走れない人の走り方 「Hashirenai Hito no Hasiri-kata」
Release Date: April 26th, 2024
Duration: 83 mins.
Director: Su Yu-chun
Writer: Su Yu-chun (Screenplay),
Starring: Nairu Yamamoto, Saori, Ryusei Isoda, Ryuzaburo Hattori, BEBE,
Inch Forward operates within the well-worn movie-within-a-movie framework. It uses the usual twists and turns and themes of an artist struggling to realise their ideas amidst creative crises but gains a lot of heart by eschewing focussing solely on the individual struggling and placing the act of creation as part of a wider vision of cinema as community.
Inch Forward is set mostly in the summertime sun-drenched suburbs of Tokyo. This is where Kiriko (Nairu Yamamoto), a young indie director already with an award nomination under her belt, is looking to continue her career by making a road movie that ends at a beach. There are bumps along the way to her destination as her indecisive nature leads to a film with no thesis to easily sell it to others, endless location hunts, confused and missing cast members, and terrible timekeeping skills that leave important people hanging. All of this, plus an ever-dwindling budget.
Kiriko’s efforts to inch forward through various challenges while her creative impulse waxes and wanes forms the engine of the plot and lead actor Nairu Yamamoto does well to bring this to life with all of the cheeky grins of a greedy creative taking advantage of others, the crumpled tear-streaked face as a woman facing despair over broken relations and impossible deadlines, and the looks of consternation and clarity of an artist realigning ideas and regaining confidence in her efforts. That written, beyond her work, her character is a bit of a blank.
The extent of Kiriko’s cinephilia is oddly unknown with no dialogue or even posters on the walls of her rooms for shorthand reference. There is also no real broader context of class or politics. It stands in contrast to a somewhat similarly-themed Lucky Chan-Sil (2019) where writer/director Kim Cho-hee seemed to have created her film producer lead character in her own image and used specificity to provide emotional resonance that gained poignancy based on how close a viewer is to her references to Leslie Cheung and Ozu in the face of an industry where people are impressed by Hollywood.
With this in mind it might be said that this lack of identifiers works in making Kiriko a more universal figure and it also helps romanticise the act of creation and keep the experience light. Indeed, this absence allows for a wide constellation of characters that serve to light up paths forward for Kiriko’s journey.
Inch Forward is generous in showing people involved in cinema at all levels. From the patrons of video rental stores to cinematographers clambering over rocks on a beach behind Kiriko and her rival directors giving interviews in online magazines, the film goes beyond the road movie at its core as it is full of similar non-sequitur sequences of people living with cinema in some way and this broadens the world tremendously, especially as they are repeatedly woven in and out of Kiriko’s story at different points.
Their importance is often highlighted in moments when Kiriko is definitely not the focus of scenes. At a critical moment she is given a dressing down by her producer, Takimoto, who scolds the younger woman with a laundry list of misdeeds in a sequence done with an effective use of a sllooooow zoom that builds in intensity as it begins with a wide shot of the two and ends on the producer’s stern face at the crescendo where she underlines all of the problems. Simple techniques like that and the resulting character change in Kiriko helps the film deal out character crisis set-ups and pay-offs. Furthermore, the clarity of the way this information is delivered also helps the film nail how the act of creativity is often based on persistence and picking up the right influences. Persistence in that Kiriko labours through each predicament, the right influences in how she picks up on the advice and inspiration that comes from others and while a lot of the character interactions serve to foreshadow or illuminate Kiriko’s changes, everyone on screen comes with their own quirks that are richly realised by the cast and so they still feel real and impactful while providing organic character development.
This appreciation of how so many people live with cinema is precisely why the film opens with a young Taiwanese woman and her Japanese boyfriend settling down to watch a film in a mini theatre and talking about differences in audience behaviour and for the film to end there with so many familiar faces. This suggests that the authorial intent has always been to champion the influence of everyone involved with cinema and the earnestness and decency afforded to each of the characters imbues Inch Forward with a heart-warming quality. It is also one of a number of fourth wall-breaking sequences and playful games that shows that writer/director Su Yu-chun is skilled at weaving together visual jokes that she deploys to keep the film’s tone light and charming.
Inch Forward is likely a case of “write what you know” since it is Su Yu-chun’s graduation work from Tokyo University of the Arts’ Graduate School of Film and she seems to be at the same stage as Kiriko. It definitely features a sense of intimate familiarity with every level of filmmaking from a new talent’s position that feels true to life and while the final result may be lightweight, it is romantic and fitting as a love letter to cinema and all who are drawn to it. It has the sheen of a fine work that suggests she is a steady hand and able to work with an expansive cast as she shows the way cinema influences all who partake in it.
Inch Forward played at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2024 on March 06 and March 09. It will next be seen at Nippon Connection on May 30.