The Toronto Japanese Film Festival is Back: Samurai, Yakuza, Manga and Tokyo trans life
By Jim Slotek
And another long-time Toronto film festival is back live and in person.
The Toronto Japanese Film Festival – which was an entirely virtual event last year – is back in the cozy confines of the Kobayashi Auditorium at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. Not just the fans are back, but filmmakers too. Among them: Tetsuo Shinohara, the director of the heartwarming Inubu The Dog Club will be at the Saturday, June 18 at 4 p.m. for a Q+A.
Running until Tuesday, June 30, the TJFF opened Thursday, June 16 with a sold-out screening of The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai, by Takashi Koizumi (an erstwhile assistant director to Akira Kurosawa). It’s an unusually thoughtful historical drama about doomed chances for peace in the face of war, as the Emperor returned to political power in the 19th Century and the Shogunate was rendered anachronistic.
Brutal Yakuza Ryôhei Suzuki lays down the law on henchman Nijirô Murakami in Last of the Wolves
Saturday, June 18 at 7:15 p.m. sees the Toronto premiere of Last of the Wolves, arguably the most violent film on the TJFF schedule (think severed fingers and eye-gouging). Another tale of avoiding war, this time in the modern Yakuza context, this sequel to Kazuya Shiraishi’s The Blood of Wolves takes place in the ‘90s, where a not-exactly-by-the-book cop (Tôri Matsuzaka) has been keeping the peace between crime families. His fragile peace agreement is threatened by the release from prison of a Yakuza psychopath (Ryôhei Suzuki) who assembles a gang of followers to cause havoc.
Highly melodramatic, but solidly acted,Eiji Uchida’s Midnight Swan (Sunday, June 19, 7 p.m.) won Best Picture and Best Actor at last year’s Japanese Academy Awards. It’s the story of Nagisa (former pop idol Tsuyoshi Kusanagi), a trans woman working a cheesy ballerina act in a Tokyo nightclub. Nagisa’s well-ordered life is disrupted when she reluctantly takes custody of her sullen niece Ichika (first time actress Misaki Hattori), who drags her out of her comfort zone and into a surrogate mother role.
Ichika, it turns out, has actual skills as a dancer, and soon is noticed by her teachers and foreign dance schools. Downbeat with inspirational moments, Midnight Swan is tragic melodrama in the most luridly popular sense.
My personal favourite film of the festival (I am on this year’s jury), Takahiro Horie’s Sensei, Would You Sit Beside Me? is a sly comedy about a husband-and-wife manga team, whose marriage may be running aground. Suspecting her husband Toshio (Tasuku Emoto) of an affair, Sawako (Haru Kuroki) begins telling the story of her suspicions in a manga that takes off with the public. Who’s lying? Who’s stretching the truth? Sensei, Would You Sit Beside Me screens Monday, June 20 at 7 p.m.
Saturday, June 25 at 4 p.m. sees the Canadian premiere of Yukiko Sode’s Aristocrats, taken from the novel by Mariko Yamauchi. It’s a layered tale of the ins and outs of class-and-marriage driven sexual politics that begins with the dropping of a social bomb by Hanako (Kadowaki Mugi) that she has broken up with her desirable fiancé.
Between unenthusiastically looking for a new husband, Hanako interacts and forms bonds with women outside her social circles. The circles, however, eventually overlap.
Toronto Japanese Film Festival. June 16-30 at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre’s Kobayashi Auditorium, 6 Garamond Court, North York.
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