I have yet to see Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s previous film, the internationally lauded 5-hour domestic drama Happy Hour, which, probably due to its length, hasn’t been picked up by WOWOW. But having read about its charms for almost a year I was intrigued to see his latest, which premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes. It’s much shorter and, based on a popular novel, apparently more manageable than Happy Hour. In fact, it’s pretty conventional in terms of plot and characterization. Hamaguchi’s strong point is his attention to personality detail. Despite the hackneyed dialogue and thin motivation that’s built into the story, he manages to make the people on screen seem familiar in a three-dimensional way, though, in the end, it isn’t enough to lift the narrative out of the pedestrian.
The title is cleverly misleading. There are not two physical Asakos (Erika Karata), but rather two completely different men with whom she falls in love in tandem. The first man, Baku (Masahiro Higashide), she meets in Osaka. Baku is carefree and irresponsible and pretty much forces his way into Asako’s life. Her friend, Haruyo (Sairi Ito), warns her about him, but they become a couple of a sort, despite the fact that Baku, who has longish hair and a distracted demeanor, tends to disappear and not show up for appointments. One day, he goes off to buy some shoes and never returns.
The story resumes two years later with Asako transplanted to Tokyo, where she meets Ryohei (Higashide), who looks a lot like Baku but, due to his retiring manner, obviously isn’t. Thanks to a second chance encounter, the two become friends and then lovers, and it’s mostly up to the viewer to decide if Asako’s attraction is based on Ryohei’s inherent qualities or his resemblance to Baku. Most likely it’s a bit of both.
Hamaguchi’s handling of the romantic give-and-take is more satisfying than the intrigues that eventually materialize. You feel like you’ve seen these intrigues done before in better movies, even if you can’t name them off the top of your head. Asako I & II is better than most Japanese films of its ilk only because Hamaguchi is a more interesting director. He allows the story, whatever it’s flaws, to reach its own conclusions without clever tricks or narrative prodding, but he necessarily misses something with his casting. Higashide, a well-respected star of stage and screen, is quite good in the dual roles. I, for one, didn’t even find the resemblance that obvious because the two men were so different temperamentally. Karata, a newcomer, is more problematic. She underplays Asako’s emotional development, but it’s hard not to think that she’s doing so because she doesn’t feel ready for the part. She’s a very slight presence in a movie where she’s supposed to be the main focus.
In Japanese. Now playing in Tokyo at Theatre Shinjuku (03-3352-1846), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905).
Asako I & II home page in Japanese.
photo (c) 2018 Eiga Nete mo Samete mo Seisaku Iinkai/Commes des Cinemas
It’s a good thing the second Ant-Man movie is above average, because it’s becoming quite a chore to fit all these Marvel superhero movies into the Marvel universe, at least as it applies to the Avengers movies, which seem to be the focus. Much of the plotting of Ant-Man and the Wasp is dependent on both the last Captain America movie and the last Avengers flick, though temporally they exist in different relative dimensions, and I found myself uselessly trying to recall the details of Avengers: Infinity War, which hasn’t taken place at this point, when I should have been concentrating on Captain America: Civil War, which is the reason our hero, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), is under house arrest as the movie begins.
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Thanks to Japan’s complicated publicity machine, the sequel to the successful movie version of the very successful ABBA-inspired jukebox musical Mamma Mia! arrives well after most of the rest of the world has decided it’s a better movie than the original. The first thing that strikes me is pity for Meryl Streep, who basically saved the first movie from mawkish amateurism with her native ability as a stage performer and willingness to parlay her appreciation of the songs into a silly nostalgia romp. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything at this point by saying that Streep’s character is deceased in the sequel, a move that may have been production-oriented (Meryl may have simply thought once is enough) but was probably strategic, since the plot is divided into two parallel storylines taking place in different time periods. In the present, we have Donna’s (Streep) daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), preparing to reopen her mother’s Greek hotel, with or without the aid of her famously three fathers, Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), and Harry (Colin Firth). The other storyline depicts the early 20-ish Donna, played by the other young blonde go-to actress of the moment, Lily James, coming to the Greek island in question for the first time and meeting the three men who will seal her fate as not only a single mother of distinction, but a popular travel destination entrepreneur.
The titular elephant in this Thai film is named after the iconic cartoon sailor, though I can’t really fathom the title’s unconventional spelling. In a way, the linguistic disconnect expands on the movie’s sometimes jarring juxtaposition of universal themes and local particulars. The hero is a successful architect, Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh), who is going through the usual mid-life crisis (failing marriage, loss of direction, etc.) and one day happens upon a man trying to move an elephant along a Bangkok street. Convinced the elephant is Popeye, his childhood pet when he lived in the deep countryside, he buys the animal off the man and sets out to “bring the elephant home” on foot. In other words, Pop Aye is a classic road movie of self-discovery except that we have no insight into the mindset of one of the members of the entourage.
The Brothers Grimm story from which this French animated film has been adapted is not one of their more famous ones, but it has all the non-Disney hallmarks that have made the fairy tale-meisters the darlings of comparative lit majors. It’s fixated on graphic violence and sublimated sex, but it’s also about the human capacity for cruelty that goes beyond the kind of cartoon villainy we’ve come to expect from stories like this. The fundamental reason the story is so powerful and suggestive is the animation itself, which not only eschews CGI, but also the kind of cell-craft that most people are familiar with.
Charlize Theron’s second feature with director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody is more sentimental than Young Adult but every bit as irreverent, which may sound like a contradiction in terms. Theron plays Marlo, the pregnant mother of an autistic kindergarden-age son, Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), and a nine-year-old daughter, Sarah (Lia Frankland). Her devotion to her children is unconditional and almost tragic in the contours of the difficulties she faces. Marlo knows that Jonah causes problems for the staff at the school he attends and is guiltily thankful they even accepted him—that is, until the principal brings up the possibility that he might be better served somewhere else. This early in the story you can see her slow meltdown begin, and though Cody cagily deflects our attention from the real issue a pattern is set that keeps the viewer off balance.
I first heard Aretha Franklin when I was 11 years old, listening clandestinely to my small transistor radio tuned to WABC (or was it WMCA?), which was tucked under my pillow as I was supposed to be sleeping. Like my mother I was an insomniac, though unlike my mother I would eventually outgrow it. We had strict bedtimes and it always took me several hours to fall asleep, so I would put my radio under the pillow and listen to music, or to Jean Shepherd tell stories on WOR.
Given the casting of Hugh Bonneville in the role of Lord Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India before independence, it’s easy to guess that the producers wanted direct comparisons between this dramatic recreation of the summer of 1947 and Downton Abbey, though it more rightly resembles Upstairs/Downstairs in its contrast between the political machinations of the British overlords and the romantic goings-on among the servants in the titular establishment.
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