Volunteering on this year's Nippon Connection in Frankfurt/Main last week again, I went to see some movies on the film festival celebrating Japanese cinema. Here's my analytical review on an inspiring slow-motion coming of age comedy by Nobuhiro Yamashita that goes by the title of
TAMAKO IN MORATORIUM
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| source: nipponconnection.com |
(Moratoriamu Tamako)
Nobuhiro YAMASHITA, Japan
2013, DCP, 78 Mins.
After graduating Tamako returns to her
hometown Kofu to again live with her father, a divorced owner of a
small sports equipment store. Friendless - except for pimply
junior-high student Hitoshi - all Tamako literally ever does is to
scoff down her father's meals, sleep, read mangas on or off the toilet, and ocasionally devote her attention to playing Tekken on the video game console.
The young woman in the baggy clothes is
the embodiment of idleness and childish behaviour. (How. on. earth. did she ever graduate at all?) Only when her father meekly
raises the subject of going job-hunting, Tamako's frustration and
pure self-loathing are revealed. When he meets a woman
he goes on a date with, Tamako is confronted with making a decision: scare the lover
away from the nest or finally start a life of her own.
Divided
into the seasons fall / winter / spring / summer, this movie not only
shows us the protagonist's gradual change (and her different
hairstyles), but gives a convincing impression of small town life
in Yamanashi Prefecture. This is is a coming of age story told as a "moratorium". Moreover, “Tamako in Moratorium” makes
a statement about parenting: Sometimes what a kid really needs is a kick in the ass.
The
comical in Yamashita's movie functions both on level of the opposed
characters that are displayed with equally great affection, their wry dialogues (“Japan is hopeless.“- “Japan
isn't hopeless. You are!“) and on the structural level as well. There's the
division into 4 seasons and also, several scenes get repeated; viewers
can compare Tamako's gentle, hard- working dad hanging up wet laundry
in fall and see lazy Tamako doing just the same thing in summer, from
the same camera angle on just the same spot. “Ritual” scenes
like this and the “eating scenes”, which almost make up 1/3 of
the film, contribute to the reason why this can be called a comedy.
The plain act of eating placed on a screen always fills me with slight disgust by all the chewing and swallowing. But what's more, it feels very intimate to me - which makes the character shown devouring even the more appealing. This is where “La vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 et 2” (Abdellatif Kechiche, France 2013, 187 mins.) jumps to my mind. A great deal of that movie consists of showing the main character Adèle in a very nonchalant way while sleeping, having food or crying - all of which is authentic stuff the human animal usually does in "normal life". To de-glamorize characters is to bond with the perceptional universe of the average cinema-goer. I guess women my age with food stains (Spaghetti Bolognese, chocolate ice cream, etc.) on their pout make a good movie for me!
The plain act of eating placed on a screen always fills me with slight disgust by all the chewing and swallowing. But what's more, it feels very intimate to me - which makes the character shown devouring even the more appealing. This is where “La vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 et 2” (Abdellatif Kechiche, France 2013, 187 mins.) jumps to my mind. A great deal of that movie consists of showing the main character Adèle in a very nonchalant way while sleeping, having food or crying - all of which is authentic stuff the human animal usually does in "normal life". To de-glamorize characters is to bond with the perceptional universe of the average cinema-goer. I guess women my age with food stains (Spaghetti Bolognese, chocolate ice cream, etc.) on their pout make a good movie for me!
The poker-faced performance by Atsuko
Maeda who works with director Yamashita for the second time here,
gloriously rounds the movie. I wonder if the actress' former career
as a singing and dancing member of the AKB48 girl group actually
inspired the character of Tamako who dreams of auditions à la
Japanese idol. In any case, I find this a nice redoubling of the motif, since the actress and the role of Tamako are individual parts of an entire generation of well educated people
that is said to be directionless in life.
