• よこがお（A Girl Missing）

10/19/20 (Mon), Tokyo

The Press Club was holding a special screening of this 2019 film in honor of this month’s Tokyo International Film Festival, where director Fukada Koji’s works will be spotlighted. The movie was co-produced by a French company and was apparently a big hit in France, where art films are more appreciated. Its appeal elsewhere, including Japan, has been more limited. Fukada explained at the screening that they chose “A Girl Missing” (what’s with the A?) as the English title as they couldn’t find a good English equivalent to the Japanese, literally “Profile”. The French apparently uses an entirely different title.

Ichiko works as a home nurse for a feeble elderly woman and tutors the grandchildren, becoming virtually a member of the family. When one of the children is kidnapped, Ichiko is shocked to learn that kidnapper is her nephew. The abducted girl’s older sister Motoko, clearly in love with Ichiko, begs her not to reveal her ties with the abductor in fear that she’ll be fired. Ichiko reluctantly agrees. Then all goes haywire.

Ichiko is forced to go into hiding and pursue a new life. The story proceeds in two timeframes, before and after she disappears into her new identity, distinguishable only by a different hairstyle. The hairstyle approach was much better done in Sliding Doors; here, it is just confusing. I didn’t see the point in the intertwined stories and felt the film would have been much better in a standard telling. It shows Ichiko losing it as she gets on all fours and barks like a dog, which pushes the crazy thing too far. I’m not even sure if the attempted drowning scene (shades of Mizoguchi) was real or a dream. I don’t get it.

The film relies on some hard-to-swallow plot points. In one case, Ichiko tells Motoko about the time she saw her sleeping nephew as a child sporting a hard-on, prompting her on a whim to pull down his trousers for a better look. I’m not sure how she spotted the child’s erection if he had his pants on, but in any event, Motoko then blabs that story on television out of spite after Ichiko has left her family (shades of Kiichiro in Silence). Ichiko, seeing that on a news program alongside her peers in her office, incredibly does not plead her case, allowing rumors to spread. The media now believe that Ichiko corrupted her nephew and was thus indirectly responsible for the kidnapping. The mother sees the story about Ichiko in the papers and dismisses her summarily despite their close relationship to that point. The entire premise was ridiculous. Ichiko’s passiveness against the lies was particularly galling. The director needs to isolate her for the purposes of the story and is trying to take the easy way out. It doesn’t work. That is true as well when Ichiko comes to pick up her nephew from prison. Despite their long separation, they don’t discuss the kidnapping, nor does he react at all to the news of his mother’s suicide. That is unnatural and not in the least credible. Ichiko later takes revenge on Motoko by seducing the latter’s boyfriend and sending her a post-sex photo, only to learn that they had already broken up. I guess the message is that revenge doesn’t pay.

I’m not a big fan of self-consciously artsy films in the first place, but they should at least make sense within their own worlds. Mariko Tsutsui was acceptable in a thankless role. Not recommended.