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(Japan, 2007, 87 mins)

DV Cam

International Premiere

PROD/SCR: Sode Yukiko
CAM: Furusho Takuma
EDS: Sode Yukiko, Kawashima Daisuke
MUS: Miyauchi Yure
Cast: Niijima Ayaco, Yamazoe Masahisa, Tsuda Kanji, Kuga Tomono, Yasuda Satoko, Nobuoka Kae

Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.

Lots of rebellious, independent-minded women in Japanese movies this year, particularly in those by women directors. Makoto, the protagonist of Sode Yukiko’s debut feature, lives alone, hates her mother and sister and occasionally dates a married man, her former teacher. Her income comes from work on a phone-sex line. She has a horror of forming attachments--or, indeed, commitments of any kind. She “kills time” with her lover and other acquaintances and life passes in a meaningless blur. Into this miasma steps someone she once knew as a classmate in primary-school: Nakajima (she abbreviates his name to “Nakaji”) represents “rectitude” and stands in opposition to Makoto’s own “weakness.” When they discover that his father and her mother plan to get married, it becomes impossible for them to have any kind of romance themselves. But “Nakaji” thinks he should give Makoto’s life some shape and purpose. After a disastrous camping trip, he puts up a tent on the rooftop where she likes to hang out and hopes, perhaps perversely, that it will bring her down to earth.

Sode Yukiko’s sparky independent feature attacks conventional “goal-oriented” thinking and searches for a viable alternative way for the characters to live their lives. With wit, pathos and a keen eye for symbiotic relationships, it confirms that Japan’s women directors are tackling women’s issues in radically new ways.

-- Tony Rayns

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