Japan Cuts Capsules 2- Asleep, Hibi Rock, This Country's Sky, The Make Up Room, Undulant Fever

With Japan Cuts ending later today here are the last bunch of films from the festival in easy to swallow capsule form.

UNDULANT FEVER (When I Sense the Sea)
Based on a notorious book written by an 18 year old young woman, the film charts the severely damaged mutually abusive relationship between a young woman and a slightly older fellow student. Every time she see him she is filled with lust. We follow as the pair drift together and part and as the roles change over time. Brooding angsty film was not my cup of tea. Partly I thought it was taking too long to get where it was going but mostly I didn't care for the two lead characters. I felt more like smacking them than anything. As for the eroticism, I was bored. While it has a bit more going on than other recent erotic films based on novels (50 Shades) its still just as eh.

MAKEUP ROOM
Based on what director Kei Morikawa saw when making adult films this is the story of what happens in the make up room of a porn shoot. While the conceit of the film never leaving the makeup room is initially interesting the film rapidly bogs down into what the film started out to be, namely a one set stage play. While the film is funny at times the frequent static nature of the film works against it (which is the result of the dull camera work). This should have been better than it is.

THIS COUNTRY'S SKY
Long time in coming and World Premiering film at Japan Cuts this is the story of life in a ward of Tokyo in the waning days of the Second World War is largely what happens when a 19 year old girl falls for her neighbor, a married man whose family has been evacuated from the city.  I'm not sure how or I should really review the film. The image seemed a tad grainy and the whole thing seemed as if it was a work in progress.  Allowing for that I will say that what I saw left me feeling mixed on the film. While I liked the look inside the city during war time, I found the plotting overly soapy and not to my taste. I'm not sure if its's the print or the fact that when I saw it I was coming to the end of two film festivals worth of films. I'll try it again down the line and get back to you.

HIBI ROCK
Yu Irie's wild and crazy manga adaption was the Opening night film for Japan Cuts and its a blast and a half. Very much a live action comic come to life.  Both Eden and Mondo are taking runs by the film so let me just say I loved it.

ASLEEP
Based on a book by Banana Yoshimoto's story about a woman in a perpetual dreamlike state, where she sleeps until the next encounter with a married lover whose wife is in a coma and while remembering a friend who committed suicide this is one of the dullest films I've ever seen. While I intellectually know what it was trying to do all it made me want to do was fall asleep. I don't care if Sakura Ando is in it the movie is a bore.

Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn (2014) Japan Cuts 2015

The closing film of this year's Japan Cuts is a unique cinematic vision that is going to thrill some audiences and bore others to tears.

Set in 1726, the film follows a farmer in the Sanchu region of the country. He like many of the other farmers are running into trouble feeding and caring for his family thanks to the demands of their lord. Trying to rectify the situation the farmers negotiate but when that fails things become violent. As events transpire around him, Jehei debates whether or not to participate and what will happen to himself and his family on either road.

Shot in glorious black and white this is a kind of you are there film that puts us in the middle of the mental and emotional debate. Much like the the shading of the film, the decision to either fight or flee is neither black nor white but a shade of gray. No matter what choice is made there are going to be repercussions.

Increasingly set in the mental landscape of Jehei, the film shifts styles in telling becoming animation for a portion of it, shifting to muted colors towards the end and including songs which re-enforce some of themes. Its a trip that you have to go along with or else you're going to have a miserable time.

For me this is a film I can admire way more than I can like. I like that director Juichiro Yamasaki doesn't make it easy for the audience. I like that he moves the story to suit his ends and is willing to use the animation and late in the film theater tricks to get us to consider the story we've seen and what it means. This is a very heady mix of technical wizardry and food for thought.

If I am not writing up along discussion of the themes and ideas that are in play it's simply that I saw this film late in my coverage of the festival (somewhere well over 20 films in) and the film just over whelmed me, This isn't to say I didn't like the film its simply it requires one to engage with it and after so many films in so short a time I just  had to take it at face value.  I have to applaud the Japan Society for making this film the final one since the film maybe too much for an audience that spent the previous five hours watching a romance and a superhero film.

I like the film but I know I need to see it again in order to give it a fair shake. Somewhere in it is a heartfelt discussion about the things we do and the consequences they bring.

If you're up to the task of engaging with the film I recommend it, if not do take a pass.

Wages of Resistence: Narita Stories (2014) Japan Cuts

In 1969 the Japanese suddenly decided to build Narita Airport  in the Sanrizuka area outside Japan. The decision caught everyone out of left field. The farmers who would have to supply the land were pissed and resisted. Students and activists flooded into the area and helped out.  Eventually a runway was built. Decades later (2002) a second runway was constructed- however the fight continues to this day.

Mix of interviews and archival footage tells the story of the struggle of the lowly farmers against the powerful government. Its a cautionary tale of what can happen when a government thinks itself above the law.

Interesting but over long story of a 45 year long struggle held my interest for about an hour or so, but somewhere along the way I started to check my watch and ponder if there wasn't a speedier way of telling this story. This is an intellectual film and probably the artiest of all of Japan Cuts and its a film one can admire more than love.

This is one of those times where I have to applaud the Japan Society for bringing this small independent film to the US, but at the same time I have to ponder who they thought this film was for.

In Brief: Strayer's Chronicle (2015) Japan Cuts 2015

From director Takahisa Zeze who's Heaven's Story played at Japan Cuts in 2011 come STRAYER'S CHRONICLE which is based on Takayoshi Honda’s best selling novel about an X-Men like team battling for the future of mankind.

Actually the film concerns two groups of super powered young people. One group was created by traumatizing the parents of the future off spring so the stress hormone would make the children open to limitless adaption. The other group was genetically engineered. The stress created group works for a government agency while the engineered group wanders around free after escaping. The two groups eventually collide and join up....

I'm not sure what else to say. The film is kind of there. More character driven then action driven the film doesn't really have a plot line as plot pencils. Things happen and then are kind of pushed aside for other things. The short life span of the kids gets a great deal of play. The X-Men moniker is there because of the super powers and the guy in a wheelchair but the comparisons end there. The X-Men are all action, these kids are just angsty kids who mope around until they fight - I don't know to what end since the reasons behind it all really aren't there.

The film plays Sunday as one of the final films at Japan Cuts and while it's not bad, I wouldn't go out of my way to see it unless you're a big fan of the book or X-Men like stories. (You'll be fine when this hits home video)

For more information on the Japan Cuts screening go here.

(The film also plays August 2nd at Fantasia in Montreal- for info on that screening go here.)

mondocurry corner: Voice of Water @ Japan Cuts 2015

Here is a grim, unflinching portrayal of religious cultism within an immigrant community of Korean nationals in Tokyo, Japan. The film shows how a group’s cultural identity, far more steeped in religious practice than that of the landscape it is assimilating with, can be used as a means of exploiting an underclass of people from within and without. Poverty, second-class citizen status, and organized crime are all incorporated into the system of suppression depicted in Masashi Yamamoto’s film.

The world depicted here is a bleak one characterized by a dearth of sympathetic figures; the adults populating it display self-serving or antagonistic tendencies to varying degrees. The meek shall devour the strong, if given the chance, and the most powerful run the risk of becoming the biggest losers among these forces that see influence as power. Religious fervor does not end at building a strong community, as we are shown activities amongst group members aimed at destroying other organizations operating in the same fashion. Indeed a kind of small-scale religious war appears to be unfolding in the alleyways and drab office spaces of the city’s outskirts.

 An unsettling picture is painted, with details colored in here and there, rather than a tightly focused narrative. At its center is Minjung, a charismatic Korean national who has been propped up as a celestial figure, delivering sermons and offering spiritual healing to the members of the group she represents. She appears to be comfortably numb to the corruption she lays a hand in, til a crack in her resolve begins to form.

This is contributed to by the appearance of her father, whom her group reluctantly allows to take refuge from vicious mobsters looking to collect on a debt. As Minjung loses her taste for illusory power in favor of a more honest spiritual path, the vicious cycle she is part of becomes more and more clear. Others are right there to shackle to her profitable position while others see an opportunity to knock her from the throne and assume her role. Walking away is not an option, though in Yamamoto‘s vision, escape is the only true source of awakening.

For such a surreal subject matter, the workings of the film are depicted in a direct and unaffected manner, though there are occasions where fever pitches of hysteria are achieved. They are nothing if not rattling. In a few members’ recruiting, or perhaps it’s a recon mission, edm music blasts in a nightclub awash in flashing strobe lights during an afternoon rave, as followers in brightly colored t-shirts jump up and down.  A chaotic climax, where several nefarious groups intersect in a forest setting, is punctuated by bells ringing jarringly. The sequence is as savage as it is frantic, leaving no question of the film’s dire perspective on this little known social phenomenon.

 This is one of the darker slivers on offer at this year’s Japan Cuts Festival, which rings too true to not reflect a large amount of reality. It is sure to leave one with concern and pity for those caught up in this system of subjugation, and revile for those orchestrating it.

VOICE OF WATER plays the evening of July 17 at the Japan Society. For information and tickets, visit the JAPAN CUTS page of their website. 

What Are You Afraid Of? (2015) Japan Cuts 2015

Eye opening look at women and Japanese society through the lives of several Japanese women who were among those fighting for equality and a better life from 1970 onward.

Intriguing companion piece to last years SHE'S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE'S ANGRY is the same story from a different part of the world. This is a film that;s all about the women who fought the cause. As director Hitsako Mitsu marches us through the last 35 yers we watch as the women simply tell their stories and what the fight meant to them.

I'm not going to lie this is not going to be a film for all audiences. The film is pretty much entirely talking heads inter cut with photographs and newspaper reprints. If you want motion look elsewhere-- on the other hand if you want to hear some great stories (including the story of spray painting the Mona Lisa) this film is for you. This is a film where the women who lived the tale tell it compellingly.

What I like about the film is that in bringing together so many voices Mitsu has fashioned a film that really is about the women's rights struggle in Japan and not just a few women. We get a wide variety of topics (love, sex, children, the right to work) and she manages to blend the abstract ideas with real life and with the complications of human nature-say when one of the women in the struggle falls in love with a man, has a baby and then finds out that he's a bum. Moments like this are small and perhaps obvious touches but at the same time they are handled so deftly that they add not only shading but a greater understanding.

I also have to congratulate Mitsu for having titles through our the film that explain what we are seeing. Early on there is a moment where the Red Army insanity is mentioned. Fleetingly I was going - "how was this going to play with people who don't know"-and then suddenly titles appeared.

This is a great film, but also a heady one. I know I didn't catch everything. Honestly I can't wait to see it again. Its a must see for anyone who wants to understand how we go to here.

The film plays at 630 today at The Japan Society. For tickets and more information go here.

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. 

A Farewell to Jinu (2015) Japan Cuts

The title means goodbye money but despite the best effort of the main character a great deal is spent.

Takeharu moves to a remote village in the hopes of living without money. However despite his best efforts to do so and remain by himself he finds himself drawn out by the inhabitants of the village.

Wonderfully funny and very alive adaption of  the manga called Kamuroba Mura e (“To Kamuroba Village”) by Mikio Igarashi this is a film that is two hours with good people.  To be certain things get surreal, one of the characters is the town's god (no really), but at the same time it all makes wonderful sense.

I was hooked almost instantly. Somewhere at the start as Takeharu was waiting for a bus and the people waiting there were talking about turning 18 and coming of age I found it all somehow charming despite the fact that the conversation talked about becoming a hostess or a hooker. I have no idea why but it made me smile.

Actually almost everything in this film made me smile. This is just a wonderful group of loopy people who aren't that far removed from the people we run into in daily life.

This is one of my favorite films of Japan Cuts and a must see when it plays Friday at the festival.

Her Granddaughter (201-) Japan Cuts 2015

Tsugumi quits her job and moves into her recently deceased grandmother's home. She is recovering from a bad relationship and has a need to re-evaluate her life.  One morning she wakes up to find an older gentleman has moved into the annex of the house. He's a gruff philosophy professor who was an ex-student of Tsugumi's grandmother. What will happen between the pair.

One of the better romantic dramas of recent vintage this is a film that pulls you in and drags you along even though you know where it's probably going.

That the film works as well as it does is due to a combination of the story not being pat (even though it is a romance) and the two leads Nana Eikura and Etsushi Toyokawa, invest the characters with a life that is more than whats on the page. You can feel their lives bleeding off the screen at the start and as the film goes on and the details of their lives are filled in you sense the characters coming more into focus as well rounded people. I love that they seem like real people and not romantic cliches being shuttled around.

While this may not be one of the best films at Japan Cuts this year I think this may end up being one of my most favorite, which means I will be revisiting this film repeatedly from now on, which is probably a better endorsement than it being great.

And The Mud Ship Sails On (2014)

36 year old Takashi difts through life  with only his grandmother and a single friend to keep him company. Dead set against getting a job Takashi's life is suddenly rattled to its core when a young woman shows up on his doorstep claiming to be his half sister and looking for their father.

Dry wry black and white comedy that seems to have been in fused with some of the energy of early Jim Jarmusch this is a very funny film if you like this sort of humor. Made up of long takes the film the film draws us int Takashi's loopy world and makes us a party to his frequent inertia and funny turns of a phrase.

The film turns surreal in the final third as Takashi drifts through a landscape and events barely rooted in reality. I'm not sure how it works with the preceding. The weirdness is very funny but I'm not sure it really ties into to the the first two thirds. I was left feeling as though I had most certainly seen something special but I wasn't sure if I liked it over all.

Reservations aside this is definitely worth a look see for the adventurous film goer.

You must go see 100 YEN LOVE(2014) at Japan Cuts 2015

Sakura Ando gives one of the best performance I've seen in 2015 in 100 YEN LOVE. This is one of those performances that looks so easy and yet you know that she is doing something truly special.

Ando plays a 32 year old slacker who lives with her mom and doesn't do much all day. She doesn't help with the family business and occasionally watches her nephew who moved in when Ando's sister's marriage collapsed. When her mom finally lays down the law and demands she gets a job at a 100 yen shop. On the way to and from work she passes a gym and falls in love with a boxer who trains there.

I love this film. There is something so real and wonderful about it. These are people who are so familiar to me as to seem as though they are long time friends. There is a humor and sense of a life lived in the film that bleeds off the screen.

When I sat down to see this film I had already had a concentrated dip into the realm of Asian films with about 25 films from the New York Asian Film Festival and  12 titles from Japan Cuts with in the previous 2 weeks. My attitude had become rather jaded as similar films from around the world were bouncing around in my head. If something didn't thrill me with in the first tewnty minute or half an hour it was doomed. 100 YEN LOVE grabbed me from the first frame. It then knocked me out when Sakura Ando appeared on the couch chain smoking and playing video games with her nephew. Its was one of those movie moments where you go Oh shit this is wonderfully unexpected and you let your guard down and you just go with it.

This is a great great film with an even greater performance at its center.

An absolute must see film- the film plays Thursday the 16th at the Japan Society as Japan Cuts Centerpiece. A Q&A will follow the film as will a party.

For details go here.

mondocurry corner: Sakura Ando in 100 YEN LOVE and ASLEEP @ Japan Cuts 2015

 The one night celebration of actress Sakura Ando at this summer’s Japan Cuts Festival of contemporary Japanese cinema demonstrates that in order to have a retrospective showing the diversity and breadth of her work, you need a minimum of just two of her films. On this occasion, the Japan Society will show Asleep and 100 Yen Love, two of her most recent films in which she plays characters that are physically and mentally different enough to be mistaken for being portrayed by two different actresses. They join an already substantial cast of powerful, multi-dimensional figures embodied by the talented second generation actress (she is the daughter of acclaimed actor Eiji Okuda), some of which may be familiar to fans of Japanese cinema without realizing it. In Sion Sono’s epic Love Exposure, she played a sexually antagonistic and emotionally damaged cult leader. In an episode of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s television project Penance she played a bearish introvert. And in .5mm, a film featured in last year’s Japan Cuts lineup directed by her sister Momo Ando, she led a tour de force charge as an every(wo)man with seemingly no past who served as a collective conscience of a male dominated Japanese society, humbling and healing all those she encountered, all the while desperately in need of healing herself.

While perhaps not of the visionary scope of those past works, the films book ending the evening when Ando will be presented with the festival’s own ‘Cut Above’ distinction for rising talent, are not only showcases of her range, but are captivating in their own right. 100 Yen Love finds Ando as Ichiko, a 30 something who is severely stuck in neutral, living at home and just barely helping out with her family’s bento shop downstairs. Here her body language and demeanor most closely resemble her turn in Penance, as she lumbers about awkwardly, often scratching herself gracelessly. At least at first. Through both ups and downs, she tries to first get a life and then get it together, eventually finding herself pursuing a career in amateur boxing. It represents not only a path toward making a mark, but also her character’s resolve to no longer be a victim of either circumstance or real world physical violence.

It starts with an unflinching picture of dysfunctional family life in the throes of economically struggling, with Ichiko’s sister having just returned to the cramped apartment home with a young son. She instantly engages her loafing sister in physical and verbal battle, leading to Ichiko leaving home. Their chaotic sparring is both can’t look away shocking and good for evoking uncomfortable laughter.

Other sources of deadpan laughter appear early on, like the convenience store devoted to giving its patrons a merely 100 yen (about a dollar) lifestyle, which Ichiko both frequents and later works for, along with its motley assortment of employees and customers. After a while, the discomfort factor around some situations increases, while laughs seem to be expected but are a bit hard to achieve; the constraints of the gallows humor squeeze a bit too tight. Ando's transformation feels as though it’s staged a bit too late and too quickly to get fully behind.

But the film is admirable for its adherence to its oddball aesthetic and its utter lack of clichés.  It never reaches the extremes of a Cinderella story. Instead it's a story of redemption in which triumph does not necessarily mean achieving victory; the transformative journey is itself reward.

While 100 Yen Love seems positioned to be the main event, I was more awed by Andou’s performance in Asleep. Herein lies a reduction where, compared to other films she has appeared in, the actress has lost a considerable amount of weight to take on the almost unhealthily waifish, introspective lead in the film. It’s a far more inward looking role than other performances where her expressiveness bubbles right to the surface.

Asleep is minimalist to its core. Its protagonist, Teruko, drifts about a languid Tokyo, engaging characters that dwell in isolation, struggling to connect. A friend speaks of receiving money from men for sleeping next to them and nothing more. Teruko begins dating a man who is presently married, his wife in coma. Their emotions are stuck in amber. Tokyo’s usual frenetic likeness is traded in for places that evoke solitude: a stoic Chinese restaurant, a desolate parking garage. The film has a fragile beauty to it, a wisp so slight as if threatening to be blown away by the slightest gust.

The pleasure of seeing Sakura Andou’s diverse and powerful performances will not be a small, especially with the actress their in person to join in on the celebration.

100 Yen Love and Asleep will be screened Thursday, July 16 at Japan Society. Sakura Andou will be presented with the CUT ABOVE award the same evening, as well as introducing the films and participating in q & a’s. For details and tickets, visit the Japan Cuts page of the Japan Societywebsite.