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The latest in a series of German movies on the theme of neuro-divergency was a box office hit in its native land, and it’s easy to see why. Clearly a mainstream effort, Weekend Rebels is based on a popular blog-turned-bestseller that approaches autism with disarming frankness leavened by a comic touch that’s obviously designed to acclimatize viewers to the behavior of people on the spectrum. In that regard, the filmmakers deserve props, but the production itself exudes a kind of harmless predictability, as if the story’s development had been structured as a power point presentation. In fact, in one scene a character says to another that his explanation of how he deals with his son’s autism sounds like “a TED talk.”

The character in question is Mirco (Florian David Fitz), the father of ten-year-old Jason (Cecilio Andresen), who has Asperger’s, a condition that mostly manifests in extreme OCD tantrums. To the casual outsider, Jason’s behavior is that of a very spoiled child, and thus Mirco and his wife, Fatime (Aylin Tezel), are subjected to withering looks whenever Jason acts out in public. Explaining that Jason is autistic does little to encourage tolerance, which is probably an anti-PC way of looking at the issue anyway, so both parents learn to cope with these situations the best they can, but Fatime has to address the problem on an almost constant basis since Mirco’s job as a national sales manager for a fast food chain keeps him on the road almost constantly. Eventually, Fatime has a kind of breakdown and Mirco is forced to confront his employer with an ultimatum, which she miraculously gives in to, offering Mirco not only a management position that allows him to go home at 5 every day, but also a pay raise. With his weekends now completely free, he endeavors to spend more time with Jason and quickly realizes what his wife had to deal with, including battling with the public education system to prevent Jason from being transferred to a school for students with “special needs.” The thing about Jason is that he understands his condition, as well as the cultural atmosphere surrounding it (“I’m not Rainman,” he screams at one point), and in his inherent stubbornness refuses to surrender to the social slot in which the establishment, regardless of how well-meaning its intentions, tries to place him. Since the same OCD tendencies that make his parents’ lives difficult also focus his energies on certain interests, mainly astrophysics, once his attentions are engaged he is willing to negotiate his behavior in order to pursue those interests. When a classmate asks what his favorite football team is, he is stumped, and Mirco uses this dilemma as a basis for bonding. They will attend games for all 56 German football clubs so that Jason can decide which one will be his favorite.

As a promotional medium for German professional football, the movie works extremely well, though those of us who aren’t necessarily into the niceties of the sport may also find the scenes of boisterous fans (which freak out Jason at first) and complicated explanations of regional sports peculiarities less than engaging. But the premise lends itself to the high drama that often marks interactions with people on the spectrum, since the visceral experience of attending live soccer games intensifies the problems that many people with Asperger’s have in public situations. However, in the movie these effective dramatic moments are often spoiled by the peppy pop song soundtrack and a style of montage-heavy editing that reduces everything to a bland porridge of sameness. As Jason himself states at one time while describing how the universe was formed, “chaos is now accepted by scientists as part of nature,” and it might have been more to the movie’s benefit had the filmmakers themselves adopted that credo.

In German and English. Opens Nov. 15 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015).

Weekend Rebels home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Wiedemann & Berg Film GMBH/Sevenpictures Film GMBH

Straightforwardly a film about loneliness and the search for connection, Pablo Berger’s animated feature, based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, eschews dialogue for a rich sound design that complements its colorful, densely built 2D visuals. The setting is Brooklyn in the mid-1980s, which is populated by animals of all species and ethnic peculiarities, not a human among them. Our protagonist is Dog, a seemingly under-employed canine living in a nice studio apartment overlooking a busy street. Despite the clamor and constant movement that goes on outside his building, he mostly sits around eating processed food and watching television alone. One day he sees a late night ad for companions and orders one. What arrives is a generic silver-colored robot, which requires some assembly. Without much ado, Dog now has a friend, who we assume is programmed for such a task, and yet genuine affection is equally offered on both sides. 

The idyll is spoiled by an accident of timing. The two friends go to the beach at Coney Island, and after Robot unwisely enters the water his parts rust up and he can’t be moved by Dog, who goes home to fetch tools and manuals, returning the next day only to find the beach closed for the season. Unable to enter he goes home crestfallen, leaving Robot to dream about someday being found and/or reunited with his friend, as Dog tries in vain every trick in the book to make those dreams a reality. The kick here is the dreams, which range from all-out fantasy to musical numbers to old Hollywood-style melodrama. As Robot lays under the accumulating sand, Dog gets on with his life, forges other friendships that fade in due time. When the season begins again he rushes to Coney Island and finds that Robot is gone, the only evidence of his existence a piece of his hand. The viewer knows, however, that Robot has been picked up by an illicit metal scavenger who has sold what’s left of him to a scrap yard, which, in turn, sells the parts to a hobbyist who endeavors to put him back together with other parts cannibalized from different devices. 

The story, whose inertia has more to do with vibes than with plotting, doesn’t necessarily go where you expect it to go, and while the the movie is steeped in non-realism, the situation that unfolds is not only believable, but sublimely affecting because it makes so much sense emotionally. At once heartbreaking and humane (despite the fact that there isn’t a human in sight), Robot Dreams is the kind of movie that gives sincerity of purpose a good name.

Opens Nov. 8 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya 03-5468-5551).

Robot Dreams home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Arcadia Motion Pictures S.L., Lokiz Films A.I.E., Noddles Production SARL, Les Films du Worso SARL

With Russia in the international cultural dog house thanks to its antics in Ukraine, it might be surprising that this art house film has made such an impact on the festival circuit. But not only are there no martial or nationalist elements in the script, the movie is a generic downer in the Russian fashion, meaning it has absolutely no agenda that could be taken as being political. Director Ilya Povolotsky mostly sticks to the cruddy grey back roads of forlorn vilages that look as if they haven’t seen a visitor since the collapse of the Soviet Union as he chronicles a road trip of an unnamed father (Gela Chitava) and his preternaturally sullen teenage daughter (Maria Lukyanova). 

Their destination is the sea, but their purpose is never fully revealed until they reach it, and even then you may wonder if they had something else in mind. Povolotsky isn’t interested in motivations or even desires. He dwells on disappointment and resentment. For the most part, this pair, who are traveling by means of an aged, rust-colored RV, don’t talk to each other except to extract needed information. The landscape suggests a blighted economy that’s two steps away from Mad Max-level ruin. They buy black market gasoline from shady characters, set up a mobile cinema and sell contraband beer and snacks, and peddle pirated porn DVDs to truckers in parking lots, a pastime that gets them run out of town in at least one instance. The girl highly resents her father’s penchant for truck-stop prostitutes, which don’t seem to cheer him up anyway, and mostly spends her time taking Polaroids of the scenery, which she and Povolotsky capture in all its magnificent decrepitude. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a plot, only that it reveals itself in fits and starts and mostly hangs over the movie like a curse, as if daring you to make sense of it. The girl falls in with an equally morose young biker who stalks the caravan and takes advantage of her enmity toward her father, but to say there’s any love between the two would be assuming too much from a movie where the most consequential occurrence is when the police turn the RV back from a seaside road because of a “fish plague” that Povolotsky is gracious enough to visualize for us. 

For the first half of the film I thought the story might actually be taking place during the Soviet era, but then a cell phone shows up and a laptop figures centrally in the latter half of the story. The bleak visuals have a timeless quality that draws you in, conveying a mysterious nostalgia for something you have no memory of but can still feel. It’s a haunting movie of restless pans and dollies, populated with pale, skinny ghosts who seem to have never had the chance to live anything that could be called a satisfactory life, which sort of matches my prejudices about Russia.

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

Grace home page in Japanese