Japanese

WIFE OF A SPY: espionage non-thriller

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Photo caption: Yû Aoi and Issey Takahashi in WIFE OF A SPY. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

In the espionage non-thriller Wife of a Spy, the prosperous Yusaku (Issey Takahashi) runs a business in international commerce. That is increasingly uncomfortable in 1940 Japan, where the militaristic government is whipping up xenophobia and bullying those Japanese who interact with foreigners.

Yusaku is a smooth cosmopolitan who won’t be intimidated. He keeps on the road, even to dangerous hotspots like Manchuria. That’s not okay with his loving, apparently frivolous wife Santoko (Yû Aoi), who, frustrated by his absences, is getting increasingly suspicious about what he’s really up to.

She finally stumbles upon his secret – he and his nephew Fumio (Ryôta Bandô) are outraged by the war crimes of the military government and are engaged in a secret plot to undermine it. Santoko, who was been a mere adornment, becomes herself embroiled.

Regrettably, Wife of a Spy is more of a snoozer than a thriller. It just takes director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) too long to get through the first and second acts.

Worse, I found the sudden dramatic lurches in the performances by Yû Aoi and Ryôta Bandô very off-putting. I don’t think I missed something cultural because I’ve watched a lot of Japanese cinema, and haven’t seen anything like this before. It’s like the director of a high school play says, “Now throw yourself on the floor!” Yû Aoi is a popular and lauded actress who has five nominations and two wins in the Japanese equivalent of the Oscars. I’m blaming Kurosawa.

I’m also mostly alone in my opinion. Wife of a Spy enjoys a high score of 79 on Metacritic and was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Wife of a Spy’s advocates may be seduced by the film’s undeniable beauty. The cinematography by Tatsunosuke Sasaki, production design by Norifumi Ataka and the costumes by Haruki Koketsu are exquisite.

Here’s a novel aspect to Wife of a Spy. The hero is a traitor to his nation. Yusaku loves Japan, hates the Japanese government, and believes Japan will be better off the sooner that Japan loses the war. So, he is trying to hasten the defeat of his own nation’s military, which is the definition of traitorous. I haven’t heard that this was hugely controversial in today’s Japan.

Wife of a Spy is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and KinoNow and is included on MHz.

DRIVE MY CAR: sublime and powerful

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Photo caption: Reika Kirishima and Hidetoshi Nishijima in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.

Drive My Car is director and co-writer Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s engrossing masterpiece about dealing with loss – and it’s the best movie of 2021. Layered with character-driven stories that could each justify their own movie, this is a mesmerizing film that builds into an exhilarating catharsis.

Drive My Car opens with an entrancing story about a teenage girl, told by a woman to her sexual partner. It turns out that the woman regularly tells stories to her husband during sex. advancing the plot after she climaxes, and the husband remembers and preserves the stories. She is Oto (Reika Kirishima), a television writer and showrunner. He is Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a theater actor and director, known for his work in Beckett and Chekhov. He works on his line readings while driving his beloved 13-year-old red SAAB 900 turbo.

Yûsuke and Oto’s relationship is complicated. We later learn how complicated and why.

Forty or so minutes in, the movie’s opening titles appear, and it’s two years later. Yûsuke still has the SAAB, which he drives to Hiroshima for a two-month theater residency. He is to cast and direct a pan-Asian, multi-lingual production of Uncle Vanya. His Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Taiwanese-American cast speak the lines in their languages (one being Korean Sign Language), with the dialogue subtitled at performances.

To Yûsuke’s distress, he is required by by the Hiroshima theater to use their driver, the impassive tomboy Misaki (Tôko Miura). He resents this incursion into his vehicular sanctuary, but Misaki is now driving his SAAB, and she turns out to be diligent and expert.

During the weeks of rehearsal, more stories emerge and more of Yûsuke’s own story is revealed. When Yûsuke and Misaki have dinner at the home of the theater project’s organizer (Dae-Young Jin) and his deaf wife (Yoo-rim Park), they are surprised by a deeply personal revelation.

Masaki Okada and Hidetoshi Nishijima in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.

Yûsuke has cast a young actor, Koji (Masaki Okada), whom we know to be unreliable, but even Koji comes through with an impassioned, and apparently true, story of his own.

There’s an outdoor rehearsal scene between two actors (Sonya Yuan and Yoo-rim Park) that becomes magical.

Sonya Yuan and Yoo-rim Park in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.

Each component story is powerful, and Drive My Car becomes even more than the sum of its parts and builds in intensity.

Drive My Car is three hours long. While screening a movie, I take notes on an unlined notebook, and I see that I had scrawled, MESMERIZING ENGROSSING WHAT AM I WATCHING? The rest of the art house audience was as spellbound as I.

There is one soon-to-be-iconic shot in Drive My Car. After a cathartic scene, Misaki and Yûsuke drive into a reddish tunnel. Hamaguchi shows us two hands holding lit cigarettes out of the SAAB’s open sun roof. It’s an exhilarating and unforgettable shot, and once enough cinephiles see Drive My Car, it will become the instantly recognizable signature of Drive My Car.

Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tôko Miura in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.

Hidetoshi Nishijima (Yûsuke) and Tôko Miura (Misaki) are superb. Both characters are poker-faced, so the performances are exceptionally subtle.

I’m dismayed that Drive My Car is so difficult to find. It is currently playing in only three Bay Area theaters, in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, plus a couple For Your Consideration screenings in San Rafael. It is currently the number one movie on many top ten lists, including mine and Barack Obama’s.

PALE FLOWER: bracing neo-noir

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Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

Coming up on Turner Classic Movies on June 18, the Japanese neo-noir Pale Flower is a slow burn that erupts into thrilling set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir. Pale Flower is writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.

Maraki (Ryô Ikebe) is a fortyish Yazuka hit man, just released from loyally serving a prison term. He went away for offing a gangland rival, but now the two gangs have become allies. Out gambling with fellow Yakuza, he encounters the much younger woman Saeko (Mariko Kaga). The stoic and completely self-contained Maraki becomes fascinated by – and then obsessed with – Saeko, who lives her life seeking thrill after thrill.

PALE FLOWER

Maraki and Saeko meet gambling on the Japanese card game of hanafuda (flower cards). She is the only woman at a table surrounded by male gangsters. Shinoda makes the tension of card games resemble that of walking into a hostile bar or waiting an Old West quick draw gunfight. The card games are silent but for the ritual betting and the players clicking their cards. The film’s title refers to both hanafuda and Saeko.

Mariko Kaga in PALE FLOWER

Just who is this mystery woman? Muraki is snagged, but he is too cool to search out her background. His obsession is more complicated than sexual passion alone, although there is a sexual element (watch whether he acts on it when he can). The mystery makes Saeko (the then 20-year-old Mariko Kaga in only her fourth movie) all the more captivating.

In another gripping set piece, Saeko races her sports car through Tokyo’s tunnels and overpasses at 2:30 AM. In the passenger seat, Muraki is transfixed by her recklessness. He’s not thrilled by the careening wild ride, he’s thrilled by Saeko’s compulsion to seek the thrill.

Mariko Kaga and Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

The ultimate thrill might be to accompany a hit man on the job. The climactic three-minute scene is a mob hit in a church, set to an aria, Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament. It is operatic – and remarkably similar to Francis Ford Coppola’s later montage in The Godfather where Michael Corleone’s assassins kills all his enemies while he is standing in church at the christening of his sister’s baby. Muarki’s murder-for-hire is up-close-and-personal.

When Maraki and Saeko are on-screen, Pale Flower is dramatically and stylistic Stylistic – the card games, the car race, the final killing, In contrast, we see the mundane plotting of the Yazuka bosses (but not their crimes) as they kibbitz at the horse races. Their underlings go bowling.

Does it all matter? is a central theme in film noir. Pale Flower’s powerful final prison scene is the the ultimate neo-noir ending.

Pale Flower is included in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies. Pale Flower is challenging to find; it can be streamed with a subscription to Criterion Collection or Kanopy, and it plays occasionally on TCM, including on June 18.

Ryô Ikebe in PALE FLOWER

THE HANDMAIDEN – gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot

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THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.

Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.

The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.

Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year. You can order the DVD from Netflix or stream it on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

CLOSET: the wonder of the cuddle

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CLOSET. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the offbeat dramedy Closet, Jin is reeling from a breakup and gets a very unusual job. The job is with a non-sexual escort service where clients pay him to cuddle with them as they try to get to sleep. It’s one of those quirky only-in-Japan things, like capsule hotels and golf in highrise buildings.

The cuddle is often preceded by a massage and/or a listening session. Cuddling is so intimate that the audience often expects sex to break out, but it doesn’t.

The service appeals to insomniacs because they can drift off to sleep with the comfort of another warm human body. Closet moves through vignettes on a varied set of customers – all differently motivated. One is a lively spirited 18-year-old student (Aino Kuribayashi).

Given his recent medical and relationship traumas and the weirdness of his new job, Jin (Yosuke Minokawa) often looks bewildered.

Cinequest will host the world premiere of Closet. Closet, with its novel premise, is a worthwhile choice.

RAMEN SHOP: yummy reconciliation

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Eric Khoo’s RAMEN SHOP. Courtesy of SFFILM.

Ramen Shop is about a family’s reconciliation in light of troubled Singaporean-Japanese history. Masato (Taikumi Saito) is a young Japanese ramen chef who loses his father; his Singaporean mom had died when he was a young child. He heads to Singapore to probe his family’s past and encounters a smorgasbord of Singaporean cuisine, a helpful and comely food blogger and his relatives – some more welcoming than others.

The first thirty minutes – with the grief of the son, his memories of his saintly mother and the flashbacks of parental romance – are too schmalzy for me. On the other hand, the thread of family turmoil as the legacy of a specific trauma from the Japanese conquest of Singapore works well.

There’s a metaphorical foodie angle here, too, in Masato’s Holy Grail – fusion of Singaporean pork rib soup with Japanese ramen stock. The foodie scenes – especially the food exploration scenes in Singapore – are mouth-watering.

I saw Ramen Shop at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). It opens this week in the Bay Area.

SHOPLIFTERS: The closest families are chosen by each other

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Ando Sakura, Sasaki Miyu, Jyo Kairi, Lily Franky, Matsuoka Mayu and Kiki Kirin in SHOPLIFTERS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Shoplifters is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems. Everyone in this contemporary Japanese family – dad, mom, teen girl and even grandma – has some shady job or outright scam. The dad has taught the 10-year-old boy to become a skilled shoplifter and tells him that he isn’t sent to school because he’s too smart. The dad and son rescue a lost and neglected four-year-old girl from a harsh winter night; the family decides to adopt her into the family. Of course, we wonder if the little girl’s biological parents will report her missing and whether the authorities will track her down.

Other than informally adding a child, not much seems to happen as the family goes on with its daily life – “work”, “shopping”, meal prep, bedtime and the rest, even a beach excursion. These lovable scoundrels are a hoot, and Shoplifters is very funny.

Writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda reveals – character by character – how each came into the family. Eventually that becomes critically important to the family’s survival – and leads to an emotionally powerful ending. The closest families are chosen by each other.


Lily Franky and Jyo Kairi in SHOPLIFTERS, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Shoplifters features a magnificent performance by Sakura Andô as the family’s mother figure – pretty understated until she gets to a knock-your-socks-off seduction scene. Her two jailhouse interviews at the end of the film are heartbreaking.

Jyo Kairi, with one of the best child performances of the year, is also superb as the boy.

Shoplifters just won the Palm d’Or, the top award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Koreeda is known for the 1995 art house hit Maborosi, one of the best movies of 2008, Still Walking and this year’s The Third Murder. I saw Shoplifters in early October at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

THE THIRD MURDER: legal procedural turns philosophical

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Masaharu Fukuyama and Kôji Yakusho in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).

The Third Murder opens with a killing, and the audience gets a clear full-face view of the killer.  Then the mystery begins – not about who done it, but about why and who will be held accountable.

A high-powered defense lawyer (Masaharu Fukuyama) has been called in to take over a challenging case; it’s potentially a death penalty case, and the defendant (Kôji Yakusho) has confessed. Moreover, the defendant has previously served thirty years for an earlier murder, he’s an oddball and he keeps switching his story.

Nevertheless, the lawyer thinks he can avoid the death penalty with a technicality about the motivation for the crime. He gets some good news from forensic evidence and then discovers one startling secret about the victims’ family – and then another one even more shocking – one that might even exculpate his client.

The Third Murder is a slow burn, as the grind of legal homework is punctuated by reveal after reveal. Eventually, there’s a shocker at the trial, and this legal procedural eventually gives way to philosophical questions. Finally, there’s an edge-of-the-seat epilogue – a final lawyer-client face-to-face where the shell-shocked lawyer tries to confirm what really happened and why.

Masaharu Fukuyama in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).

Yakusho (Tampopo, Shall We Dance?, Babel, 13 Assassins) is quite excellent as the defendant, a man who seems to be an unreliable mental case, but who might have a sense of justice that trumps everyone else’s.

The Third Murder is the work of director Hirokazu Koreeda, who made the 1995 art house hit Maborosi and one of the best movies of 2008, Still Walking.  Koreeda’s Shoplifters just won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and will be released in the US by Magnolia Pictures on November 23.  I saw The Third Murder at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).

 

Stream of the Week: THE HANDMAIDEN – gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot

by

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.

Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.

The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.

Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year.  You can stream it on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE HANDMAIDEN: gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot

by

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.

Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.

The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing.  The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.

Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year.