The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
The Japan Foundation Manila (JFM) is celebrating the second decade of Eigasai by showing this month 20 diverse features, most of which—including an Academy Award winner for best foreign-language film—will be screened at the Shangri-La Plaza’s Shang Cineplex in Mandaluyong City from July 7 to 16, 2017.
Opening this year’s edition of the popular Japanese film festival at the Shang on July 6 is Her Love Boils Bathwater, writer-director Ryota Nakano’s 2016 drama that focuses on a terminally ill woman who wants to use the last weeks of her life to reconcile her family and restart the operations of its shuttered bathhouse. Making this screening more special is the talk Nakano is set to give on July 8.
Among the participating features, the most notable is Departures, Yojiro Takita’s Oscar-winning 2008 film about a failed cellist who becomes a traditional Japanese ritual mortician, and how he earns people’s respect for the dignity and value of his work, despite their initial prejudice against it.
That film is one of three previously shown movies that are screened to mark Eigasai’s 20th anniversary. The other two are Memories of You, Shinichiro Sawai’s 1988 drama that focuses on a university student named Akira who meets up with a girl he had tutored years ago, and whom he learns is stricken with leukemia and has only six months to live; and The Sting of Death, Kohei Oguri’s Grand Prix winner at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival about a couple trying to save their marriage after the husband’s secret affair was revealed. Both were shown at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the festival’s original home, on July 1.
Another Cannes winner, specifically in that festival’s Un Certain Regard section in 2016, is Naomi Kasawe’s Sweet Bean, about a dorayaki shop owner who hires an elderly woman named Tokue, whose recipe for the pancake-like snack filled with red bean paste bolsters the store’s business, which is later threatened when an unkind rumor drives the new employee away.
Of interest to Filipino audiences are three movies dubbed in Tagalog. They are Hitoshi One’s Bakuman (2015), about a gifted manga illustrator named Moritaka who fears overworking himself to death, like what his artist-uncle did, until his classmate and aspiring manga writer Akito invites him to join forces and become manga creators together; Akira Nagai’s If Cats Disappeared from the World (2016), which depicts a dying postman who strikes a deal with the devil to prolong his life in exchange for making things—like mobile phones—disappear from the world; and Koji Shiraishi’s Sadako vs. Kayako (2016), which brings together the villians of the horror movies The Ring and The Grudge in a story about a university student who, after watching the cursed videotape and before Sadako kills her, tries to pit her against the vengeful spirit Kayako in order to survive.
Also of interest is Asian Three-Fold Mirror 2016: Reflections, an omnibus film produced by the Japan Foundation and the Tokyo International Film Festival that features three segments—all with the theme “Living Together in Asia”—directed by three acclaimed Southeast Asian filmmakers.
One of them, Brillante Ma. Mendoza, helms SHINIUMA Dead Horse, about an illegal Filipino immigrant (Lou Veloso) in Japan who, after he was deported home, learns that his family has dispersed a long time ago and has no place for him to stay.
Other films in the lineup are two family comedies first released last year. The first, Shuichi Okita’s The Mohican Comes Home, tells the story of a death-metal band frontman who returns to his island home after seven years to inform his family that he will marry his pregnant girlfriend. And the second, Yoji Yamada’s What a Wonderful Family, centers on an elderly married couple who are comtemplating divorce, throwing their children into a panic.
Another comedy is Yoshihiro Nakamura’s Edo Period-set The Magnificent Nine (2016), about nine merchants who try to use their wits and wealth to save their town from poverty and oppose its feudal lord’s harsh taxes without getting caught—or executed.
The Anthem of the Heart (2015) is Tatsuyaki Nagai’s animated feature about a young girl who loses her ability to speak because of a traumatic childhood incident. However, her outlook on life changes as she discovers the magic of music and friendship.
Nori Koizumi’s Chihayafuru Part 1 and Part 2 (2016) focuses on two friends, Chihaya and Taichi, who are brought together by their passion for the traditional Japanese card game karuta. Determined to be the best, Chihaya forms a competitive karuta club with Taichi to prove that the game is more than just about old customs and to hopefully reunite with their estranged friend Arata.
Japanese horror master Kiyoshi Kurasawa helms Creepy (2016), which follows an ex-detective named Takakura as he tries to figure out the behavior of his strange new neighbor, while his old colleagues enlist his help in reopening the case of a missing family.
Miwa Nishikawa’s The Long Excuse (2016) centers on an adulterous celebrity novelist who loses his wife in a bus accident. After faking the part of a bereaved husband, he meets Yoichi and his children, who show him the genuine kind of connections he hasn’t experienced before.
And Tsukiji Wonderland (2016), a documentary by Naotaro Endo whose filming took 16 months, chronicles the famous Tsukiji Market—considered a center of Japanese food culture—as it prepares to be moved to a different location.
Although not part of the screenings at the Shang Cineplex, two films are considered part of Eigasai this year: Sunao Katabuchi’s animé feature In this Corner of the World (2016), which follows a fiesty young housewife as she fights for happiness and a normal life during World War II, is already in commercial theaters; and Hirobumi Watanabe’s thriller Poolsideman (2016), about a lonely swimming pool lifeguard who accompanies his colleague to a neighboring town plagued by an epidemic, is set to be shown at the CCP on Aug. 5.
Tickets cost P100 each, except on July 14, when screenings are free and on a first-come, first-serve basis. ALVIN I. DACANAY
For screening schedules, visit the Japan Foundation Manila office website. For inquiries, call (632) 370-2597 or visit www.facebook.com/shangrilaplazaofficial.