[Spoiler Alert: Many of my review comments will reveal plot elements that may be spoilers for some.]
A friend alerted me to the Japanese Film Festival Online a week before it ended, so I was able to watch 6 of the 20 that were available. The service ended at 5 PM sharp (Japan Standard Time) on Feb 28, and I finished watching the last one with half an hour to spare!
The JFF website, showing a partial line-up of the 20 movies available. I've moved the 6 I watched to the beginning of this list.
The online festival is available in quite a few countries, so I would advise my friends to subscribe to the site and be informed of future screenings.
Let me complain about one of my bugbears right at the start. The website does not support Linux! Sure, they tell you that on their Help page, but for someone like me who only uses Open Source operating systems, this was a real pain. I had to watch all 6 movies on the cramped screen of my Android phone.
I really hope the JFF ups its game and enters the 21st century by 2023!
With that rant out of the way, here are my reviews of the movies I watched. All of them had English subtitles, although they were almost not required, since half of all the words spoken seemed to be just Arigato Gozaimas' (Thank you)!
Happy Flight
I can best describe this light movie as a documentary held together by the thinnest of storylines. A plane takes off, then returns after a couple of hours due to technical problems. With this simple plotline, the movie shows us all the processes that happen in an airport, like an Arthur Hailey novel would. There is light humour throughout, but I wouldn't classify this movie as a comedy.
I liked this movie for the way it educates its viewers about everything that happens in an airport, using a few characters and short storylines.
Ground engineers - If a tool is missing, the entire area is searched and no one goes home until it is found. The risk of a tool ending up inside an aircraft engine is simply too great.
Ground service staff - They deal with the mess of overbooking and the confusion of misplaced baggage, among other things.
Cabin crew - Life is a series of minor emergencies and challenges, from difficult passengers to unexpected food shortages, all handled with calmness and smiles.
Air Traffic Control - Dealing with weather issues, sudden changes in flight plans, and real-time decision-making are all in a day's work.
The pilots - Anyone can seemingly do this job, until there's an emergency, which is when their training kicks in.
This was a light and no-stress movie, and I would give it a 3 out of 5.
Ito
It wasn't clear at the start what kind of movie this was going to be. I don't like watching tragedies and "struggle movies". But thankfully, it wasn't anything like that.
Ito is a shy country girl who lost her mother at a very young age, and lives in a village with her father, an academic, and her maternal grandmother who is a classical musician. She takes a train to attend school at a nearby town. She seems a troubled teenager, but it's not clear what her problems are.
Bit by bit, she grows up as she resolves each of her problems, whether it be her own lack of self-confidence, her inability to communicate well with words, her unresolved feelings about her mother's death, her reluctance to play the shamisen, or her relationship with her father. Taking the first step, which is to apply for and take up a part-time job as a waitress in a "Maid Cafe", draws her out into the larger world and helps her develop her personality. At the end of the movie, we see her climbing a mountain with her dad and shouting with abandon as she looks down from the peak. Ito is fine, and we're happy to see her grown up as the movie ends.
Ito's grandmother is a sane voice in the household, capable of talking sense both to her granddaughter and her son-in-law when the latter have a spat.
Taking up a job as a hostess at the "Maid Cafe" was the best thing Ito could have done. It introduced her to a bunch of nice people whom she grew to like.
Ito's father overcomes his misgivings about his daughter's job in what he considers an anachronistic outfit when he sees her actually working.
Ito accepts herself enough to start practising the Shamisen again with her grandmother.
This was a mild coming-of-age movie, and I would give it a 3.5 out of 5.
Bread of Happiness
In some ways, this was the weirdest of the 6 movies I saw, although it wasn't bad. It seemed to have some mystical elements to it, and the female lead's problems and motivations weren't very clear.
The female lead is a young woman called Rie, who is heavily influenced by a childhood storybook about a boy called Mani and the moon. Mani to her represents a soulmate, and she gives up on her dream of ever finding such a soulmate as she grows up. After her father's death, she is all alone, and accepts the invitation of a man she knows (Nao Mizushima) to move from Tokyo to a small village. It's not immediately clear that they are married, and the relationship between herself and her husband isn't fleshed out well. They just seem to be joint owners of the Mani Cafe, which is also a boarding house.
The story is a series of episodes where people with various problems come to their cafe, and go away happier after the encounter. Whether there is supposed to be some mystical element to the bread Nao Mizushima bakes, or the coffee and soup that Rie makes, isn't clear.
At the end of the movie, Rie finally realises that her loyal and supportive husband is the Mani (soulmate) she's been looking for after all. She tells him they're going to have another guest in the new year, pointing to her tummy.
Rie making coffee (She looks Vulcan!)
Nao baking bread
A dumped girl and a man with a dead-end job find each other at the Mani Cafe after eating the magical bread there.
A latchkey kid and her divorced father rediscover each other after some magic bread.
An ailing old woman and her devoted husband find peace through magic bread.
Again, a mild and nice story, and I would give it a 3 out of 5.
Masked Ward
Now this is a thriller where providing spoilers would be a criminal offence, so I won't. The basic plot is about a young doctor doing his first night shift at a hospital for patients with dementia, where he finds himself in a dramatic situation as a masked robber bursts in with a wounded hostage. Things get curiouser and curiouser as our hero begins to look beneath the surface. Suffice it to say that nothing is what it seems to be.
Can we just agree that clowns are the scariest characters ever?
I would give this mystery thriller a 4 out of 5. I found it absolutely gripping.
Aristocrats
With the last two movies, I would say we've moved into adult territory in the sense that the themes have much more sophistication and depth.
"Aristocrats" gives us a good look into elite Japanese society. Japanese society in general is much more custom-bound than others, but the elites operate within an even more constricting social environment. It's a bit like the British Royal Family - glamorous from the outside, but probably unbearably stifling. It's an absolutely terrible life for the women of course, but the men born into this society don't have too many options either. The path ahead, paved as it may be with gold bricks, is laid out for them, and they cannot deviate from it.
They can keep their money! I'd rather live my comfortable middle-class life, doing whatever I want.
The story is essentially a contrast between the lives and personalities of two young women, Hanako and Miki. Hanako comes from an upper-crust family herself, because her father has been a successful and well-off physician. But the man she marries (Koichiro, literally "first son") comes from an even higher stratum. Hanako's upbringing gives her barely enough sophistication to cope with the demands of her role in this family.
Miki is from a much humbler background. Her father is perpetually unemployed, and she is forced to discontinue college for financial reasons. However, her brief period in college makes her a classmate of the privileged Koichiro. She has a relationship with him later on, although she doesn't have any hope of marrying him. Their relationship is a natural one, and they are easy friends. In contrast, Koichiro's relationship with his wife Hanako is a bit more formal and strained, even though they are both decent human beings. Hanako lacks a certain something that the less sophisticated Miki has in spades - a vivacious and sparkling personality with plenty of pluck and drive. I personally was very impressed with the character of Miki.
Koichiro with Miki - Miki's being from the out-crowd paradoxically allowed her to relate to Koichiro much more naturally than the women of his circle could, although a formal relationship was out of the question.
It's interesting how the two women meet and interact. It seems to be an understood aspect of Japanese society that men will have extramarital affairs, and the two women negotiate awkwardly about it, Miki parting ways with Koichiro thereafter.
The surprising twist in the story comes when Hanako sees Miki in the city and impulsively meets up with her, even visiting her modest apartment. She sees that Miki's life, although more challenging and less privileged, is completely authentic, and Miki is her own woman. It brings home to Hanako that she is trapped, and once she has a child, escape will be impossible, because aristocratic families don't allow divorced wives custody of their children. She then divorces Koichiro (which earns her a slap from her aristocratic mother-in-law) and becomes a working woman like Miki. She becomes the manager for her high school friend, who is also single and a talented violinist.
The best part of the movie is at the end, when Koichiro, by now a local politician on account of his family's connections, runs into Hanako at a park. As a district official, he attends a musical performance by Hanako's friend. Hanako and Koichiro look at each other across the room, and exchange smiles.
The movie is a statement against the shackles of aristocratic society that prevent both men and women from discovering themselves and relating to one another as authentic individuals. One can see that Koichiro is a man who finds independent women attractive. That's what had attracted him to Miki, and that's what makes his ex-wife newly attractive to him in a way she wasn't when she was playing her domestic role with docility.
For the gradual and convincing way it brought out the need for humans to live their lives without stifling social constraints, this movie gets a rating of 4 out of 5.
(Trivia: Miki's strikingly un-Japanese looks are because the actor Kiko Mizuhara is of mixed ethnicity. Her mother is Korean, and her father is American.)
Until The Break Of Dawn (The Japanese title is Tsunagu, which means "Connect")
I frankly wouldn't have watched this movie if I'd known how many times I'd have to reach for the tissue box. But having watched it, I have to say this was the best of the lot.
This was the only movie of the 6 I saw that dealt with the metaphysical. However, I see this as just a plot device to explore how we should see our lives.
The premise is that there are people called "connectors" who can allow living people to talk to a dead person. There is a limit of one meeting per person, both for the living and for the dead, so it is important for both to choose wisely. If a living person asks to connect with a dead person and the dead person refuses, then the living person has lost their only chance.
Ayumi, a young man who lives with his grandmother, does the legwork of connecting people. The grandmother is the actual connector. Ayumi escorts his clients to a hotel room where they meet with the person who is dead. The meeting only takes place on full moon nights, and at dawn, the dead person disappears for good.
The noble profession of the Connectors
The story is an exploration of regret in all its forms. At the end, Ayumi understands that his job is to facilitate the dead in comforting the living so they can move on.
Every client's story was deeply poignant. If I'd been watching it alone with no one else at home, I'd have been bawling like a baby.
I give it 4.5 out of 5.
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