Summary
A gentle and sometimes absurdist comedy about funerary rites in Japan, one filled with genuine emotion – even if it is punctuated by regular laughs.
Death and funerary rites have always been such a large part of Japanese cinema. Despite the very particular local aspects of some of the traditions, films like Departures (2008) and Blank 13 (2018) have shared them with the world. BORN BONE BORN (洗骨) may involve a very unique process, but it always does it with grace and good humour.
Based director Toshiyuki Teruya’s (aka comedian Gori) own short film, it follows a family on the remote island of Aguni, not too far from Okinawa. Four years after the death of her mother Emiko, a heavily pregnant Yuko (Ayame Misaki) returns home. Her father (Eiji Okuda) has become withdrawn, and her brother Tsuyoshi (Michitaka Tsutsui) argues at everything.
Like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Still Walking (2008), Teruya’s film follows a family brought together in memory of grief. However, unlike Kore-eda’s characters, the people in this family only want to talk about the Yuko and the memory of their late matriarch. Teruya, who is one half of the comedy duo Garage Sale, employs a mixture of absurdist beats and tradition to tell his tale. We’re introduced to the family during a serene moment at the funeral, with the late Emiko’s serene face filling the frame in the opening shot. This reverie is immediately punctured by a well-wisher who keeps coming back and asking to take home some food from the service.
As the film’s Japanese title comes from the rite of senkotsu, the washing of bones before placing them in a bone storage urn, the grief and anxiety of the family coming together soon gives way to the ceremony of the process. Teruya is careful to treat this aspect with a degree of respect, highlighting both the trauma and pragmatism of a ritual that would otherwise be bizarre to outsiders. Even so, he doesn’t miss an opportunity for dramatic comedy when the inevitability of Yuko’s labour commences.
Structured around Ayame Misaki, who impressed in last year’s Radiance, she very much sets the tone in her introduction. A rubber-faced series of moments on the ferry over to her island home keep us expecting the unexpected from the get-go, making the string of kooks she calls ‘family’ all the more endearing. The award-winning Eiji Okuda is wonderful as her father, going through his own depression and grief while attempting to support his daughter.
BORN BONE BORN is as much about the irregular beat of Okinawan island life as it is about the senkotsu ritual, and the gentle and uncomplicated way of telling this story says volumes about the people it highlights. Remaining delightfully weird (or weirdly delightful) right up until the last moments, it’s hard to walk away from this film without feeling a little warmer. Of course, that might just be the nice Okinawan climate though.
2018 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Toshiyuki Teruya | WRITERS: Toshiyuki Teruya | CAST: Ayame Misaki, Eiji Okuda, Michitaka Tsutsui, Yoko Oshima | DISTRIBUTOR: Japan Cuts (US) | RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 21 July 2018 (Japan Cuts)
