nature, and her gradual withdrawal from others and her pain over her lies to Shota. When she breaks with anger and grief, it is heartbreaking. She is the guardian to Riku Ohishi’s character and he brings a refreshinginnocence which acts like ballast for his co-star.His pure joy, his loyalty to his sister and the care he shows to her, patting her when she is ill and playing with her, all of it speak volumes. There is a softness present in young boys that is rarely given screen time in films (shown in Being Good) that is on display here and it is greatly affecting not least because it cements the emotional bond between himself and Haruna.
The film begins and ends ominously in water but there is a light that holds the darkness back. Maybe it’s the love of their parents or their natural resilience, but what secures them is their love for each other.You get the sense that even if the world forgets about their pain, they will be able to overcome it together. The close-ups on their faces are precious in delivering that bond the actors show with perfection in this simple yet touching drama that will surely move audiences.
The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme launches tomorrow and the organisers have announced the special guests attending this year and they are big-hitters.
The first guest to be announced was screenwriter and cinematographer Kosuke Mukai, writer behind a huge variety of films such as Linda Linda Linda (2005), Shindo(2007), The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky (2011), and his latest film, Gukoroku: Traces of Sin (2017). He will attend screenings for that film which is an intriguing murder mystery and an analysis of some of the worst aspects of society.
Kosuke Mukai will attend the screenings at:
ICA, London: Friday, 02nd February and Tuesday 06th February
Watershed, Bristol: Sunday, 04th February
MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling: Monday, 05th February
The second guest is Masahiro Motoki who will be at the ICA after the screening of The Long Excuse (2016) at ICA London on February 03rd. He gives a fantastic performances as an author who is heartless and arrogant, someone who must confront his worst character traits after the death of his wife. It’s an incredible film with fine performances from everyone. Motoki is best known for being the lead in Departureswhich won the Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Academy Awards in 2008.
ICA, London: Saturday, February 03rd
The third guest, Yu Irie, has had a big year for his films considering Vigilante (2017) and Memoirs of Murder (2017) came out at the same time. Both are crime films and he’s continuing with the genre theme with Gangoose (2018). Irie will be in the UK for Confession of Murder, a murder mystery about a serial killer who comes forward with a book after a legal loophole means he can no longer be prosecuted for his crime. It’s a film with a great plot and fantastic performances and it’s well-shot. Yu Irie will attend the screenings at:
Showroom, Sheffield: Thursday, 22nd March
Broadway, Nottingham: Friday 23th March
Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast: Sunday, 25th March
The theme for this year’s programme is “Un(true) Colours: Secrets and Lies in Japanese Cinema” and all of the films consist of characters lying and hiding something, whether for good or bad intentions. The Festival will be held from February 02nd to March 28th nationwide and there are 16 films that will be screened at these venues:
The Osaka Asian Film Festival is back for its 13th year and a wide variety of films from across Asia will be shown in a programme that includes a Competition, Special Screenings, Special Programs, an Indie Forum and more.
The festival opens on Friday March 9th at Hankyu Umeda Hall with the Japanese premiere of the Korean film “Anarchist from Colony”, directed by Lee Joon-ik (“The Throne” and “Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet”) and stars Lee Je-hoon from “Architecture 101” and “Phantom Detective”, and the up-and-coming actress Choi Hee-seo who won many awards for her performance in this title.
The film is based on the real life anarchist and revolutionary Park Yeol (Lee Je-hoon), a Korean living in Tokyo during the time of the Japanese occupation of his homeland. After the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake strikes, the city descends into chaos and with many people worried that the long-exploited Korean minority, already agitating for independence, would use this disaster to start a rebellion. To quell the disorder, the Japanese government issuesinstructions for the arrest of Korean men. Amongst the innocent Koreans who get rounded up isthe reckless anarchist Park Yeol, and his lover, the Japanese nihilist Kaneko Fumiko (Choi Hee-seo). The two have shown their defiance against authority in the past and their continued defiance causes a massive scandal when they reveal their plot to “Kill the Crown Prince of Japan, Hirohito”.
Here’s the trailer:
This is the first film selected by festival director Sozo Teruoka with the rest of the programme set to be announced in early February.
The Osaka Asian Film Festival takes place from Friday, March 9th to Sunday, March 18th.
This comedy comes from the director of Hard Romanticker. It was filmed in Fukuoka City and later showed up at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year.
Synopsis from the festival site: The daughter of a Shinto priest, the shrine maiden Shiwasu takes care of 5-year-old boy Kenta under extraordinary circumstances. This is the story of Shiwasu’s growth as a woman, intertwined with the rules and etiquette of the shrine, and its behind-the-scenes workings.
A great cast for this thriller with character actors like Ken Yasuda roped in. A special mention for Shugo Oshinari who was in the 2015 indie film Promises.
Synopsis: Police detective Tomoko Tada (Erika Sawajiri) is on the hunt for a seemingly untraceable contract killer. Her target is Tadashi Usobuki (Tori Matsuzaka), a mysterious man who wears a black suit and picks up his contracts from a specific phone booth. His method of killing and what makes him hard to track is the power of suggestion. He can drive people to take their own lives through mind control. The police better be careful when chasing him!
WebsiteIMDB
Daihachi Yoshida of The Kirishima Thing fame us back with this interesting looking murder mystery which is supposed to have equal doses of drama and comedy.
Synopsis: Thanks to a government program, the small seaside town of Uobuka gets six strangers into the community. They include a scary fisherman (Kazuki Kitamura), a methodical cleaning woman (Mikako Ichikawa), and a simple-minded deliveryman (Ryuhei Matsuda). All are under the supervision of local government official Hajime Tsukisue (Ryo Nishikido) who gets reports of suspicious behaviour. When he finds out who these people are and their criminal backgrounds, a body is discovered in the harbour and Tsukisue suspects one of the newcomers committed murder…
The Wolves of the East
東の狼「Higashi no ohkami」
Running Time:79 mins.
Release Date:February 03rd, 2018
Director:Carlos M Quintela
Writer:Carlos M Quintela, Fabian Suarez, Abel Arcos
WebsiteIMDB Nara Film Festival helps promote its home turf with international co-productions involving talented creatives expected to be active in the future. This latest is produced by Naomi Kawase.
Synopsis: The story takes place specifically in Higashiyoshino village where a solitary old hunter named Akira (Tatsuya Fuji) keeps on tracking the phantom wolves not seen for more than 100 years ago. He is the president of the Hunting Association. Akira is the only one who believes they still exist and despite opposition, he heads into the depths of the forest in search of a wolf. What he gets is the ghost of the former lover in the figure of the wolf. He decides to put his gun down. A year after that, men of the Hunting Association discover that wolf, but Akira tries to stop the wolf hunt…
Kamen Rider EX-AID: Another Ending Part 1 – Kamen Rider Brave & Kamen Rider Snipe
仮面ライダーエグゼイド トリロジー アナザー・エンディング PartI 仮面ライダーブレイブ＆スナイプ「Kamen Raida- Eguzeido Toriroji- Anaza- Endingu Part I Kamen Raida- Bureibu & Sunaipu」
Website
The first of the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid V-Cinema trilogy focusing on the characters of Hiiro Kagami/Kamen Rider Brave and Taiga Hanaya/Kamen Rider Snipe.
Synopsis from Kamen Rider wikia: Saki, who is supposed to have disappeared, shows up and Hiiro is concerned. However, Lovelica was behind her reappearance and he is controlling her! Also, Luke Kidman, a mysterious American who is fond of Nico appears at Taiga’s hospital. However, he starts showing Lovelica’s Game Disease symptoms in front of Taiga, he didn’t know that Lovelica is revived after he was killed by Cronus. The destiny of both heroes is put in jeopardy by the worst game plot ever. And God Kuroto Dan, lurking in the shadows has plans of his own…
Starring:BiS Girls: Pour Lui, Kika Front Frontal, Peri Ubu, Go Zeela, Pan Luna Leafy, Momoland, Saki Kamiya / Gang Parade Girls:Miki Yamamachi, Yua Yumeno, Maika Kyan, Yuuka Terashima, Dokuson Yui ga, Coco Partin Coco, AYA EiGHTPRiNCE
Synopsis: If you can remember the last BiS documentary, it followed the disbandment of the group. This one tracks the time since their reformation and includes behind the scenes stuff from their record label and fellow idols working the circuit. Three years are recorded. The death of high culture is on show.
Blank 13
ブランク１３ 「Buranku 13」
Running Time:70 mins.
Release Date: February03rd, 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,
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…
Cooperation and Communitywas the last documentary I saw to do something about the topic of sustainable living and demographic shifts and this one looks equally as interesting.
Synopsis: This documentary looks at people heading to places where depopulation and an ageing population are problems and hoping to turn those places around. From Fukushima to Gifu, people take to the land and create food and drink and natural energy.
Namae no nai onnatachi usotsuki onna
名前のない女たち うそつき女 「Namae no nai onnatachi usotsuki onna」
Mitsuru Fukikoshi from Cold Fish takes the lead in this adaptation of Atsuhiko Nakamura’s non-fiction book.
Synopsis:Atsushi (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) is a writer who gets to know AV actresses and interviews them. He discovers that life in the industry is tough and the women are looked down on but they keep their heads held high for various reasons. One actress, Yoko (Anthia), is looking after her younger brother who is about to graduate from high school.
Love and Other Cults is one of the latest in films produced Third Window Films and it is about to hit cinemas and homes in the UK very soon. This is the latest film from Eiji Uchida, director of Greatful Dead (2014) and Lowlife Love (2016). It was produced by Adam Torel of Third Window Films, a person who did a lot to build up the profile of Japanese films in the UK and he has made another cracking title with this twisted romantic saga set in small town Japan and featuring a set of broken characters.
The film is slightly less darker than Eiji Uchida’s earlier works due to its sprightly rhythm and quirky humour but it still gets dark and female characters don’t have a fun time – this was shot under police supervision and the cast features real teen delinquents and the story deals with child neglect, cults, crime and the AV industry – but the never say die attitude of Sairi Itoh is great as she gives a loveable performance as a lost lamb looking for love in all the wrong places. Uchida builds on his earlier work with confidence and there is plenty here to charm audiences.
Synopsis: Ai’s (Sairi Itoh) has never had a stable home. Her religious mother stuck her in a cult and then she lands with a gang of drug-users and dropouts, a traditional nuclear family and worse. While she bounces around different environments, her classmate Ryota (Kenta Suga) follows a similar path as he falls in with a gang of wannabe yakuza. They harbour feelings for each other but will they be able to express them? It turns out that the two are star-crossed lovers of sorts, destined to meet each other in unsavoury circumstances
This review by Elizabeth Kerr from The Hollywood Reporter tells you about the great performances from its young cast:
“…Love and Other Cults packs a boggling amount of narrative into its lean 95 minutes. At times it can feel like too much, but Uchida juggles his characters’ various arcs efficiently, making every frame and line of dialogue count. An energetic pop-punk sensibility keeps the film moving at a breezy clip…“
This review from Andrew Daley over at Eastern Kicks names it one of the best films of last year!
“…The grunge nature of the film elicits a uniqueness similar to that of the experimental 80s, where money was thrown at the wall of ideas in an attempt to see what works, and in this case it works too well. Eiji Uchida juggles the character arcs neatly in the snappy 95-minute runtime, which seems to fit a mammoth amount of storytelling in where every moment absolutely counts.”
The 68th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 15th to the 25th, has a pretty good line-up of films but I’m super interested in the Japanese contingent. Thanks to the great media communication, the last few weeks have been building up lots of anticipation. I’ve been covering this festival for a while now and this year is as strong as many others.
Here are the Japanese films that have been programmed, just click on the titles to be taken to the festival listing.
The Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art has programmed the Forum as part of the Berlinale, selecting 44 films, 35 of which world premieres. The International Forum of New Cinema, Forum is a bit like the wild west in the sense that the filmmakers selected come from different backgrounds and practice different forms of cinema from drama to avant garde, experimental works closer to art pieces to to observational documentaries, with subjects like political reportage and drama being given equal importance. There are a huge variety of films and topics few formal limitations when it comes to the selection of films, resulting in even greater freedom.
There are two films from the Pia Film Festival and both are directed by women who seem to have a unique take on tired stories judging by the synopses and trailers.
This film comes from Yui Kiyohara, a graduate student at the Tokyo National University of the Arts and has studied with Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It won the Pia Film Festival Grand Prix and was at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year. Her previous film was A Certain Bagatelle (2015). Our House, Yui Kiyohara. IP. For the Japan Times’ Mark Schilling, Kiyohara depicts “the ways loneliness and alienation can distort the field we call reality until the afflicted start to feel the presence of unseen others and experience what rationally shouldn’t exist. She does this with a quiet assurance, supported by subtly spooky lighting and crisply composed visuals in traditional Japanese spaces, as though she’s been channeling Yasujiro Ozu as well as Kurosawa.”
Synopsis from the festival site: Fourteen-year-old Seri lives with her mother in a small town by the ocean, in a house made of wood, with sliding doors, paper walls and tatami straw floors – a house full of history.
Two women meet while leaving a ferry. One seems confused, and declares that she’s lost her memory. All she can remember is her name: Sana. The other woman, Toko, offers Sana a place to stay. The viewer recognises Toko’s house at first glance: It’s the same one where Seri and her mother Kiriko live, albeit furnished slightly differently. Any attempt to bring together the two stories that are told in parallel from now on falls short. They unfold in tandem, in parallel universes perhaps, separated by boundaries that are nonetheless permeable. Again and again, the inhabitants of the house sense the eerie, ghostlike presence of the others.
The subtle spookiness of the story, heightened by the ethereal music, is occasionally reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, with whom the director studied. But she also cites another influence: At the start of the film, a short burst of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” is heard. Our House borrows its polyphonic narration from the art of Bach’s fugues.
This special gem won the Audience Award and Hikari TV Awardat the Pia Film FestivalEvery person would like to be loved and adored by someone but don’t ever forget that the other person is a human and has their own thoughts and feelings.
Synopsis: 16-year-old Amiko is convinced that “the Japanese are unable to dance spontaneously.” She’s just tried it out herself, with some strangers in a Tokyo underground passage. Believing that she’s had more than her fair share of days where she’d do absolutely anything, she’s left behind the provincial city of Nagano to head to the capital and take her heartthrob Aomi to task. A year before, she took a long winter’s walk with him and thought she’d met her soulmate, someone else like her who wonders in which phase of life there’s actually room for being happy. But then he disappeared, headed for Tokyo, together with Amiko’s nemesis Miyako of all people, the very “epitome of mass culture”, quite unlike her anti-bourgeois and wildly romantic self.
As far as creativity and playful levity are concerned, the invigorating directorial debut by 20-year-old Yoko Yamanaka need fear no comparisons. The recalcitrant Amiko could easily be a distant relative of Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro. Yet the imaginative and insolent film equally breathes the increasingly rare rebellious spirit of the 1980s “Hachimiri” movement.
There are two Japanese films by veteran directors who are very active to this day.
Yocho is an edited version of the WOWOW drama series Yocho Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha and boils down the five 40 minute episodes into a film that lasts 140 minutes. It was shown in cinemas for 2 weeks and was made as a tie-in for the film, Before We Vanish (2017) which I reviewed over at Vcinema last week.
When Etsuko Yamagiwa (Kaho) gets involved in what seems to be an emotional crisis faced by co-worker Miyuki Asakawa (Yukino Kishii), little did she expect she could be facing the end of humanity. One day, Miyuki tells Etsuko that she has seen a ghost in her father, that the way the sky seems to be different and even the way people’s behaviour is changingare all signs of something. Etsuko is worried andarranges for Miyuki to be sent to the psychiatric hospital where her husband Tatsuo (Shota Sometani) works. There, Miyuki receives a diagnosis that she lacks the concept of “family.” It is also there that Miyuki becomes disturbed by the presence of Dr. Jiro Makabe (Masahiro Higashide) and Etsuko also has misgivings because the strangely unemotional man is working with Tatsuo. The growing paranoia may not be unfounded because, one day, Etsuko hears Dr. Jiro Makabe state “I came to Earth to invade.” Before that takes place, he just needs to steal some concepts like “family” and “dignity”…
Isao Yukisada is a familiar face to appear at Berinale since this is his fourth film to appear in the Panorama section. His feature film debut was Sunflower whichwon the Fipresci Prize at the 2000 Busan International Film Festival. Go is his 2001 teen action film which was nominated for over 50 international awards but his biggest film in Japan is Crying Out Love in the Center of the World ) reached an audience of 6.2 million, making it Japan’s most commercially successful film of 2004. I’ve reviewed two of his works, Parade(2010) and Aroused by Gymnopedies (2016).
Synopsis: This is a film told from a variety of perspectives, all linked up to show a generation and their experiences with extreme emotions. Stories consist of a bulimic model who gorges herself on food every night, a gay highschooler who is bullied by classmates who discovers something gruesome in a polluted river, a girl who pushes the boundaries of rough sex to frightening levels, and an introvert who reads her pregnant sister’s diaries.
There are documentaries from Japan here including one from Kazuhiro Soda:
Synopsis:Documentarian Kazuhiro Soda has been touring around the world based on films like The Oyster Factory (2015). Here, he brings his camera to the fishing village of Ushimado on the coast between Honshu and Shikoku. It is famous for being the place Shohei Imamura shot two features but now it has an ageing population but fishermen and fish-traderswho tour the village and knows the local’s habits and lives. With insiders leading the way, inclduing the film’s producer Kiyoko Kashiwagi whose family hails from the village, many tales emerge.
Synopsis:Right from the start, Mitsuo Sato makes clear that this film is not an appeal for pity. Instead, Yama is a film for the workers, meant to function as a weapon in their struggle. Sato paid for this stance with his life: on December 22, 1985 – during filming – he was murdered by Yakuza gangsters whose criminal involvement in the restructuring of the job market Sato intended to reveal with this film. A collective of directors headed by Kyoichi Yamaoka finished the film; Yamaoka, too, was later murdered. The dramatic circumstances of the production reflect the explosive nature of the subject: the film exposes the collaboration between the Japanese elite and police with Yakuza gangs, who gained ever more power in the mid-80s as subcontractors in the booming construction business in Tokyo. Yama accuses those responsible of the resulting brutal exploitation of the types of people Marxists call the “reserve army of labour”: day workers, outcasts, the unemployed, foreigners. Highlighting their dramatic struggle as those exploited and victimised by criminal conditions, the film documents the excesses of a capitalism with fascist undertones.
The Forum section continues to provoke and explore by having a tribute to Keiko Sato. The name may not be familiar to many so here’s the information given by Rapid Eye Movies who are orchestrating this:
The Japanese “pink eiga” films form perhaps one of the most idiosyncratic phenomena in the whole of international cinema. Conceived to entice male audiences with erotic content, the genre also attracted numerous young directors who bent it to their will and created some of the most radical, avant-garde works in Japanese film. A considerable number of the Japanese directors most well-known today took their first steps with “pink film.” What’s less well-known is that one of the driving forces behind the “pinku eiga” genre is actually a woman, who was concealed behind the male pseudonym Daisuke Asakura. With its “Pink Tribute to Keiko Sato”, the Forum is showing three of the producer’s most original films. Atsushi Yamatoya wrote his absurdly titled 1967 film Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands in parallel to his script for Seijun Suzuki’s classic Branded to Kill, to which the former work undoubtedly forms a twin of sorts. For Masao Adachi, 1971’s Gushing Prayer was one last attempt to couch social critique in sexually provocative form, before he turned his attention to political activism. Finally, the most recent work in the series is the debut film by Masayuki Suo, who later landed one of the biggest hits in Japanese film history with Shall We Dance. Abnormal Family from 1984 is his tribute to Yasujiro Ozu, who for all the stylistic similarities would hardly have been pleased by the degree of sexual permissiveness.
Synopsis from the festival site: Yasuko, Yoichi, Koichi and Bill are four high-school students who try to escape their overwhelming sense of alienation from the world around them by indulging in group sex, all to see whether they can forge their own path free of the corruptions of adult society. After revealing she has had an affair with her teacher, Yasuko is made to feel like a prostitute, with sex thus reduced to an economic transaction rather than something about pleasure. She sets out on an odyssey of self-exploration, the final goal being to see whether she can “beat” sex.
The most cryptic and formally extreme pink film from the most politically radical director to work in the field deploys actual suicide notes and a refrain by folk musician Masato Minami to unsettling effect to convey the vacuum left behind in the wake of the failed student movements of the 1960s. The cinematography by Wakamatsu regular Hideo Ito captures the landscapes of Shinjuku through an intriguing blend of the documentary and the cinematic. Real-life scenes of jeeps and tanks crawling through the streets recall just how strong the anti-terrorist police presence was in Tokyo at the turn of the decade.
Synopsis: When a hitman named Sho is hired to save Sae, the kidnapped lover of a wealth real estate agent from a gang of yakuza, he is set on a collision course with the gang leader, Ko, who was responsible for the murder of his own girlfriend five years before. His only real clue is distorted footage of the woman and as he heads deep into Tokyo, he wonders if the girl really existed in the first place.
Synopsis: The debut film of the future director of hit international comedy Shall We Dance? (1996) follows the antics of the five members of the model middle-class Mamiya family after the latest arrival into the household, the voluptuous new bride Yuriko of the over-sexed eldest son Koichi. Younger brother Kazuo sees his new sister-in-law as a possible source of release from study stress, while his sister Akiko dons her office lady uniform every morning and slips out of her family’s eyesight with a cheery smile, before heading straight to a workplace that offers much more in the way of financial incentive than the office. Meanwhile, their father remains a silent fixture behind his newspaper, nodding sagely at the head of the table, while waxing wistfully about the owner of the local bar who reminds him of his dead wife.
Shooting from his own script, Suo’s only ever pink film is a bawdy pastiche of the works of Yasujiro Ozu, presenting the members of this far-from-typical family through idiosyncratic editing and compositional style of the Grand Master of the Japanese domestic drama. The results are amongst the wittiest and entertaining in the entire history of “pinku eiga”.
In the Culinary Cinema section with have a Japanese-Singaporean fusion served up by Erik Khoo:
Erik Kohoo is probably best known for his animated film, Tatsumi: A Drifting Life but he has achieved other things such as being the first Singaporean to make films that were screened at major festivals including Berlin, Venice and Cannes and making his own production company. His recent projects are inspired by Singapore’s history.
Synopsis: Masato is a young ramen chef in the city of Takasaki in Japan who has just lost his emotionally distant father. His Singaporean mother died when he was ten and he has no idea about his family history so he is completely adrift. After he discovers a red notebook – filled with musings and old photos – left behind by his mother, he decides to head to Singapore and uses it to track down his missing background. With the help of Miki, a Japanese food blogger and single mother, he discovers a whole side of his family including his grandmother Madam Lee who is still alive know more about the story of his parents. Through the power of cooking, Masato gets in touch with his Singaporean family and his own history.
There are seven restored films in the Berlinale Classics section and one of them is a work by Yasujiro Ozu.
IMDB
This is the world premiere of Ozu’s last black and white film. It’s the digitally restored version and it comes in a 4K DCP and a longer running time. It will be presented by Wim Wenders. It is considered one of Ozu’s darkest films because he unflinchingly looks on characters inflicting tragedy on one another and unable to change the course they take because of the flow of life and desire. To be human is to be flawed. The best of us try to avoid making mistakes.
According to the festival site, “the film was digitally restored in 4K on the basis of the 35mm duplicate negative provided by the Japanese production company Shochiku, managed by Shochiku MediaWorX Inc. Colour correction was led by Ozu’s former assistant cameraman Takashi Kawamata and cinematographer Masashi Chikamori.”
Synopsis: Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child. Abandoned by their mother, sisters Akiko (Ineko Arima) and Takako (Setsuko Hara) live with their father Shukichi (Chishu Ryu). When Akiko falls into desperate trouble, she turns away from her family.
Synopsis: Legendary musician Ryūichi Sakamoto played two evenings in the Veteran’s Room, an intimate, 200-seater hall at the Park Avenue Armory in New York and documentarian Stephen Nomura Schible recorded this concert with his camera. If you’re familiar with his work stretching from Yellow Magic Orchestra and Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, through to The Last Emperor and The Revenant, you will know he mixes instruments so you can witness him use various electronic instruments, a grand piano without a lid, a guitar and a glass panel. The venue also had a huge screen mounted on the ceiling of the room above the grand piano which translated the melancholic, contemplative sounds that floated into the air into black-and-white images, creating a dreamlike space the results of which come across as a paean to life itself, according to critics.
This was released a couple of weeks ago in Japan but with Sakamoto being a member of the 2018 Berlinale’s International Jury, it’s a great way to celebrate a massive talent.
GENERATION 2018: Reflecting Reality
More than 2,000 films were submitted by people from around the world and that huge figure has been whittled down to a total of 65 feature-length and short films from 39 production and co-production countries. All of these were invited to compete in the Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus competitions and tell stories from the perspective of young protagonists who seek love and security in a world full of uncertainty and banal tragedies.
Here’s more from the people who programmed this section:
“Every single selection is an invitation to the audience to experience life from the perspective of youth. They are films with young people, as opposed to about them. An impressive characteristic throughout the programme is not only the deep respect with which the filmmakers paint portraits of their protagonists, but also the immediacy and intimacy with which they approach these very individual world views,” says section head Maryanne Redpath about this year’s programme.
There is one feature-length Japanese film in this section:
Synopsis: Ao (Hizuki Tanaka) lives with his mother and younger sister Kii in an industrial coastal village on the Japanese island of Sado. Their father recently disappeared without a trace, but nobody talks much about that. Ao and Kii wander around the island and vent their incomprehension to the expanses of the sea. Then Ao finds a soulmate in the secretive Sayoko. These two daydreamers need only a few words and feel immediately connected to one another.
an animated short film directed by Jon Frickey (website)
Synopsis: Jiro, a little boy, feels sick. His father takes him to the doctor’s. She diagnoses a harmless condition. But it shakes the core of the boy’s identity.
Here is past coverage I have offered on the festival:
The team behind the Osaka Asian Film Festival has given a glimpse of the entire programme of films that will play at this year’s edition and full details of the film which will close this year’s festival, the Word Premiere of Akihiro Toda’s “THE NAME (名前)” which will play at the ABC Hall on Sunday, March 18th.
Synopsis: Moriya city in Ibaraki is a quiet place with residents who lead simple lives. Everyone, apart from a lonely angst-ridden bachelor named Masao Nakamura. Since losing his business and becoming penniless, he has adopted multiple identities to get by: Yoshikawa, a big businessman, Suzuki, the happy family man, Okubo, the doting husband who quit Tokyo to look after a sick wife. When his ruse about the sick wife is about to be exposed as a lie at work, a schoolgirl named Emiko Hayama steps in from out of nowhere and pretends to be his daughter.
Emiko is another person who loves to lie. Instead of facing a lonely home run by a single-mother, the girl hangs out with Masao and the pair strike up a friendship. It fills a gap in their lives but their lies hinder them from overcoming inner-turmoil. At some point a fake dad and a fake daughter will have to face their suffering in order to move on.
“THE NAME” is a gentle dramedy film by the director Akihiro Toda who is known for “Neko ni mikan” He is active as a theatre director, scriptwriter and producer. The film’s script was adapted from a story by Naoki Prize-winning author MICHIO Shusuke Michio and the film stars Kanji Tsuda, a veteran actor who appears
in both the mainstream and independent film industries, and Ren Komai, “kokoronifukukaze”. The cinematographer is Kenichi Negishi, who is a regular collaborator with Koji Fukada.
Director Akihiro Toda was born in Nara in 1983 and is a graduate of Kinki University’s Department of Arts. He has worked on the stage, in radio, advertising, and on music videos and short films. Frequently writing and directing his own titles, his feature-film debut came with “Hana no Fukuro” (2008) and since then he has gone on to bigger projects, directing features like, “Neko ni Mikan” (2014) and “Yokotawaru Kanojo” (2014) and now, “The Name” (2017) which closes a major international festival.
Synopsis from PIA FF: As a red comet approaches, the astronomy club sets out to make a cometary nucleus. Jun, a member of the club, toils away in the heat and humidity as if to lift up his depressed feeling. A vibrant depiction of the feeling of excitement that permeates the “quiet before the storm.
WebsiteIMDB
This is the second in the three-part tribute to the writer Junichiro Tanizaki and it’s based on his 1919 novel of the same name.
Synopsis: An old man named Tsukakoshi has quite the foot fetish and his mistress, Fumiko, appears to have the most beautiful feet he has seen. He wants the artist Unokichi to paint a picture of Fumiko and her feet...
Synopsis: Kazunari Kanayama works at a printing company and is a nice guy. In complete contrast, there’s his older brother Takuji who is a violent troublemaker and has spent time in prison. Kazunari attracts the attention of Yuria Ikuno who is smart and runs the printing business but Kazunari really likes her younger sister Mako Ikuno who is attractive and outgoing.
Synopsis: A popular stage actor named Mikio Katagiri goes missing just before a theatre production and his friend Yuuki Sei goes looking for him in Okinawa. He meets family and friends of Mikio’s.
WebsiteIMDB Hiroshi Takahashi loves his supernatural stories but the one’s I have seen have been less than creepy. He is a good writer when working for other people and his screenplays for Don’t Look Up (1996), Serpent’s Path (1998), and the Ringu franchise hold up. His most recent work is the Kurosawa piece, Yocho, which plays at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
Synopsis: A group of men and women gather in a warehouse with recording equipment to try and capture spooks and ghosts. Hanae Kan takes the lead as Yukiko, a woman who really has had supernatural experiences.
Tonight, At The Movies / Tonight, At Romance Theatre
今夜、ロマンス劇場で「Konya, Romansu Gekijou de」
Running Time:108 mins.
Release Date:February 10th, 2018
Director:Hideki Takeuchi
Writer:Keisuke Uyama (Screenplay),
Starring:Haruka Ayasse, Kentaro Sakaguchi, Tsubasa Honda, Kazuki Kitamura, Akiyoshi Nakao, Anna Ishibashi, Akira Emoto, Go Kato,
SHOGO HAMADA ON THE ROAD 2015-2016 Tabisuru Songu Raita- “Journey of a Songwriter”
SHOGO HAMADA ON THE ROAD 2015-2016 旅するソングライター “Journey of a Songwriter”「SHOGO HAMADA ON THE ROAD 2015-2016 Tabisuru Songu Raita- “Journey of a Songwriter”」
Synopsis: Porn about a father and son who have a bad relationship since the death of the mother. They both pleasure themselves over idols and, lo and behold, two sexy women turn up in their lives. Cue sexy antics if you find this stuff sexy. NSFW.
Macross Δ Movie: Gekijou no Walküre
劇場版マクロスΔ 激情のワルキューレ「Macross Δ Movie: Gekijou no Walküre」
Running Time: 120 mins.
Release Date: February 09th, 2018
Director: Kenji Yasuda, General Manager: Shoji Kawamori
This is a compilation of the Macross Delta TV anime with a couple of new scenes and a new song added.
Synopsis from ANN:Macross Delta is set in the year 2067, 8 years after the events of the latest Macross TV series, Macross Frontier. The story focuses on Walküre, a team of talented idols and the Delta Squadron, a team of experienced Valkyrie pilots as they battle against the Var Syndrome, a mysterious phenomena that is consuming the galaxy and there is also the mysterious Aerial Knights Valkyrie fighter team of the Kingdom of Wind.
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion – The Rebellion Path
コードギアス 反逆のルルーシュII 叛道「Code Geass – Hangyaku no Lelouch – Handō」
This is the second in a trilogy recounting the events of the TV anime.
Synopsis from ANN:The Empire of Britannia has invaded Japan using giant robot weapons called Knightmare Frames. Japan is now referred to as Area 11, and its people the 11’s. A Britannian who was living in Japan at the time, Lelouch, vowed to his Japanese friend Suzaku that he’d destroy Britannia. Years later, Lelouch is in high school, but regularly skips out of school to go play chess and gamble on himself. One day, he stumbles on terrorists 11’s who’ve stolen a military secret and is caught by a member of the Britannian task force sent after them, who is Suzaku. As the rest of the squad arrives, Suzaku is shot for disobeying orders, while the military secret, a young girl, gives Lelouch the power of Geass, which makes anyone obey any order. While Suzaku is secretly made the pilot of Britannia’s brand new prototype Knightmare, Lancelot, Lelouch becomes the masked Zero to lead the rebellion to destroy Britannia once and for all.
Synopsis from MAL:After the events of Invasion, Johnny Rico has been demoted to the rank of colonel and relocated to a Martian satellite to train a new batch of troopers. Unfortunately, these troopers are some of the worst low-performing Rico has ever trained as they’re Martians and don’t take the war seriously. Mars overall has low support for the war as they see their planet unaffected by the bug conflict and even suggested pulling out from the war. Because of their laid back attitude, the denizens of Mars wasn’t ready when the bugs attacked. Unknown to everyone, Sky Marshall Amy Snapp executes her plans for power.
The Glasgow Film Festival (February 21st – March 04th) will launch at the end of this month and it kicks off with Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, a stop-motion animation set in a dystopian Japan and featuring the voices of lots of American actors. There’s also the documentary Haiku on a Plum Treea documentary where the director tracks down what happened to her grandparent’s who were living in Japan during World War 2 and were interned in a prisoner of war camp when they refused to pledge allegiance to Mussolini. There plenty of films from Japan and it’s a pretty diverse slate in terms of subject-matter and medium.
Here is what is on offer:
The next film is in the CineMasters strand which is dedicated to master directors who have perfected their craft. This strand includes Wim Wenders and Claire Denis and the fantastic Kore-eda.
Hirokazu Koreeda’s murder mystery will be travelling from the Venice Film Festival to Toronto (and hopefully on to London). This one sees him bring together a great cast, some of whom he has worked with before. Suzu Hirose was the eponymous little sister in Our Little Sister and Masaharu Fukuyama was one of the fathers in (Like Father Like Son) and there’s also the masterful Koji Yakusho who has worked with most of the great modern directors like Juzo Itami (Tampopo), Takashi Miike (Thirteen Assassins), and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) and Tetsuya Nakashima (director of the still totally mind-blowing film The World ofKanako. There is also the wonderful underused actor Mikako Ichikawa who took the lead in the utterly charming Rent-a-neko!
Synopsis:Shigemori (Fukuyama) is a hot-shot lawyer on a mean winning streak but when he is compelled to take on defending a man named Mikuma (Yakusho) he finds the first case which could cause the wheels to fall off his career.
Mikuma is accused of a murdering the president of a company and setting fire to the corpse. It looks like an open and shut case since Mikuma has confessed and he was convicted of a murder that took place 30 years ago. The death penalty is almost a certainty but the more Shigemori investigates and the more he talks to Mikuma, the less certain he becomes of the man’s guilt and the case itself.
The truth lies with the daughter of the murdered president, Sakie (Hirose)…
The Modern Families strand features one of the hottest anime properties to have gone global and it should be a guaranteed hit for fans of Studio Ghibli.
This is the UK premiere of Mary and the Witch’s Flower, directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (Arrietty, When Marnie Was There) and animated by many talented people from Studio Ghibli.
Synopsis:When Mary is sent to live with her great aunt in the countryside she had no expectations about going on a magical adventure but when she ventures into the woods with her loyal cat Tib, she discovers a mysterious blue flower that only appears once every seven years, and an old broomstick which can fly. Soon Mary is soaring through the sky and deposited at the door of the Endor College of Magic which is run by the mysterious Madam Mumblechook. It seems like a nice place at first but she discovers dark experiments and Tib’s life is in danger!
Future Cult strand which collects films that are considered strange.
The film will be the directorial debut of anime screenwriter Mari Okada (The Anthem of the Heart, The Dark Maidens) and it will be animated at P.A. Works.
Synopsis from ANN: The story begins with Maquia, who is from a family where all the members stop aging in their mid teens. She has no parents and, although her days are peaceful, she feels lonely. Their peace is shattered when an army invades, seeking the secret to her people’s immortality. Leilia, the most beautiful girl in her clan, is taken away, and the boy Maquia has secret feelings for disappears. Maquia is able to escape, but she loses her friends and her home. Wandering alone in the forest, she finds Erial, a baby boy who has lost his parents. The story follows the changing relationship between the two as Erial grows up and Maquia does not.
This is a stop-motion animation from Takahide Hori. It’s based on a short he spent four years developing by himself and it is available online to watch. Junk Head has been invited to many different film festivals such as Raindance last year.
Synopsis: Some time in the future, humans have lost the ability to procreate. An explorer is sent underground to investigate tales of human mutants…
Vampire Clay is the feature-length film debut of writer/director Soichi Umezawa, a man who has had a long career as a special make-up effects artist on many doramas and films like those of the Tomie franchise, low-budget horror like the truly awful Alien vs Ninja and Dead Waves and the rather excellent Kiyoshi Kurosawa film Bright Future. This one looks more in line with his horror films and the special effects look pretty good – gooey and creepy dolls made from clay and some even creepier paintings!!! It was at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The trailer I found is a compilation one for a horror film festival with films like Jeepers Creepers and The Fog and a couple of other titles. The third film featured is Vampire Clay.
Synopsis:The students of a rural, run-down art school find that painting pretty pictures and sculpting pots is the least of their worries as they start disappearing one-by-one and it seems connected to some horrific looking clay statues… Could there be something in the clay itself?
I used to be a huge fan of this show. I read the manga, a light novel or two, and watched the anime. Now, I barely watch anime at all… This is a compilation film consisting of episodes from the second season.
Synopsis from My Anime List:Eren Yeager and others of the 104th Training Corps have just begun to become full members of the Survey Corps. As they ready themselves to face the Titans once again, their preparations are interrupted by the invasion of Wall Rose—but all is not as it seems as more mysteries are unravelled. As the Survey Corps races to save the wall, they uncover more about the invading Titans and the dark secrets of their own members.
This comedy gem was programmed by Britain’s Japan Foundation for their 2018 Touring Film Programme to celebrate the centenary of Yuzo Kawashima (1918 – 1963), a master of satire who was little-known outside of Japan until around the 2010s when festivals like Berlin started programming restored prints of his films. The Japan Society in New York also recently screened a number of his films so his profile is rising. Closer to the UK it is hard to get many of his titles but we have one film at least, “Bakumatsu Taiyoden”(1957), which was released via Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label and it proved to be a funny ensemble comedy set during the Bakumatsu period when the shogunate was coming to an end. This historical setting is, according to experts, an outlier for what Kawashima was known for which was telling tales tragedy and comedy in the lives of ordinary people in post-war Japan, a nation in flux as people returned from colonies and front-lines, emerged from rubble-strewn streets and charred houses, to find a more liberal set of ideas taking root in the home islands with traditional social structures being modernised, cities being rebuilt, and everybody on the make. Indeed, it seems Room For Let is more representative of his output and some suggest it even goes as far as to act as a link between the formalised Golden Age of cinema and the New Wave as the chaotic sense of change and oddball personalities are captured on screen with class and plenty of ribald humour. Seeing it as part of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2018 with a friend was great but having the privilege of seeing a rare 35mm print was fantastic as we were taken back in time to 1950s Osaka!
“Room For Let” is based on a novel by Masuji Ibuse and details the joined-up lives of a group of different people, all with madcap schemes, secrets, and heartaches to spare, and all of whom are united in their struggle to better themselves in post-war Japan by whatever means necessary.
They reside in an old mansion overlooking Osaka. We meet them when Yumiko Tsuyama, a potter by profession, journeys up the hill enquiring about the use of a printing press and then a room to rent when she finds the place has a well and a kiln. As she wanders through the mansion’s courtyard, both she and the audience encounter a colourful collection of characters in their cosy but slightly tumble-down dwellings. There’s a scientist obsessed with bees who keeps a beehive in his room, a wannabe-geisha from a small traditional town who brings her clients home, a low-level gangster and panty thief who sells porn, a married couple expecting a child, and a married couple already with one. Throw in some refugees from Tokyo, one of whom is an old army sergeant and cabbage roll seller, and a female rice merchant turned bootlegger and a landlady who scrapes as much money from her tenants as possible, and you get the small community at the heart of the film.
The de-facto headman of this tiny village is Yoda Goro, an eccentric jack-of-all-trades who is both charming and vulnerable because of his good-natured simplicity and naivety. His fellow tenants listen to and depend upon his prodigious skills and intelligence to solve thorny issues because Goro is a multi-hyphenate talent – writer, academic, lawyer, cook, negotiator, linguist, electrician, engineer – despite being unqualified in all areas. His skills and knowledge are such that he is almost always right and he has written many How To books – How To be a Geisha, How to be a Government Minister etc. Alas, his inability to turn away people in need leaves him susceptible to unscrupulous manipulators who take advantage of him including his fellow residents in the mansion. Due to his actions, he feels like a massive fraud, a source for discord between him and Yumiko who wants him to accept her love. As far as he’s concerned, he’s not worthy and he needs to find a way to be true before he can be hers. Through these characters, hijinks ensue.
Yumiko is initially our way into this group until her story thread is sewn into the fabric of this community. As she wanders into the courtyard to use the kiln or to Goro’s room to utilise the printing press, we witness the everyday antics of the others such as the beekeeper who creates an amazing aphrodisiac made from the secretion of bees which affects various characters in the area, Yumiko’s romantic feelings for Goro, and the drama of a student who will do anything to get Goro to sit his exams which involves press-ganging the man to go to Fukuoka.
With each sequence, Kawashima sets up scenes and plot points that will come into play later with neat camera placement and blocking so that the actors can breathlessly enter the narrative and display their quirks and start their stories before moving on and reappearing later. This film is powered by characters who are all interesting because of their flaws which they overcome with gusto and wit. There is an old-fashioned innocence to their actions so that even the most malevolent person doesn’t seem so bad. Nearly everyone is an amiable perv to begin with, even the women, but underlying their desires are darker notes of crime, suicide, and guilt. What keeps the film from tipping over into seriousness and misery is that they all have feisty fighting spirits with varying levels of generosity of spirit and unique attitudes that are hilarious to see clashing. More is given to us later as we get involved in their lives and a wider patchwork of Japanese society is unveiled, especially with Goro’s trip to Fukuoka and the way he bumps into old war comrades.
While one might see this as Osaka lowlife on display, what one feels is the sense of renewal and energy as men and women try and stake their claim on happiness through gutsy actions and desperate romance. There is the intense work and intense play that one associates with Japan but it is all melded together as characters drop any notion of formality and proper order and just plough on with what they want to do – lighting cigarettes during university tests, gazing at stars at night, evading the police, relaxing in a restaurant. Not even arrests, death, and disappearances can stop them.
It all takes place in the rebuilding process of Japan following the war and a spirit of wonder and excitement can be felt and with the Tsutenkaku Tower in the distance (I spent some of the movie puzzling over the distances between locations) all the way through to the distinctive domed building that is city hall which Yumiko frequently walks by, seeing old Osaka is fascinating as the countryside and suburbs and onsen have a character of their own. It’s a reminder that Japan is a nation made up just as much by fields as it is by cities but the main draw is the mansion.
What makes the place feel homely and the community bond strong is definitely the setting as Kawashima imbues the spaces with life. Paper-thin walls and the tight living quarters make a close-knit feeling rise especially as characters are on top of each other (sometimes literally) but it is the clutter and character that really sells the place. Kawashima and his set designers create rich mise-en-scene from detailed set design full of symbolic items which reflects the characters whether it is Goro’s workshop which is full of equipment, the bootlegger’s room full booze and pantyhose, or the family homes which are full of the accoutrements of different lives. It all feels individual and lived-in and the camera shows this and it allows the film speaks of the richness of these characters and their brief moments of togetherness in such fond and affectionate ways that it is hard not to want to join them for drunken parties and farewells.
One character says, “life is nothing but goodbyes,” and audiences may feel the same way but I can guarantee that at the end of this film, you will want to stay in the company of this cast of wonderful characters as you get to know about their dreams and desires, flaws and charm points, such is Kawashima’s ability to get charming performances from his actors and the way they are affectionately treated.
I hope you are all well. I’m still spending a lot of my free time writing about lots of different things but I had more time to do the trailer post this week which is ironic because last weekend had the better batch of films that I wanted to pay more attention to. This weekend does have some appealing titles like Sunny 32 and that’s mostly because of the cast. I played catch-up by posting about the Japanese Films at the Glasgow Film Festival and posting a review for the wonderful ensemble comedy Room for Let. Also released was a lot of information for this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival and the line-up of films is pretty fine!
What is released this weekend?
Our Blue Moment
パンとバスと2度目のハツコイ 「Pan to basu to 2 dome no hatsukoi」
Synopsis: Fumi, who works at a bakery, accidentally bumps into Yuasa, a bus driver. He was her first love in junior high school but they were unable to make a connection back then. However, with their current love lives looking bleak, maybe now is the moment to make the leap…
Isao Yukisada has made a lot of films. Go is his 2001 teen action film which was nominated for over 50 international awards and is best-known by foreigners but his biggest film in Japan is Crying Out Love in the Center of the World which reached an audience of 6.2 million, making it Japan’s most commercially successful film of 2004. I’ve reviewed two of his works, Parade(2010) and Aroused by Gymnopedies (2016). This was at the Berlin Film Festival.
Synopsis: This is a film told from a variety of perspectives, all linked up to show a generation and their experiences with extreme emotions. Stories consist of a bulimic model who gorges herself on food every night, a gay highschooler who is bullied by classmates who discovers something gruesome in a polluted river, a girl who pushes the boundaries of rough sex to frightening levels, and an introvert who reads her pregnant sister’s diaries.
Synopsis: Shinichi (Kento Hayashi), Tatsuya (Shuntaro Yanagi) and Makoto (Tomoya Maeno) have all hit 25 and despite thinking nonstop about sex, they are still virgins. Desperate to get laid, they conconct elaborate plans but it might be hard pulling them off when they live in a provincial town.
Sunny / 32
サニー/32 「Sani- / 32」
Running Time: 110 mins.
Release Date:February 17th, 2018
Director: Kazuya Shiraishi
Writer: Izumi Takahashi (Screenplay),
Starring:Rie Kitahara, Mugi Kadowaki, Pierre Taki, Lily Franky, Taro Suruga,
Synopsis: A middle school teacher named Akari Fujii (Rie Kitahara) is kidnapped on her 24th birthday. These two men who abduct her call themselves “The Most Lovely Murderers in Criminal History” and they are big admirers of a girl named Sunny, an internet idol…
Kamen Rider Para-DX with Poppy
仮面ライダーエグゼイド トリロジー アナザー・エンディング PartII 仮仮面ライダーパラドクスwithポッピ 「Kamen Raida- Eguzeido Toriroji- Anaza- Endingu Part II Kamen Raidā Paradokusu Uizu Poppī」
Website
The second of the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid V-Cinema trilogy and this one focuses on the characters of Parado/Kamen Rider Para-DX and Poppy Pipopapo/Kamen Rider Poppy.
Synopsis from Kamen Rider wikia: Saiko Yaotome is a doctor dedicated to recovery treatments and heads “Let’s Make Bugsters”, a new training game created for the recovery of people that disappeared. The test run has Emu raising Parado and Saiko raising Poppy. There is something different about the Parado in the game, though. The “real” Parado has been trapped and he faces his mysterious double, with the strength of the bond with Emu.
Kurueru sekai no tame no rekuiemu
狂える世界のためのレクイエム 「Kurueru sekai no tame no rekuiemu」
Synopsis: Kei Ota’s feature film debut sees him take the role of writer, director, editor and more and he made it while holding down his own job. The story is about an unemployed man named Toshiaki who picks up a knife and heads off to finish it all when he runs into a woman named Chisato who recruits him into her violent gang.
Gure- no ko panda chiisana gure-to no seicho- nikki
グレーの子パンダ 小さなグレートの成長日記「Gure- no ko panda chiisana gure-to no seicho- nikki」
Synopsis: A rare grey panda was born at Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Base in China in 2016. This documentary, originally screened in science museums, looks at its growth and gives information on pandas.
WebsiteIMDB Heartland Film Festival screened this film and the link contains an interview with the film director who is also a university lecturer. It seems he made it with students he took to Japan.
Synopsis from IMDB: Cicada is the story of Jumpei– a man who loses sight of his progeny when he finds out he is infertile, but then is given the gift of clairvoyance and begins to see glimpses of the future. These glimpses lead him to a series of cicada shells, which become symbolic of his desire to shed his old self. Though his lineage ends with himself, Jumpei starts anew as a father-figure to his sister’s young son.
Raika
ライカ 「Raika」
Running Time: 94 mins.
Release Date:February 17th, 2018
Director: Akiyoshi Imazeki
Writer:Akira Ishikawa (Screenplay),
Starring:Sae Miyajima, Ksenia Aristotratova,
WebsiteIMDB
This one was at last year’s Japan Film Festival Los Angeles. The trailer is pretty self-explanatory but this could be the next Citizen Kane. Probably not but you never know.
Synopsis: Yurya lives in Moscow and wants to be an actress. She runs into a Japanese woman outside a cemetery and strange relationship somewhere between friendship and love develops between the two until an incident on the subway splits them up…
Synopsis: Shirakawa City, Fukushima Prefecture has a new local hero. Akihiro wanted to become an actor but had to give up his dream as a result of his wife ‘s pregnancy. He returned to his family’ s home in Shirakawa city and returned to real life until he took part in a local character contest promoted by the city. He makes a hero character “Dharuriser” (I think that’s the correct spelling) which is based on his city’s traditional crafts. Little does he realise that the mysterious group “Dice” have plans to take over the place and he will have to fight for real.
9 Nain
9 ナイン 「9Nain」
Running Time:N/A
Release Date:February 17th, 2018
Director: Jiro Ishikawa
Writer:Yasuyuki Tsutsumi (Screenplay),
Starring:Rena Ichiki, Atsushi Maruyama, Akira Maeda, Daiki Kameda, Ken Nakajima,
Synopsis: Rena Ichiki, a graduate from Nogizaka 46, has taken the lead role of Saya, an actress who wants to star in a film about boxing. She joins a real-life gym to learn the skills to look like the real deal on the big screen but learns that its owner is deep in debt and the gym might be knocked down. What will she and the other young people who use it do? Daiki Kameda, a real boxer, also stars in this film.
N.Y. Maxman
N.Y.マックスマン 「N.Y. Makkusuman」
Running Time: 56 mins.
Release Date:February 17th, 2018
Director: Akihide Masuda
Writer:Takuro Fukuda (Screenplay),
Starring:Yuu Inaba, Yudai Chiba, Rio Uchida, Mizuki Yamamoto, Shota Matsushima,
Synopsis: Following the first “Mr. MAXMAN” and sequel “Bros. MAXMAN”, now the third MAXMAN is here, this time from New York!
This is the third in the MAXMAN trilogy and it starts in New York where audiences will be introduced to Hiro Max, aka N.Y. MAXMAN, the grandson of Mr. M, the artist of the American comic “MAXMAN”. It then shifts to America where the three MAXMAN heroes try and rescue an idol named Kaho Kaito who is kidnapped after threatening to reveal terrorist plans her father was involved in.
Synopsis: This is a digital remaster of the original 1972 film. Panda Kopanda (Panda! Go Panda!) which was created by Ghibli founders Hayao Miyazaki (story, layout, key animation) and Isao Takahata (direction). The story begins with a farewell. 7-year-old Mimiko sees off her grandmother who is going on a trip and returns home by herself. She lives in a nice house in a bamboo grove in a friendly village and she’s a kid from the 70s so she’s tougher than millennials so it’s probably no problem. When she arrives back home from the train station, she discovers a baby panda and the two quickly become friends. She name’s it Pannie. Then the baby’s father shows up and she names it Papanda. She asks Papanda if he will be her father and he agrees and the three become a happy family.
Synopsis: This is the sequel to Panda Kopanda and the family is expanded when a little tiger appears at their home on the day a circus comes to town. It starts raining but they head to the circus anyway. Since you’re sitting under the big top, who care?
Writer-director Tetsuya Mariko’s fourth feature film is a realistic take on the idea of anger begetting more anger with nothing to break the cycle as a teen named Taira terrifies Shikoku with a wave of violence that draws a variety of innocents and other outsiders into a twisted game.
It all starts in Mitsuhama with the disappearance of 18-year-old Taira (Yuya Yagira). His brother Shota (Nijiro Murakami) is the last person to witness him leaving their home. With an air of jollity, Taira turns, waves and shouts, “Shota, I’m leaving town!” before getting beaten up by a gang. He’s saved when an older man named Kondo (Denden) steps in. This is the ominous start of Taira’s destructive path as he wanders from Mitsuhama port to the downtown shotengai and yokocho of the city of Matsuyama, picking random fistfights with teens, musicians, thugs, and fully-fledged yakuza.
As Taira aimlessly wanders through Matsuyama, provoking fights with random bystanders, one of the people he picks on is the high schooler Yuya (Masaki Suda) whose story gets added to Taira’s. Handsome as his exterior is, the boy is a craven parasite, a loudmouth with a misogynistic streak he displays when he picks on women and teenage girls. Taira does what Yuya cannot, he externalises his anger and dominates others but he is stronger than Yuya because his targets will fight back. Yuya feeds off this and rallies the bigger boy to beat up more people while filming it on his camera.
It isn’t just the boys who do some fighting because another parallel narrative is added in the shape of a hostess by the name of Nana (Nana Komatsu). Ruthless and cunning, her cute exterior hides a venomous viper who gets her thrills from lying and stealing. She gets dragged into Taira’s street-side scuffles which become even more mindless and indiscriminate and deadly as the group leave behind a trail of blood and mass confusion sparking a media frenzy.
That’s as far as the narrative really goes.This is a mood piece. Many of the characters get dragged into and struggle to make sense of the violence and so will the audience as the script avoids any explanations leaving it for viewers to intuit something from the atmosphere and slight narrative details. During a police interview with Shota, we piece together parts of his and Taira’s broken background and neglect is writ large. Being on the bottom run of the social ladder and with no family background leaves the boys exposed to certain aspects of male culture which promotes bravado, machismo, and violence. Taira is an embodiment of these things.
The film takes place at the height of summer, just before the coming of age festival. In this place the Itsukushima Shrine autumn festival is where men carry shrines and battle it out for supremacy. Last year’s festival was marked by a death. It is all the men talk about. Outside of the festival, gangsters roam the streets and hang out at the door of hostess clubs and younger guys imitate them. Most of the male characters get into scraps and the dialogue they use is mostly empty macho boasting of violence and domination. Taira does this and his actions emphasises the nihilism of a story where the toxic atmosphere of anger shrouds everyone. This is an atmospheric piece made potent by the performances which are equal parts anger, hopelessness, malice, and selfishness, as everyone is soaked in ugly emotions,empty vessels who are waiting to be filled up by pain.
Yuya Yagira as Taira is simply terrifying to behold as the teen meting out pain. Audiences will be drawn to his dark features, his twisted grin and arched eyebrows, and his empty eyes which suck the souls of others into them as he silently stalks the streets looking for prey. He is mesmerising to observe, his quiet presence goading others to act before getting off on violence but there’s a depth to him that is intriguing. In one scene, after a particularly laborious fight, he basks in the sun and breathes hard. A close-up of his swollen and cut face segues into a POV shot and the sound of the wind and his breathing is all we here as he looks into the sky. Perhaps he feels alive during these moments of physical agony. It’s interesting to speculate.
Shota, the film’s one source of love hangs on amidst the swirling winds of pain and shame over his brother’s actions but is he strong enough to survive the storm or will he submit? Nijiro Murakami’s performance offers a strong counterpoint to Yuya Yagira as his story offers raw screams of anger filled with tragedy and brings the film pathos, a way to understanding how the cycle of violence keeps going.
For a lo-fi film with so much explosive fighting, it would be tempting to simply go for a handheld camera but Mariko switches things up multiple times using security camera footage, news recordings, smart phones, and a camera on tripod to capture the locations. The town and countryside are beautiful: the crowded marina with seagulls wheeling in the sky, blocky neon-covered buildings where beautiful hostesses who lure men in, shotengai with housewives doing the weekly shop. It is a fine place if you have money and purpose but for many of the characters, their lives revolve around eking out little pleasures with no big ambitions in their minds. That aimlessness coupled with the small-town atmosphere where there’s not much to do is like an incubator for anarchy for those inclined that way and without family support.
The soundscape matches the dirty and wayward nature of the violence with grunts and growls often being uttered and music full of discordant reverb and distortion, a scuzzy guitar and a chaotic clattering of drums, a fitting accompaniment for an end of the line collapse into exhaustion after much exertion.
The story is left open-ended as Mariko rejects clear-cut moral certainties and pat psychology. All we know is that people are left with pain and Shota’s narration, referring to everything in the past tense, suggesting no answers will ever be found. All the audience knows Taira is still out there, a spectre of violence.
This film is harsh and unrelenting. Perhaps this feeling is created because the film is mostly shot in the same tarmacked urban area where people’s faces are brutally slammed and kicked and punched against asphalt or maybe it is mostly because the directionless main characters we follow are trapped on an aimless road-trip, destination nowhere, with the desire to inflict violence and dominate others being their fuel. What this mood piece does well is create a sullen and threatening presence that refuses to explain itself, much like Taira, the engine of destruction leaving a trail of battered and bruised bodies in his wake.
Veteran actor Ren Osugi passed away earlier today from heart failure. He was only 66. It’s not often that I write about someone’s passing but I can’t let Osugi’s go by without a few words.
I’ve grown up watching Japanese films and one person in particular kept cropping up and that was Ren Osugi. He has worked on projects directed by Takeshi Kitano, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, SABU, Shinya Tsukamoto, Sion Sono, Takashi Miike, and other major directors my generation have been influenced by. Usually it was a small part such as a detective in some horror movie or a gangster in a Kitano film but he had such skill and versatility as an actor that he appeared in many more films and doramas and he could hold a film down and bring depth to his characters, no matter what their place in the plot was.
Whatever the role, whether big or small, he brought his presence to a role and made a character his own. Usually there was a dose of black comedy that went along with his mischievous smile but he had a wide range that extended to serious roles and that helped imprint him in my memory. Uzumaki showed his weird side but his performance as a hair-mad corpse raider made the film Exteas he chased the main protagonist and her sister for their long locks was so outrageous it made the film. Auditionhad him in a short scene but it is endlessly remembered while he was fun in MPD Psycho. His rendition of the old writer in Bitter Honey made the film a moving look at mortality rather than a camera gazing creepily at Fumi Nikaido and their double-act became touching. I was genuinely sad when his character was no longer on screen in Shin Gojira. He gave a twist to his performance in Nightmare Detectiveand hisgangster in Eyes of the Spider presented many hilarious spit-take moments.
His roles in Kitano movies switched between comedy and drama as Sonatine and Getting Any?and Hana-bi showed dramatic and comedic brilliance. Check out this scene and see how he works with Kitano to own this scene as a police partner with a massive change in his life to deal with. His resigned look and his contemplative voice combine with Joe Hisaishi’s music to bring a powerful tone to proceedings:
These few words cannot do him justice. What does give across his skill is the fact he was constantly in work. Whenever I saw his name in the cast list, I made sure to include it in my trailer posts and information. Ren Osugi may have passed away but he leaves a wealth of work and memories for fans, friends, colleagues, and family and so he will live forever.
Here are some images that were floating around on this blog.
The second guest is Masahiro Motoki who will be at the ICA after the screening of 
The third guest, Yu Irie, has had a big year for his films considering Vigilante (2017) and Memoirs of Murder (2017) came out at the same time. Both are crime films and he’s continuing with the genre theme with Gangoose (2018). Irie will be in the UK for Confession of Murder, a murder mystery about a serial killer who comes forward with a book after a legal loophole means he can no longer be prosecuted for his crime. It’s a film with a great plot and fantastic performances and it’s well-shot. Yu Irie will attend the screenings at:
