Month: December 2010

Categories
comedy gendai-geki

Kamikaze Girls: The Tale of Two Unique Friends

Nakashima Tetsuya’s Kamikaze Girls or Shimotsuma monogatari is based on a popular novel and the movie was released in 2004.  Kamikaze Girls is a light-hearted gendai-geki about life in rural town Shimotsuma.  The film features actresses Fukada Kyoko as Ryugasaki Momoko and Tsuchiya Anna as Shirayuri Ichigo “Ichiko”.

Kamikaze Girls centers around the lives of two girls who have completely different backgrounds and personalities.  Momoko is a Lolita girl who loves to wear frilly dresses and bonnets, and wishes she was born during the Rococo period.   Ichiko is a tough Yanki, a female gangster, who only cares about rebeling against society and making a statement with her biker gang.  The movie starts with a flashforward of Momoko being thrown into the air after getting hit by a car on her scooter.  The plot then shifts to the past where Momoko narrates and explains her childhood and present life.  Momoko is always in need of money since she buys her Lolita clothes in Tokyo.  So in order to make money, she sells her father’s fake brand-name clothing which Ichiko is very interested in.  Ichiko comes around Momoko’s house everyday and the two start an unlikely friendship.  Together they go to Tokyo in search of a mysterious embroiderer and when they do not find the embroiderer, Momoko offers to do the embroidery on Ichiko’s coat.  The movie comes to a climax when Ichiko faces a challenge from her motocycle gang and Momoko rushes to her defense.

Nakashima contrasts the two main characters as each represents an entirely different world.  Momoko is a gentle, sweet girl who daydreams in her own Rococo world.  She does not care about the fact that she does not have any friends because she believes that her clothes are all she needs to be happy.  She places her identity in her girly appearance and her fragile manners.  Ichiko is the opposite in her mannerisms and appearance.  She is loud and spits as she talks, and is easily offended by others so much so that she even hits Momoko with her head.  Her identity is with her rough biker gang as expressed in her long and elaborate coat and her flashy motocycle.  At first the two characters are somewhat disgusted, but fascinated with each other.  They slowly value each other’s friendship and come to accept their differences.  At the end of the movie, Momoko, seeing Ichiko being threatened, transforms from a quiet girl into a strong heroine.  The two characters realize they are more similar to each other than judging from their appearances.

Kamikaze Girls is a colourful and detailed film as shown in the costumes and set designs.  Momoko’s costumes are always very extravagant and she never wears the same thing twice.  Her room is brightly coloured and full of material objects to reflect her personal style.  The restaurant has ornate chairs and fancy figurines.  Whenever there are shots of an outdoor scene, the colours are very crisp and the surroundings are shown in great detail.  For example, there are many shots of the sky with white clouds against a bright blue sky.

I really enjoyed watching Kamikaze Girls.  It was a very refreshing film with a unique sense of humour and the settings and costumes are beautiful.  The characters are likeable and the story has a great message of how two different teenagers can have a friendship.  Momoko and Ichiko seem to represent the new generation of Japanese teenagers who have extra money to spend on their personal desires.  They choose to set themselves apart from society through their personal style and manners.



Categories
comedy

“Swing Girls”

Swing Girls (2004) is a feel-good comedy co-written and directed by Yaguchi Shinobu.  Yaguchi is well known for his feel-good types of comedy (such as his famous Water Boys (2001)) which generally involves a group of people overcoming different obstacles as they try to complete unlikely tasks and challenges, but eventually succeed.  Swing Girls was first released in Japan on September 11, 2004 and has won numerous awards including Best Screenplay at the 2005 Yokohama Film Festival as well as winning the Most Popular Film in the 2005 Japanese Academy Awards.

The film is set in modern Japan at a Japanese high school located in the rural Yamagata prefecture. The characters in the film often use the local Yamagata dialect for comedic purposes.  The story revolves around a group of high school girls that have to take summer school due to their poor academic grades. The class consists of 13 girls from different social groups which include Suzuki Tomoko, who never finishes anything she starts; Saito Yoshie, who has a crush on one of the school’s baseball player; Sekiguchi Kaori, who is timid and anti-social; Tanaka Naomi, who loves to eat and is socialy awkward; and Ozawa, their nervous and anti-social summer school teacher.

One day in class as Suzuki looks out the window in her classroom, she sees the brass band leaving the school to perform at the school’s baseball game. Seconds after the brass band departs, a catering truck pulls up at the school with food for the brass band. Tomoko immediately comes up with an idea and volunteers her class to deliver the food to the brass band as a way to get out of class. The teacher agrees and the girls make their way by train to the game. The girls fall asleep and miss their station and end up at the terminal station. The girls set out on foot on a hot summer day determined to deliver the food to the brass band. Meanwhile at the baseball game, Nakamura Takuo (a passive, music loving student from the girls’ school) is determined to quit the brass band because he is stuck playing the cymbals, which he is awful at and dislikes very much. When the girls arrive at the game, Nakamura makes them hand the food out to the brass band. However, because the weather is too hot and the food is not well-preserved, the brass band suffers food poisoning and are all sent to be hospitalized. Knowing who caused the food poisoning, Nakamura blackmails the girls (who are all musically challenged) into joining the band to replace the original band members until they are fully recovered. At first the girls rebel in frustration but eventually grow to like the music they were playing. Just as everyone was getting along and having a good time, the original brass band returns in good health and eventually takes over again.

The regular school year begins and the girls go back to the social crowds that they originally hung out with. However, Suzuki decides that she wants to start her own jazz band and recruits her summer school classmates along with Nakamura. Along the way, they find out that their summer school teacher Ozawa is a jazz-loving maniac and persuade him into becoming their mentor. Ozawa reluctantly agrees but what the girls’ and boy does not know is that aside from loving jazz music, Ozawa has a very embarrassing secret. Throughout the movie, the girls and boy encounter many obstacles including money for their instruments, a place for them to perform and the lack of dedication from some of the girls in the jazz band. The finale will leave one feeling truly inspired by this group of students.

The movie has a lot of cause-and-effect events where throughout the movie the audience is engaged in various little events with a beginning and an end. For example,  the brass band getting food poisoning causing the girls joining the brass band which ends up with the brass band returning in full health. This leads to another event where the girls decided to start their own band which causes them to raise money for their instruments which eventually resulted (after numerous obstacles) in the girls successfully raising enough money to buy their own instruments.

Another thing I really liked is the director’s attention on the relationship and bonds formed between the main characters. He paints a very clear picture of each character’s personality and traits. Yaguchi does this in a brilliant way in which he does not have to incorporate side stories for the audience to have an idea of what the characters’ personalities are like. This is why the audience gets almost no background information on the main characters’ life except Suzuki’s, which is the only character in the film where the audience can see what her home life is like.

Yaguchi’s sense of comedy is very distinct as well. I find the movie’s comedic timing to be very appropriate. This film has several comedic moments, some being predictable (but not corny!) and some that are unpredictable such as when Suzuki runs through the snow and out of the blue falls face flat into the snow. One specific scene I remember in particular is when the main characters go into the woods to collect mushroom in the forest to raise money for their instruments. As they are collecting the mushrooms, they run into an angry wild boar.  Rather than having the characters run away in slow motion as one may predict, Yaguchi depicts the next few frames motionless. One will see a frame shot of the characters’ frozen in their running position as a wild boar is frozen in the back in a charging position towards the characters. The next frame everything is still motionless but you see the boar catching up to them as some of the characters run away and one climbs up a tree. While all of this is happening, the background music is playing“What a Wonderful World” by Stevie Wonders. I found this scene very entertaining.

I strongly recommend this film for people who just want to relax and have a good laugh. This movie is also very inspirational as you watch these high school students overcome various obstacles. The characters in the movie are also very loveable and the movie does not get boring. It is entertaining from start to finish. The movie is an hour and forty minutes long but it feels even shorter when one watches it. Fans of his film Water Boys will definitely enjoy this movie as well.

Categories
action chambara/chanbara jidai-geki

The Sight and Sound of the End of an Era

The sheer mastery of Yamada Yôji’s The Twilight Samurai (Tasogare Seibei) is made clear even from the first frame in this “meditative character-driven elegy” (Chi). Based upon the three short novels by Shuhei Fujisawa, the film is a gentle jidai-geki in the chambara/chanbara genre set in the final hours of Japan’s Edo period. Upon the loss of his wife to consumption, Iguchi Seibei (Sanaa Hiroyuki ) is left to care for his two young daughters Kayano (Itô Miki) and Ito (Hashiguchi Erina), and senescent mother (Tamba Tetsuro). Iguchi is caught between the value of giri or duty as a samurai, and ninjô to support his family. Tasogare Seibei, as he becomes known due to decision not to join his peers for sake at dusk, is soon overwhelmed by the responsibilities of providing for his family. As fortune would have it, Tomoe (Miyazawa Rie) his childhood love and a recent divorcee, enters the narrative to acting as a both a beautiful foil to the character of Iguchi, and a vehicle for Yamada to begin a discussion of class expectations, duty, hope and love in a time of great change for the samurai.

A major element throughout the film is Yamada’s deft use of light and shadow, in an ironic homage to the title, Twilight. Yamada uses these ‘two siblings’ not only to light a scene and the mise-en-scene, but to also to convey the subtext and emotion of each character. Each character ‘wears’ their light, as if it were an additional costume to add to their characterization. Yamada integrates warm, top lighting and natural sunshine to convey the peace Iguchi and Michinojo (Fukikoshi Mitsuro) feel as they fish by the riverside. He uses the natural light to emphasize the joy of Kayano and Ito as they play in the fields. This technique is again used as we see Iguchi open the sliding door of the bedroom, casting golden rays from the fire over the faces of the girls, displaying the pride and love their father holds for them. Tomoe too is characterized through light in the form of the ‘lantern in the night’ that Iguchi uses to walk her home, symbolic of her presence in his life.

In the final act Iguchi is forced to duel Zenemon Yogo (Tanaka Min), a local retainer who has disobeyed the clan’s order for him to commit seppuku. Again Yamada uses a skillful synthesis of shot, composition, and light to convey the deep subtext and visceral emotion between the two men. As Iguchi enters the hut in which Yogo is hiding, the viewer is made immediately aware of the silhouette of the trees outside the window that start to shake in the wind, aptly setting the tone for the scene. Iguchi cannot originally see Yogo who sits in the shadows. As the two men begin to talk, whispers of light start to stream across Yogo’s profile. They are at odds with one another, both aware of the mission endowed upon Iguchi. The two men sit back to back, a distance apart but are drawn toward one another in the deft use of the rack focus of the camera. They begin to establish commonalities, and Iguchi can for the first time begin to see his opponent’s eyes as light washes across his forehead. The two drink tea, and share suffering over the loss of loved ones to consumption. A strange familiarity is breed between the two men, cleverly articulated by Yamada’s technique of slowly lighting Yogo’s face, which is only fully seen for the first time in the climactic duel – a moment of ultimate bonding and understanding. Other notable techniques include Yamada’s use of diagetic and non-diagetic sound and silence, especially during the duels and domestic scenes. He not only plays between using sounds of chickens to symbolize and represent the household and sounds of field birds to represent nature, but also employs silence as a means to build tension.

Yamada’s film brims with life and colour in a gentle discourse of dealing with love, family and duty in a time when the world of the samurai seemed fleeting.

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