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<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal"><u>A short report from the </u><u>Far East</u><u>
Film Festival, 2019</u>.</p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">Japanese films did not find the
limelight this year at the Far East Film Festival. Films from other East Asian
countries picked up the awards; and the retrospective, that run concurrently in
another location this year, was on Korean films. But, for those not in touch
with recent releases in Japan,
the light that it shone rendered some strong contrasts.</p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">Before reporting, I should mention
two footnotes about the awards announcements. Firstly, since Oliver Chan’s
feature debut, <i>Still Human</i>, has two of her characters watching and
listening to a Japanese pink film in their Hong Kong
public housing apartment, I can cheat and mention a well-deserved audience
award-winner. It’s a cantonese film with a strong mix of spanish. Chan gets at
least six languages spoken in her winning debut, which convinced all the way. </p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">Secondly, the FEFF press release
mentioned that “readers of Mymovies.it” had chosen as their best film, <i>Fly
Me to the Saitama</i>, the latest film of <span>TAKEUCHI Hideki – he of <i>Thermae Romae</i>.</span> I could find no
mention of this on <i>Mymovies</i> website, which I greet with some relief.<span> </span>Perhaps both of them left early whilst there
was some genuine comedy in a grotesquely privileged school. Later, the film
leaves that behind for a heroic march on Tokyo
by strictly all-Japanese massed ranks from Saitama and Chiba
“in 19xx”, fuelled on a victimhood - a fake grievance about provincials needing
passes. </p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">It’s a past, from a weak framing
story in which characters look nostalgically back to something that looks very
much like our present. Except that those whose access to Japanese IDs is
actually restricted, foreign faces, are absent from both time frames. We should
not be unduly worried about this choice: the website voters of Friuli
might not have been thinking of the March on Rome
(1922) – I’ve seen it covered in museums elsewhere in Italy
but not in these parts.</p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">But now for some more rewarding Japanese
films in this festival of “popular film”. After the Hong Kong
omnibus film <i>Ten Years</i> was shown at FEFF a few years ago, producers from
other industries in the region also sought to speculate on conditions ten years
hence. Under the Koreeda name as producer, five directors of <i>Ten Years Japan</i>
all make something of their 19 minutes. The film has already got some notice in
festivals, so I’ll just add that its health must owe something to the competition
and questioning at the script stage. Japanese independent film has, in my view,
suffered relative to Europe and elsewhere, in the dearth
of support at the script stages. So I hope ‘Ten Years Japan’ really does point
to the future, and that many of those unsuccessful this time get other
opportunities to develop a script.</p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt"><i>Melancholic</i> is the debut
feature by Tanaka Seiji where, as is so often the case outside the production
committees for commercial films, a filmmaker has to self-nurture their script. The
characters are nicely drawn and it is particularly well, and subtly, acted for
a ‘situation’ drama. For a while, I thought it would bite at moral choice and
its everyday evasion. I know that others admire this film but, for me, if the
political is personal, it can’t also be metaphorical.</p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt">Having finally caught <i><span>Tomerareruka oretachi o</span></i><span> = <i>Dare to Stop Us</i> here, I wonder
whether the objections in some quarters to the film directed by Shiraishi Kazua,
is in the pronoun of the title, oretachi = ‘us’. The film is not really on
Wakamatsu Pro, but a biopic on Yoshizumi Megumi who worked there. <span style="color:black">I agree with Mark Schilling that Kadowaki Mugi, (previously
in <i>Close-knit</i>,), makes her character “</span></span>funny, likeable,
dark and unknowable<span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black">” in a
milieu populated by young men, apart from some uncentred porn stars.<span> </span>The script of Inoue Jun’ichi is smart and
tender.</span></p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black">The one-line lead-ins to the films at FEFF did the Japanese
entries no favour - I thought ‘quirky’ had past its sell-by date a long way
back.<span> </span>But I also nearly missed the
“Feel-good tea ceremony film”, until I noticed some of the names involved. </span><i><span>Nichi nichi kore kōjitsu</span></i><span> = <i><span style="color:black">Every Day a
Good Day</span></i><span style="color:black"> is one of the last films to cast
Kiki Kirin. She is the master who sets the scene in all possible ways, but the
film centres on her student, played by Kuroki Haru. Kuroki’s character, Noriko,
passes in the film from a 20-year-old student to a seasoned 40-year old. In
developing from an awkward and timid young woman to someone much more mature,
Kuroki somehow moulded her body undetectably, convincing me here as an actor
far more than for her Berlin award-winning role a few years back.</span></span></p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black">‘Noriko’ was a name not much given to girls, even in the
70s, and director Ōmori Tatsushi picks up on this, even though the film is
based on an autobiographical piece by Morishita Noriko. No omiai are staged or
elided in this story – her relationships are very much the lived-in,
hit-and-miss versions of the current age. Nor does her father stare wistfully
upon her parting – the gaze is centred from her, in a life-to-death scene, and
just before that, in a frame-grab, which I’ll leave you with. No prizes for what
and who is invoked here, but I thought it a nice way to remember Kiki Kirin.</span></p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black">Roger</span></p>
<p class="ydpa5958394MsoNormal" style="margin-top:6.0pt"><br></p></div><br></div></div></body></html>