Two in Tracksuits (ジャージの二人, 2008)

This film begins on a swelteringly hot day in Tokyo. A 54-year-old father and his 32-year-old son are escaping from the heat by indulging in ice cream in an air conditioned Mini-Stop convenience store. They decide to head to the family home in rural Gunma Prefecture to get away from the oppressiveness of summer in Tokyo.

Once in Gunma, they find that it is so cool that they need to put on warmer clothes. Searching about in boxes of items belonging to the late grandparents who used to live in the house, the father finds a collection of seventies-style colourful school tracksuits. These tracksuits become both a visual gag and a symbol of togetherness for the father and son: their ‘slow life’ uniforms, so to speak.

The Two in Tracksuits (Jaji no Futari)

(click above to order film)

Two in Tracksuits (Jaji no Futari) could be described as a buddy film. However, unlike the American films that gave that genre its name, this is not a chatty film. Both men have a lot of issues to resolve, such as bad marriages, job dissatisfaction (the father) and joblessness (the son), but they do so by taking time to enjoy each other’s company and the peacefulness of rural life.

Rock star Makoto Ayukawa (father) and actor Masato Sakai (son) are both masters of the poker face, and the laughs are subtlety evoked through visual repetition and variation gags. For example, the father and son find tomatoes on sale at the local supermarket and fill their cart with them. Then neighbours begin giving them bags of tomatoes as presents, which leads of course to the running gag of them serving tomatoes (salad, sandwiches, etc.) to their visitors. It sounds very simple on paper, but left the audience in stitches during its screening at Nippon Connection.

The repetition and variation theme is reflected in the storyline. The film actually depicts two summers. The first summer, the men are alone in the family home. The second summer, the men are joined first by the son’s wife, then by his half-sister. The visitors are a clever device for showing the uniqueness of the father-son relationship which at first seems rather superficial. The ending (which I won’t spoil) uses one of the films running gags (about the difficulties of reading kanji) to demonstrate just how strong the bond between these two men is. A truly uplifting film for those who enjoy the ‘slow life’.

director & screenplay: Yoshihiro Nakamura 中村義洋

writer: Yū Nagashima 長嶋有　(novel)

cinematography: Takashi Komatsu小松高志

Son ♦ Masato Sakai 堺雅人

Father ♦ Makoto Ayukawa 鮎川誠

Son’s wife ♦ Miki Mizuno　水野美紀

Hanako-san (sister) ♦ Asami Tanaka　田中あさみ

Toyama-san (neighbour) ♦ Michiyo Ookusu　大楠道代

Dankan ♦ Okada 　ダンカン

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009

Talk Talk Talk (しゃべれどもしゃべれども, 2007)

As the title implies, Hideyuki Hirayama’s adaptation of Takako Satō’s Talk Talk Talk (Shaberedomo Shaberedomo) is all about talking, both privately and in public. At the centre of the drama is the young rakugo performer Mitsuba, played by Taichi Kokubun of the boy band Tokio. Mitsuba’s colleagues and audiences find him a mediocre talent, but he is determined to succeed in order to honour the memory of his late grandfather who was a huge fan of this traditional form of storytelling.

Rakugo (落語) is performed in traditional costume while sitting down in the seiza (正座) position. The stories told are long and complicated comic tales involving a dialogue between two or more characters. The storyteller plays all the roles, distinguishing the different characters through variations in pitch, tone, and gesture. The comedy comes not only out of the story, but out of wordplay such as puns and onomatopoeia.

Mitsuba insists on using traditional stories despite the cajoling of his younger peers to try modern tales in order to make himself more popular. His main flaw is that he tries too hard to mimic his mentor Kosanmon, played with flair by the imitable Shirō Itō. In doing so, Mitsuba fails to infuse his storytelling with his own unique sensibilities.

Through happenstance, Mitsuba finds himself teaching rakugo to a motley crew of misfits in the living room of the home he shares with his grandmother Haruko Toyama (Kaoru Yachigusa). His first student is Masaru-kun, the nephew of one of Toyama-san’s tea ceremony disciples. Masaru has just moved to Tokyo from Osaka and is being bullied in school for his Kansai-ben (dialect). His aunt hopes that learning a skill will improve his self-confidence at school. There is also Satsuki Tokawa, a sullen but beautiful young women whose grumpy exterior belies the fact that she seems to diligently help her parents run the family dry cleaning business. Rounding off the trio is a retired baseball player, Yugawara, whose poor public speaking skills are ruining his chances of keeping his new job as a radio commentator.
The camaraderie and good-natured squabbles of these rakugo classes acts a catalyst for each of the characters, including Mitsuba himself, to grow as individuals and to face problems they have in their personal lives. The film is heartwarming without being too sappy and has plenty of comedy with a dash of romance thrown in for good measure. The cast works really well as an ensemble with strong performances from all leading players. The ever graceful and beautiful Yachigusa brings such warmth and humour to a rather small role and the young fellow playing Masaru-kun (Yuuki Morinaga) practically steals the show with his infectious laughter and high energy performance.

The centerpiece of this film, however, is the art of rakugo itself. Through its use of repetition of the two main stories by different characters in the film, Hirayama teaches the audience how to appreciate the subtleties of the storytelling craft.

The trailer for this film can be viewed on its official homepage. The DVD (with English subtitles) is available:

Talk, Talk, Talk (Shaberedomo Shaberedomo) (English Subtitles)

Japanese Movie

Director: Hideyuki Hirayama 平山秀幸
Screenwriter: Satoko Okudera　奥寺佐渡子
Based on novel by: Takako Satō　佐藤多佳子

Cast

Mitsuba 今昔亭三つ葉（外山達也）● Taichi Kokubun　国分太一
Kosanmon 今昔亭小三 ● Shirō Itō　伊東四朗
Satsuki Tokawa 十河五月　 ● Karina　香里奈
Masaru Murabayashi村林優 ● Yuuki Morinaga　森永悠希
Taichi Yugawara 湯河原太一 ● Yutaka Matsushige　松重豊
Haruko Toyama 外山春子 ● Kaoru Yachigusa 八千草薫

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009

Moving (おひっこし, 2008)

At the Musabi Student Film Explosion screening at Nippon Connection, the real standout for me was a three-minute animation from director Kei Suezawa (末澤慧). Musabi is the nickname of the Musashino Art University (武蔵野美術大学), a leading college in the education of young artists including Satoshi Kon.

The film Moving (おひっこし/Ohikkoshi, 2008) takes a simple story concept and uses it as a vehicle to show off the animators talent. The animation is executed with innovation and a sense of humour. It opens with moving men clearing the furnishings from a room. Two identical grey cat decorations sit side-by-side on a shelf staring forwards with wide eyes and ambivalent expressions on their faces. Neglected by the movers, one of the two cats tumbles off into the traffic. From there the cat falls into the sewers and floats out into the ocean to begin its adventures around the world. The film closes with the cat landing back in the moving van, but it’s colour has faded to white during its journey making the cats look like a pair of salt & pepper shakers.

The cel animation looks to be hand drawn and uses bold colours. A professionally mixed soundtrack of music and sound effects complements the high quality of the animation. My one criticism of the film is the inclusion of one of those stock scenes of an aboriginal island community dancing around a caldron which suggests they are cannibals. This is such a cliché and not even a funny one at that.

When I looked this little film up on Musabi’s website, I found that someone named Hodaka Ueda (上田穂高) received top billing on their screening list, but I have found very little information about the current status of either of these two students. Ueda and Suezawa seem to also have collaborated together on another short animation called Buraunkan Heya (ブラウン管部屋). Judging from the high quality of Moving (おひっこし, I suspect that the students behind it are studio bound and have a bright future in animation ahead of them.

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009