恋がする 「Koigasuru」
Release Date: 2022
Duration: 17 mins.
Director: Azusa Hieda
Writer: Azusa Hieda (Screenplay),
Starring: Rika Kurosawa, Daiki Nunami,
Receiving its world premiere at the 2022 edition of the Osaka Asian Film Festival, Azusa Hieda’s short Summer Wedding was the only work to directly use COVID-19 as a large part of its setting.
Like last year’s Among Four of Us by Mayu Nakamura, it is a pandemic-themed film that shows how isolation and distance prompt self-reflection and change in its characters in unexpected ways.
The titular summer wedding is a makeshift event involving a woman (Rika Kurosawa) and her lover (Daiki Nunami) at her family home. The ceremony is an unofficiated and imperfect affair marked not with joy but melancholy as the two are alone and awkward together. “If it weren’t for Covid, we wouldn’t be here,” says the woman wistfully.
Audiences may initially assume that any source of unhappiness lies with the virus affecting their big moment but Azusa’s carefully calibrated writing and atmosphere building reveals a backstory that overturns our expectations.
The virus itself feels a world away from the enclosed space of the old house. It is a major event relegated to radio programme material about couples getting to know each other, something which Azusa cannily uses to signal the film’s themes of isolation, reflection, and personal development.
Our understanding that the pandemic is not the cause of discomfort comes through a strong emotional undercurrent that Azusa establishes through the physical setting and thee actors deliver with skill.
A rich atmosphere based on the stagnant feeling emanates from the set is felt. This is a house set to be demolished and haunted with the bride’s troubled family history, as explored through props that camera focuses on, characters interact with, and the bride’s eventual explanations as to their importance. The dialogue teases out eerie and sad parallels between the bride, her broken family background, and the reality of her present situation.
As we recognise that appearances deceive and this celebratory scene is a one-sided confirmation of love, we understand that while the turmoil of our pandemic reality is in the background, it is the catalyst for this major shift in the character’s relationship, one that could only have taken place with the rest of the world and all of its distractions kept at a distance thanks to the virus. The freedoms of pre-pandemic life must surely have delayed their recognition of an unsustainable relationship.
Guiding us to this profound understanding that reverses our expectations are two strong performances from the cast. Rika Kurosawa is especially powerful in the moments when her smile falters and frustration shows and this packs dialogue with emotional weight so that she goes from being wistful to movingly sad as the true nature of their relationship is revealed and we get a quietly devastating turn in our perception of the bride. Somehow, there is hope for change at the end but it is tough for the bride getting there.
In Azusa’s carefully crafted subtle and unshowy drama, she constantly wrongfoots viewers to build up a portrait of a woman stuck in isolation in more ways than one. The bleak atmosphere of the Corona backdrop and Rika Kurosawa’s melancholy performance, good writing and persuasive acting sell this short which will remain in the minds of those who watch it.