スノードロップ 「Suno-doroppu」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 98 mins.
Director: Kota Yoshida
Writer: Kota Yoshida (Screenplay),
Starring: Aki Nishihara, Haruhi Ito, Rao Onozuka, Naoko Miya, Kensuke Ashihara,
A profound sense of despair and, eventually, hope haunts Snowdrop, a domestic drama with shades of social consciousness that was written and directed by Kota Yoshida. His story, based on a real-life incident, explores welfare support through the experiences of a claimee and a caseworker. He tells it with a restraint designed to foreground a superb acting performance by leading lady Aki Nishihara who portrays a character whose dignified front hides the anguish of a woman trapped by circumstance.
If you haven’t seen this, I won’t reveal too much in this review.
The focus of the story is a 30-something woman named Naoko (Aki Nishihara). After a mysterious opening montage where characters disappear and reappear in Naoko’s childhood, we get caught up in her present-day plight. Unemployed and already stretched to her limit due to the demand of caring for her dementia-stricken mother, she is forced to apply for government assistance when her father’s gout makes it impossible for him to work and she figures out family finances are going to fail.
We follow the processing of her application, from her father’s illness to her first steps into the city office where she meets Munemura (Haruhi Ito), a diligent case worker whose perspective also informs the narrative. Things seem bleak but it appears that Naoko is just holding on. Her stoic face reveals nothing and she approaches the process with diligence. It seems apt that the kanji 直子 of her name means “obedient child” as she keeps her family together despite the immense pressure on her. Munemura is impressed but not all is as it seems and this forms the buried suspense that compellingly and subtly informs this work.
“I should’ve tried harder to understand you.”
This is a slow burn experience. Stylistically, the film settles perfectly into a sense of reality with its real-time narrative and lived-in locations of the city office and Naoko’s rented one-storey family home in the suburbs of a rural town. Within this world, the minutiae of form filling and interviews takes place.
As Naoko’s routine is described on screen, one naturally feels she is being overburdened with care work and there is the ring of topicality in the depiction elder care and public welfare. This will make the drama resonate with viewers since we live in an age where we are all increasingly asked to do too much with too little help.
It all feels like a follow-the-line story will transpire as Naoko says the right things about returning to work and accepting care. However, occasionally, she reacts in ways that suggest her fragility.
Snowdrop slowly changes as Naoko’s eventual escape from her situation takes place within the framework of a character study. Here, Aki Nishihara is immensely powerful. She offers an enigmatic performance that keeps us fixated on her with highly controlled behaviour. We want to know what is going on inside Naoko’s head in her difficult situation because we empathise after seeing her plight but Nishihara’s placid face makes her a picture of stoicism. She only reveals her disquiet with small physical tells – pursed lips when asked questions, clutching her coat during interviews, often talking to others with a downcast gaze, and clasping her hands when uncertain. Yoshida’s restrained direction via slow pacing, static takes, and sparing use of close ups ensures that we pick up on everything.
The more we witness, the deeper into the enigma of Naoko’s behaviour we are sucked. Vigilant viewers will gradually become aware of a subtext of abandonment binding everything in Naoko’s life together. The motif is obvious from flashbacks, her mother’s dementia-driven ramblings, and symbolic images of hands that suggest togetherness and abandonment. That symbolism is expanded into learning to let go and it is after that moment that the film’s tour de force of acting comes from Nishihara in a two-minute monologue where Naoko reveals the true reason of her behaviour. Here everything falls into place and Nishihara’s performance crescendos as she allows her character’s lifetime worth of emotional weight to burst through that placid visage. With her tears and contorted features revealing the profound sense of anguish she has lived with. I had been dragged along by intrigue, the tension rising to this moment and finally my heart broke and I cried.
Helping the film reach this point is Haruhi Ito’s performance which offers a good foil in the form of her character who goes through her own moral journey and also cares enough to become a sympathetic ear for Naoko. The other performers are also finely tuned, each acting out a character that feels real but also feels like they work together in a way that allows Naoko to escape her fate.
As grim as it sounds, the film ends on a quietly hopeful note and a sense of catharsis. The state has not abandoned Naoko so much as it is unaware of her plight, silent as she had been for so long. The narrative serves to become something of a public service announcement as characters offer support and state that welfare is open to all who need it. In a final shot, we get that titular snowdrop. In terms of flower language, a snowdrop can represent hope and new beginnings and it is a wonder to behold.
This film is truly moving and Aki Nishihara is incredible, her co-stars equally wonderful.
I must admit that the delicacy and seriousness came as a surprise to me considering, through a lack of familiarity with his full body of work, I associate Kota Yoshida’s name with his more well known erotic narratives like Sexual Drive (2021) and Yuriko’s Aroma (2010). However, my estimation of his abilities has radically changed after viewing Snowdrop due to the emotional power and intellectual focus of the film.
Snowdrop was screened at Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024 on March 05. It will play again on March 08 at ABC Hall at 10:20.
You can read an interview with the director here.