Izuru Kumasaka/ Japan 2007/ 111 min/ 15/ Japanese with English subtitles
Winner of the Best First Feature Award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, director Izuru Kumasaka’s powerful indie-hit has been on the circuit for a long time and deserves to break-out, even if it can feel a touch over-precious at times.
Hotel manager Tsuyako (singer-turned-actor Lily) runs the titular hotel, where a trio of dispossessed young women’s stories interweave. Suicidal thirteen-year-old Mika (Hikari Kajiwara) has left home since feeling like an outsider in her father’s new family, Tsuki (Sachi Jinno) power-walks past the hotel everyday on orders from her chauvinist husband to lose weight, and seventeen-year-old Marika (Chiharu) is there for an altogether stranger reason. Will they find salvation with the maternal Tsuyako?
Mired only by a seriously lagging pace that soon changes from moodiness to slackness, Kumasaka has crafted an otherwise excellent film of rare subtlety. Lily turns in a restrained and irresistibly affecting performance, supported by a generally strong cast. Cinematically, there’s a curious shifting in style throughout, from a cool, distanced feeling to getting right into the actors faces, a move that helps underscore how everyday life can suddenly spring from mundanity to poignancy. There’s also, despite the harsh emotional reality, something of a fairytale aspect to the story that lifts the drama into a poetic cry for recognition of Japan’s neglected women.
Showing @Filmhouse March 11th at 17:45 as part of Girls On Film festival,