Three Stories of Love
恋人たち 「Koibito-tachi」
Release Date: November 14th, 2015
Duration: 140 mins
Director: Ryosuke Hashiguchi
Writer: Ryosuke Hashiguchi
Starring: Atsushi Shinohara, Toko Narushima, Ryo Ikeda, Ken Mitsuishi, Lily Franky, Hana Kino, Tamae Ando, Chika Uchida,
Ryosuke Hashiguchi gives us the story of three people who don’t realise they are cracking up from loneliness and a lack of love for themselves until it is almost too late. Simply asking for our patience, in return he gives us the lives of people who we might ordinarily pass by without a second thought and yet reveals the alienation that we all seek to avoid.
While not as strong as his previous film, All Around Us (2008), it is still a good ensemble piece that works because of his commitment to depicting reality and the naturalistic acting of his cast that strikes a chord. Due to these elements, essential truths of the human condition and the influence of facticity – the deadening effects of routines and the need to escape them – eventually shine through during a lengthy film but ultimately emotionally resonant drama.
Set in Japan, circa 2015, audiences will recognise familiar locales and the cast of characters, all of whom initially start off as archetypes before we get to know them intimately through their routines and relate to their dead-end existences:
Atsushi Shinozuka (Atsushi Shinohara), a dumpy-looking widowed bridge inspector who lost his wife in a violent stabbing, cruises the canals and rivers of Tokyo with other blue-collar workers who absent-mindedly speculate on contracts from the upcoming Tokyo Olympics while he seethes with anger over the killer still being alive;
Toko (Toko Narushima), a frumpy and faithful housewife living in a countryside town, cheerfully endures either being henpecked by her boss on a production line making food for bento boxes or by her domineering husband and his callous mother. She soon reckons with how unfulfilling her life is and the dreams she would like to chase when a con man takes an interest in her and ropes her into a shady business run from a hostess bar;
Shinomiya (Ryo Ikeda), a highly successful, super-smarmy, and very vein corporate lawyer living in Tokyo spends his days belittling those around him, including his boyfriend, mostly behind their backs until he breaks his leg in what could be a malicious assault or accident. It is kept vague as to what happens but while Toko and Atsushi might seem like sad-sack losers about to flame out quickly, his egregious behaviour makes his comeuppance seem like karma and he teeters on the verge of self-destruction.
Ostensibly different from each other and, with the exception of Toko, unsympathetic, the film slowly reveals how each character is similar and pitiable in how they exhibit a self-conceited or wrong-headed notion of love and low self-esteem that traps them in the isolation we meet them enduring. What makes their individual dramas universally understood and emotionally resonant is that the film quietly takes its time to wend its way to each character’s moment of realisation with many scenes taken from normality and delivered with understated acting and different emotional tones that slowly envelope us into a reality we recognise and eventually feel in our bones.
Atsushi’s increasingly self-destructive behaviour drives him into poverty and crime but without the attendant melodrama it could have descended into. Instead, he remains hapless and sympathetically frustrated and we appreciate more the scenes of him baring his irritation with co-workers who idly chatter about the Olympics or him scraping together 10,000 yen to pay for health insurance, all tersely revealing the mental strain being poor and widowed. That becomes a big drama in itself as audiences learn to recognise how hard it is for him to contain his hatred for himself and others. Shinomiya’s jaded sophistication and appalling arrogance offers alternating scenes of cringe comedy and heartache as he alienates those around him with a viperish tongue while he also experiences prejudice for being gay and his aloof facade falls away. Toko’s scenes of endurance of everyday humiliations are lightened by her optimistic attitude but one can instantly recognise the stultifying life of an underappreciated housewife and appreciate deeply the moments of sheer joy just being asked about her dreams and being seen as a sexual being is when the con man descends upon her.
The pleasure and drama in the film comes in understanding how their problems are projections of their own loneliness and seeing them confront it. We watch their ordinary lives fettered by a lack of love, or at least, an idealised one, threaten to spin out of control once shaken out of their humdrum existence by an accident or an encounter that opens their eyes to what they feel is missing but getting to this realisation requires patience.
Pacing is slow. We watch as the characters perform day-to-day activities and their interactions with co-workers and family sneak in hints of their weaknesses. Despite brief intersections, each person’s journey plays out as separate stories where the separate thread of loneliness and loss are gradually unpicked so we get a diverse array of lifestyles and love experiences that feel like they take place in the real world locations like Ueno, Shinjuku’s Nichome district, and, both sadly and amusingly, a chicken farm.
Not all storylines are equal. Certainly, Toko’s meetings with a scam artist offers respite from a life lacking all affection that reminds a viewer of the flight of fancy taken by Kyoko Koizumi in the Koji Yakusho segment of Tokyo Sonata (2008) and that may or may not work for some. Taken as a whole, however, they are revealing and honest about the way people can become inured with leading lives reduced in hope and optimism, the crushing feeling that an unchanging normality offers and so the attendant emotional rush of something like love sweeping them away feels more powerful as it imbues their lives with romance and meaning that feels bigger than the suburban streets and small towns and petty prejudices that each of the characters inhabit and that we viewers will recognise and identify with and, ultimately find optimistic as the three characters try to rediscover love.