誰かの花 「Dareka no Hana」
Release Date: January 29th, 2022
Duration: 115 mins.
Director: Yusuke Okada
Writer: Yusuke Okada (Script),
Starring: Shinsuke Kato, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Choei Takahashi, Misa Wada, Honoka Murakami, Ryusei Ohta,
Somebody’s Flowers was planned and produced for the 30th anniversary of Cinema Jack & Betty, a famous mini-theatre in Yokohama. The film’s story is set in the same city. It was directed by Yokohama native Yusuke Okuda and takes us into a small corner of the city where everyday folks endure the vagaries of life. A drama, it starts slow but gains meaning and emotional freight as it carefully depicts lives marred by grief that tears at relationships that are already fraying in a pressure-cooker atmosphere of a small community where secrets, resentments, and shame abound.
The film stars Shinsuke Kato (Ken and Kazu) as Takaaki, a down-on-his-luck steelworker who is the less than loyal son of an elderly couple living in an apartment complex. His begrudging visits to his parents see him talk big about life but sponge off his mother, Machi (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), while side-stepping his father Tadayoshi. The old man has dementia and requires a carer, Satomi (Honoka Murakami), since he is becoming too much for Takaaki’s mother to handle, much to the chagrin of Takaaki who wants an easier life.
In its depiction of living with a parent with dementia, the film shows humanity as we get a sense of the person who once existed before their cognitive decline and the strain that they pose on their nearest and dearest. From Tadayoshi’s habit of absent-mindedly wandering away from home to confusing Takaaki for his other son, who passed away a few years ago, there are all sorts of tense connections between people that emerge from the get-go. These connections are sustained and elaborated upon with each reluctant visit to his parents and also the group therapy sessions Takaaki goes to solo to hear people talk about the death of loved ones and their desire for revenge. Why he doesn’t include his mother is questionable but the anger-filled rhetoric heard at meetings is hair-raising and suggests the emotions roiling inside Takaaki. The film plucks at these ever-increasingly tensing strings quite effectively until something breaks during a storm.
What breaks, specifically, is one of Tadayoshi’s balcony flowerpots that plunges down onto the head of a new neighbour.
While we previously got a taste of domestic disharmony within Takaaki’s family unit, the story shifts ears as we also get some of the dynamics of danchi (apartment) life with the appearance of new neighbours in the form of a family, the father of which takes the blow.
The father-son dynamic experienced by Takaaki will remind readers of Kore-eda’s Still Walking (2008) but Somebody’s Flowers, while wreathed in similar idea of how grief closes people off, uses the fallout of the flowerpot incident to propel a fascinating examination of how people who are victims of something, can morph into a perpetrator and the apartment setting is key to this.
How the flowerpot fell, accidentally or deliberately via human touch, that point remains ambiguous throughout the story and it is left for the audience to select suspects:
- The son of the new family dislodges the pot while playing on his unit’s balcony;
- The storm foreshadowed earlier in the film hits and blows all sorts of things around;
- The grandfather’s dementia and evidence of his “gardening” are apparent when Takaaki checks in on him after the accident.
This situation sends Takaaki into a paranoia-fuelled tailspin as he tries to cover up the possibility that his old man is responsible. This is where the film gets really interesting.
Up until this point, the story had felt slow and even a little dull and dour in execution as the film patiently created its setting but as Takaaki lies to visitors and lets other neighbours take the blame, a tension surfaces that becomes quite fraught with second-hand embarrassment felt for Takaaki and displeasure, especially when he goes as far as to reluctantly take the dead man’s family under his wing to assuage his guilt. It suggests some form of contrition but it is entirely self-serving as he continues living up to his lowlife character, especially in scenes where he encounters them at his group therapy sessions and hears of their anguish.
No longer able to climb up on his moral high horse and criticise the wrongdoers of society and lament the loss of his elder, brother, he must sit and squirm as he finds himself moving from victim to perpetrator.
All of this is facilitated by the setting which keeps everybody trapped together. The danchi location creates a tight-knit community where neighbours are ever-present and rumours travel fast and so does shame, something Takaaki wants to avoid. Certainly, Japanese tradition where people greet new neighbours is seen here to show how bonds are cemented or ignored. The character’s use of a lift to go between floors creates moments of unhappy meetings that draw out the awkwardness of the situation. And so, even though Takaaki is morally wrong in his actions, his desire to protect his parents from being ostracised due to scandal inform his actions and that makes for an interesting dilemma for him to wrestle and for us to think about with while we watch and wait to see if his lies will ever come to light, especially as more and more people get dragged into harm’s way and are made to suffer.
At this point, audiences will be intrigued by this story set up and watch through the fingers, at points, as Takaaki’s facades risk being poked through by people asking too many questions. Shinsuke Kato is brilliant at showing the way guilt eats away at his character due to his wrongdoing with his brusque behaviour and braggadocio from earlier being carefully dialled down to the hunched movement and darting gaze of someone waiting to be discovered by an accuser and humiliated in public and sneaky duplicitous actions taken in shadows and whispered over phones.
This is meat enough but the film surprises with an emotionally powerful ending. Wrapped up in Takaaki’s predicament the grief over a lost son that the family tamp down flows underneath ever-present and the father’s dementia brilliantly comes into play at the end where, forgetful that his boy is gone, he insists on making a call and talking about his feelings. This unleashes a flood of emotions from the actors, especially Kato, whose tears are quite affecting as the pressure of his present situation and sense of loss become too much to bare without his parent’s aid.
In the face of a fracturing family, the father’s fading memory, and the folly of failing to face up to his neighbour’s, Takaaki reaches a moment of catharsis and however me might look down upon him for his selfishness, it is hard not to be moved, especially as it gives the sense that the family might be able to heal.
