Sway

Another great film I had the chance to watch at the Japenese film festival "Japan Cuts" here in New York was, Sway (original title "Yureru"), the latest effort by Miwa Nishikawa (Wild Berries).
Sway is easily one of the most well written and thought provoking films I have seen in a very long time.
The film starts with a young man named Takeru (played by the brilliant Jo Odagiri who was also the star of Kiroshi Kurosawa's "Bright future") returning to his hometown to honor his dead mother, something he wasn't able to do at her funeral since he was working. Takeru is a successful photographer, handsome and rebellious who chose to pursue his dreams rather than work at his family's gas station like his older brother Minoru did (a great performance by Teruyuki Kagawa). Takeru soon finds out that his old girlfriend has been working at their gas station and that his brother has a crush on her. Chieko (a heartbreaking performance by Yoko Maki) however, doesn't seem to feel the same way and the appearance of her old boyfriend makes her hope for a better future.
When the 3 of them go on a trip to the countryside, the hopes and the fears of our main characters are to some extent revealed and will lead to the death of Chieko.
Minoru is soon accused of murder and Takeru is doing everything he can to protect his brother, even though he is not sure he is innocent. The discussions between the two brothers give us a glimpse into how they feel about each other and the dialogue is brilliant.
After the film, the audience had the chance to talk to the writer/director of the film, Miwa Nishikawa and she told us that the idea of making it came from a dream, where her best friend killed a woman and she wanted to protect him, something she didn't expect herself to do and which surprised her and made her feel there's so much we don't know about ourselves. She also told us that another thing she wanted to explore was the fragility of memories which personally I think is a very interesting concept.
Finally I couldn't help but relate to the story of these people, one of whom had left his old town to live in Tokyo but still was very much connected to everything he left behind (even if it was hard for him to admit it), while his brother and old girlfriend, felt that they hadn't been able to accomplish everything they wanted in life and that their dreams were drifting away.
I saw "Sway" 2 days ago and I still can't get it out of my mind. I really wish more films such as this one existed.

my life as a nightmare detective...

The New York Asian Film Festival ended yesterday and I have to say there was some really good stuff there.
Most of the films I watched were Japanese and since I have been reading some Ryu Murakami books lately, I can't help but admire how imaginative artists are in Japan.


Other than Ekusute that I reviewed last week, my favorite film was easily Nightmare Detective, the new thriller by Shinya Tsukamoto.
"Nightmare Detective" is one of his darkest, most psychedelic films and is a true masterpiece. One of his two main characters is a young suicidal man, who we soon discover has the ability to enter people's thoughts and dreams. As awesome as that might sound, it really hasn't done our hero much good. Every nightmare he enters depresses him even more and every thought he reads makes him lose faith in the human race.
At the same time, a beautiful detective with problems of her own and her team investigate two cases where the victims appeared to have committed suicide after talking to a man known only as 0 (zero). Soon, the police is forced to ask for the help of the reluctant to help nightmare detective.

Tsukamoto with this film has managed to break the boundaries between dream and reality, presenting us a side of Tokyo that is as hellish as the nightmares our detective is asked to enter. I have to admit that lately I have been disappointed by some of the director's efforts, but "Nightmare detective" is fabulous and its poetic beauty stems from its depiction of our darkest fears.

I had the chance after the festival to talk to one of the people who organized it and he told me that the film that had the best chance of winning was Memories of Matsuko, a heartbreaking musical about a woman who began her life with so many dreams to end up dying alone abandoned by friends and family. The film is really powerful and you couldn't help but feel for Matsuko, played brilliantly by Miki Nakatani who won the Japanese Academy's Best Actress Award last year.

Ekusute

The best film I've seen so far at the New York Asian Film Festival is easily Ekusute, or "Exte", as the film's english title is.
Written and directed by Sion Sono (Suicide club), Ekusute combines humor, horror and drama in the most innovative way and it will please even the most demanding audience.
The film deals with two parallel stories. On one hand there's Yuko, a woman in her early 20s who works as a trainee at a hair salon. One day her roommate Yuki finds a young girl waiting at their doorstep. Yuko soon discovers that the young girl that has been abused both emotionally and physically by her mother, is her niece Mami.
And while Yuko struggles to keep up with her job and with raising the young girl (who at Yuko's request calls her sister rather than aunt), a strange man with a hair fetish named Yamazaki, steals a body from the morgue. The body which belonged to a young woman whose kidneys and eyeballs had been removed, magically grows hair not only on her head but from wounds, her fingers, even her eyes. We soon discover more about the young woman when Yamazaki begins to sell her hair as extensions at different hair salons, including the one where Yuko works.

The film at many times feels like a parody of many J-Horror films such as the Ring or Ju-on (which was the director's intention as Sion Sono who is very funny and witty told us after the screening), but at the same time by dealing with the very sensitive issue of child abuse it manages to be a very strong drama as well. Ekusute is anchored by the great performances of its two main stars, Chiaki Kuriyama as Yuko and newcomer Miku Sato as her niece Mami and I have a feeling it could become an international success when (or if) it gets a wider release outside Japan.

NY Asian Film Festival

I had the chance to watch a couple of films at the NYAFF this week and I'm planning to watch more until Sunday when the festival will be over.


One film that I totally loved was Hula Girls, a film about the real story of a mining town in Northern Japan and the attempts of a group of young girls to bring some sunshine to their community that has been declining along with the mining trade.


The film which swept the Japanese Academy Awards is really wonderful, has some great performances, especially by its 2 stars, Yasuko Matsuyuki, a dancer who after her career went downhill, accepts a job as a dancing instructor in this small town and her favorite student, played by Yu Aoi, who won the Japanese Academy's Best Supporting Actress award.

The film is probably a little more commercial than one would expect from a Film Festival, but it is really sweet and leaves you with a smile on your face.


I also had the chance to see Kiroshi Kurosawa's new film Retribution and like most of Kurosawa's films (no relation to Akira Kurosawa) it's full of ghosts, doppelgangers (or maybe not?) and many other supernatural references, while at the same time dealing with what is at the heart of all his films: our loneliness.

The always excellent, Koji Yakusho (Babel), plays a detective, who after discovering the body of a woman drowned in seawater begins to fear that it was him who committed the crime, even though he has no recollection of such an event. A series of similar murders and the strange behavior of the murderers leads him to a downward spiral from which there appears to be no escape. As with all of Kurosawa's films, the film lacks any type of structure and even when you expect a Hollywood ending, you get the exact opposite. I didn't like it as much as his previous film, Bright future, (one of my favorite films of 2003) but it's still one of the best I've seen lately and one of the most horrifying portrayals of what we as human beings are capable of and how lonely one can be in the world's largest city.