• 怒り (Rage)

10/17/19 (Wed), Tokyo

Lee Sang-il’s 2018 film opens with the murder of an innocent couple in their own home by a drifter, who paints the character for “rage” (怒) on their wall before escaping. This is followed by three unrelated stories in Tokyo, Chiba and Okinawa featuring drifters who could all conceivably be the killer. The film is on the surface a suspense tale keeping us guessing which one is the villain, but its real theme involves the nature of trust and mistrust – “Doubt” would actually be a better title than “Rage”, which doesn’t quite make sense in context. The stories are interwoven throughout the film:

• Chiba: A father (Watanabe Ken) rescues his daughter Aiko (Miyazaki Aoi in a terrific performance) from an abusive life as a sex worker. He refrains from hard questions or accusations to avoid putting pressure on her. He accepts with reluctance but some relief her relationship with a drifter Tetsuya (Matsuyama Kenichi), even giving the latter work in his business. But he comes to find that Tetsuya has not been entirely open about his past.
• Tokyo: Yuma, a closeted gay businessman (a superb Tsumabuki Satoshi), practically rapes a passive guy Naoto (Ayano Go) in a gay sex club, only to learn that the kid is homeless. He takes a liking to him and lets him move in – even introducing him to his mother (as his “friend”) – without really knowing much about him. Misgivings build when the guy lies about a meeting with a mysterious woman at a local café and remains reticent about his past.
• Okinawa: An innocent young kid Tatsuya (Sakumoto Takara) has a crush on Izumi (Suzu Hirose). They take an adventure to a small island, where Izumi discovers a go-lucky eccentric named Tanaka (Moriyama Mirai) living alone. The couple chance to meet Tanaka later in Naha, Okinawa’s capital city, and go out drinking. On the way home, Izumi gets separated and is brutally raped by US servicemen. It turns out that Tatsuya and Tanaka are both, unbenownst to each other, watching separately in the shadows but fail to intervene, the former out of fear and the latter out of a creepy desire to watch the abduction. The story then concentrates not on the girl, who virtually vanishes until the very end, but on the guilt of the two guys.

A melodramatic ending ties up these plotlines, not entirely convincingly, revealing which one is the real killer.

The film seems to question our lack of faith in each other, but it undercuts itself with the need to keep the killer’s identity hidden, meaning revealing as little information as possible, versus ensuring the believability of the underlying stories. It’s easy to have doubts when the other side is not forthcoming. The drifters are not only taciturn about their past but actually lie, necessarily raising suspicions when questions arise. That is true especially of Yuma, whose live-in partner’s failure to communicate and outright falsehood when caught inevitably leaves the door open for misunderstanding. That story has the most moving ending thanks to stellar acting by Tsumabuki as the wary Yuma, who refuses a call from the police that would have connected him with his dying friend. But we have to accept that Naoto could have lived for months with the buoyant Yuma without revealing much about himself, even after Yuma has shown such kindness and drawn him into his circle. True, Yuma does not invite Naoto to his mom’s funeral, but that relates more to Yuma’s fear of outing (and thus accepting) himself rather than doubts over his friend. There’s also the iffy scene where Yuma, seeking information, just happens to find the girl still sitting in the same café at precisely the same table some time later.

More disturbing was Izumi’s disappearance from the film after her rape, as if her feelings didn’t matter compared to the rape’s effect on the two guys. Tatsuya’s dismissal of the Okinawan protests against the US military base as useless made for an interesting comparison with the girl’s perception that reporting the rape to the police would be futile, hinting at her traumatized state of mind. It would have been nice to see more of her other than the tacked-on ending where she screams emptily to the ocean. Her rape is little more than a plot device to explore the other characters, which is rather callous (“So let me tell you how I felt about your rape”). Moriyama, better known as a modern dancer, is unexpectedly engaging as the carefree drifter.

The only truly plausible story was the Chiba tale, where emerging details of the murder gleaned from TV news convince Aiko that Tetsuya was the culprit and that he lied about escaping from the yakuza. The truth proves devastating. This section is buttressed by a tremendous performance by Miyazaki and solid support by Watanabe.

We learn that the murderer killed the couple after misconstruing an act of kindness for a gesture of ridicule, also a betrayal in its way of a lack of trust. The character “rage” that he paints on the wall after the murder seems misplaced — guilt or despair would be a more normal reaction. Is he angry at himself for letting his passion overwhelm him? At society for creating the social difference between him and the well-off couple? Beats me.

Lee’s stylish production intermingles the three stories (and the murder investigation by the detectives) with great skill. The bathos at the end was unfortunate, and as noted, the uncommunicativeness of all the drifters made the theme hard to swallow; I wouldn’t have trusted these guys either. But the movie was technically flawless, striking a good balance among the unconnected stories and keeping us uncertain to the end. It also benefited from superior acting all around. An entertaining work despite a muddled message.