(IMAGE: Shinobu Terajima in “Oh, Lucy!” / Courtesy of Film Movement)
Film Movement. 2018. Drama. 96 minutes. Japanese; English-subtitled.
RATING: 3 angels
Loneliness has long been a popular topic in Japanese cinema, and for obvious reasons: that one of the most densely populated nations on earth should also be one of its most insular and culturally isolated is a contradiction naturally ripe for dramatic exploitation. For Japan’s miniscule community of female filmmakers, who labor under a considerably more entrenched patriarchal order than Hollywood’s, the topic is even more urgent, as it speaks not only to their challenges as artists, but to the limited life options faced by Japanese women generally. A handful of films in recent years have flirted with the topic, but none have confronted it head-on as bravely or as honestly as Oh, Lucy! from debut feature writer/director Atsuko Hirayanagi, based on her 2014 short film of the same name. Co-written with Boris Frumin, this sensitive, penetrating and frequently unsettling study of one woman’s battle with regret, should enjoy a long and healthy life especially in ancillary where it will find a welcome home among foreign film buffs increasingly starved of intelligent overseas fare.
Shinobu Terajima (previously best known for playing the beleaguered war wife in Kôji Wakamatsu’s devastating 2010 film Caterpillar) stars as Setsuko, a middle-aged corporate office worker who appears to have compromised her way through an unremarkable and unfulfilling life. She’s unmarried, childless and, as audiences soon discover, harbors a deep and abiding resentment of her sister Ayako (Kaho Minami) whom she blames for the event that precipitated her life of mediocrity and unhappiness. Feelings that might otherwise have remained stoically bottled away, however, are unleashed after she is witness to a subway suicide. Suddenly aware of her own mortality and risk-free life, she accepts a strange, spontaneous offer from her bubbly niece, Mika (Shioli Kutsuna), to purchase the remaining portion of her English lessons with a young American named John (Josh Hartnett). The first lesson is unorthodox to say the least – it’s less about English than about adopting a looser, freer American persona through which students are meant to overcome their fears and inhibitions. This typically means choosing an American name and donning a bad drug store wig – which transforms dour, dark-haired office drone Setsuko into bleach-blonde Lucy, a ridiculous persona at first glance, but a decision which nonetheless triggers something deep inside.
A series of unexpected yet not inorganic twists transpire in fairly short order during which the film becomes a kind of fish-out-of-water road trip and existential journey at the same time. The intent is to contrast Setsuko’s closely guarded inner world with the dull, routine outside world to which she has resigned herself, and push both of them well past the breaking point. This is no small ambition for a debut feature film, especially one expanded from a short that was already narratively tight and thematically complete. At times, one can feel Hirayanagi straining a bit to fill the narrative, but on balance the effort is a rousing success, achieving a kind of emotional universality which, of late, has been in short supply from Japanese cinema. For English-language audiences it obviously helps that there’s a familiar face in Hartnett (as well as an amusing cameo from a well-known sitcom star), and that much of the film is in English; but these are merely cosmetic entry points. Terajima is a magnetic presence, and she conveys a wealth of emotions that are not so much female or Japanese as they are human. Not to be overlooked is the powerful contribution of Kôji Yakusho (Tampopo, Shall We Dance, The Eel) in a small part as Takeshi, a fellow English class student whose adopted name is “Tom.” In Yakusho’s hands, “Tom”’s otherwise marginal role in the story creates an essential contrast and counterbalance to that of “Lucy.” Both are straining across an emotional chasm to find a lifeline to life – their yearning, our yearning, and the randomness between is where the movie comes alive.