The port
town of Otaru on Ishikari Bay is a popular tourist destination in Hokkaido because
of its unique 1920s canal with its picturesque Victorian-style gaslights. However, a stone’s throw away from the tourist
traps are average communities of working and middle class people, many of whom
commute into nearby Sapporo for work.
While we do get glimpses of Otaru’s famous port as the backdrop of Mipo Oh’s latest feature film Being Good (きみはいい子 / Kimi wa ii ko, 2015), the director focuses her camera intently on the
lives of the common people of Otaru.
Being Good is an adaptation of the bestselling
book of the same by Hatsue Nakawai (中脇初枝, b. 1974). The
original book is a collection of five short stories set in the same town that
are linked by the themes of abuse and people dealing with mental illness. Oh has taken three of these stories, “Santa no konai ie” (The House that Santa
does not Visit), “Beppin-san” (Pretty Girl), and “Konnichi wa, sayonara”
(Hello, Good-bye) and interweaves them in one Otaru neighbourhood. It’s a familiar
setting which really could be found in any town in Hokkaido.
The “Santa no konai ie” thread tells the
story of rookie elementary school teacher Tasuku Okano (Kengo Kora) who is struggling both to keep discipline in his rowdy
classroom and to deal with difficult parents. He soon starts to suspect that a troubled child
in his class may be suffering neglect and even abuse at home. His efforts to help the boy are consistently thwarted
but he continues to look for a solution.
Meanwhile, Masami
(Machiko Ono) of the “Beppin-san”
story is struggling to look after her 3-year-old daughter Ayane on her own
because her husband is away on long business trips abroad. Her isolation is compounded by the fact that she
was abused as a child and her frustration erupts in violence towards
Ayane. She tries to hide her nasty
secret from the mothers she meets with at the playground, but one of the moms (Chizuru Ikewaki) is more perceptive and
understanding than she could ever imagine.
Another lonely woman in the neighbourhood is the
elderly home owner Kazumi (Michie Kita)
who never married. She is known locally
as suffering from mild dementia, which sometimes leads her into difficult
situations such as when a supermarket employee, Mrs. Sakurai (Yasuko Tomita), catches Kazumi unintentionally
shoplifting. One day Kazumi finds that
an autistic boy (Amon Kabe) who
always greets her with “Konnichi wa, sayonara” is in a panic because he has
lost his house key. Kazumi invites him
into her home and he reminds her of the younger brother she lost during the firebombing
of Tokyo. By chance, his mother turns
out to be the supermarket employee who is shocked to discover that this woman
she thought was crazy actually is full of a wisdom and love beyond anything she
has experienced from the “normal” members of her community. She begins to realize that she has been focusing too strongly on her son’s tics instead of recognizing the goodness in
him.
I saw the EU
premiere of this film at Camera Japan 2015
in Rotterdam. The film is not an easy
one to watch, especially for people who have experienced or witnessed abuse in
their own lives. I gave a talk on
Japanese Women Behind the Scenes immediately after this screening and found
that many audience members were still reeling from the disturbing abuse
depicted or suggested by the film. I say
“suggested” because Oh is careful not to show the worst of the abuse on screen
by having the girl’s body blocked by her mother’s body shot from behind;
however, this doesn’t not really lessen the emotional impact of the
scenes. The sound of the violence and of
the child screaming are traumatic. As
are the evidence of bruises on her skin afterwards. The performance of the children in this film
are truly amazing to behold and if I ever have a chance to interview Mipo Oh I
would ask her about how she worked with the child actors. It must have taken a great deal of sensitivity
in order to get these heartbreakingly realistic performances from them.
There are no
easy answers or real happy endings in this film. In fact, many of the key issues remain
frustratingly unresolved. While many
audience members that I chatted with said they felt deeply disturbed by the
child abuse scenes, I believe that these were very realistically portrayed stories
that need to be told. Unfortunately
abuse is much more common than we would like to believe and we need to educate
ourselves and not try to sweep it under the carpet. Being
Good imparts the message that we should connect with our neighbours and
communities so that people who need help know that there are people out there
who do care. As Okano’s sister tells
him, we need to treat our children well, so that world peace can become a
reality.
Mipo Oh (also written as Mipo O /呉 美保, b. 1977) is third generation Korean-Japanese. She grew up in Mie prefecture and graduated from
Osaka University of Arts. She began her
career as a screenwriter to Nobuhiko Obayashi and went on to make commercials
and short films before directing her first feature in 2005. Her 2014 film The Light Only Shines There won her numerous awards at
international film festivals and was Japan's entry for the Academy Award for
Best Foreign Film. Most recently, Being
Good won the NETPAC Jury Prize at the Moscow
International Film Festival 2015 for “being seeing, insightful and
incredibly sincere.” Learn more about Oh’s
work at Japanese
Women Behind the Scenes.
2015 Cathy
Munroe Hotes
