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Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan, 1978) debuted with the university thesis
Passion (2008).
The five-hour epic Happi Awa/ Happy Hour (2015), co-written with Hatano Koubou (i.e. the duo of Tadashi Nohara and Tomoyuki Takahashi),
is the first demonstration of
Hamaguchi's slow-paced cinema, with several segments feeling like
real-time documentaries or home videos.
Hamaguchi wants us to experience a scene as if we were exactly there with the
characters, embedded in the story.
On the other hand, he often spends only one second on events that change the course of the narrative: when a character who breaks a leg, when a character takes a ferry for an unknown destination, when a character has an almost lethal car accidents, ...
The women self-psychoanalyze. The film becomes a psychological tour de force of increasingly intimate confessions that border on existentialist philosophy.
The film displays great cinematic art, with dozens of inspiring tableux, despite the fact that every setting is ordinary.
In his hands the most mundane of scenes become philosophical essays.
Four women in their 30s travel to a mountaintop for a picnic. Unfortunately,
there is no view because it's a foggy day.
They plan a trip to Arima, a hot-springs spa resort, and to attend the first workshop organized by Fumi and her business partner Kawano for new-age guru Ukai in their new art space.
Very few people signed up for the workshop due to the fact that the flyer advertising it was published too late.
Akari is a senior nurse at a hospital, working for doctor Kurita, and coaches the young inexperienced nurse Yuzuki.
Sakurako is a sweet housewife with a teenage son, Daiki, and who now is sharing
the house with her the mother of her husband Yoshihiko.
She falls asleep on the couch waiting for her husband Yoshihiko, who comes home
hungry from work. He's a government employee.
She asks him permission to go on the trip with her friends.
Akari is a lonely and melancholic woman. She meets a divorced man who is looking for a mother for his daughter Suzuka. She is divorced too and doesn't want to get into a new relationship.
Jun tells Sakurako something disturbing and asks her not to tell Akari and Fumi.
During the workshop (a segment that lasts 30 minutes) Ukai demonstrates how to balance chairs in unorthodox manners (his specialty that made him famous) as a starting point to discuss how to find the center of mass of a person, which in turn is the gateway to explore unconventional ways of communicating with others.
The rest of the workshop is all about making bodies communicate through movement. The girls enjoy the workshop.
At the end of the workshop, Sakurako is asked out by a young participant,
Kazama, and politely declines.
This scene is followed by another extended (25-minute) scene in which Fumi, Kawano, the girlfriends, Ukai and other participants of the workshop
(Kazama, Hinako, and Yoshie, three old friends of Ukai)
gather in a bar.
Kawano explains that he invited Ukai after witnessing his spontaneous installation at a beach, where he balanced found objects in impossible positions.
Jun and Sakurako have known each other since high school, for 25 years.
Akari is blunt about the power of medicine to extend the lifespan: the dark
side of it is that everybody ends up in a hospital with dementia.
She elaborates on the tough duties of a nurse.
She makes everybody depressed.
She tells the group that she is divorced,
while Sakurako, Fumi and Jun are still married.
Kazaka says that he is divorced too and tells the long story of his divorce.
Both Kazaka and Akari divorced because of their spouse's infidelity.
Jun discloses to the whole group that she wants to divorce
her husband, biologist Kohei, and confesses that she cheated on him,
but the husband doesn't want to grant her a divorce.
Everybody is depressed after this embarrassing conversation.
Later, at the subway station,
Jun chats with Sakurako about it and seems sure of her decision, but then
she almost faints and spends the night at Sakurako's and Yoshihiko's place.
Fumi gets home to find her long-haired husband Takuya sleeping on the couch.
He works for a publisher and is organizing an event for a female author and
would like to invite Ukai as a guest, but Fumi doesn't like the idea.
When he leaves for work, she regrets having said it.
She seems to be jealous of the young female author: Kozue Nose.
Sakurako's husband Yoshihiko gives a ride to Jun. He is cold but honest He can't answer the simple question whether he loves Sakurako, and asks Jun not to invite Sakurako out, seeing it as a distraction from her home duties.
We sense that Jun thinks
Sakurako is being neglected by the stern hardworking Yoshihiko the same way she, Jun, was neglected by her husband Kohei.
Akari goes out with the divorced man and his little girl.
Back home, she receives a weird phone call from her ex-husband who is inviting her to his second wedding.
Another long scene is Juns divorce court hearing.
Her three friends are the only audience in the courtroom.
A tape is played of Jun's confession that she was cheating on her husband.
Jun in the witness box explains that she wanted to hurt her husband.
Jun has trouble explaining why she felt abused by her husband even if he never physically nor verbally abused her. It's his coldness who hurt her, and their
rare sex is the reason they don't have a child. She says: "I was killed by my husband".
The judge cannot grant the divorce without any evidence that the husband abused her.
The girls are shaken by Jun's ordeal.
Fumi returns home and asks her husband Takuya an opinion on Kohei since he once
interviewed him. Takuya keeps talking about the young female author,
Kozue Nose. He even offers
to drive the four friends to the hot springs because the female author wants
to write about them. So he's really doing it for the author,
Kozue Nose,
not for his wife and her friends.
Sakurako tells Yoshihiko about Jun's trial, clearly identifying with Jun,
and
Yoshihiko behaves exactly like Kohei: cold and indifferent.
Granma tells Sakurako and Yoshihiko that she found a girl in Daiki's bedroom.
She suggests that they discuss contraception with the kid.
Jun works in a restaurant. Her husband confronts her. He is determined to fight
the divorce. He begs her to go back to him. She swears she will never return.
She provokes him, and even pours water on his head, hoping that he will lose control and hit her, but he doesn't.
The day of the trip comes.
Takuya drives Jun, Sakurako, Fumi and Akari. During the trip he keeps talking
about the young female author and invites them to attend her future reading where she
will also talk about the hot springs.
When they reach the hot springs, the four girls see Takuya walking around with
Kozue Nose.
Funi is uncomfortable and the other girls easily realize the reason.
When their time is over,
Jun, who has quit her job, decides to stay longer by herself and takes a bus. She befriends a fellow passenger, the 28-year-old Takino, who is there because she is fond of waterfalls but has to go back home because her parents have problems.
Kohei summons Akari, Fumi and Sakurako: Jun has disappeared. We learn that Jun is pregnant with his child, which contradicts what Jun said at the trial.
The girls have a hard time believing that Jun was sleeping with Kohei after what
she told them about hating him. Either she always lied to them or the baby is not Kohei's.
Sakurako knew about the pregnancy but kept the secret.
But even she doesn't know where Jun is.
At the hospital, the stern Akari makes a
mistake that could have killed a patient, and
the shy young nurse Yuzuki finds out. Akari thanks her but then coldly and cruelly decides to write a report against her because she should have spoken up earlier. As she walks away, Akari falls down the stairs and breaks a leg.
Daiki tells his mother Sakurako that he got his girlfriend
Yuki
pregnant and they need money for an abortion.
Yoshihiko is angry but cold as usual. For him it is just a matter of paying
some money to the family of the girl.
His mother and Sakurako go in person to apologize and deliver the money to the family.
Doctor Kurita drives Akari home from the hospital. She needs crutches for her
broken leg. He tries to kiss her, but she rejects him and slaps him in the face.
Jun, who is now visibly pregnant, accidentally runs into Daiki at a ferry station, and she makes Daiki listen to the baby in her womb.
Daiki confesses that he and his girlfriend Yuki were planning to elope together but the girl stood him up. Daiki thanks Jun for having arranged the marriage between her parents: he exists because of her. Jun seems to be in good spirits. We see her leaving on the ferry but we are not told where she is traveling to.
Sakurako finds out that Daiki is missing
Sakurako takes the train to
Takuya's literary event at
Fumi's art space that features
Kozue Nose and Ukai. We finally see Kozue. She reads from her forthcoming book of short stories.
We hear five minutes of Kozue's tedious monotone reading.
Fumi eventually walks out of the room, followed by Ukai. She rejects his invitation to leave the meeting and leaves alone, while Fumi walks back in.
Minutes later Ukai makes the same proposal to Akari, who is arriving late on crutches.
Kawano and Fumi receive a text message from Ukai saying that he is not the right
person to interview Kozue and even quits as resident artist of their art space.
Takuya asks Fumi to do the interview, but she refuses.
Takuya surprisingly asks Jun's husband Kohei to conduct the interview.
Meanwhile, Ukai and Akari have taken a taxi to a dance club.
We are treated to five more minutes of Kozue's monotone reading.
Then Takuya introduces Kohei as the interviewer, and Kohei turns out to be a much more interesting man than Jun's description made it look like, a scientist capable of connecting biological evolution and literature. In fact, Kohei steals the show because his monologues are more interesting than Kozue's answers.
In fact, it is Kohei's analysis that makes Kozue's story interesting,
certainly more than Kozue's conventional answers.
Fumi and Takuya thank Kohei and invite him to dinner with Kozue. They also invite Sakurako who is in the audience.
Sakurako compliments Kozue for bringing out things about the hot springs in her story that she had missed when visiting in person.
Kohei gives another penetrating analysis of Kozue's story, noticing that her female character doesn't really love anybody, which implies that the author (Kozue) doesn't know love. It also clearly implies that he, Kohei, knows what real love is.
Sakurako accuses Kohei of selfish, one-sided love, of not considering Jun's feelings.
Kohei confesses that the trial was the deepest communication between he and his wife since they got married. He fell even more in love with her.
He pledges to continue looking for Jun, even if it takes his whole life and all of his money, and he asks them for help to contact Ukai.
Meanwhile, Akari and Ukai are at the nightclub chatting with the bartender, who turns out to be Hinako.
Akari seems hostile but can't resist Ukai's cynical albeit magnetic persona.
Ukai even drags her to the dancefloor, even though obviously Akari cannot dance with a broken leg. The dancers lift Akari over their heads while Ukai shifts his
attention to an underage girl.
Back to the dinner, Kohei explains why he wants to talk to Ukai. He has found out that Ukai arranged for Jun to be taken in by a women's shelter (a shelter for women who run away from their husbands).
Fumi, just like
Sakurako earlier,
is outraged that Kohei doesn't face the fact that Jun doesn't love him, but
Kozue jumps in to defend Kohei: Kozue accuses Fumi and
Sakurako of using Jun to speak for their own situation of frustrated wives.
This in front of Fumi's husband.
Sakurako resents her intrusion.
Kohei states that he is prepared to live a life of disappointment.
Takuya decides to drive Kozue home.
Fumi gets upset. Sakurako gets angry that
Takuya doesn't understand why Fumi is upset.
Takuya resents Sakurako's intrusion
Fumi walks out and Takuya doesn't follow her.
Sakurako runs after Fumi who is boarding a subway train.
The situation got extremely embarrassing.
Meanwhile, at the club Hinako reveals to Akari that she is Ukai's sister.
Ukai is nowhere to be found.
Hinako tells Akari that Ukai is a selfish heartless man and a control freak.
Akari warns Hinako that she is too close to Ukai, almost like a wife.
They ask each other intimate questions.
Akari confesses that she needs a man.
She also confesses that she's had sex with two men that week.
Hinako gets erotically excited and suddenly kisses Akari, who lets her do it.
Ukai arrives to interrupts them.
Akari jumps to him and kisses him, and asks Ukai to help her
Sakurako and Fumi are on the subway train.
Sakurako tells Fumi that she has had no sex in a long time.
They get out of the train, and Sakurako shocks Fumi by impulsively jumping back onto the train when she realizes that Kazama is on the train, Kazama being the man who was attracted to her at the workshop. Fumi stares speechless at the train moving away.
Meanwhile, Takuya is driving Kozue to her place.
Kozue confesses that she is in love with him.
We are only shown from high above that the car stops and we can guess that they are kissing.
Takuya's wife Fumi is walking home alone. She eventually gets home at sunrise.
Takuya gets home at the same time. She says that she just took a long walk.
He admits that he spent the night with Kozue but denies having sex with her.
Takuya offers to cut all ties with Kozue but
Fumi has has enough anyway and decides to break up.
Takuya tells her that she's wonderful, apologizes for hurting her, and leaves.
Fumi, psychologically exhausted, lies on the floor
Next we see the wreckage of Takuya's car, implying that he got into an accident.
Sakurako comes home in the morning after a night out. She confesses to
Yoshihiko that she had sex with another man.
Yoshihiko is hurt and confesses that his detached and cold way of behaving is the only way he knows. She tells him that she doesn't feel sorry. He wears his jacket and leaves for work. She goes back to the usual household chores.
We see that minutes later in the street Yoshihiko stops walking and starts crying like a child.
Akari, who still has a cast on her leg, shows up at work surprising Yuzuki.
It's a different Akari though: she is now warm and understanding with the shy and humble Yuzuki. Akari even hugs her.
Yuzuki tells Akari that there's a new patient, the victim of a car accident who
is in a coma.
We guess it's Takuya. In fact, Akari finds Fumi sitting in the waiting area.
They walk to the terrace so Akari can smoke a cigarette.
Despite all the tragedies and the breakups,
Akari is already thinking of organizing a new trip when Jun returns.
Asako I & II (2018), adapted from
Tomoka Shibasaki's
"Netemo Sametemo/ Even if I sleep or get cold" (2010),
is a half-baked melodrama with a boring frustrating ending.
A young woman, Asako, is attracted by a boy, Baku, she sees at a photo exhibition and follows him in the street. He stops, turn, they exchange first names, and kiss.
They are students from the same university.
Haruyo is Asako's best friend, while
Okazaki is Baku's landlord, and by coincidence Haruyo knows Okazaki.
Haruyo disapproves of Asako dating Baku because she has information that he breaks hearts.
Asako and Baku are happy even when they have a motorcycle accident that could have been serious.
Asako is invited to dinner by Baku and his friends.
After dinner, Baku walks out to buy bread.
In the morning he's not back yet.
Baku's friend explains to Asako that Baku has the habit of disappearing even for several days. It started when his father died. Asako is scared but Baku does return and promises he'll never do it again.
The voiceover informs us that six months later Baku disappeared again and this time he never returned.
Two years later Akaso, who is now working for a coffee shop, gets transfixed when she meets businessman Ryohei: he looks just like Baku. He denies being Baku and claims to be an only child but admits having studied in the same town where she studied.
One evening Ryohei runs into Asako, who touches his face and stares
silently at him.
Ryohei is scared by Asako's reaction, but then helps her and her friend
walk into a photo exhibition. Afterwards Ryohei chats with
Asako's friend and housemate, aspiring actress Maya, while Asako can't utter a word, because of his striking resemblance to Baku.
She is still secretly suspecting that he is Baku.
He is new in town and has no friends, so Maya invites him to come and visit them.
Ryohei invites coworker Kushihashi to join.
Maya makes the mistake of showing a video of her acting in a
Chekhov play to Ryohei and Kushihashi without knowing that
Kushihashi knows Chekhov by heart and wanted to be an actor himself.
Kushihashi cruelly criticizes Maya's acting and Asako defends her until
Kushihashi apologizes and admits that he was just being jealous.
Asako is still unsure and ironically her weird behavior makes Ryohei
fall in love with her. They kiss.
Days later, Asako wants to break up with no explanation.
Ryohei is desperate. He looks for Maya at a performance of an Ibsen play.
Maya tells him that Asako is quitting her job at the coffee shop which will make it even more difficult to see her. During the performance an
earthquake strikes and the audience has to evacuate the theater.
All the trains have stopped so everybody is on foot. Ryohei runs into Asako who
silently hugs him.
Five years later, Asako and Ryohei are living together but not married yet, and
Ryohei has become a successful businessman.
On eday, Asako runs into her old friend Haruyo, who too is amazed by how
similar Ryohei is to Baku. Haruyo married a Singaporean.
She tells Asako that Baku has become a famous model and TV actor.
Asako and Ryohei invite both
Haruyo and Maya, who is now married to Kushihashi and pregnant.
They watch television and see Baku in a commercial. Maya is crazy about him,
and Asako confesses to Maya that she was Baku's boyfriend.
She never told him that she was dating a lookalike.
Ryohei proposes to Asako and Asako finally
musters the courage to tell him about Baku.
He says he had already guessed.
One day Asako and Haruyo are walking in a park when the rumor spreads that
the famous actor Baku is nearby. Asako starts running with the crowd towards
Baku. He is already inside a car with blackened windows but she waves in front of
the car so that Baku must see her.
One day when Asako is home alone Baku shows up. He tracked her down and wants
her to leave with him. Asako hides in a corner of the kitchen. She is scared
when someone opens the door but it's just Ryohei with Maya and Kushihashi.
Did Baku truly show up or did she imagine it?
The five friend (including Haruyo) go to a restaurant.
Suddenly, Baku walks into the restaurant and sits at their table.
He again asks Asako to leave with her, this time in
front of Ryohei and of her friends.
Asako meekly follows him, dumping her husband.
Maya calls begging her to return. Asako coldly tells her to
throw away all her stuff. Maya curses her and tells her never to come back.
But then suddenly she decides to go back to Ryohei. She asks Baku to leave her
in the middle of nowhere. She walks alone along the beach and then borrows
money to get on a bus. She tells
Ryohei that she loves him but he doesn't trust her anymore.
He doesn't forgive her.
Asako visits Baku's old friend Okazaki, who is now paralyzed and can communicate only via an electronic device.
She bonds with the woman who is devoted to him, Eiko.
And she keeps searching for her beloved cat, which Ryohei let go.
In vain. She begs Ryohei to take her back. She even
desperately runs after Ryohei, who runs away from her.
He finally opens the door, and hands her the cat, which he actually kept.
Ryohei tells Asako that Maya delivered her baby.
And then he seems to take her back even though he says that he will never be
able to trust her again.
Guzen to Sozo/ Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) is a collection of three stories.
Doraibu Mai Ka/ Drive My Car (2021) is only loosely based
on Haruki Murakami's short story (2014), which has a very different plot.
The film is only marginally interested in the relationship between life
and theater and a lot more on the complexity of the human psyche.
The three-hour film is a methodical build-up of psychological pressure,
but it seems to lack an adequate ending.
A naked woman is telling the story of a
teenage girl who is obsessed with her first love and fellow schoolmate, Yamaga. This girl finds where the family hides the house's key and sneaks inside the boy's room when nobody is around. Then she leaves clues around for the boy to realize that she was there.
We see that the woman, Oto, just had sex with her husband, Yusuke.
Later as they are driving he continues the story for her: the teenage girl
is trying to wrestle the boy from his mother's control.
Yusuke drives Oto to a meeting and then drives to his theater where he
is staging Beckett's "Waiting for Godot". Oto
introduces Yusuke to a young promising actor who helps her enact her stories, Koshi.
Yusuke leaves for a business trip, but at the airport learns that his flight has been canceled and his meeting postponed.
He drives back home and finds Oto having sex with Koshi.
Yusuke leaves the house silently, lights up a cigarette and wait patiently.
Oto calls him on the computer and he pretends to be in Vladivostok.
Oto has given Yusuke a tape of Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya" which Yusuke
plays all the time in the car memorizing Vanya's lines.
One week later, while driving around, Yusuke gets into an accident.
At the hospital he is diagnosed with glaucoma: the disease is
incurable and one can only slow down its progression.
We then see Oto and Yusuke at a
temple praying in front of the photo of a dead little girl.
On the way back home, Oto asks Yusuke if he still wants kids.
She behaves like a loving, devoted wife.
During sex she continues her script: the girl used to be a lamprey in a previous life and karmic fate is causing her to be haunted by that boy;
she masturbates in the boy's bed and someone enters the house. Here she
cannot finish the story.
Yusuke drives to work by himself for the first time since the accident.
Oto tells him that they have something to discuss in the evening.
In the car Yusuke recites "Uncle Vanya". He is moved by the ending dialogue
of Sonya talking to Vanya.
Yusuke returns home late and finds Oto dead from a brain hemorrhage.
At the funeral he sees Koshi again.
Yusuke plays Vanya in theater but
leaves the stage
after reciting the line "woman's fidelity is a lie".
Two years later, Yusuke
drives to Hiroshima and sleeps in a parking lot
(the opening credits of the film roll only now, 40 minutes into the film, as if the film started here).
The director of a theater introduces him to a Korean
literary advisor, Yoon-su.
We learn that Yusuke has won a
two-month residency, which includes six weeks of rehearsals, to produce
"Uncle Vanya".
He has chosen to live in a quiet island one hour away. They assign him
a driver, a young girl, Misaki Watari.
He is reluctant to let her drive his old car but has no choice.
During the drive he listens to the tape of "Uncle Vanya".
The auditions begin. Many actors applied from overseas.
Koshi and a Taiwanese girl named Janice audition together despite speaking different languages.
Yusuke interrupts them when they get to a kissing scene.
The last actress to audition is a mute who communicates in Korean sign language, translated by Yoon-su.
Few people audition for the part of Vanya that Yasuke could play himself.
Surprisingly, Yusuke picks Koshi, despite his young age, to play Vanya (in the play Vanya is a 47-year-old man).
Koshi himself is surprised and reluctant.
The mute is chosen too for a part, the part of Sonya (an important part because Sonya delivers the final monologue). The Taiwanese actress Janice is chosen for the part of Yelena. Other actors speak Korean or English, so it is a truly multilingual experience.
Koshi invites Yusuke for a drink and says
that he really enjoyed enacting Oto's scripts. He
confesses that he ruined his acting career because of love affairs.
Koshi wants Yusuke to talk about Oto.
Yusuke accuses Koshi of having been in love with Oto but Koshi denies it.
They are interrupted when someone takes a picture of them and Koshi gets angry, showing his violent temper.
Koshi mentions that he feels Oto brought them together in that city to perform that play.
Yusuke's method is to start with the actors reading their parts.
The Taiwanese actress, Janice, is unhappy with Yusuke's method.
When he invites Yusuke and his chaffeur to dinner,
the Korean advisor reveals that the mute actress playing Sonya is actually his wife.
The chaffeur, Misaki, who has become familiar with the play because Yusuke wants her to play the tape all the time, is impressed to learn that Sonya is played by a mute.
Yusuke praises Misaki's driving in front of the Koreans.
The following day Yusuke sees Koshi and the Taiwanese girl stuck on the road.
Yusuke is aware that Koshi doesn't speak Chinese nor English and that Janice doesn't speak Japanese, so the two cannot possibly have conversations.
They show up late at the rehearsal.
That night Yusuke asks his chaffeur Misaki to spend the evening with him and she gives him a tour of Hiroshima along the axis of peace leading from the atomic bomb memorial to the sea.
She tells him how her mother died in a mudslide five years earlier, leaving her alone when she was only 18, and how she drove away until the car broke down in Hiroshima.
So far, Yusuke has had the actors mostly read the play, not act it. Finally he takes them to a public garden and lets them act their parts, again each one speaking her or his own language. First is a scene between
Yelena (played by Janice in Mandarin) and Sonya (played by the mute in sign language).
Koshi invites Yusuke again for a drink. He feels uncomfortable playing an
old man. He confesses that he originally accepted only because he was desperate.
Yusuke encourages him to stick to the part. Again,
someone takes pictures of Koshi. At the exit Koshi chases him and we don't see what happens between them.
Misaki drives both men home. Yusuke tells Koshi that he and Oto had a daughter who died at the age of four of pneumonia and she would now be 23 (incidentally, Misaki's age).
The tragedy deeply affected Oto, who
quit acting and started writing stories, or, better, telling them,
and always during sex.
Yusuke also tells Koshi that he knew of her many love affairs, usually with
actors playing her stories. Yusuke accepted it as part of her job, and never told Oto that he knew.
(Yusuke doesn't explicitly tell Koshi that he saw them having sex at home).
Koshi knows the ending of Oto's unfinished story: when the girl is masturbating, someone enters the house, but it's neither Yamaga nor his parents, it's a burglar who finds her naked in bed and tries to rape her but she kills him and leaves the corpse in Yamaga's room.
The following day Yamaga looks normal in school.
She returns to Yamaga's house and sees a security camera on the front door and the key is no longer where it used to be.
While driving, Misaki has been listening to the whole conversation.
At last, there are rehearsals on a theatrical stage, but just then the cops
show up and arrest Koshi. It turns out he beat up the photographer and
the man died.
Koshi calmly confesses and leaves with the cops after bending respectfully in front of Yusuke.
Yusuke has no choice but to play Vanya himself.
Yusuke asks Misaki to drive him to her hometown, which is a long drive
through the night.
Yusuke confesses that he got home late the night his wife died because he was afraid of what his wife wanted to discuss.
Misaki, in turn, confesses that she could have saved her mother but didn't
because she hated her.
She still bears a scar on her face from that accident.
Yusuke feels that he could have saved Oto if he had come home earlier, so
he tells Misaki that he killed his wife and she killed her mother.
They take a ferry to Misaki's island while television news is talking about
Koshi, his murder and the fact that his career had been hurt by a
relationship he had with an underage girl.
After the ferry, they still have to drive through a snowy landscape to
reach the ruined home in which Misaki's mother died.
While throwing flowers at the ruins, Misaki tells Yusuke that her mother had a second personality, Sachi, an eight-year-old who appeared
after her mother abused Misaki, and Sachi was Misaki's only friend.
Yusuke's wife Oto too had two personalities: the loving wife and the cheater.
Yusuke sobbing admits that he misses Oto and can't forgive himself for not having fully accepted her double personality.
Yusuke hugs Misaki like a father.
We now see the premiere of the play, with Yusuke playing Vanya.
The last scene of the play is Sonya's uplifting monologue, standing behind the desperate Vanya, and it is delivered in sign language by the mute actress.
We see a close-up of Misaki sitting among the audience.
The play ends.
The film fast-forwards ahead and shows Misaki in the time of covid, when everybody is wearing facemasks, shopping in a Korean supermarket.
She walks to the parking lot and opens Yusuke's car. There's a dog inside.
No sign of Yusuke. She removes her facemask and we see that the scar has disappeared.
Walden (2022) is a two-minute meditative short.
Aku Wa Sonzai Shinai/ Evil Does Not Exist (2023) is
an enigmatic philosophical puzzle that unfortunately remains incomprehensible to the end.
The director toys with the spectator: instead of focusing on the pathos of the story, the director focuses lengthy shots on irrelevant details.
It is almost a Brecht-ian strategy to make the spectator realize that this is just a spectable, and, as far as spectacles go, the fictitious story is not any
more important than a tree or footprints in the snow.
The story, in fact, is hardly interesting, and doesn't have an ending.
The film begins with the camera staring at the top of the trees from the ground,
gliding through the lower branches of the forest like an airplane in reverse.
Takumi in a nice cabin in a cold mountain forest. He leads a simple life in an
idyllic natural environment.
His friend Kazuo helps him collect water from a creek. They find and pick
wild wasabi.
Kazuo reminds him of a community meeting.
First, Takumi has to carry home
his eight-year-old daughter Hana on his shoulders through the forest. Along
the way he teaches her about the plants and the animals.
Takumi, Kazuo and other friends have dinner together and discuss the project
that has been proposed by a construction firm to develop a
glamorous camping site for 64 people.
The following day they all attend the community meeting in which the firm
outlines the project.
Kazuo is the first to voice dissent, afraid that the projected septic tank will
pollute their wells. The company representatives remind the audience that
the project will turn their village into a tourist hotspot.
The villagers get more upset as the meeting goes on and several details turn out to be dubious.
The company is in a hurry to begin construction because it wants to qualify for government subsidies that are about to expire.
The company representatives are actually just a hired PR agency: the company
didn't even have the decency of sending the experts or, better, the president in person.
The old village chief feels sorry for the company representatives and advise them to treat Takumi well because he could help them improve the project as he knows
the territory well and is influential on the community.
The two hapless representatives report back to the president via videoconference
and he still refuses to meet the villagers in person.
The president and is advisor Hasegawa remark that they already bought the land and that delays would be expensive. The president suggests hiring Takumi as caretaker.
The two hapless company representatives are uncomfortable with the scheme but drive back to the village and meet with Takumi.
(The drive back takes up many minutes of lengthy and pointless conversation that only sheds light on the private lives of these two secondary characters).
They bond with Takumi, a widower who lives only for his little daughter.
But Takumi refuses the job of caretaker.
They hear gunshots in the distance: deer hunters.
Meanwhile, Hana feeds the cow, but then she's horrified by the stench of the manure and runs away.
The following day Hana walks home alone through the forest like she's done before, but this time she doesn't get home.
The two company representatives help Takumi search for Hana.
The whole village joins in the search.
Takumi's daughter Hana goes missing and the village community searches into the night for her.
At Dawn Takumi and the male representative find Hana in an open field in front
of a deer that has been wounded by gunshots. As Hana walks towards the deer,
Takumi strangles the representative until almost killing him (with no explanation for why).
He then runs to Hana who has been hit in the face by the animal and carries her away.
The representative is alive but has trouble getting up.
The film ends with images of the forest in the mist.
As darkness falls again, we hear footsteps.
Gift (2023) is an alternate version of Evil Does Not Exist.
(Copyright © 2020 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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