ランダム・コール 「Randamu Ko-ru」
Release Date: 2022
Duration: 83 mins.
Director: Riki Ohkanda
Writer: Riki Ohkanda (Screenplay),
Starring: Tensho Shibuya, Shin Adachi, Ako, Shunsaku Kudo, Yudai Uenishi,
Riki Ohkanda hails from Chicago but now lives in Tokyo and works in the Japanese television and film industries where she has credits on titles like Love and Peace (2016), Demekin (2017), and GI Joe: Snake Eyes (2021). From the contacts that she has made over the years, she recruited friends and colleagues (including Sion Sono!) to make Random Call, a delightful light drama/comedy about human connections as told through the prism of a struggling actor getting over himself as he gets reacquainted with people.
When we first meet our main character, Ryo Kinugawa (Tensho Shibuya), things look bleak. Quite literally, actually! The lighting is dark, sombre music plays, his face is cast in shadow, and he goes from writing a funeral contact list to leafing through a copy of The Suicide Manual (the inspiration for the same-named film) which lies on top of a stack of unopened scripts. A striking shot of him on a poster for a theatre performance of Hamlet from ten year’s prior suggests his career, once so full of potential(!), is in the doldrums and it seems to be true as in the very next scene, he’s doing a good job at acting but gets rejected because he is so talented he will outshine the rest of the cast.
It seems like it is all over but the crying but the truth is somewhere in between as, in a smart reversal, we soon learn that most of the dark death material witnessed pre-audition is research he is conducting. It may be a bit of a bait-and-switch but fiction and truth mix as he is getting desperate and an answer to his career troubles lies amidst all of these revealing career details as we intuit that his perfection comes with a certain conceit. It seem that all of his high falutin dedication to his art has stalled his career and Ryo, now the wrong side of 30, has failed to get a lead role in years. Worse still, it has come at the cost of losing contact with friends, lovers, and family as he chases his dream.
Just as he is at risk of becoming a bit-part player in life, he receives an unexpected phone call from an old friend who introduces him to a social experiment called “Random Call,” the idea of which is to call those in his phone’s contacts list and physically meet them without any particular purpose. Indeed, the purpose lies in the purposelessness of a meeting as it becomes hanging out for the sake of a person’s company.
Initially sceptical, Ryo tries out the concept himself and hits up his contacts, whoever they are and no matter how painful a meeting may be. The more he meets others, the more he finds his life is enriched with opportunities and support but there are more important things he learns along the way to stop this being a cynical exercise.
Made with a budget of just $700 by a crew of only four¹, Random Call is an easy and enjoyable watch with a simple but profound message of the importance of maintaining human connections that is neatly drawn out from a well-written script and great acting that is delivered through perfectly calibrated direction.
Scripting is good with a nice pacey build up of meetings between Ryo and various people, each of whom imparts a lesson or detail for shared character growth within a vignette formula – a cynical producer appreciates simply going out for drinks and keeps Ryo in mind; a writer, who mirrors Ryo by putting on airs, learns to keep at his craft until he gets a career break. It eventually becomes a whole picture of a community forming as threads between characters are established through Ryo’s interventions and mutual benefits occur.
Reinforcing this, a subplot involving a friend named Mie (movingly played by Ako), a talented dancer, takes the film into more dramatic territory that drills into the idea that a person’s talent only really works in conjunction with the talents of others. Through Mie, Ryo comes to learn how to temper his conceit and make himself physically and emotionally open to others.
All of this character growth is done through well-realised dramatic sections which are easy to slip into thanks to delightful character-based comedy brought by a sharp observational eye from Ohkanda and the performers who play their roles vividly in ways that makes them easy to empathise with. Small details such as Ryo’s agency boss siphoning coffee from audition rooms are amusing (and telling) while Koichi, Ryo’s younger colleague, is hilarious as he really goes for the back row when it comes to his performances as he tries to impress Ryo.
At the centre of things is Tensho Shibuya who is a very able lead – surely he and Ohkanda are playing off his natural charm/looks and his ability to arch his eyebrows that allow him to switch between conceited and caring at the drop of a hat. He sells Ryo’s character arc of learning humility and renewing social bonds with considerable skill.
Ultimately, the film’s message of being present for others resonates in an era of separation due to SNS and Covid-19. Our isolation and the lack of sincere feeling engendered by the loss of physical presence is defeated in this film where the emphasis is on making the effort to meet and understand those we are connected to. This effort carries with it a sincerity and care that is heart-warming lesson to watch. It culminates in an ending that is satisfying and inspirational, one that led me to tears of happiness as I fell under the spell of the characters and the effect a random call has on them.
¹ https://twitter.com/PaprikaGirl_JP/status/1500834847983812610
Random Call was screened as part of the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022 on March 15. It will be screened again on March 19.