Not Telluride, Not Sundance: TOKYO FILMeX.

Yurakucho Asahi Hall, screening location of the competition films.

 I spent the past weekend in Tokyo, where the International Film Festival Tokyo FilmexNational Film Center, was wrapping up its final weekend of screenings throughout the Ginza, including a retrospective of classic Ozu and Kurosawa works among the ten new competition films.  Between people-watching in Harajuku and getting to see Kurosawa’s actual Golden Lion and Palm D’Or at his special centennial exhibit and the National Film Center, I only made it to one Filmex screening – but I picked the right one.

冬の獣

冬の獣 (Fuyu no Kemono, “Winter Beast”), a relationship drama with the English title Love Addiction, directed this year by Uchida Nobuteru, is a riveting piece of realism, psychologically complex and powerful – and not surprisingly, it was awarded the festival Grand Prize.

The dynamics of the four main characters within the film and their attempts to navigate love, connections, and gender roles in an isolating modern Japanese landscape is in itself full of anthropological potential, but what struck me beyond the film itself was the relationship between the primarily Japanese audience and the characters on the screen.  I went with two other American friends, and early in the climactic scene, the rationalizations and reverse accusations of the main character’s philandering boyfriend became too unbearable – all three of us couldn’t help but express our disgust, and then amazed amusement, at the utter absurdity of his words.  Talking during films is looked down upon throughout the world, and particularly in Japan, and particularly at film festivals (unless you’re Quentin Tarantino and you feel the need to criticize Kawase Naomi at Cannes…), but it was not long before our feelings were echoed throughout the theatre.

The cast and director take the stage after the screening.

I found myself laughing and audibly catching my breath, exclaiming in surprise or frustration right along with a hall full of people whom I would generally expect to remain quiet and attentive at such an event.  Part of this is undoubtedly due to the incredible realism of the film, a product of its largely handheld yet striking cinematography and the unscripted, quasi-method-acted interplay of the four main characters.  But the willingness of a Japanese audience to make noise at a movie is nonetheless telling.  Further, they seemed to be decidedly against the lead male character’s brazenly doubly-standard attitude that men should have multiple women, while women should be monogamous, a reflection perhaps of changing conceptions of gender roles and relations, at least among the film-festival-attending and film-making crowd.

Festival organizer, Uchida, the four stars, and translator take questions.

One thing that I love about film festivals is the ubiquity of Q&A sessions – and the way this one proceeded, as opposed to what one might experience outside of Japan (especially in the U.S.), reveals much about Japanese culture and the Japanese approach to the creation of art.  One of my film profs back home says that the first question (and usually the second, third, fourth…) for a director is always “What was your budget?” or “What cameras/equipment did you shoot with (and how much did that cost you…)?” or other similarly financially-oriented questions.  But at Tokyo Filmex, not a single question touched on economics – discussion of the title, the film’s inspiration, the relatability of the characters and the approaches to characterization and creation of meaning were directed to Uchida and the four main actors.

The four stars of the new film listen during the Q&A session.

Admittedly, the low budget of the film is to be commended, but the tone of the Q&A session, and the verbal freedom of the audience during the screening, revealed how deeply affected the audience was by the themes of desperation, alienation, and uncertainty and the discourses regarding gender that the film so artistically articulates.  Personally, I find this commitment to form and function, rather than finance, in film, refreshing – but even more so, the fact that a Japanese film that looks so frankly at modern relationships, and where they break down, tops a film festival devoted to new Asian cinema, says even more about modern Japan – how it mediates its fears about the 21^st century (check this out for another interesting take on the festival), and how willing it is to engage in that mediation.  I would say the festival lived up to its mission statement, and then some.