愛の茶番 「Ai no Chaban」
Release Date: 2024
Duration: 120 mins.
Director: Junko Emoto
Writer: Junko Emoto (Screenplay),
Starring: Runa Endo, Ami Tomite, Yuki Sugawara, Ryo Iwase, Kosuke Fujita, Sumihiro Yoshikawa, Kiyobumi Kaneko, Akihito Kajiya, Tomonori Mikan,
It Must Be Love (2023) does so much to humiliate its character that it feels cruel at times. That written, you won’t stop laughing at how farcical events get.
The sophomore feature of theatre troupe leader Junko Emoto (following 2016’s The Extremist’s Opera), this anti-romance casts the titular emotion as a disaster-inducing malaise for those afflicted with it. Once infected, the ego is blinded and all rational relations with the surrounding world are lost. In place of any reasonable perspective is a gaping desire to feel loved in some way, any way, no matter the cost.
The resulting film is filled with tragedy and hilarity simultaneously.
Over a near two-hour narrative, we witness seven years of passions, petty betrayals, public humiliations, and vendettas played out in public by those sick with love.
The story starts with louche lothario Ryosuke (Ryo Iwase). Patient zero, if you will. His habit of loving and leaving ladies must give him an ego boost and part of it must be fed off the ego boosts he visibly enjoys giving women with his sugary words – if he can keep their names in the right order, that is. Alas, his romantic love is cheap and easily spread.
One such woman infected with the love disease is the bespectacled and uber sexual Rumi (Runa Endo). She has it baaaaad for Ryosuke and won’t lose him without a fight. However, she was already suffering another form of lovesickness having grown up in the shadow of her younger (and cuter) sister Aki (Ami Tomite) who had all of their parent’s attention. Resentment boils away between the sisters but as far as the adult Aki goes, she is looking to find her own place in the world and love herself and if that means becoming an idol or talent or lover to do it, then so be it. Lastly there is a mousy girl named Rie (Yuki Sugawara), who was thrown over by Ryosuke (literally) for Rumi and left drifting amongst emotional wreckage and cast-aways in love.
Their experiences with love are bruising to watch but even more despair-inducing are the collection of loveless hangers-on who find themselves following in the wake of the three women with zero chance of attention. Their number includes Aki’s lovelorn manager Donko (Junko Emoto) and Rie’s childhood friend, a perpetual loser in love (and life), Sumio (Sumihiro Yoshikawa).
Watching a seven-year conflict between these characters sounds like a lot but it flies by due to the film’s construction.
Emoto approached her second film as a formal exercise in combining aspects of theatre (minimalist set, live audience participation) and cinema (multiple cameras catching the action, careful editing in post). The result is a cascade of scenes shot in a theatre-like location that focus on the flashpoints between the characters as they alternately try to seduce and tear at each other, all done via improvisational acting that, when combined with the spartan visualisation, leaves characters looking foolish which can be exhilarating for a viewer to experience.
The film is shot in a warehouse location. Specific props and our imaginations being utilised by the cast to stand in for an entire world of coffee shops, supermarkets, and cinemas. It all comes to life because the cast commit to the bit and with nothing overly theatrical from a set design standpoint to distract from the performers.
The improvisation allows an edge of rawness and unpredictability to act as the blade that cuts through our expectations and lead to ridiculous situations that leave us cringing or laughing as the cast work off each other. The dialogue can be wayward and have that awkwardness of people choking on emotion as they sputter out their deepest hurt or go from chill to shrill in fits of rage.
Physical performances match as the cast work through slouching over each other in configurations of lust to wielding baguettes like batons in anger. Meanwhile, the comic and tragic energy of scenes is mainlined to the viewer via the visuals alacrity that Emoto brings via editing. One gag set-up sees Ryosuke reassuring Rumi that he had an amicable breakup with Rie only for a smash-cut to show their fight, complete with foul language and fists flying. An internet show discussion about love ends with a handheld camera pushing up on Rumi who cries over breaking up with Ryosuke, tears and strings of snot dripping down her face. In one of the film’s most agonising and memorable scenes, Aki sings her pop song minus the music. Her weak voice and childish lyrics (which are insults aimed at Rumi) stand out all the more due to the unadorned nature of the presentation and make her seem ridiculous.
At all times, you have to admire the performers for giving it their all in the name of their character being embarrassed in public, a sense built upon by audience participation.
A lot of material flies by and so it is to the credit of Emoto and her team that it all hangs together. The main reason for coherence is that the performers are constantly committed to their parts with such spirit. As the characters thrash about in unexpected ways while others freeze in embarrassment, the film remains consistently in an enjoyable zone between severe sense of second-hand embarrassment and schadenfreude. The editing and camerawork constantly highlight each agonising moment. There is also the commitment to charting the deterioration of relationships and furthering the theme of love driving everyone crazy which is explored nonstop to give the film its direction.
In the end, It Must Be Love ends up being a fun work because it takes what may be a staid relationship drama and turns it into a farce by allowing its cast to put in knock-out performances that frequently cross the line between comic and tragic. The theatre like energy that is showcased by cinematic techniques constantly highlights these strengths and it flies by because of these elements.
It Must Be Love was screened at Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024 on March 03 and March 06.
You can read an interview with the director here.