Review: Food, Inc. 2

Posted on December 6, 2024 by philipbrasor

Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo’s sequel to Kenner’s 2011 documentary Food, Inc. covers much the same territory, but the filmmakers obviously felt that in the wake of the pandemic some issues needed reiteration and clarification. Eric Schlosser, who wrote Fast Food Nation, produces again, and he and Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, are the main talking heads. Technology is their chief bugaboo as it applies to agriculture and food processing, but this time they go a little further into the economics of food production and food service, including the low wages paid to both farmworkers and fast food employees. Thus, the movie seems particularly timely in the wake of Trump’s victory (he makes an appearance here because as president he signed a bill that made it possible for meatpackers to avoid intrusive inspections) since Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented foreigners will have a huge impact on the prices of produce and meat, though the film doesn’t mention that. What it stresses is the weakening of antitrust legislation that has reduced competition, thus empowering a few corporations to dominate the food sector. From there, Schlosser and Pollan discuss a variety of bad outcomes, including the mass introduction of additives that make unnutritious processed food more addictive, the destruction of farmland dedicated to single crops, and the bankrupting of small farmers to the benefit of corporate mega-farms.

Among the new issues that the doc attempts to tackle, meat substitutes are the most interesting. So-called plant-based “meats” are shown to be not much better than ultra-processed foods (“it’s not health food”); and cultured meat, while now being promoted as a solution to the greater environmental and ethical problems of livestock raising, isn’t as feasible as its boosters claim, so Schlosser, who is nothing if not a realist, says the only solution is to cut back on meat consumption in order to rid the industry of animal cruelty and save the environment, a move that would undoubtedly make meat more expensive, though the movie doesn’t say that explicitly. It does talk at length about how lower income people have become obese due to buying cheaper processed foods rather than fresh foods, but it doesn’t really talk about the so-called developed world’s demand for low prices, which is really the reason Big Agriculture has succeeded. 

As with the first Food, Inc., the sequel gives the impression that there’s almost nothing you can do on a micro level to make things better. Even limiting one’s animal-based protein intake to seafood is shown to be debilitating, but at least the filmmakers show solutions that are doable (kelp farms that double as shellfish farms). Though Schlosser is more optimistic than Pollan, the movie in general tries not to be too despairing about the future of food, but with Trump coming back in a few months ready to trash any regulations that rein in Big Ag and the major food producers, there will probably be plenty of material to make an even scarier Food, Inc. 3 sometime down the line.

In English and Portuguese. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Food, Inc. 2 home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Another Perfect Meal, LLC

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Review: White Bird

Posted on December 5, 2024 by philipbrasor

When the YA genre became more relevant in the 1980s, the idea of using fiction aimed directly at teens to teach about social issues was treated almost experimentally since many of those issues were considered adult in essence, but now it’s often difficult to distinguish between issue-based stories for grownups and those for adolescents, probably because entertainment prerogatives have overtaken both approaches. Marc Forster’s White Bird is a sequel of sorts to the 2017 film Wonder, in which a boy with a genetic facial deformity is bullied by schoolmates. One of those bullies eventually apologizes to the boy, but only after he is expelled for his actions. The bully, Julian (Bryce Gheisar), is seen starting over in White Bird at a new private school in New York, and is himself subjected to rough treatment by someone who scans as a bully. Depressed over his prospects, Julian returns home to his parents’ upper west side apartment where, naturally, his parents are absent, though his French grandmother, a world famous artist named Sara (Helen Mirren), has just arrived in order to receive some sort of recognition from the Met. Understanding his dilemma, she tells him her own story about surviving World War II as a Jewish girl in occupied France. 

The bulk of the movie is this flashback tale, which recounts Sara’s childhood as the daughter of a doctor. When the Nazis show up, her parents are taken away, but Sara (Ariella Glaser) manages to escape with the help of a handicapped boy in her class, Julien (Orlando Schwerdt), who hides her in the family barn with the full knowlege of his parents (Gillian Anderson, Jo-Stone Fewings). She spends a year in the barn and during this time forms a budding romantic relationship with Julien, who home schools and entertains her. The on-the-nose irony here is that previously Sara ignored Julien because of his handicap and developed a crush on another boy who turned out to be a Nazi-in-the-making. This is the lesson that adult Sara wants to impart on her grandson, but, of course, before that happens, we have to go through the drama and intrigue of a Holocaust narrative, which involves insidious antisemitism and amazing self-sacrifice. 

White Bird, in line with what has become de rigeuer for YA stories, is premised thematically on the concept of “being kind,” an honorable mission but one that tends to feel understated in a tale centered on genocide. Moreover, the moral is so pat that it slides off the veiwer’s consciousness like water off a duck’s back. Teens can handle emotional and ethical complications, as proved by such YA classics as The Giant Robot and The Outsiders. What we have here is Morality Lite. 

Opens Dec. 6 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024). 

White Bird home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Lions GateFilms Inc. and Participant Media, LLC

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Review: A Big Home

Posted on December 4, 2024 by philipbrasor

According to Japanese government statistics cited at the beginning of this documentary, about 42,000 children in Japan require “protective care.” Half of these minors live in “children’s homes,” which are not foster homes or orphanages, but they are nevertheless “living separately from” their parents. The reasons vary and include death, illness, abuse, and “financial issues.” The movie basically goes inside one of these children’s homes in Tokyo and profiles several residents who range in age from seven to 14 and also includes one who is about to depart the facility and another who already has. According to regulations, the children must leave the home once they turn 18 (though under special circumstances they can extend their stay). The filmmakers do not mask the faces of the children profiled nor the employees who work in the home, though not much else is revealed about them, and that’s for a reason. Society tends to discriminate against these children because they are growing up in such a facility. 

The bulk of screen time is given over to interviews with the children: how they go about their everyday lives and how they feel about their situation, including their relationships with whatever family members they are in contact with (or, for that matter, not in contact with), as well as their interactions with the staff of the home and students at their schools (they attend regular public schools). They are perceptive and smart, and understand their situation very well. As one child puts its, “What’s normal here is not normal for most people.” The most pressing problem for them is coping with the world once they turn 18 and have to support themselves. Though they have the opportunity to attend university just like anyone else, they obviously don’t have access to the kinds of resources afforded to children who live with their parents, and thus are at a disadvantage when it comes to higher education. 

Director Ryo Takebayashi says in the production notes that he hopes the movie becomes a “good luck charm” for the children he filmed, understanding that they may struggle after they leave the facility. He thinks if they relive the moments he captured then they can “realize they always had the strength to overcome difficulties.” He also wants viewers to see things “they’ve never noticed before, even though they were right under our noses.” In order to protect the children he and the producers have limited the documentary’s exposure to theatrical screenings, meaning no streaming and no physical media for either sale or rent. In addition, the media outlets who report on the movie are asked to include as little information about the children or the facility as possible. All these restrictions fall within the purview of the production but defeat whatever edifying mission the filmmakers have in mind for the material. If these children are so readily subjected to discrimination because of where they grew up, the source of that discrimination should be addressed by the film instead of just being tacitly assumed. When you hide all the particulars of the “children’s home” system, it becomes impossible to discuss anything meaningful about these children’s situation. There is no input from the government officials who authorize the system (which prioritizes the prerogatives of parents, even those who have abused their offspring), nor any comments from social workers whose job it is to place these children in the facility. It’s understandable why parents and others who may have had a hand in the children living in the home do not want to be interviewed or even mentioned, but that doesn’t mean the filmmakers can’t explain what’s behind these decisions in a general way and why exactly these children have to put up with such terrible prejudices. In the end, the documentary is a well-meaning attempt to inform the public of the existence of these facilities, but without understanding why and how they exist, the children become merely victims of a social environment that has failed them. 

In Japanese. Opens Dec. 6 in Tokyo at Kino Cinema Shinjuku (03-5315-0978), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225).

A Big Home home page in Japanese

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Tokyo Filmex 2024

Posted on December 3, 2024 by philipbrasor

I hadn’t been to Filmex since 2015, owing mainly to the fact that for a while after co-founder Shozo Ichiyama resumed his role of chief programmer at the Tokyo International Film Festival, the two events overlapped to a certain extent. During and after the pandemic they were even held simultaneously. I had essentially gotten out of the habit of applying for a press pass, since I used to attend as the representative writer for EL Magazine (given that I was the only writer for EL Magazine, it went without saying) and EL stopped publishing in 2017. 

But this year the temporal gap between TIFF and Filmex (Nov. 23-Dec. 1) was several weeks, and there were a few movies at the latter that I had missed at the Busan International Film Festival, so I thought I’d return. Besides, they were celebrating their 25th anniversary. Alas, they didn’t accept this blog as reason enough to grant me a press pass, but they did give me a general pass (usually for industry people) for a nominal fee, so I was in. The more difficult part came when ticketing started and those with passes were asked to apply online through the ticketing platform that Filmex had contracted with. Unlike the similar system used by BIFF, applicants were required to register using their smartphones (with BIFF, any device would do), and while I do have a Japanese carrier, which is also required (thus blocking out foreign press and guests), for some reason my phone was unable to complete the “authentication” process needed to get into the system. Apparently, it had something to do with my carrier, Rakuten, which the fine print in the instructions warned me might make it difficult for me to sign up. I followed the extra instructions in the fine print but to no avail. Several days before the festival was to start, I still was unable to reserve tickets to the screenings I wanted to see and contacted the press rep at Filmex, who told me that ticketing issues could only be solved by the ticketing platform but that Filmex also had a means of reserving tickets online for those without phones. I filled out the spreadsheet with the names of the films I wanted to see and waited…and waited. No response. I sent another email and got no reply, so I went back to the fine print on the ticketing platform, which said at the very end that if all the stated remedies still didn’t yield success then I could call a number on the phone for authentication. The number was in the U.S. and that’s what I did. I got a recording and a prompt to type in a four-digit number sent to my registered email address and then I was in. 

I made all my ticket reservations hoping the screenings were not sold out yet, but I needn’t have worried. Of all the screenings I attended most were only half filled, and none had attendance over 70 percent. Part of the reason may be the venue: all the main screenings were at Marunouchi Toei, one of the last classic movie palaces in Tokyo (a balcony!), but still pretty old. Some of the screenings took place at smaller “mini-theaters,” but those were not accessible with my pass. In any case, I didn’t see many other people with passes at the screenings and only one or two I actually knew. 

Though I spotted Ichiyama hanging around during the festival, he wasn’t listed as a programmer. Still, his original mission for Filmex seems to be intact: showcasing mostly vanguard Asian and Japanese art films and a handful of European features. One complaint I’ve always heard about Filmex from others is that Ichiyama tends to highlight the same directors every year, which is not a problem for me since I like those director as well. This year, that club was represented by Jia Zhangke, Hong Sangsoo, and Lou Ye. I’d already seen Jia’s Caught By the Tides, the opening film, at BIFF so I was able to skip that (just as well, since the Filmex print didn’t have English subtitles). I did catch Hong’s By the Stream, the closing film, which wasn’t shown at this year’s BIFF for some reason, as well as Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. Lou was on the jury for the Filmex competition, which An Unfinished Film was not a part of, obviously.

Due to logistics, I only got to see eight films, and the only true dud was the Japanese feature, The Gesuidouz, about a hapless punk band led by a female lead singer who intends to commit suicide on a certain date, more or less as a kind of aesthetic gesture—not punk so much as Euro-nihilistic—but the group becomes a hit in its own way. I found it utterly amateurish in the worst way. Nominally a comedy, the movie’s jokes were not funny and, in any case, only make sense to Japanese viewers; the music was disposable; the storyline baffling. Even the post-screening Q&A, which the director did not attend, was a flat bore. 

I was most impressed by the two Indian films I saw, both of which, like the best film I’ve seen so far this year, All We Imagine As Light, were directed by women. Santosh, by the Indian-British director Sandyha Suri, is another harsh study of Indian gender discrimination but presented as a police procedural. A rookie female officer is caught up in the rape-murder case of a woman from a lower caste, forcing her to address her own prejudices toward marginalized social groups and the cruelties that Indian society in general are so quick to inflict on them. During the Q&A Suri said that, as a British production, it has been submitted by the UK as its representative for an International Feature Oscar, since it’s all in Hindi, thus giving India perhaps two possible Oscar nominees. I sort of doubt that. Then there was the debut feature by Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls, an English-language movie set at a private boarding school in the Himalayas during the 90s and centered on a teenage girl from a middle class family who is her class’s star pupil but also something of a klutz when it comes to social and personal matters. She takes up with a handsome transfer student who charms her mother in a way that makes her suspicious. The frankness and humor of the script make it a very different kind of coming-of-age story, one that conveys a bracingly unconventional take on adolescent desire. 

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Number 1 Shimbun, December 2024

Posted on December 2, 2024 by philipbrasor

Here’s a link to our media column in this month’s Number 1 Shimbun, put out by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. It’s about how Asahi Shimbun got credit for a scoop that was originally reported by Shimbun Akahata, the news organ of the Japanese Communist Party.

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Review: Knit’s Island

Posted on November 30, 2024 by philipbrasor

If you’re not into virtual reality, you may need time to adjust to the visual environment of this documentary feature by French filmmakers Ekiem Barbier, Builhem Causse, and Quentin L’Helgouac’h, since it all takes place within the computer game DayZ, specifically the titular post-apocalyptic “place” within the game where zombies roam and the once civilized landscape is returning to nature. The filmmakers’ avatars are dressed in combat gear and flak vests with the word “Press” stenciled on them. They wander around trying to interview gamers who have formed groups of their own. These groups may have purposes within the scope of the game, but the trio’s mission is to go beyond the game’s “story” to find out how and why these people have left “real life” to socialize within a virtual world with people they will never meet face-to-face. It’s a tricky proposition, especially given the fact that, basically, DayZ is a violent game and everyone is carrying guns that can “kill” you. If it seems as if I’m laying the scare quotes on thick, the problem in describing the doc is that the rules of the game are never laid out and so it’s difficult to get a purchase on the logic of its appeal as a pastime before you need to address it as a venue where people live second lives.

This surreal aspect is made apparent right from the start. The first encounter the three “journalists” make is with a vigilante crew called Dark As Midnight, whose philosophy is gleefully nihilistic. “What do we value?” says the nominal leader, a woman with a North American accent. “I don’t give a fuck.” As Barbier talks to the masked woman and her acolytes, a half-naked male prisoner they call “the princess” lies on a table waiting to be tortured, presumably. Though it’s obvious the members of the group are taking the piss with regard to Barbier’s questions about their moral purview, their idea of “fun” is to kill, and that’s why they’re there. “It’s a playground,” one points out. At the other end of the intention spectrum is a religious cult that worships a god called Dagoth headed by a cowboy-hatted “reverend” who we eventually learn is a Finnish massage therapist in real life. Over the course of the movie, which represents 963 hours of the filmmakers’ presence on the island, they will encounter the reverend several times, extracting more about his relationship to the game and why he spends so much time here. “It’s good to disappear,” he says at one point, though he’s keenly aware that he can be usurped by VR and lose himself. A husband-and-wife team, who are based in Berlin and mostly visit the game to surround themselves with the kind of nature they used to enjoy when they lived in Australia, can be heard tending to an unseen child back in their apartment as they explain why they spend every waking hour in DayZ when they are not at work. Another man, a Canadian transplanted to South Africa, describes the game as something akin to “my local pub,” a pastime within a pastime. 

The prosaic responses to the trio’s puzzled inquiries about the nature of these participants’ involvement in the game indicate a desire for a new way to connect with others. Much of the “filming” was done during the pandemic, and some of the journalists’ interlocutors are under lockdown back in their homes (which are suggested at the end with actual footage of views from their windows). Knit’s Island thus also becomes literally a place to escape to. At one point, several of the people with whom the trio has made friends accompany them to find the edge of the island, which is featureless, just endless rolling hills of grass. The creators of the game have obviously thought of everything, including the infinitude of space. Despite the movie’s title, no game is an island. 

In English and French. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114).

Knit’s Island home page in Japanese

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Review: The Bikeriders

Posted on November 29, 2024 by philipbrasor

The 1960s was the decade that the Hollywood system died, thus giving birth to a new style of rambunctious narrative art that felt revolutionary at the time. Nowadays, conveying the social atmosphere of the 60s isn’t necessarily difficult, but doing so without acknowledging the legacy of those movies in the process can be, and Jeff Nichols confronts this paradox head-on in his movie about a fictional Midwestern biker gang in the late 60s-early 70s by positing that the inspiration for the gang was the Marlon Brando classic The Wild One, specifically the scene that everyone knows (“Whattaya got?”) even if they’ve never seen the whole film. Nichols, who has made a career out of exploring the various species of American masculinity, thus creates an historic framework for his film that sets it within the context of 60s movies (even if The Wild One came out in 1953). As such, it feels of its time rather than like a visit to another planet—familiar but anachronistic. 

Based on a famous book of photographs, The Bikeriders eschews a plot-invested timeline for a series of chronological episodes that describe how this particular gang, called the Vandals, out of Illinois, evolved from a club where gainfully employed but socially uncomfortable motorcycle fanatics could blow off steam into a more insular organization that channeled its defiance into extra-legal activities. Nichols centers the narrative on two members and a satellite: Johnny (Tom Hardy), the founder of the Vandals whose sense of responsibility radiates out from his trucker job and nuclear family to embrace the members who aren’t so responsible but look to him as a leader (“Everybody needs somebody to pick on”); Benny (Austin Butler), the gang’s most volatile member, a moody, inarticulate romantic who will explode into violent action to protect himself and those he loves; and Kathy (Jodie Comer), Benny’s working class girlfriend and eventual wife, whom Nichols selects as his mouthpiece, since she narrates most of the film. Nichols isn’t so interested in biker gangs as an anthropological project—though he does insert the photographer (Mike Faist) who published the famous book into the story—preferring instead vivid character studies that cover the gamut of attitudes that such a group tolerates and engenders. So in addition to the three principals there’s Ziplo (Nichols regular Michael Shannon), a reactionary motormouth who self-consciously boosts his lack of proper education and failure to be taken by the military as a badge of identity; Brucie (Damon Herriman), the gang’s level-headed but obsequious enforcer of rules for people who inherently “don’t like rules”; and Cockroach (Emory Cohen), the fuckup who would be nothing without the gang, a truth he realizes too late once the gang gets too big for its limited dreams.

This focus on character over story results in runaway stereotypes that Nichols can’t help but promote. The fights are numerous and terribly painful to watch, thus making them feel gratuitous, and while Nichols streamlines the inevitable transition of biker culture from beer-drinking salt-of-the-earth types to weed-smoking, long-haired sociopaths, he tries too hard to connect this perversion of outlaw community to tropes that have become biker cliches, like gang rapes and hardcore bigotry. This exaggerated quality is exacerbated by the cartoonish flat-vowel accents of Brits Hardy and Comer, who are having way too much fun putting on redneck airs. Real rednecks should be outraged.

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225).

The Bikeriders home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Focus Features, LLC

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Review: Lust in the Rain

Posted on November 28, 2024 by philipbrasor

Not being a manga reader, I don’t have anything to say about how faithfully director Shinzo Katayama adapted comics artist Yoshiharu Tsuge’s work, but it seems to adhere to the kind of free-form story-based surrealism that Tsuge is famous for. In fact, the main character, Yoshio (Ryo Narita), starts out the film as a manga artist trying to sell his work sometime in mid-20th century Japan-occupied Taiwan, using his dream life as fodder for his creations. The opening one is a doozy: Yoshio’s avatar and a woman he doesn’t know are waiting for a bus during a downpour and he forces her to strip in order to avoid lighting strikes. After she’s naked he rapes her. I think the scene is supposed to be funny, or, at least, anachronistic.

There’s not a whole lot of coherence to the ever-mutating plot, even in terms of dream logic, so much of the movie comes across as variations on themes that can veer from the totally absurd to the blatantly horrifying. In what passes for real life in the movie’s story, Yoshio is enamored of Fukuko (Eriko Nakamura), who is introduced as the opportunistic widow of the small town’s richest man, and then over the course of the film is also depicted as a prostitute; a muse for a novelist, Imori (Go Morita), who is Yoshio’s rival for Fukuko’s affections; and several other female archetypes (read: cliches) that Katayama seems to believe still hold some kind of unironic significance in 21st century narrative art. In any event, Fukuko is the least convincing character in the story because she’s merely a projection of male appetites, even if Yoshio keeps claiming it’s all about love. The timeline feels smudged as well, with Taiwan alternating with rural Japan before, during, and after the war. As the film progresses, what we see appears to be at least partly Yoshio’s hallucinations as he carries out his wartime service, which is shown in graphically bloody detail. 

The closest aesthetic analog would probably be George Roy Hill’s adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, with its reverie-like side trips from the carnage of war to nostalgic and extraterrestrially sensual sanctuaries. The difference is that Katayama uses this setup to shock rather than edify—there’s a lot of sex and a lot of violence and little of either really adds to the development of the so-called plot. It’s there to show the viewer that Katayama means business, but the movie simply spins its wheels for two hours and 15 minutes. 

In Japanese and Mandarin. Opens Nov. 29 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

Lust in the Rain home page in Japanese

photo (c) Lust in the Rain Film Partners

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Review: Hail to Hell

Posted on November 23, 2024 by philipbrasor

I would rate this debut feature more highly if the English title had been Hooray for Hell, because it better fits the idiosyncratic tone of the film. The protagonists are a pair of high school girls whose friendship is initially deceptive. Both Na-mi (Oh Woo-ri) and Seon-woo (Bang Hyo-rin) are victims of school bullies, though we eventually learn that the latter used to be tormented by the former before the former herself became a target. During a humorously botched suicide attempt, Seon-woo tells Na-mi that their mutual tormentor, Chae-rin (Yung Yi-ju), has moved with her family to Seoul due to the father’s bankruptcy. Nevertheless, the skinny on the street is that Chae-rin is doing even better than ever, and is planning to go overseas to study. Hearing of this, Na-mi loses it and decides to postpone her self-obliteration in order to get back at Chae-rin before she skips the country, and enlists Seon-woo in her scheme even though she still hasn’t worked out the details. 

When they arrive in Seoul they discover that their nemesis has actually joined a Christian cult. She’s already confessed to and repented for her cruelties, and in fact welcomes her former classmates for the opportunity to be punished and forgiven by them. Consequently, Na-mi’s and Seon-woo’s dreams of revenge are deflated, leaving them in a mental quandary: How to gain satisfaction from someone who may still deserve their enmity but isn’t fazed by it. The kicker is that they are still bent on somehow sticking it to Chae-rin and hang around under the pretense of perhaps joining the cult until the other shoe drops, which it eventually does with an enormous crash after they learn that the cult is a money-making scam, at which point the movie turns into a frantic horror thriller.

Hail to Hell betrays the typical plot inconsistencies and unsteady comic tone of a debut feature, but the writer-director, Lim Oh-jeong, seems so immersively steeped in the culture of bullying that she’s able to gain considerable mileage from a premise that’s been done to death, especially in Korea, mostly by constantly keeping the story moving in unexpected directions. It may not be the last cinematic word on the social dynamics of bullying, but it’s certainly the most original. 

In Korean. Now playing in Tokyo at Euro Space Shibuya (03-3461-0211).

Hail to Hell home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Korean Film Council

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Review: It Ends With Us and Back to Black

Posted on November 22, 2024 by philipbrasor

As both a classic romantic melodrama and a cautionary tale about domestic violence, this adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller has to contend with finding an audience that will be receptive to both aspects and then settles on a look that is so glossily aspirational as to be lifted directly from an Apple Computer advertisement. This mood is elevated, even exaggerated, and demands reinforcement from the plot specifics and characters, none of whom seem to worry about material needs, which means they can concentrate full bore on their emotional needs. 

Blake Lively, whose enormous and enormously varied wardrobe here deserves a supporting actor Oscar, plays the improbably named Lily Bloom, whose dream is to open a flower shop in Boston, not far from where she grew up in Maine. As she sets her plans in motion her father dies, an event that causes her more than grief as her father (Kevin McKidd) physically abused her mother (Amy Morton) on a regular basis. Returning to Boston to fulfill her dreams, she meets Ryle (Justin Baldoni, who also directed) by accident on an apartment builidng rooftop. Ryle is a neurosurgeon and, by his own admission, a serial one-night-stander, but while Lily successfully deflects his come-ons she is intrigued by his facility with clever banter and admission that he had a tough day after losing a patient, which resulted in him throwing a chair across the roof. Having observed this kind of behavior in her father, it seems odd that Lily would look past it aside in this instance, but the gesture seems to be for our edification as readers/viewers, not for hers. Suffice to say that the two meet again by means of another impossible accident (the story adheres to romantic melodrama tropes by including more than the average), namely that Lily hires Ryle’s sister, Allysa (Jenny Slate), before she knows she’s his sister, and after that second introduction they become an item. The requisite monkey wrench is the equally improbably named Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), Lily’s secret high school boyfriend, also the product of a violent household and who was beaten by her own father brutally when he caught them together in her bedroom, effectively ending that relationship. Atlas now runs a hip restaurant in Boston that Ryle and his sister happen to frequent, and when Atlas gets a gander at Ryle he immediately pegs him as a hothead and tries to warn Lily off.

Though the sumptuous production design—neurosurgeons make a lot of money—is never anything less than distracting, the story has substance thanks mainly to Lively’s dedication to making Lily’s co-dependency shtick convincing, even as Ryle’s temper tantrums intensify in stages. Hoover’s insistence on explaining every personality flaw granularly often just adds to the script’s ridiculousness quotient, but the cast knows how to make it all come across as organically credible, and Lily’s reckoning with her own failure to address her abuser, a failure she resented in her mother, delivers the psychological rationale that romantic melodramas need like a real heart needs oxygen.

The Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson from a script by Matt Greenhaigh, isn’t about domestic violence and contains nothing that could be inferred as such, but it does center on a self-destructive personality whose demons were most likely provoked by people who professed to love her. One could argue that Back to Black is a corrective to the 2011 Oscar-winning documentary, Amy, which apparently her surviving family did not like at all, as the doc insisted that the beloved singer’s descent into addiction and self-harm was a function of those closest to her prodding her to produce, as it were, and neglecting her emotional issues in the process. Were they behind this attempt to center Amy’s story on her rather than look for the culprits in her downfall?

If so, they didn’t do Amy any favors. Though there’s plenty of music lovingly reproduced in Back to Black, from Amy’s earliest successful explorations of jazz to the titular breakthrough R&B album that turned her into a worldwide sensation, none of it conveys what made her unique since it doesn’t offer any insights into how that music was conceived or made. Almost everything of significance in the movie concerns her private life, especially with regard to her relationships with her family and the junkie who would eventually marry her, Blake Fielder-Civil. Perhaps the film’s most puzzling thesis is that Amy’s attraction to this man had something to do with his taste in music—the movie says that it was he who introduced her to the Shangri-Las, which is difficult to believe—combined with his smooth-talking style, and while it’s easy to accept Fielder-Civil as a charming con man, there’s not a whole lot of chemistry between Marisa Abela, who plays Amy, and Jack O’Connell, who plays Blake; and without that kind of dynamic the whole rationale of her losing it for the love of a heel is forced and trite. 

Even Amy’s relationship to her domineering father, Mitch (Eddie Marsan), feels flat since he is depicted solely as someone who tried to save his daughter from herself but failed. Whether that is a true portrayal of the relationship is impossible to know (it’s certainly much different from the portrayal in Amy, where Mitch was the main agent who put her career above her mental well-being), but it doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the film’s dramatic arc, which makes the most out of Amy’s desperate struggle with feeling unloved. Whether Mitch had a more central role in his daughter’s death from alcohol poisoning at age 27 is for more objective biographers to determine, but Back to Black‘s only conclusion is that it was inevitable given Amy’s disposition, which is a lazy if not downright dismaying approach.

It Ends With Us now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

It Ends With Us home page in Japanese

Back to Black now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905).

Back to Black home page in Japanese

Back to Black photo (c) 2024 Focus Features, LLC

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