Highly Recommended
A meditative and intimate debut explores the notions of cultural and personal identity in Japan.
In Japan, the term hāfu (ハーフ) refers to anyone who is born to one ethnic Japanese and one non-Japanese parent. The irony of course is that this is itself a loan word from English. In one of the most ostensibly homogenous nations in the world, brothers Bilal and Usman Kawazoe explore their personal experiences about identity this moving short feature.
Introverted Haruki (Kai Hoshino Sandy) returns home after dropping out of college abroad. His father is nowhere to be seen, and his mother seems indifferent to his presence. He crosses paths with the outwardly confident Makoto (Usman Kawazoe), a labourer who also has a mixed ethnic heritage. They have no reason to gravitate towards each other despite both being biracial in Japan.
As the title implies, the two men slowly begin to find some kind of “whole” through their association. Makoto doesn’t seem to let casual racism from Japanese people bother him, something that leaves Haruki slightly in awe. Haruki has his own defence mechanism: “I’m not half,” he’ll tell people. “I’m double.”
At JAPAN CUTS 2019, the film is preceded by an intriguing short documentary film called TOKYO KURDS. Director Fumiari Hyuga follows two Kurdish refugees in their late teens as they try to get legal status in Japan. It doesn’t really get to the root of why so few immigrants achieve refugee status (a staggering 28 out of 10,901 applicants in 2016), or acknowledge the global issue of refugee rights, but it does give us a sense of the bureaucracy in the country.
Bilal Kawazoe has a studied approach to filmmaking, having worked under Naomi Kawase (Radiance) and Ida Panahandeh (The Nikaidos’ Fall) after graduating from the Visual Arts College Osaka. Like Kawase, he invokes an autobiographical documentary style and applies it to fiction storytelling. He is in a position, after all, to view contemporary Japanese culture as one who has some lived experienced as a perceived outsider.
Screenwriter Usman Kawazoe imbues his co-lead role with an effortless charm, a natural counterpoint to Kai Hoshino Sandy’s geekish and buttoned-down presence. Their chemistry works because of these differences rather than in spite of it, even if that is one of the more obvious observations that we might make there.
Toshiyuki Takei’s (Takasaki Graffiti) photography keeps the audience partly at arm’s length, a floating world of industrial landscapes, bridges, and apartment complexes.
With roles as director, writer, editor, and actor between them, the Kawazoe brothers prove themselves to be a formidable filmmaking team with WHOLE. Although it comes in at a slender 45 minutes, it packs in enough emotional nuance for a film twice its length. Here’s looking forward to seeing whatever they have planned next.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Bilal Kawazoe | WRITERS: Usman Kawazoe | CAST: Kai Hoshino Sandy, Usman Kawazoe, Aoi Ibuki, Meimei Kikuchi | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS (US) | RUNNING TIME: 45 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 – 28 July 2019 (JAPAN CUTS)
