Summary
Sitting somewhere between the French New Wave and Hong Sang-soo, this delightful bottle film sees chaos swirl around a trio of young women and the toxic masculinity that surrounds them.
In case you couldn’t tell from the title, which roughly translates as “beach games,” debut director Aimi Natsuto is a little bit inspired by New Wave French cinema. It’s a gentle romp with a female point of view, a fresh perspective that feels simultaneously familiar and brand new.
The loose plotting focuses primarily on a trio of three women – Sayaka (Haruna Hori), Yui (Juri Fukushima), and Momoko (Nanaho Otsuka) – staying at a beachside villa shared by a group of people. The comings and goings of the group – made up largely of artistically-minded people – is explored over a roughly 24-hour period. Sex, desire, and deluded men swirl around this voyeuristic carousel in ways that are both amusing and insightful.
The sheer parade of arty types and cameos from the Asian film scene can’t help but recall Hong Sang-soo, the South Korean filmmaker who has practically created a self-perpetuating industry around this type of cinema. Case in point is the film professor character who is introduced to us sans pants after a night of drinking and womanising. He could have stepped right out of Oki’s Movie.
Which isn’t to say that Natsuto is derivative by any means, she’s just a filmmaker who wears her influences cheekily on her sleeve. Where Hong’s films of the last few years have been almost public penance for his widely reported affair, Natsuto is the fresher voice of the #MeToo movement. Here she quietly catalogues the everyday examples of toxic masculinity, including a Korean couple who aren’t what they seem and a musician who has women on his mind. “Somehow all the guys seem to be charmers,” remarks one of the women.
The tranquillity of the film, marked by timecoded chapter headings like “La Femme Douche” and “L’amour en fuite,” is interrupted by a sudden turning point in which the women have collectively had their fill of the men. The games of the title turn into a beach attack (or an attaque de plage, if you will) as a vocal serving on the Korean man triggers a group attack on one of the men. It’s a moment of catharsis for the women and the audience alike, or as one of the women puts it: “I feel good finally.”
Shot in a plain style, and running at a compact 77 minutes, Natsuto still always manages to make the scene feel present. The layout of the house and the handful of other background environments are carefully selected to give a deceptively tight control to the sequences. Adding to the Frenchiness of the whole thing is the use of DeBussy’s “Clair De Lune” as interstitial music: it’s a cliché for sure, but Natsuto is well aware of that.
JEUX DE PLAGE all culminates in the core trio of women in a fight filled with overlapping dialogue, ill-timed assertions of affection from a shy Thai poet, and a reversal of the balanced dynamic Natsuto has been playing with for the previous hour or so. Announcing her arrival as a filmmaker to watch, Natsuto takes a small frame and fills it with all the complexities of human emotion.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Aimi Natsuto| WRITERS: Aimi Natsuto | CAST: Haruna Hori, Juri Fukushima, Nanaho Otsuka, Shinsuke Kato | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS (US) | RUNNING TIME: 77 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 19 – 28 July 2019 (JAPAN CUTS)
