Tuesday, April 3, 2012
めがね 予告編
“Megane”
Last year
Naoko Ogigami had a surprise hit with "Kamome Shokudo (Seagull Diner),"
a film about three Japanese women who end up running a restaurant together in
Helsinki. It was a surprise because stars Satomi Kobayashi and Masako Motai
were hardly marquee names, while the plot offered little in the way of high
drama. The heroine's big moment came — mild spoiler alert — when her restaurant
finally filled up. Nonetheless, the film had a charming setting, likable,
quirky characters and shot after shot of scrumptious-looking food, including
the heroine's down-home specialty: onigiri (rice balls). Most of all, it
told a story of personal realization that many in the audience could identify with
— and dream about living themselves (in Chiba if not Helsinki).
Ogigami
wisely resisted the temptation to make "Kamome Shokudo 2," but her
followup, "Megane (Glasses)," has many of the elements that made
"Kamome" a success, including Kobayashi and Motai. This
same-but-different formula is not new — the "Road" films of Bob Hope
and Bing Crosby used it as well — but it is unusual for the Japanese film
industry, which prefers safe sequels over chancy creative tangents.
The biggest
departure in the new film is the character of Kobayashi's heroine. In
"Kamome" she was a striver in a foreign land, trying to make good
against stiff odds. In "Megane" she escapes from a high-stress
lifestyle to an unnamed Okinawa-like island, where she learns to chill like the
natives. Ogigami gets laughs with this situation, but as in "Kamome"
her main purpose is to create a possible miniature paradise — that is, another
invitation for her fan-base to dream.
As the story
progressed, however, I was reminded of George Orwell's famous essay on Charles
Dickens — and his observation that for Dickens, as for many Victorians, the
ideal life was one in which "nothing ever happens, except the yearly
childbirth." Though modern-day Japanese, the inhabitants of Ogigami's
island are likewise devotees of idleness, whose entire existence revolves
around mealtime, playtime and staring out to sea. The question of how the
pin-neat inn where the heroine stays is maintained and how its well-stocked
larder is supplied remain unanswered, save for the inn-master's apparently
magical skill with a fishing rod.
Ogigami
holds up this life as a model for emulation — though it is a fantasy the way
the life of the restaurant owner in "Kamome" was not. Also, in this
age of rapid environmental destruction of even remote island paradises, I
wondered at the natives' utter complacency. Sitting on your bum sucking on kaki-gori
(shaved ice) is not going to going to ensure your future fish supply, is it?
And though
Ogigami gives us shot after tempting shot of crystalline tropical waters, no
one in the entire film goes swimming, snorkeling or even wading. What a waste.
The first
person we see in "Megane" is Sakura (Motai), who deboards an ancient
prop plane one beautiful spring day on the aforementioned island and makes a
beeline for a small beach house, smiling and bowing with elaborate politeness
to all she meets on the way. She is the same blithely single middle-aged woman
as the one she played in "Kamome," but this time she has come not as
a tourist, but to work at the beach house as a kaki-gori seller and at the
nearby Hanada Inn as a maid.
Next comes
Taeko (Kobayashi), who was on the same flight, but is a first-timer to the
island. With a dubious look on her face, she drags her suitcase over the sand
with one hand, while clutching the map to the Hamada Inn with the other.
Arriving at her destination, she finds the smiling master, Yuji (Ken
Mitsuishi), who greets her with an odd compliment: "You have talent — the
talent to be here." He whips up a delicious supper that Taeko devours with
hungry eyes, but he casually wraps it up and, telling her she can find food in
the fridge, walks out with it.
The
strangeness continues: In the morning Taeko is awakened by Sakura's
polite-but-firm "ohayo gozaimasu (good morning)," delivered at
her bedside. Then Yuji invites her to join him, Sakura and Haruna (Mikako
Ichikawa), a geeky, blunt-speaking high-school teacher, for breakfast. A guest
eating with the help — not done! Soon after, she happens upon Sakura at the
beach, leading a group of locals in a cross between radio taiso
(exercises of antique vintage broadcast daily on NHK radio) and moves
apparently inspired by "The Rite of Spring" and "I'm a Little
Teapot." Yuji urges her to join in, but she flees instead — mixing with
the natives in such an outre way is not her idea of a vacation.
The
accumulating craziness prompts Taeko to move out, but worse is waiting for her
at the island's other inn, the misnamed Marine Palace. Fleeing, she finds her
way back to the Hamada, with the provident aid of the unflappable Sakura. Taeko
begins to realize that these folks are not so much mad as different — or,
rather, indifferent to the ways of conventional society. Instead, they've made
their own world, and Taeko decides to live in it. There isn't much more to the
story than that, though there is a lot more sucking of kaki-gori.
This
go-with-the-flow message will no doubt resound with "Megane' "s
target audience — Taeko's overworked urban sisters. But where are they going to
find a Hamada Inn, not to mention Taeko's endless vacation time? This movie is
a bit of a sell, if you ask me. And when can I book my ticket to Okinawa?
By MARK SCHILLING
Friday, Sept. 21, 2007
高峰秀子 「女が階段を上がる時」予告篇
Keiko, a young widow, becomes a bar hostess in Ginza to make ends meet. The story recounts the struggles to maintain her independence in a male-dominated society. She projects ease and grace but the audience knows how tormented she really is – they also know how much rent she has to pay and the cost of her nephew's operation.
Plot:
Keiko (called Mama by the other characters), a young widow approaching 30, is a hostess at a bar in Ginza.
Realizing she is losing her looks, she decides after talking to her bar
manager, Komatsu, that she wants to open her own bar rather than
remarrying and dishonoring her late husband to whose memory she is still
devoted. To accomplish this, she must secure loans from some of the
affluent patrons who frequent her bar, but is unwilling to lead them on
for the sake of money.Meanwhile, a former employee, Yuri, has opened up a bar of her own nearby, subsequently taking away most of Keiko's former customers. She scouts locations for her own bar with a confidant of her bar, Junko, undecided as to where she will open up. While Keiko is having lunch with Yuri and thinking she is doing well in her enterprise, she reveals that she is deep in debt, and cannot afford to pay off her creditors. She tells Keiko of a plan to fake a suicide to keep her creditors at bay. Keiko is shocked to learn the next day that Yuri has died, and that she had either planned her death all along, or had merely misjudged the amount of sleeping pills to take. She is again shocked to see Yuri's creditors dunning her family for money while still in mourning.
After Keiko suffers an unnamed bout of sickness, she retreats to the home of her family to recover. It is revealed that she must give them money to keep her brother out of jail, while also paying for an operation that her nephew needs (who is suffering from polio) in order to walk again. After telling them she can not afford to give them money as she must keep up appearances with an expensive apartment and kimonos, Keiko reluctantly agrees, realizing this will forestall any plan to open her own bar.
After returning to her bar to work, she is made a proposal to by a heavy-set man, who Keiko entertains briefly. When he turns out to be a fraud, she sets her sights on Fujisaki, a businessman who is interested in her. While promising to give her money after sleeping with her, he tells her he has been transferred to Osaka for work, and cannot abandon his family. Feeling jilted, Keiko is given a stern lecture by Komatsu, previously infatuated with Keiko for her resolve and reluctance to give in to the men. Losing his interest in her, he quits the bar. Keiko is then shown returning again for work, pretending to be happy.
Other source of info: www.cinemastrikesback.com
高峰秀子 「放浪記」予告篇 - Hōrōki (Kimura Sotoji)
A Wanderer's Notebook (放浪記 Hourou-ki), also known as Her Lonely Lane is a 1962 black-and-white Japanese film drama directed by Mikio Naruse, starring Hideko Takamine. The film is based on the autobiography of author Fumiko Hayashi, whose work the director often adapted for the screen.
Plot:
Fumiko Hayashi (Hideko Takamine)
is a young woman can't find a decent job, meanwhile being dumped by her
boyfriend and writing on the side. People say her writing on poverty is
good, but she can't sell it and continues with dead end factory and bar
hostess jobs and occasional heavy drinking. She gets together with
another aspiring writer Fukuya (Akira Takarada) who can't sell his work either. Despite she doing all she can for him and his disease tuberculosis, he abuses her verbally and eventually physically. She walks out, comes back, walks out again. A kind man, Nobuo Sadaoka (Daisuke Katō) helps her occasionally, but she rejects his proposal. After these struggles, the film ends up with her literary success.
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