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The obvious outlier among last year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations, Dean Fleisher-Camp and Jenny Slate’s story about a talking seashell never had a chance, which is probably why film cognoscenti tripped all over themselves in a rush to claim it was some kind of work of genius. It isn’t, but its charms are unique. Having started as a series of shorts that quickly developed a following on YouTube about ten years ago, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has been carefully reformulated as a 90-minute feature by jiggering the titular mollusc’s origin story and using his internet fame as part of the plot-line. But the basic frame of the shorts remains in tact: Fleisher-Camp interviewing Marcel, who is voiced by Slate, after he discovers him living with his slightly senile grandmother, Connie (Isabella Rossellini), in the Airbnb house he’s renting. Apparently, there was a larger shell brood that belonged to the previous tenants, a couple who broke up and moved out taking all the shells except Marcel and Connie, who ever since have been making do as best they can.

Most of the humor is derived from Slate’s purposely cute vocal mannerisms and portrayal of Marcel as a wisecracking, genuinely curious adolescent savant who is constantly dreaming up ways to overcome his very small size by repurposing common items he finds around the house, including detritus (nail clippings as skis—yech!). But there’s also poignancy on display, as Marcel enlists Fleisher-Camp in his hunt for his extended family and addresses Connie’s encroaching dementia in a protective and often defensive way. As Fleisher-Camp’s videos of his interviews with Marcel catch fire on YouTube, Marcel’s fame grows, and while at first he can’t quite process the attention, he tries to exploit it for his family-seeking purposes, agreeing to appear as the subject of a 60 Minutes (his and Connie’s favorite TV show) profile hosted by Leslie Stahl. The scene where the CBS crew takes over the house for the shoot is certainly one of the most trenchant comments on media overkill ever set to film. 

Having not seen the shorts, I can’t say whether the feature is better, but the appeal is obviously centered on the interactions between Marcel and Fleisher-Camp, which have a tension that complicates the childish tone of the whole premise. Tying it all to a plot-like structure doesn’t necessarily spoil this appeal, but it sometimes gets in the way. Visually and conceptually, Marcel has a wondrous simplicity that could have only been achieved through a great deal of effort and thought. It’s endearingly entertaining. 

Opens June 30 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Shibuya Parco White Cine Quinto (03-6712-7225).

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2021 Marcel the Movie LLC

Not to be confused with the 2003 Helen Mirren comedy with the same title, Maria Loohufvud and Love Martinsen’s documentary nevertheless covers similar ground; namely, women of a “certain age” flaunting what they’ve still got to make a point about female vitality. In the former, this theme was played for both laughs and poignancy, while in the latter it’s presented as an aspect of aging that most people would prefer to ignore. The titular dance troupe, whose members are over 60 and some over 70, performs in various public and private facilities to raise money for charity (usually, helper dogs for veterans). They wear colorful, often purposely ridiculous costumes and come in all shapes and sizes, but for the most part they exude a relaxed sexual confidence in their appearance and limited athletic capabilities. Since they’re based in Florida, most of the facilities where they perform cater to people who are even older than they are, but the film claims they put on more than 130 shows a year, and have been doing this for 14 years, meaning they’ve become something of an institution, though, obviously, one with high turnover.

And while the filmmakers do emphasize the troupe’s aspiration to professionalism with extensive scenes of sweaty rehearsals and interviews that highlight their dedication, what distinguishes the documentary is how they convey what this kind of activity means to these women. The variety of backgrounds and attitudes is impressively diverse. Though most seem to have been homemakers, quite a few are retirees who used to have careers (one used to be a Baltimore cop), and a few still have to work to make a living. Almost all suffer to some degree from health problems, and openly share horror stories about medication and bad insurance. Significantly, almost all are married and look upon their dance activities as a respite from connubial responsibilities that they only take seriously insofar as their husbands insist they do—the few men who appear onscreen at best tolerate their wives’ participation in Calendar Girls. And while the members interviewed look as if they lead nice, middle class lives, the movie gives the impression that their activities fulfill a need that they always knew needed to be fulfilled but couldn’t until now. This realization is poignant in and of itself because they crave some sort of meaning at the end of their lives. One woman who has chronic health problems even talks about assisted suicide in a positive way, as if dancing had been the main item on her bucket list. 

It’s difficult to take in these women’s longings and ambitions and not think about the state (in all the word’s meanings) of Florida, which the current governor has turned into a bastion of intolerance and white male grievance. Here, only the personal is political, and since the directors are Swedish I don’t think they tried to avoid anything that smacked of cultural anxiety. The abandon with which their subjects throw themselves into their art, no matter how corny some people may find it, goes to show that women of any age just wanna have fun and, as a corollary of that desire, hope everyone else can live their lives as they please in the moment. There’s no reason to wait until you’re old. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Uplink Kichijoji (0422-66-5042).

Calendar Girls home page in Japanese

The first minute of Yoon Jong-seok’s convoluted thriller, based on the Spanish movie Contratiempo, neatly sets up the basic story. Powerful IT entrepreneur Min-ho (So Ji-sub) has been arrested for the murder of his mistress but is released due to the machinations of his even more powerful father-in-law and retreats to a family-owned vacation home in the woods to lay low amidst the media furor. To anyone who has seen any crime-related Korean films of the last 20 years the sentiment is immediately recognizable: rich people can get away with anything. However, Yoon intensifies this sentiment by sending in a high-profile criminal attorney named Yang (Kim Yunjin), who drops by the vacation home, at night and in the middle of a blizzard, saying she has been retained by Min-ho’s family to represent him on the case, which just became more complicated after she learns that prosecutors found a witness to the crime. She is sure that she can fend off this threat, but needs Min-ho, who claims innocence, to tell her the truth surrounding the murder as far as he knows it. Once she understands that, she will know how to proceed.

The complication here is crucial to Yoon’s purposes, which is not only to show how the wealthy can do whatever they want, but also how they have the resources to invent their own truths, since Yang clearly states that whatever Min-ho says—even if he admits to having murdered his lover, Se-hee (Nana)—she will come up with a story that guarantees his exoneration. What ensues is a series of 4 narratives, all dramatized as flashbacks, that explain what may have led to the murder in a sealed hotel room and how it was carried out. Though the stories change as the dynamic between lawyer and potential client shifts through the night, Yoon keeps a tight grip on the particulars so that each narrative remains distinct and clear, with its own set of implications and conclusions. It’s a clever balancing act that demonstrates his skills at storytelling, but in the end the entire premise of having not one but two unreliable narrators in the same room working against each other undermines the integrity of the overall plot as it devolves into a mess of implausibilities. 

The obvious purpose is to keep the viewer constantly second-guessing the stories being told, but in the end what I ended up doubting was the characters themselves as characters, whose motives became clear even as the resulting actions became more and more contrived. Nobody demands realistic situations from a thriller like this, but within the world depicted they should at least make internal sense. 

In Korean. Now playing in Tokyo at Cine Switch Ginza (03-3561-0707), Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

Confession home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Lotte Entertainment & Realies Pictures

Maryam Touzani’s Moroccan drama is all about beauty: Beautiful people making beautiful things in the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. The opening credit sequence features billows of colorful satin fabric shot with eye-popping attention paid to the tactile and light-reflecting gorgeousness of the textures. These fabrics are the wares in the shop of Halim (Saleh Bakri), a maalem, or master tailor who makes traditional clothing. His customers are mostly women who need expensive garments for special occasions, and while the movie presents him as the last of his ilk, these customers don’t necessarily appreciate his patient craft, demanding that he speed up processes that have taken him a lifetime to perfect. But Halim, completely wrapped up in this craft, is not a salesman. That task falls on his wife, Mina (Lubna Azabel), who defends her husband’s care and deliberateness to impatient customers, going so far as to tell them to take their business elsewhere if they can’t wait, knowing that no one else in the medina can do this kind of work. Halim and Mina are an inseparably complementary team. 

Into their world comes Youssef (Ayoub Missioui), a young man with some experience in tailoring, who wants to apprentice with Halim. Having had bad luck in the past with assistants, Halim is desperate for someone who really wants to learn, but somehow Mina questions Youssef’s dedication. “He’ll be just like the others,” she says, and you sense a resentment underlying her words that goes deeper than professional pessimism, and which, in fact, prefigures the viewer’s own realization of why she may find Youssef a threat. She already senses that Halim is falling in love. 

Touzani doesn’t veil Halim’s desires. She follows him to the local public bath, where he rents private stalls for assignations with men to whom he says nothing. Mina, who married Halim when they were very young, naturally knows of these desires, and in one powerful scene she asserts her connubial privilege by seducing her husband in bed. He responds accordingly, though the reluctance is palpable. Meanwhile, relations between Mina and the new apprentice remain icy, and at one point there’s a breach. In youthful petulance Youssef makes an ultimatum that would seem to prove Mina’s point. But he can only stay away so long.

The plot arc that Touzani traces is also beautiful in its integrity. The various ways the story threads, like the threads in the silk fabric, resolve themselves in the end is almost too perfect, and much of the emotional power of the film is built on realizing expectations. All three principals turn out to be more complicated than first suggested, and the way they come together as characters borders on the contrived. Nevertheless, no one can deny the beauty of the film’s construction, just as no one can deny the beauty of Halim’s handiwork. It’s the ideal combination of craft and intention. 

In Arabic. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670). 

The Blue Caftan home page in Japanese

photo (c) Les Films du Nouveau Monde-Ali n’ Productions-Velvet Films-Snowglobe