Japan Cuts 2011

Summer is here, which means the return of JAPAN CUTS: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema to The Japan Society.  The festival runs  from July 7^th to July 22^nd with 32 titles and 33 screenings, including 10 co-presentations with New York Asian Film Festival. They will be presenting a wide selection of films from uplifting family fare to brooding dramas, blockbusters and thrillers. Special guests will include directors Masashi Yamamoto and Tak Sakaguchi, and actress Sora Aoi.  

The July 20^th screening of Haru’s Journey, which stars legendary actor Nakadai Tatsuya, will see 50% of the proceedings go to Japan Society’s Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.

Other festival highlights include screenings of Sketches of Kaitan City (dir. Kazuyoshi Kumakiri), Into the White Night (dir. Yoshihiro Fukagawa), The Last Ronin (dir. Shigemichi Sugita), Ninja Kids!!! (dir. Takashi Miike), The Seaside Motel (dir. Kentaro Moriya), Heaven’s Story (dir. Takahisa Zeze), A Liar and a Broken Girl (dir. Natsuki Seta), Milocrorze: A Love Story (dir. Yoshimasa Ishibashi), A Night in Nude: Salvation (dir. Takashi Ishii), Toilet (dir. Naoko Ogigami), and Vengeance Can Wait (dir. Masanori Tominaga).  

I recommend seeing Mai Tominaga's  Rinco's Restaurant (食堂かたつむり, 2010), which I enjoyed at Nippon Connection this spring. 

Order from Cdjapan (no subs)

Here is the JAPAN CUTS line-up:

Thursday, July 7
Buddha 6:45 PM
Ringing in their Ears 9 PM

Friday, July 8
Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano 7 PM
Battle Royale  9:15 PM

Saturday, July 9
Gantz: The Movie, Part 1 12:30 PM
Gantz, Part II: Perfect Answer 3 PM
Ninja Kids!!! 6 PM
Yakuza Weapon 8:15 PM
+ After Party!

Sunday, July 10
Buddha 12:30 PM
Heaven’s Story 2:45 PM
Milocrorze: A Love Story 8 PM
+ Q&A with Yoshimasa Ishibashi  
Tuesday, July 12
Sword of Desperation 6:30 PM
The Last Ronin 9 PM

Wednesday, July 13
Rinco’s Restaurant 6:30 PM
Birthright (a.k.a. Umbilical Cord) 9 PM

Thursday, July 14
Rail Truck 6:30 PM
Yuki and Nina 9 PM

Friday, July 15
Toilet 6:15 PM
Three☆Points 8:30 PM*
+ Q&A with Masashi Yamamoto and Sora Aoi  
+ After Party!

Saturday, July 16
Love Addiction 2:30 PM
The Seaside Motel 4:30 PM
+ Q&A with Kentaro Moriya 
A Liar and a Broken Girl 7:15 PM
+ Q&A with Natsuki Seta  
Love and Treachery 10:30 PM

Sunday, July 17
The Knot 2 PM
Torso 4 PM
Strangers in the City 6:15 PM
A Night in Nude: Salvation 9 PM

Tuesday, July 19
Sketches of Kaitan City 6:30 PM
Control Tower 9:30 PM

Wednesday, July 20
Haru’s Journey 7 PM
+ Q&A with Masahiro Kobayashi and Reception

Thursday, July 21
Vengeance Can Wait 7 PM
Wandering Home 9 PM

Friday, July 22
Into the White Night 7 PM
+ Closing Party

Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ, 2009)

It is rare to find an individual who is completely happy with themselves.  Most people, especially those without love in their lives, find themselves constantly searching for a way to improve or replace these pieces of themselves that they find lacking.  Momoko Andō’s Kakera: A Piece of Our Life (カケラ, 2009) is peopled with characters who are unhappy with their present circumstances and are looking without rather than within in order to fulfill their needs and desires.

Kakera tells the story of a college student named Haru  Kitagawa (Hikari Mitsushima of Love Exposure), who stays with her boyfriend (Tasuku Nagaoka of Moon and Cherry) despite the fact that he treats her quite badly.  One day in a café, she is approached by an older woman named Riko Sakata (Eriko Nakamura) who finds her attractive.  This awkward, yet tender scene marks the beginning of a complicated relationship between the two women which runs the gamut of emotions from warmth and affection to jealousy and confusion.  

Momoko Andō has managed to capture the fragile beauty of a romance between women with an authenticity and sensitivity rarely seen in feature films.  Each of the characters in the film has a kind of void in their lives that they try to fill with the love they have for another character and as in real life the course of these relationships never runs smooth.  Riko’s love for Haru is complicated by Haru’s unresolved feelings for her boyfriend and her own sexuality.  Haru’s boyfriend is one of those types of people who seem to always desire what he cannot have.  And Riko’s client and lover Tōko (Rino Katase) is also consumed by desires that remain only partially fulfilled.  This theme is visually represented in the film by the prosthetics that Riko designs for people who have lost body parts.  Prosthetics allow their wearers to disguise the ravages of illness or accidents that they have suffered, but they are not a permanent replacement for what has been lost.

Kakera is a film that examines female sexuality in all its ambiguities.  Riko’s love for Haru is complex.  She can be loving and kind, but she can also be possessive and jealous.  It is a brave film in many respects, though might have been even braver if Andō had included less chaste lovemaking scenes between the female protagonists.  This would have been a welcome contrast to the cold, empty sex scenes between Haru and her boyfriend that look more like rape than love-making.

The film has a feeling of authenticity about it thanks to not only the sincere performances of the actors but also the use of recognizable locations from around Tokyo, which ground the film in a very realistic, contemporary setting.  As a female spectator, I also took great delight in Andō’s use of female spaces that normally get left out of films.  There is one wonderful scene in which Haru is shot from a high angle using a public squat toilet to put a menstruation pad into her underpants.  It is an intimate moment that marks a new phase in Haru and Riko’s relationship.  This scene should not have been as surprising as it was as it’s a part of women’s everyday lives, but  startles because these moments always get omitted from films.  

  

Order the DVD

Kakera was adapted by Andō from the popular manga Love Vibes by Erica Sakurazawa  and was filmed beautifully by cinematographer Hirokazu Ishii.  The soundtrack was written by James Iha, the former guitarist of Smashing Pumpkins.  It is available on DVD in the UK from Third Window Films.  It is also available from cdjapan (JP only).

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs. To read more LGBT posts from the blogathon click here.

Manji (卍, 1964)

The impassioned voice of Kiyoko Kishida in the lead role of Sonoko Kakiuchi dominates the narrative of Yasuzo Masumura’s 1964 classic feature film Manji (卍, 1964). Just as in the original novel Quicksand (Manji/卍, 1928-30) by Junichirō Tanizaki, the story is told from Sonoko’s point of view to a man she refers to as “sensei”.

  

The Taniguchi novel

Sonoko is stuck in a loveless arranged marriage to Kotaro Kakiuchi (Eiji Funakoshi). The marriage is childless because Sonoko is secretly taking measures to prevent pregnancy, and she fills her empty days with art. She attends art lessons at a local women’s college. During life drawing classes, it is brought to Sonoko’s attention that she has become the subject of gossip because instead of drawing the model’s face, she has been drawing the face of beautiful fellow student Mitsuko Sido (Ayako Wakao).

Sonoko is brought to her knees by Michiko's unadorned beauty

The two women develop a friendship with each other that blossoms into a full-fledged love affair. The passion Sonoko feels for Mitsuko is so strong that she brazenly conducts the affair in her own marital bed and defies her husband’s wishes for her to end the relationship. It does not take long however for cracks to appear in what Sonoko believed to be a perfect love. She soon discovers that Mitsuko has a secret fiancé Eijiro Wakanuki (Yuusuke Kawazu), a man whose impotence leads him to behave in a jealous, irrational manner. This awkward ménage-à-trois becomes even more complicated when Mitsuko also draws Sonoko’s husband into the fray.

Michiko embraces Sonoko.

It’s a frenetic narrative that rarely stops for air as it races towards its dramatic conclusion. Set among the Osakan upper classes, we rarely see a glimpse of the city streets as the story for the most part unfolds in the interiors of the Kakiuchi home or in anonymous rented rooms. The use of interior spaces and frequent use of close-ups adds to the stifled atmosphere created by the oppressive passions of the four narcissistic lovers. The Japanese title “Manji” is the Buddhist swastika with its four arms representing each of the four lovers. Sonoko also uses Mitsuko as the model for her painting of the Goddess of Mercy, which serves an ironic function in the plot as Mitsuko turns out to be anything but merciful in the way that she skillfully manipulates her lovers.

Sonoko and Michiko's love letters.

In the wrong hands, Tanizaki’s story of obsession and jealousy could have easily been turned into a tawdry film exploiting love between women. Masumura avoids this thanks to Kaneto Shindō's poignant script and his use of highly stylized framing. Love scenes are rendered in fragments with each frame carefully composed with the elegance of an oil painting. The pureness of Sonoko's love for Michiko is emphasized through one of the few outdoor scenes in which the two women stroll through a verdant forest and pause in front of some Buddhist statues.  Throughout it all, the tremulous voice of Kyoko Kishida as Sonoko reminds us that with all the lovers’ threats of suicide at the very least one passionate woman will survive the maelstrom that is Manji. 

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs. To read more LGBT posts from the blogathon click here.  This film is widely available on DVD (Fantoma in the US, Yume Pictures in the UK - who have interestingly dropped the swastika from the poster).  Click here to order from Japan (no subs).