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Dreaming in Between 逃げきれた夢 (2023) Director: Ryutaro Ninomiya

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Dreaming in Between   Dreaming in Between Film Poster R

逃げきれた夢 「Nigekireta Yume

Release Date: June 09th, 2023

Duration: 96 mins.

Director: Ryutaro Ninomiya

Writer: Ryutaro Ninomiya (Screenplay),

Starring: Ken Mitsuishi, Miyu Yoshimoto, Haruka Kudo, Maki Sakai, Yutaka Matsushige, Rei Okamoto,

Website IMDB

The line between hilarity and hurt is brutally thin in Dreaming in Between, Ryutaro Ninomiya’s tragicomic character study of a man coming to terms with the emotional boundaries put up by others.

It’s a quiet and unassuming drama that might slip off radars. This isn’t a story of big emotions, it’s more four days in the life of a government worker realising that he cannot communicate with anyone in his personal life. A modern-day Ikiru (1952), if you will, but without any dreams of a lasting legacy to push the man, just the quiet regrets of living in service to the public at the expense of people in his personal life and finding out that they regard him as a figure on the periphery, as revealed in some cringe-comedy moments that are ultimately sorrowful.

The civil servant is Shuhei Suenaga (Ken Mitsuishi), a middle-aged vice principal of a high school in Kitakyushuu who is on the verge of retirement. As head of discipline, we see him tour his school’s corridors and classrooms and deal with staff and students in a friendly and efficient manner that leaves everyone happy – or, at least, keeps the day passing without incident. In most regards, he appears to be a success as he maintains a routine and revels in his pride in his work ethic.  

In contrast with his professional life, his personal life is a wreck.

He is on bad terms with his wife Akiko (Maki Sakai) and his smartphone-addicted adult daughter Yuma (Haruka Kudo) is alienated from him. He has also become distant with his childhood friend Keiji (Yutaka Matsushige), a foul-mouthed bicycle repair shop owner. His mother is long gone and his father, a formerly stern presence, is in a care home with dementia. Now that his career is winding down, Shuhei realises that he is becoming forgetful – quite worryingly, maybe like his father. 

It becomes obvious when he forgets to pay for a meal in a restaurant where an ex-student, Minami (Miyu Yoshimoto) works. To her, a near stranger, he confesses that he isn’t well and begins to consider what his life is like before his memory fades. With such momentous changes about to occur, he decides to repair his relationships and we watch four days of these disastrous interactions.

This is where the audience might be tempted to laugh as Akiko shrinks from Shuhei’s efforts at skinship after years of neglect. “Can I hug you?” he plaintively asks a visibly disgusted woman. Meanwhile his smartphone-addicted daughter reacts with dubiousness to the change in character – “Are you dying?” she says in shock. Keiji senses a medical issue and family problems at hand but is left cussing out a “best friend” whose pride prevents him from confessing his private shames. 

Dreaming in Between Film Image 2 Yutaka Matsushige and Ken Mitsuishi

There is nothing majorly dramatic in the interactions and that non-reaction and rejection is what makes his indignities sad. While other films might play up interactions for comedic effect, each conversation Shuhei has with a significant other reveals withered relationships. It isn’t anger he gets but pity and indifference at his attempts to reconnect and they signal social distance between people he should be close to. 

An emotional throughline connected to Shuhei being too busy keeping up the appearance of a figure of authority is detected in other people’s gripes and all that’s left after the initial cringe-comedy laughter of social misinteraction and family breakdown laid bare is the tears of a man who demands respect from those he should be able to expect it from. 

Veteran actor Ken Mitsuishi took his first leading role in 12 years to play Shuhei Suenaga and does an impressive job with monologues to a dementia-ridden father where he tragically reveals that he turned into the man he grew up hating. He holds audience sympathy as a hapless person through painful and blackly-comic humiliating confessions of emotional needs to his wife and daughter that involve him physically placing himself in a supplicating position as the two women look on in horror and disgust. Ninimoiya’s camera cuts from looking down on him for an uncomfortable amount of time to a shot where the blocking and acting displaying the broken connections. 

Dreaming in Between Film Image 4

Making things sting that bit more is the sense of realism. That quiet atmosphere makes the whining and the insults pathetic while the narrow 4:3 aspect ratio kind of makes this drama also feel smaller. Adding to the sense of normality is the film being shot in Fukuoka Prefecture, the home of Mitsuishi and Matsushige, and there’s a relaxed feeling to proceedings. Indeed, Ken Mitsuishi is even joined by his father who took on the stern patriarch role.

A quiet drama it may be, what makes the film compelling is watching how the situation is always just out of Shuhei’s grasp to resolve as his pride and disinterest in others get in the way. A quiet desperation emanates from Mitsuishi’s nuanced performance as Shuhei realises that he might be alone. One might hope that he finds some resolution but Ninomiya avoids trite endings and leaves characters adrift, the ending open. 

At the heart of the film is Ninomiya playing with the idea of how having expectations for others doesn’t work out. In a conversation with Minami, as Shuhei  tries to make sense of his life, he admits that maybe it’s best that people have a little distance from each other and it is sad to hear him say that. It is as if he is giving up on family and friends. When Minami, someone so young, voices doubts over her future, a sense of failure builds. Nobody (nor the audience) can see a way forward as things stand and as Ken Mitsuishi shuffles off the screen, a reduced figure of a man who once had authority. 

Dreaming in Between Film Image 5


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