Summary
A strong debut that takes you to the unexpected repeatedly and stays that way to the bittersweet ending.
Following its debut at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year, writer/director Seiji Tanaka’s debut film had won the Japanese Cinema SplashAward for Best Director (alongside Masaharu Take’s The Gun). With the Far East Asia Film Festival’s sophomore White Mulberry Award for First Time Director also under its belt, MELANCHOLIC (メランコリック) comes to our screens with a fair amount of well-earned anticipation.
In Tanaka’s original screenplay, Tokyo University graduate Kazuhiko Nabeoka (Yoji Minagawa) is still unemployed and living with his parents. After taking a job at a bathhouse, his fortunes change when he accidentally discovers that the business is a yakuza run enterprise used to execute and dispose of various people. Talk about your hidden job requirements.
Tanaka’s film initially brushes against some very familiar tropes, as Kazuhiko is invited into an alluringly violent world. We watch as his fascination turns to enthusiasm, giving him a new lease on life and the purpose he was sorely lacking. As he begins to crave more ‘night shift’ work, Tanaka offers up one of the first of many surprises that this moody but twisty narrative offers up.
The shocks actually come even earlier than this, when the opening scene introduces to an empathetic character that is quickly dispatched moments later. For a short time we have an advantage over the protagonist and are aware of what his job truly entails. Once his position description changes, the film switches to a kind of novelistic interiority that refuses to give us all the answers at once.
Newcomers Yoji Minagawa and the peroxide-blonde Yoshitomo Isozaki, who plays a slightly more trusted night cleaner in the organisation, comfortably carry the emotional weight on their shoulders. Minagawa has a remarkable growth on screen as we watch his character evolve from introverted drop-out to someone who embraces his inexorable destiny. There are fleeting moments when you are aware this is a debut indie production, but overall this is a slick piece of work.
Shot on a cobbled-together ¥3 million (or less than US$28,000), Tanaka and his crew manage to elevate what could have been a derivate post- Takashi Miike bloodfest into something that is simultaneously touching and funny, even when it explores the darker parts of human nature. This is sure to be a festival favourite and a cult classic for years to come.
2018 | Japan | DIR: Seiji Tanaka| WRITERS: Seiji Tanaka | CAST: Yoji Minagawa, Yoshitomo Isozaki, Mebuki Yoshida | DISTRIBUTOR: UPLINK Company (JPN), Japanese Film Festival 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes | RELEASE DATE: October – December 2019 (JFF)
