Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters will open in Thailand on Aug 2, two months after the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. Among modern Japanese filmmakers, Kore-eda has amassed the strongest following in Thailand, largely due to the fortunate fact that most of his films -- not all, mind you -- have opened commercially here since 2004. To pave the mood for Shoplifters, a gem of a family drama that finally brought the 56-year-old director one of the highest honours in international cinema, the Thai distribution Mongkol Major brings back seven films by the master in a Kore-eda Retrospective programme at House RCA, starting today.
Kore-eda has been making gentle movies that conceal their seismic power so discreetly that sometimes we mistake them as "feel-good" drama. No, in fact, his films are feel-bad drama at their most masterful (except maybe Our Little Sister and I Wish). The measured pacing of his films and the complex dynamics within a family (often a broken or incomplete family) often earn him a comparison to the late Japanese master Yazujiro Oza -- a comparison that seems to irk Kore-eda. Still, there's not many filmmakers at work in the world today who capture the minutiae of family relationships with such sympathy and precision as he does.
The seven films in the Kore-eda Retrospective programme are Nobody Knows (2004), Air Doll (2009), I Wish (2011), Like Father, Like Son (2012), Our Little Sister (2015), After The Storm (2016) and The Third Murder (2017). Note that the programme doesn't feature Still Walking (2008), which is one of my favourites, and neither his earlier films from the period before the director gained international recognition, such as Maborosi (1995) and After Life (1998).
Here's the programme at House RCA:
Nobody Knows (Friday at 2.20pm and Monday at 4.40pm)
Something close to a masterpiece, Nobody Knows occupies a rarely visited terrain between ethereal despair and genuine hope. The 140-minute drama is based on a true incident in Japan when five young children were abandoned in a Tokyo flat by their mother. At the centre of the film is the Cannes-winning performance of 14-year-old Yuya Yagira, playing the eldest son who assumes the premature responsibility of feeding his step-siblings after their mum leaves without any explanation. A film about an individual's struggle that resonates with a realistic, chilling social relevance, this is one of the best films I saw that year.
Air Doll
(Friday at noon and Sunday at 2.30pm)
The story of a sex doll (Bae Du-na) that comes alive, falls in love with a video store clerk, and her wandering through a Japanese neighbourhood becomes a sublime, quaint and sad metaphor on the human condition. There's an outlandish sex scene between the doll and her male friend, which involves a series of inflation and deflation of various body parts. But the comedy is plastic-bitter: How our lives are "filled" by others, and how the human soul can be as empty as a deflated doll, are the lofty questions the film explores.
After The Storm
(Friday at 5pm and Sunday at 4.50pm)
Hiroshi Abe plays Ryota, a down-and-out writer who now works, improbably, as a private detective. He once won a literary prize, but now the tall, self-deprecating ex-author haunts a horse track. Ryota has divorced his wife (Yoko Maki) and now he struggles to make enough money to send her child support. Much of the film concerns Ryota's afternoon rendezvous with his ex-wife and his young son with whom he tries to bond, and their evening visit to his mother's flat as a typhoon is about to bring a lot of rain.
I Wish
(Saturday at noon)
Two brothers are separated by the divorce of their parents. I Wish is a film about small happiness hidden under earth-shaking woes. An unexpected hand clasp on the shoulder, a swimming trunk in a wash basin, the sound of a clinking bell, the volcanic ash that falls like confetti -- the random joy of life slowly works its way into the heart of a young boy at the centre of this family drama.
Like Father, Like Son
(Saturday at 2.30pm and Sunday at 7.10pm)
Steven Spielberg bought the remake rights of the film when it came out, but why would we want to watch the Hollywood version of this? Ryota (Fukuyama Masaharu) is a well-to-do businessman working for a real estate company and living in a fashionably sleek apartment in Tokyo. Following a call from a hospital, Ryota and his wife Midori (Ono Machiko) find out that their six-year-old son Keita (the wonderful Ninomiya Keita) isn't their birth child; due to what seems to be a horrible mistake, the hospital switched their baby with that of another couple.
The Third Murder
(Saturday at 7:20pm)
Somewhat a departure from his earlier films, The Third Murder is a whodunnit wrought with the dramaturgy of a Russian novel. Right at the opening, we see a murder being committed: Takashi Misumi (Koji Yakusho) is clubbing a man to death on a riverbank. But in its staunchly reflective storyline, the film is as much about the murder itself as it is about the killer's complex motif that underlines the elusiveness of truth, reason, justice and victimhood -- of crime and punishment.
Our Little Sister
(Sunday at noon and Monday at 2pm)
Sachi, Yoshino and Chika are grown-up sisters living in the small town of Kamakura, with its leafy temples and vintage train stations. One day they receive news that their father, who left the family to be with another woman years ago, has died and the three sisters travel to the northeast for his funeral. There they meet Suzu, their serious-looking 15-year-old half-sister. Out of kindness, curiosity and maybe familial instinct, the three sisters ask the young girl to come live with them in Kamakura. Suzu, for the same reason, agrees, and now the four sisters will learn that a family is something that is given but also built, something inherited (whether you like it or not) as well as negotiated.
