Confessions 告白 (Kokuhaku) [2010] • Japan

When I made my top ten list for 2010 I wrote I was confident that if I had seen this it would have made the list. It's a little late, but now I've seen it and added it to the list.

As par usual, I'm not going to go through a plot synopsis. Click on one of the links at the end of this entry if you want that. 

Confessions is not perfect but it's pretty close. It's dark and gorgeous. It's unsettling. It's got Takako Matsu and Yoshino Kimura; Radiohead and Boris on the soundtrack. It gets crazy and goes by quickly at times (hard to catch all the subtitles), even though a good portion of the film is in slow motion. It's a testament to the skill of the director that everything makes an impression, even fluttering by. A few times, for a moment, it seems like it might lose steam and then whoosh! There it goes again. This is hands-on film making. An audio-visual package right up there with Myung-se Lee's M. It gets physical. And that's what I like about it. Nakashima gets how to manipulate sight, sound, and time moving through time that creates both a sense of being on a rollar coaster and being suspended in time. Like being in a dream or a car wreck.

It's creepy that most of the players in the film are 14 years old, talking about killing people and their mommy problems. The film gets most of its fuel from mommy problems. Shocking that it seems so believable that these kids understand what they are talking about. Tetsuya Nakashima makes these kids smart. It's very refreshing.

The first and last acts are both tours de force. I've seen three different English translations of the last line in the film. Don't google it until after you've seen it. What an ending! Some folks have written that Nakashima throws it all away with the last line but I think it depends on how you take it. I found it eerily ambiguous and evil.

Most commenters on the film will point out the film's "social commentary", i.e., that kids under fourteen years of age can't be punished by the law for anything. I'm not big on social commentary commentating but watching the film I couldn't help but think that any thirteen year old contemplating murder sort of gets a green lit idea. And the bit about the teacher giving the unpunishable kids HIV tainted milk, as part of her revenge, is chilling but it's more that she fills the kids with a fear of their own mortality than attempting murder of her own. You'll see what I mean when you watch the film. It's just one of the many questionable aspects of the script's believability that ....

If you over think this film it can fall apart. If you're the type that does that kind of thing you won't like it as much as I did. But unless you are also sensitive to slow motion or post rock emo soundtracks it's hard not to be overwhelmed by this masterfully crafted film.

★★★★★

Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Starring: Takako Matsu, Masaki Okada, Yoshino Kimura, Masakazu Ato, Atsushi Ozawa

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April Story 四月物語 (Shigatsu monogatari) [1998] • Japan

A sweet slice of life portrait of a girl's transition from a high school in Japan's northern countryside to university in Tokyo. It's a series of vignettes that begins with her family seeing her off and ends with a reveal of why she went to this particular university. In between we watch her move into her new apartment, cook meals for herself, meet her neighbors and classmates, buy a bike, and browse a bookstore. It may not sound like much but it's very well crafted. Takako Matsu is as endearing as can be. It was a pleasure to see her, as a teenager, play this naive young girl after having recently seen her, at thirty-two, play an archetypal Japanese woman in Villon's Wife.

This is a short film, at just over an hour, that doesn't attempt much more than capturing a few moments in the life of a girl who is not only changing her outward surroundings but also following her inward desires. The reason she chose to go to the university in Tokyo is because her unrequited crush on a boy one year her senior is attending it. The film could have been longer and explored their relationship but then it wouldn't have ended as poetically as it does right at the moment they meet. Broken umbrellas, a rainstorm, and a barrel full of young love, idealism, and hope. Simply beautiful.

★★★★

Director: Shunji Iwai
Starring: Takako Matsu, Seiichi Tanabe, Kahori Fujii, Rumi, Kazuhiko Kato
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Villon's Wife ヴィヨンの妻 〜桜桃とタンポポ〜 (Viyon no tsuma) [2009] • Japan

This film made me crazy. It's a good film, very well acted with some poetic dialog sprinkled throughout, but it's also some of the worst Orientalist horror imaginable. But that's weird because it's a Japanese film, by a Japanese director, based on a short story by a Japanese writer. "Villon's Wife" is the name of the story the film is based upon, and the film is about a wife but there's nobody named Villon in it. If you run the Japanese sub-title, 〜桜桃とタンポポ〜, through Google translation it returns "Cherry and dandelion", which might seem a little abstract but it has a lot more to do with the movie than "Villon's Wife" and actually takes a bit of the sting out of what comes off as the debatable center of attention and refocuses it on what really matters. 

On the surface this is a film of questionable merit about a long-suffering and loyal wife, named Sachi, to a cheating, thieving, alcoholic husband named Otani. They have a two year old child. Otani is a writer and an attempt is made to give his awful ways a pass by portraying them as self-destructive in that poetic way only artists can be, and be loved. He characterizes the owners of a local pub, where Sachi is working to pay off his debt, as "mercenaries" who feed him liquor so they can profit off him. That's the twisted logic of a drunk. He says things like "Distant yet close, are man and woman", and "Women know neither joy nor grief ... men know only grief. They are always fighting fear". Goodness.

Which brings us to cherries and dandelions. Otani has written a dandelion story about "a dandelion's sincerity". The story moved a young factory worker named Okada so deeply he begins stalking Otani but meets and falls in love with Sachi instead, quickly sussing Otani's ill-treatment of her. Over drinks with this would be suitor to his wife Otani, as a self-reflective woe-is-me justification for his abuse of Sachi, says "I can't even love a dandelion the way I should. I want to pluck its petals, scrunch it in my fist ... stick it in my mouth..." Otani is suspicious of the relationship between his wife and the factory worker and, feeling like a cuckold, meets with one of his lovers, portrayed as equally self-destructive (somehow, as a woman she is able to feel grief too, I guess), and they attempt suicide together. They fail. Sachi dutifully hires a lawyer, an old flame who is still in love with her, to defend Otani who is charged with the attempted murder of the girl. Sachi doesn't have any money and might have slept with the lawyer as payment.

The film ends with Sachi trying to mend things with Otani who is eating cherries that were given to him to give to his son. He acknowledges he is a terrible father. Sachi eats one of the cherries, says they are good and tells her husband that "Being a monster is fine. As long as at least we're alive, it's just fine." I wanted to pull my hair out.

Japanese sexism may not be peculiar but it is certainly intense and complex. On first blush, Villon's Wife seems to be one big stereotype celebrating the loyal, subservient, and beautiful Japanese woman. And props must be given to Takako Matsu who plays Sachi. She is beautiful, beaming that stereotype loud and clear. Everyone in the film is portrayed as loving her. She is so radiant it might be hard to take your eyes off her and see what else is going on in the film. Villon's Wife is a period piece set in the late 1940s and all the characters seem self-destructive. The Japanese have lost the war and GI Joe is everywhere. When Sachi goes to meet with the lawyer who helped her husband, she first approaches a woman on the street who is applying red lipstick to entice GI Joe, and says "Please sell me your lipstick". The woman replies "A Yankee gave it to me. It's American." Sachi makes the woman an offer she can't refuse, applies the lipstick and goes in to see the lawyer. When she comes out, her hair ever so slightly disheveled, she sees the lipstick woman in the back of a Jeep with a few other women and a bunch of GI Joes. The woman is waving and saying "Good bye. Good bye". At first Sachi seems confused, but eventually smiles and returns the "Good bye". She sets the lipstick down in the grass and, with an apparent sense of shame (or empowerment?), wipes her hand across her lips.

I don't really know for sure if this film is that smart and subtle, but if it's not, it's awful. I can't even say for sure what exactly the film is exploring or trying to say. It would help if I were Japanese, I think, and had read the source material but that kind of movie going is for college students. I can say that Villon's Wife presents itself as being a whole lot more than a simple character study of an abused but loyal wife. I blame the chosen English title for throwing me off. All of the performances are outstanding. Takako Matsu is brilliant and beautiful as Sachi. Asano Tadanobu was born to play the role of Otani and Ryoko Hirosue is wonderful in her bit part as his partner in the attempted Love-Suicide. All the characters are good and the film looks great. I'm not so creeped out any more, but be warned: watching this film at face value is a little troubling. If you don't look for deeper meaning it might not appeal.

★★★★

Director: Kichitaro Negishi
Starring: Takako Matsu, Asano Tadanobu, Ryoko Hirosue, Shigeru Muroi, Masatô Ibu
IMDb 7.7 (58 votes)