mondocurry corner: THE LIGHT SHINES ONLY THERE @ Japan Cuts, 2015

THE LIGHT SHINES ONLY THERE is an instance of subtle storytelling being masterfully utilized to tell a potentially heart-rending tale. The film never inundates with a crescendo of dramatics to tell its gripping story of small town woe, nor does it use any particular moments to tug immeasurably at ones heartstrings.  Rather, director Mipo O achieves a slow boil of grief, during which you feel the oppressive summer heat of the small Hokkaido town where the story takes place in every frame, dotting it with poignant moments of humanity when one might least expect to find it.

The conflicts experienced by the film’s central quartet of characters, is not exclusive to provincial locales, but being stuck in a place where everybody knows your name heightens their strife. Everyone is anchored by some sort of burden they drag along. Chinatsu must take care of an ill father consumed with base desires and take on undignified work to make ends meet. Her younger brother Takuji is similarly tethered, baring the additional hindrance of a recent parole hanging over his head. Tatsuo, the stranger who has just walked into town, carries the weight of a fatal accident on a mining job he feels responsible for. Meanwhile, a wealthy farm owner, the closest the film has to a flesh and blood antagonist, uses his resources and influence to try to control passions and break up an otherwise flourishing relationship between Chinatsu and Tatsuo.

Through this simple narrative, the film effectively gets at universal themes: the lifestyle gulf between rich and poor and the nefarious means those with power relative to others in their community resort to when they want get their way.

Go Ayano is compelling as the quietly brooding yet compassionate Tatsuo and Chizuru Ikewaki gives a rather scorching performance, both scintillating and thorny. The chemistry developed between the two is enthralling.

This is powerful filmmaking without flexing its muscles and one of the most beautiful cinematic statements you’ll come across at this year’s Japan Cuts Festival.

 THE LIGHT SHINES ONLY THERE plays the evening of July 15 at the Japan Society. For information and tickets, visit the JAPAN CUTS page of their website. 

ARCHAEOLOGY OF A WOMAN Digs Fertile But Uneven Ground

ARCHAEOLOGY OF A WOMAN, from director Sharon Greytak concerns an elderly woman named Margaret (Sally Kirkland) whose mind is set upon by severe dementia. Normally this would be a harrowing enough premise. However, Margaret also has a past marked by unclear but ominous undertakings. Our introduction to Margaret shows her hobbling restlessly about a supermarket parking lot. She beseeches a police officer for help finding her car with seeming sincerity, yet her interaction with him feels offputtingly like an attempt at seduction.  After a fruitless search for her vehicle, she is driven to her home where her automobile awaits. Margaret’s reaction is inscrutable. Is she legitimately confused or was this some kind of carefully constructed ploy? And if so, to what end did it serve?

Perhaps intentionally, the parking lot incident leads to Margaret's somewhat estranged daughter, Kate, showing up to help. Here another plot and theme is explored, as Kate, a successful chef brokering a deal to become a big time restaurateur, is faced with a choice of looking after her mother or remaining focused on her career path.  Hints suggest that the relationship between mother and daughter has been a more than a little rocky path, making her commitment to being by her mother’s side a difficult decision to come to terms with. Margaret's abrasive demeanor suggests this all the more.

Throughout ARCHAEOLOGY, Margaret appears torn between her deteriorating mental state and a conniving countenance, which seems to be have been adapted as a form of second nature survival instinct. Which force is in control is constantly in question: Is Margaret's lapses into bewilderment feeding a compulsive drive to manipulate those around her, or are her mental slips a tool that serves her self preservation, guarding against the uncovering of a nasty truth?

Kirkland's performance keeps us captivated by the questions…for a while. She holds nothing back, writhing beneath her character’s skin in an unsettling performance. Although she is able to capture the essence of Margaret's anguished restlessness, the character lacks development. This is due in large part to an unravelling story that undermines its bigger ideas. Instead of becoming elucidated, the events of the past that are at first chips away only become murkier and more difficult to discern. A case could be made that this matches Margaret‘s increasingly distorted perception of reality. However, it shouldn’t come at the cost of frustrating viewing. While maintaining an aura of mystery is often sufficient to drive a story’s message home, here it comes across as dissatisfying. After the time invested in the unevenly navigated story, an explanation feels deserved, hard earned even.

This brings up the tone. At times, especially as details begin spiraling into obscurity, a more stylized shading is called for. Perhaps a lurid or psychedelic coloring, something suggestive of the tale’s more outlandish turns. While the soundtrack moves in this direction, creeping in with repetitive nerve-wracking echoes of horror, the visuals almost always play very close to real. Recognizable settings like Grand Central Station, or the interior of a nursing home, feel pedestrian. It’s hard to bridge this with the decidedly fantastical elements added into the narrative. Likewise, it is a bold yet in the end disjointed attempt to join a sober account of mental illness with a more mischievous head trip.

Still there are interesting themes touched upon that are worth considering, even if underdeveloped as the result of a flawed telling. Shades of  Margaret‘s past indiscretions and Kate’s increasingly risky behavior suggests that mothers and daughters may share deep rooted bonds, traits and habits being passed on and superseding common sense or a desire to break away from unhealthy influences. The film is at its best when providing a simple, unflinching look at dementia’s debilitating effects.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF A WOMAN is being screened at City Cinema Village East on second avenue through Thursday September 18. See a trailer for the film below the break.

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JAPAN CUTS 2014: The Vagina Dialogues of THE PASSION

A film with a premise that reads like something straight off the Pink Eiga or Roman Porn racks, THE PASSION features a young woman committed to the chaste path of a nun who regularly communes with a constantly berating otherworldly presence that has taken up residence in her vagina, and has a tendency for continual self castigation, at one point even flogging herself. Yet this satirical comedy actually plays like a lighthearted and mostly innocent comedy, the premise having much to say about the trials of being a woman in Japan who does not fit the typical mold. With no name given to protagonist Francesco (Frances-KO)’s covenant and little talk of religion, it’s safe to say the notion of being a nun is a sly way of tackling issues of women’s self image, in society in general, but particularly Japanese, where desires to be typically feminine run contrary to perceived pressures to be self sacrificing and virginal. Interestingly, you can switch the words ‘desires’ and ‘pressures’ in the previous sentence and it would still hold true in relation to Frances-KO’s inability and unwillingness to make herself attractive to the men around her.

It is a fresh and amusing concept, based on a novel shortlisted for the award for Japanese literary award the Naoki Prize, though I found the constant dialogue between Frances-KO and her unexpected passenger to be a wearying after a while. At some point, the lark takes on a positively fairy tale-esque turn, and like most fairy tales, it is populated by a fair share of insipidly 1 dimensional characters that can wear on the nerves.

Credit to Mayuko Iwase for her commitment to the role of Frances-Ko as unflappably self sacrificing heroine, and for credibly wearing a slow and subtly moving transformation from homely to radiant.

Espousing a point of view rarely found in Japanese culture that is pro female sexuality, THE PASSION is a lively, though at times a tad tedious, bit of cinematic mischief.

THE PASSION plays at the 2014 JAPAN CUTS festival of contemporary Japanese cinema at 6:30, Friday, July 18 at the Japan Society. Click here for more information or to buy tickets.  

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