Kazoku:Eiga Sai 2014, Day 3

For Eiga Sai's second day, we saw a film whose family, unconventional though it may be, is essentially no different from any other family in that, no matter the challenges and difficulties, it is still strengthened by the power of love and the imperturbability of the spirit. Let's now find out how the films on the festival's third day have regarded this most basic unit of society.

• "The Kirishima Thing" by Daihachi Yoshida (100 mins)

This is basically a high-school film which is set solely in a, well, high school within a week's time. It employs a multi-character perspective and repetition to show how the sudden disappearance of the title character, Kirishima, who seems to be the most popular student in school, has affected in one way or another each and every high-school student who knows him, each of whom belongs to a certain school club (film, sports, music, etc), just like Kirishima himself. On the surface, because of its elliptical narrative and demography, it feels like it's treading along the same path as Gus Van Sant's "Elephant". There's no bloody tragedy that ensues in "The Kirishima Thing", but on a different level of interpretation, what the young students are undergoing in the film might just as well be called tragic. It seems that they look up at Kirishima and, most probably, have patterned their lives after him;and with his "disappearance", their sense of security and confidence has been suddenly shaken out of its firm foundation. The eponymous character is never for once shown in the film and yet he is always being mentioned by his fellow students. He's being asked for;he's being sought after;he's being remembered either with admiration or in disdain. It's probably logical to deduct from this that, for the students, Kirishima is their family and the high school, their home. In accordance with this, not one parent or guardian of these young people (if we are to discount their teachers or club advisors, who are not that much) is shown onscreen as well - they are not even being mentioned by the students! 

I can't tell with certainty if it's culture-specific, but more likely than not, the high-school students' seemingly unassailable "devotion" to Kirishima stands for the modern Japanese youth's unquestioning veneration or consumption of pop culture (a theme tackled, though in a more explicit and sensational manner, in Shion Sono's "Suicide Club" and, more poetically, in Shunji Iwai's "All About Lily Chou-Chou" some years back). The only characters in "The Kirishima Thing" who appear to not have been affected by the sudden disappearance and, therefore, to have a firm footing in their identity are the bespectacled aspiring filmmaker - who is intent in shooting his own "zombie" movie at school, no matter how foolish he may appear to his advisor and fellow students - and the handsome athlete - who is considered to be the "unseen" missing person's best pal and who seems to know the reason for his flight but is just keeping mum about it to his classmates. If it wasn't drowned out by the noise of baseball players in the opposite stadium, we may have been able to make out if the athlete's call to Kirishima was answered by the latter in the film's final frame (but of course, we know that the scene was intended that way). A unique take on parental absence and the youth's identity vacuum, an enigma of a titular character and a sort of love affair with filmmaking, coupled with a  curious set design and an elliptical narrative that allows us to see certain situations from different perspectives make "The Kirishima Thing" not just another high-school movie. 

• "A Story of Yonosuke" by Shuichi Okita (160 mins) 

There are films that depict human cruelty in such a way that leaves us with a sinking feeling and there are films that show humans' innate kindness and warmth, giving us feelings of hope and wonder. "A Story of Yonosuke" is of the latter kind. It's a crowd-pleasing story of a young man named Yonosuke Yokomichi who leaves his hometown to study in Tokyo and of the various interactions he has with certain people whose lives he has touched in a way that would make them remember him "with a smile" (or even with a laugh!). It is remarkable how the viewers are introduced to this affable young man:At the film's opening shot (we are told that the year is 1987), we see a crowded and busy subway where lots of people are coming to and fro;after a while, there emerges from among them the titular character, he with the frizzy mop of a hair and bag in tow and who, as gleaned from his visible manners, looks like a fish out of water. It seems like destiny has played its hands for us to meet this "random stranger" from the streets. The beauty of the script (based on a newspaper serial by Shuichi Yoshida) is how the human interactions (those involving Yonosuke and the people that has come to matter to him) are imbued with a richness of behavioral nuances and emotional depths that the characters just become vivid living persons. We may also notice how the film is "divided" into two different genres, which complement, rather than negate, each other:an absurdist situational comedy in the first half as Yonosuke adapts to city living and a touching love story in the second half as love develops, awkwardly yet gently, between him and a bubbly rich girl named Shoko. At some junctures in the narrative thread, the film cuts to the present day to show how the major characters (noticeably surrounded with glass windows, adding a sense of gentle melancholy) suddenly remember the fond memories they have of Yonosuke. Another wonderful aspect of the film, something which shows a triumph in production design, make-up and cinematography, is the feeling of nostalgia that it subtly evokes in us for the '80s era (most especially, I guess, for those of us who grew up in the era). Yet again (as in the '70s California of David Fincher's "Zodiac" and the '80s Texas of Jean-Marc Vallée's "Dallas Buyers Club"), we have a film situated in a bygone era that looks and feels natural - the atmosphere, the fashion, the sounds and the establishments;the lifestyle itself. 

On the other hand, all the performances are exceptional, but of course, the one that holds it all, the emotional center of the film, is Kengo Kora. As Yokosune, Kora is hands-down brilliant. In a mixture of physical comedy and child-like affability, he completely wins you over with his humor, sincerity and kind-heartedness that it becomes hard not to believe how he has really significantly touched the lives of the people dear to him. Rather than being annoying, Kora is able to make Yonosuke's good-naturedness as something winsome. That's why in the film's closing moments, as Yonosuke eagerly photographs random persons, places and objects and runs with a brimming smile as white blossoms fall from above, we feel as if we have also become part of the young man's family. 

(Shuichi Okita's "A Story of Yonosuke":A winsome kindness.)