Duration: 27 mins.
Release Date: February 09th, 2024
Director: Masaru Sano
Writer: FUJINOYAMAI (Screenplay)
Starring: Minori Fujidera, Akari Takaishi,
“Ayaka. Do you still want to die?”
These words delivered near the end have quite the effect because the drama preceding to them is rich with atmosphere delivered through Masaru Sano’s impressively imaginative and visually dazzling conception of a serious look at life and death.
The story is of two young women who both carry within them an incurable disease. Ayaka (Minori Fujidera) is in hospital due to arteriosclerosis and she will lose her legs in a month. Yoshino (Akari Takaishi) is in a neighbouring sanatorium because she has congenital generalised arborisation syndrome, a fantasy condition that will see her also lose her legs as she turns into a literal tree and spend the remainder of her days bathing in the sun.
Their meeting came about due to a botched suicide by the downhearted Ayaka who had attempted to hang herself from a tree. Yoshino’s intervention leads to a tour of the sanatorium and, as the two explain their respective maladies to each other, Ayaka begins to learn that even though they will both lose their legs, they will still keep on living. They will bloom once again, albeit in ways she had never considered.
Their winding conversation is excellently constructed as the dialogue is full of parallels made between the two characters that allows Yoshino’s otherworldly aspect to enter Ayaka’s miserable reality. This allows for the film to infuse the atmosphere with a touch of fantasy.
Our two leads may have opposing personalities, which are distinctively drawn through costuming and supple performances – Ayaka, mousy but wearing bright clothes and eventually exuding an air of wonder, Yoshino looking a little goth, like Wednesday Adams, and showing some morbidity and cynicism – but they grow closer to each other (and we are sucked in) by their shared connection of and coming to terms with having a fragile human body that is betraying them.
As the diseases that mutate them make them visibly deteriorate on screen (done via subtle CG and makeup), we see their bond grow. All the while, underlying their talk is Yoshino’s message about adapting to maintain life and appreciating it in its many forms, something she has clearly considered a lot of since her sanatorium is littered with a multitude of plants that suggest scores have “passed” on into new lives, something which she now faces.
Both Fujidera and Takaishi perform their roles with sensitivity and grace while their costuming blends beautifully into the background as they move in and out of darkness and through various phases of life in a evocative set of environments.
As they talk, Yoshino leads Ayaka through a distinctive landscape where locations such as the ruins of a hospital building and sets like the dark halls and wards of the sanitorium are full of visual motifs that remind both the characters and viewers that they are surrounded by death, disease, and defective bodies. Ayaka’s legs have disturbing discolouration. Yoshino’s feet and fingers display distinctive bark-like flesh (done in CG).
With all of this talk of disease, there is the temptation to use Cronenbergian to describe the process and sight of people losing control of their own body. However, their transformation is done with beautiful imagery rather than the gloopy horrors of a Cronenberg scenario. We may be constantly reminded of our mortality through seeing characters discuss theirs but the beauty and gradual acceptance means that the film has a real sense of catharsis and even optimism for the ending.
This effect is achieved through seeing the pulse of life on screen via the brilliant colours. The shafts of light that pierce the canopy of the forest that Ayaka was intent as using as a suicide spot cast a warm yellow glow. The dark sanitorium, eerie as it is from the plants that spring up from people who harbour Yoshino’s absurd disease, finds itself given rich shades of green ranging from moss-like to lime. Humans merge with their natural environment and blossom once again and there is a sense of renewal despite the debilitation. The narrow aspect ratio and use of black borders also serve to accentuate colours also adds a picture-book quality to make this fairy tale-like.
Just the sight of green, green, green and warm earth tones infuses the screen with a certain lusciousness. As such, when Ayaka and Yoshino’s conversation about death reaches its apotheosis, the stage is ready for a radical switch in mindsets for our initially suicidal protagonist and the film sticks the landing to earn an emotional crescendo. I teared up as Ayaka uttered her final line and believed it with my heart.
And this is a film I could keep coming back to. The fantastical nature of the set-up could all be in the mind of the suicidal girl who tried to hang herself. Could there be an ambiguity to the ending, that Ayaka had really communed with a tree rather than encountered a person who turned into a tree? Who knows?
Whatever the case, great use of light and dark, bold set design, and glorious colours and nuanced performances created an ethereal atmosphere that carried a weirdly life-affirming tale.
Perfect Nervous was screened as part of Osaka Asian Film Festival’s Housen Cultural Foundation-Supported Program. You can read an interview with the director, Masaru Sano, here.