Release Date: February 25th, 2022
Duration: 107 mins.
Director: Non
Writer: Non (Script),
Starring: Non, Daichi Watanabe, Rio Yamashita, Karin Ono, Daikichi Sugawara, Misayo Haruki,
Thursday Jul 21, 4:30pm
There is something satisfying in seeing the return and rise of Non (real name Rena Nounen) following troubles with a talent agency. After getting plaudits for her performance in Akiko Ohku’s Hold Me Back, the Audience Award winner at the 2020 Tokyo International Film Festival, Non continues to strike her own path by making her debut feature movie as director/editor/writer with Ribbon, an imaginative and fun coming-of-age that takes on life in the ongoing Coivd-19 pandemic at a time when so many other films ignore it.
Inspired by an interview with an art college graduate who said that she considered a work that she had spent a year making little more than “trash because she could no longer exhibit it due to a lockdown” (source), Non crafts and acts out the story of Itsuka Asakawa, an art university student who is about to experience this crushing mindset.
Itsuka’s pandemic days are split into an episodic structure. We first meet her at the outset of social restrictions. She is the calmest of a number of students who have just been told that Covid-19 lockdowns have forced classes and graduation show to be cancelled – one of the profs is played by Shunji Iwai, look out for that fabulous mane of hair.
With people told to take work home or risk it being trashed, the undergrads display a range of emotional responses, from despondent stares to tears and rage, as they dismantle and destroy their pieces. Itsuka, however, quietly carries out her self-portrait and painting materials while best friend Hirai (Rio Yamashita) puts on a brave face and admits that her painting has to remain on site. If Itsuka is calm at the outset, the lockdown will wear her out as she slowly comes to grapple with facing an uncertain future.
After returning to her rather nice apartment, we see Itsuka indulge in oversleeping and letting laundry pile up, all while her self-portrait stares at her. It isn’t long before her family drop in day by day to try and motivate her, first her mother (Misayo Haruki) with a hilarious homemade hazmat suit, her father (Daikichi Sugawara) with a catchpole he uses to maintain social distance, and her sister Mai (Karin Ono) who is effectively dressed like a sunglasses-wearing ninja and douses everything in antiviral spray while daintily dodging close contact with others. Their exaggerated response to the pandemic and Itsuka’s teasing of them is played for laughs, but they all have some question for Itsuka about the quality of her self-portrait and about her life, whether it is about the chances of getting married, getting a job, and pursuing art.
At first, the initial scenes of Itsuka carrying her bulky art on public transport seemed comedic but with each episode (or maybe straight away for the astute) we realise that the weight of the work comes to symbolise the importance/burden of her creative passion and her tenacity in pursuing it in difficult circumstances. Their placement in her apartment becomes a lingering question of whether she can make art, one that she cannot escape, especially as that portrait dominates the room. And so the Covid-lockdown proves to be a frustrating experience for Itsuka as it becomes a literal career roadblock and also symbolic of a creative impasse that requires her to reflect on what she wants in life if she is to move forward.
While these existential questions are engaged with, the scenes of the pandemic are continually exaggerated for deliberate effect as Non uses this pandemic-enforced context to create the terrain that Itsuka career and life frustrations are confronted. We watch her experience and re-experience her stifling isolation days where time slows to a crawl and Itsuka has nobody to push her past her creative and career blockages which literally stare her in her face when she is at home via that self-portrait. It is during this time that the film shows the true value of art comes from the inspiration Itsuka discovers to exercise her talent and regain her motivation to try and change her reality.
The change takes the audacious form of an art heist episode involving an equally frustrated Hirai but it feels like a natural progression as Non’s script steadily builds across each episode Itsuka’s evolving rage with each passing day and dovetails it nicely into a subplot involving contact with a young man (Daichi Watanabe) in a local park, introduced in each prior episode, who provides a link to her childhood that allows her to remember the joy of pursuing art. And so Itsuka’s growth from procrastinator to active agent who dares to go against the grain feels organic and well earned.
Non utilises her cute, quirky, and loveably awkward personality perfectly to buoy her character’s journey by injecting comedic overreactions and mannerisms to keep scenes light. Which is not to say there is no substance as Non builds naturally to dramatic crescendos involving tears and anger that are moving. While her character may not have lost as much as many others during the pandemic, her struggle is still moving and we feel empathy with Itsuka at every step.
And what of the titular ribbons? These are mostly CG creations crafted by a special effects team led by Shinji Higuchi, director of Shin Godzilla. The CG is used sparingly to change shape and colour to reflect Itsuka’s mood but they really come to life when in laid out as physical set dressing and combined with the art Itsuka creates. Non herself created the character’s paintings and the ribbons were created by fans who sent them to the production team. It provides the film with a beautiful sight in its coda that reinforces the creative and collaborative spirit of art to be a fitting culmination of Itsuka’s creative and personal journey as she regains confidence.
Made at a time when many other filmmakers have chosen to ignore or consign Covid-19 to the background, Ribbon is an optimistic film that bravely uses it in a substantive way and reminds us, in our dark pandemic days, that art can be a light in life.