If there was a theme to the narrative short films at JAPAN CUTS 2021, then it was unquestionably the pandemic. After all, it’s been the theme of the last two years of our lives. In this selection of four films, we see that the agility of the short form is able to respond in ways that features cannot.
Take LEO’S RETURN for example. We first fell in love with director Anshul Chauhan’s work at last year’s JAPAN CUTS with his debut feature Kontora, an elegant and mystical spin on the coming-of-age narrative. In his new short, he takes a much more intimate and small scale approach. Nobu (WHOLE‘s Kai Hoshino Sandy) is having an affair with Akane (Yurika Minami). When the film begins, Akane has discovered she is pregnant.
When her titular boyfriend Leo (Nozomi de Lencquesaing) comes back from shooting a film, she keeps him at literal arm’s length by making him santise, change clothes and stay at the bottom of the stairs. Like a capsule in time from the start of the pandemic — when the world first discovered the newfangled science of hand-washing — the physical distance, albeit minor, allows Akane to reveal her real feelings for the first time. It’s the kind of intense character study Chauhan is rapidly becoming known for.
AMONG FOUR OF US, from director Mayu Nakamura (Play Room), is also set smack bang in the middle of the age of social distancing. Three old friends from college reunite via a video chat in the middle of Tokyo’s COVID-19 lockdown. A fourth member of their troupe is missing, but remains forever present in conversation and ripple effects from their past. Like Chauhan’s film, Nakamura uses this simple device to demonstrate how a singular event and the need for connection can bring out long buried emotions.
If Nakamura and Chauhan’s films are reactions to ‘isolife,’ then GO SEPPUKU YOURSELVES (全員切腹) is Toshiaki Toyoda’s angry cry of response. Despite the period setting, there is no doubt that Toyoda is commenting on the here and now. Just like The Day of Destruction, the global pandemic lurks behind the Meiji facade. The demon that is assumed to have ‘poisoned the well’ could very much be an analogy for the intangible nature of a pandemic, even if the film treads a fine balance between literal and figurative causes. You can read our full review of that film here.
There’s nothing overtly about the pandemic in BORN PISCES, Yoko Yamanaka’s NDJC short film about two children. Yet it is imbued with the sense of isolation that’s naturally engendered by a global pandemic. Yamanaka, best known for Amiko, was another filmmaker we last met at JAPAN CUTS 2020 with the polyamorous drama See You On the Other Side. This short is about 10-year-old children Midori and Futa leading separate lives, one a product of latchkey parenting and the other smothered by Christian parents. Both act out in their own way and the circumstances of their meeting is the subject of this short.
Time will tell on what future generations will make of relationships in the time of Corona, and if these vignettes will resonate as strongly as they do with us. Or more to the point, if we will need another few decades to fully understand what this all means to our long-term way of relating. Either way, each of the shorts acts as a capsule of an intangible emotion that is still a reality for much of the world.
JAPAN CUTS 2021 ran from 22 August to 2 September 2021 as a hybrid festival. You can check out our entire coverage, and previous years, at our JAPAN CUTS hub. Read more coverage of Japanese films from the silent era to festivals and other contemporary releases. Plus go beyond Japan with more film from Asia in Focus.
