Review: Tony Takitani (2004)

Tony Takitani (Issei Ogata) is a quiet and introverted technical illustrator. He lives a solitary life, his mother (Rie Miyazawa) having died soon after childbirth, and him only meeting his father Shozaburo (also Issei Ogata) every couple of years. Tony falls in love with a much younger woman, Eiko (also Rie Miyazama) who attracts him because she perfectly wears her clothes. In addition to having found a companion, Tony also realises that he no longer wants to live alone. They have a blissful married life, except that Eiko's insatiable need to buy designer clothes makes Tony request that she moderate her desire, with tragic results.

Tony lives in a hushed world of muted colours. Everyone, except Eiko and Shozaburo, is kept at arms' length. His home is a sterile tidy apartment. Tony sees the details in his world, such as the veins in a leaf or the fabric of Eiko's clothes, but never the whole picture. Based on a short story by popular Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, writer-director Jun Ichikawa's film perfectly captures the idea of loneliness.

Japanese with English subtitles.

4 out of 5 stars.

Review: Konsento / Concent (2001)

Yuki Asakura's (Miwako Ichikawa) life is thrown into turmoil when her older brother Taka (Houka Kinoshita) commits suicide. Seeking to understand why her brother died, she consults her former psychology lecturer, Dr. Kunisada (Masahiko Akuta), as a patient. She also meets a former classmate, Ritsuko (Miho Tsumiki), who seems to have an ulterior reason for helping her.

I couldn't take seriously Masahiko Akuta's eye-rolling performance and Miwako Ichikawa appears in a lot of nude scenes, some of which seem unwarranted. There's also some pseudo-scientific mystical explanation (a staple of Japanese screenwriting for the supernatural?) for what is happening, which doesn't have any impact on the plot.

The supernatural elements seem very gimmicky and don't mesh well with the realistic tone of the film. If you ignore them, this film turns out to be a competently made drama about a woman coming to terms with the death of her brother and her troubled past.

Japanese with English subtitles.

3 out of 5 stars.

Review: Rasen / The Ring 2 (1998)

A sequel to 'The Ring', where people who watched a cursed video tape die a horrible death within a week. This time around, pathologist Dr Mitsou Andou (Koichi Sato) and medical student Mai Takano (Miki Nakatani) unravel the mystery behind the death of Dr Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), who was one of the last victims in the previous film.

It's a lifeless effort, made worse by some cheap production values and grainy film. Apparently, a second sequel to 'Ring' was made later, which ignores all the events in this film.

Japanese with English subtitles.

1 out of 5 stars.

Review: Invisible Waves (2005)

After Kyoji (Tadanobu Asano), a young Japanese cook, murders his lover Seiko (Tomono Kuga), he flees Macau on a cruise ship, where he meets Noi (Hye-jeong Kang), a Korean mother with a toddler, on vacation. When he arrives in Phuket, he finds he is being hunted by some gangsters, possibly hired by Seiko's husband (and his Thai boss), Wiwat (Toon Hiranyasap).

This is a languorous film made by Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and writer Prabda Yoon. It is filled with dreamlike scenes set in strangely deserted streets of Macau and Hong Kong, or aboard the near-empty cruise ship. Kyoji's journey is punctuated with minor mishaps and annoyances, perhaps reflecting his punishment for his crime. Christopher Doyle's lovely fluid and off-centre cinematography and the hesitant use of English between the characters from different cultures (obviously everyone's second language) further add to the dreamlike feeling. Most of the action occurs off screen and it's only near the end that the horror of Kyoji's crime is revealed.

While accepting that this is a slow-moving mood piece and admiring the writing and technical achievements, I found this film to be a challenge to watch. The scenes on the cruise ship go on and on interminably, and Kyoji is annoyingly dim (why go to Thailand to evade the law when your dead lover's husband may be connected to Thai gangsters?) and passive.

Thai, Japanese with English subtitles.

2 out of 5 stars.

Review was originally published in Morva House.