Kazoku:Eiga Sai 2014, Day 1

Eiga Sai, the yearly festival of Japanese films being held in the country, has just begun. For this year, its theme is about the family, which, while the basic foundation of all societies past and present, is a rather generic subject. Let's take a look at some of the entries in this year's event that revolve around the subject. 

• "Hospitalité" by Koji Fukada (93 mins)

This is Japanese cinema's own take on the home invasion genre - and just how did they do it! It doesn't have the bloodshed and brutality that we have come to associate with films belonging to the genre (Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs", Michael Haneke's "Funny Games", Adam Wingard's "You're Next", to name some), as it's more on psychology and emotional manipulation, while attempting to add social dimension by tackling issues of homelessness and illegal immigration. Yet, it's just as tense and unpredictable, as intrigue is generated, secrets are discovered, blackmail is utilized, fidelity is tested and power is shifted. We're virtually clueless as to how the next situation will turn out. In this instance, the virtuousness evoked by the title is tested to its limits and possibilities. The closely-knit family of Ozu might just be on the verge of breaking up and of breaking down with the intrusion of another "family". 

Just when everything is about to reach its boiling point already, things take a detour or, perhaps, are turned upside down towards the end, when what could have been a heady confrontation or clash of wills is instead replaced with a kind of bacchanalian celebration. Without some sort of a warning, we now see the "intruders" and the "intruded" in festive unison. Thanks to a screenplay that was written with a keen and subdued feel for the intriguing, the peculiar and the absurd in human interaction, we get to witness how the notion of a family and what it is to have a home gets to be taken from a radical, even unconventional, view. 

• "Tamako in Moratorium" by Nobuhiro Yamashita (76 mins)

For this one, Japanese cinema puts its own twist on a subject that Richard Linklater would have loved to tackle (at least in his younger days):the slacker lifestyle. With a curious title to boot, the character referred to in the title is a 23-year-old college graduate who is without a job and spends most of her time at home in bed or at the dinner table, much to the dismay of her divorced father who keeps on reminding her to find work and yet "can't tell to her face" to leave home and be on her own. With a running time of barely 80 minutes, the film is told in accordance with the four seasons and yet, through the year, there appears to be not much that has significantly "changed" in the lives of the father and the daughter, even if, finally, the former is about to open a new chapter in marital life and the latter is about to take a step further away from home. Looks like it's just one of those things. Nothing special;just have to move on. As in the first film, the domestic set-up of Ozu's family is put through a litmus test, though the effect that the film wants to achieve is probably in reverse - that is, rather than cracking it up, it just wants to lay it back. After all, didn't we say that the father is intent in sending his daughter off, not just to a married life, as the patriarch in an Ozu film is wont to do. 

And for the most part, all of these are told in the manner of a deadpan comedy, something along the likes of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch. While the formal aesthetics is the kind that has already become second nature to Japanese cinema:minimal dialogue, static shots, absence of a soundtrack, pensive mood. Don't you just love a Japanese film? 

• "About the Pink Sky" by Keiichi Kobayashi (112 mins) 

While all the three Japanese films shown on Eiga Sai's first day were exceptionally good, this one was my favorite. This debut feature film by Keiichi Kobayashi is rich, complex and ultimately moving. It's the kind of work that may offer a number of pleasant rewards and could be peeled layer by layer upon repeat viewings. This is probably a trite observation, but it's almost always the case that when a contemporary Japanese film is shot in black-and-white, it's sure to be brilliant (Shohei Imamura's "Black Rain", Shinji Aoyama's "Eureka", Ishii Sogo's "Labyrinth of Dreams") - and "About the Pink Sky" is no exception. Japanese filmmakers probably just have this way with a monochrome hue. In a manner that evokes Robert Bresson's "L'Argent", a chain of events is set off when a spunky highschool girl named Izumi (a brilliant Ai Ikeda, who is present in every scene) finds a lost wallet containing a large sum of money and decides, not without some inkling and with the help of two friends, to return it to the owner, a highschool boy named Sato (Tsubasa Takayama), son of a rich politician - but this is after lending a certain portion of it to a poor and out-of-work family man! From a seemingly pure and random act of philantropy (Izumi is of the thinking that the "dirty money" - earned by a corrupt politician - should be put to good use) and an understandably natural decision by the owner to have it paid back, a surprisingly dense morality tale branches out - something that involves the nature of money, the value of honesty and responsibility, the meaning of love and friendship, and the conception of reality as filtered through a mass media. This is simply a unique coming-of-age tale, with the literal "absence" of parental or guardian figures to guide the young (another Japanese film comes to mind, Ryosuke Hashiguchi's "Like Grains of Sand"). And the beauty of it is that despite all the morality play involved, there is no attempt to take sides or to pass a blatant judgment. The film simply savors the complexity of human nature and of human relationships and allows them to unfold or to go through some transformation or to make some realization as if it just happens naturally. 

And in a challenging narrative method, all of these are played out in long-take conservations between or among the characters. This is a marvel of the film, because just like in a Dostoevsky or an Ibsen verbal exchange, as the conversation progresses, a whole spectrum of differing emotions is illuminated and a wide variety of human behavior is displayed, as if the conversation is an odyssey itself for the characters. And as the film closes, it's as if we ourselves have also undergone a life-changing odyssey. 

(Keiichi Kobayashi's "About the Pink Sky":A unique coming-of-age tale.)