Japan Cuts 2023

Writing for the Film Stage, Eli Friedberg notes that Inoue “incorporates a mixture of rotoscoped 3D character models on the court and 2D backgrounds, textures, and supporting characters drawn in his familiar style, painted in soft impressionist pseudo-watercolors to match similarly impressionist direction.” This approach “creates an uncanny space between ESPN broadcast and abstract dance that heightens the maneuvers of the game to nigh-mythic levels of spectacle and melodrama.”

In a brief piece for the festival, Japan Times film critic Mark Schilling sketches a picture of a film industry undergoing “a turbulent and exciting renewal” after the setbacks imposed by the pandemic. Schilling points to a few films in the Japan Cuts program as encouraging examples of a thriving independent scene, including Yusuke Morii’s debut feature, Amiko, a portrait of a young girl in a provincial coastal town. “Playing Amiko,” writes Schilling, “newcomer Kana Osawa is an unstoppable force of nature, while the film reinvigorates the family drama genre with a mix of raw emotions and lyrical surrealism.”

The Centerpiece presentation is Under the Turquoise Sky, the first feature directed by actor Kentaro (Sabrina, Rush Hour 3). Yuya Yagira, who broke through in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows (2004) and is the recipient of this year’s Cut Above Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film, plays a spoiled young man whose wealthy grandfather sends him on a mission to Mongolia. Reviewing Under the Turquoise Sky for the Japan Times in 2021, Schilling called it “an affectionate, visually sumptuous love letter to Mongolia’s land, people, and culture.”

The film is one of five Japan Cuts 2023 features that Dustin Chang previews at ScreenAnarchy. Another is Daigo Matsui’s Hand, one of Nikkatsu Studio’s Roman Porno revival projects. Twenty-five-year-old Sawako (Akari Fukunaga) has a thing for older men but becomes romantically involved with a coworker her own age—until she learns he’s taken. “Unwanted at home, and heartbroken with her lover, Sawako reassesses her adulthood,” writes Chang. Hand “abides by the Roman Porno rules (low budget, shot in a week, a sex scene every ten minutes). But the film is an exceptionally well-written, poignant, intimate relationship drama.”

On Saturday, Japan Cuts will screen an imported 16 mm print of Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto (1985), an hour-long portrait Elizabeth Lennard shot for French television. Sakamoto, who passed away earlier this year, was working at the time on his eclectic 1984 album, Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia, and Lennard captures studio sessions, interviews, the sounds of Tokyo, and domestic scenes of Sakamoto playing a piano duet with his then-wife, pop and jazz artist Akiko Yano, who will introduce Saturday’s screening. Lennard, who will take part in a post-screening Q&A, looks back on the making of the film with Nobuhiro Hosoki at Cinema Daily. Sakamoto “was very into it,” she says, “and I was very into it.”

Surveying the two programs of short films, Reel Bits editor Richard Gray suggests that Silent Movie, a compilation of eleven silent shorts created by students and alumni from the Tokyo University of the Arts’ Film Department, “embodies the spirit of the Short Cuts programs more than any other.” Narrated by benshi storyteller Ichiro Kataoka, these shorts “travel through the various stages of Japanese film history and just have fun with the form.” For more recommendations, lend an ear to programmers Peter Tatara and Alexander Fee as they tell Projection Booth host Mike White all about this year’s sixteenth edition of Japan Cuts, which will run through August 6.