Summary
It’s easy to connect with this film about a group of outsiders, one that explores different sides of the kindness coin.
It’s rare to find a film that not only deals with people on their own mental health journeys, but one that (like the group who do what the title says) is completely non-judgmental and observational in its approach.
Following several short and mid-length films, and a contribution to anthology 21st Century Girl, director Yurina Kaneko makes her feature length debut with PEOPLE WHO TALK TO PLUSHIES ARE KIND (ぬいぐるみとしゃべる人はやさしい). From the opening scene, Kaneko makes it clear that this film is about connection, the absence of it, and the people who struggle to connect with a harsh world.
Based on the novel by Ao Omae, university student Tsuyoshi Nanamori (Kanata Hosoda) is one of those people who often feels alone in a crowd. When he and fellow student Mimiko Mugito (Ren Komai) discover the Plushie Club, a place where other students speak directly to plushies while wearing headphones, it opens up a new way of being.
What emerges is a little therapy club, one where the act of sitting and listening and being listened to – even if it is by a stuffed animal – holds an immense power. After all, it would have been really easy to treat this subject as a comedy, and it’s a massive credit to all involved that it becomes such an engaging piece.
Nor does it simply sit on its laurels, and say job done when the group begins to connect. In exploring the complexities of introversion, sexuality, gender, and broader notions of tolerance, Kaneko and Omae recognise that there’s no one size fits all solution. Club member Shiraki (Yuzumi Shintani), for example, finds that kindness a type of torment, something even more of a burden than isolation or harassment. She purposefully puts herself in unsafe environments in order to ‘toughen up.’
The film is intimately shot and casually paced, allowing us time to simply sit with these characters on their way through this period in their lives. There are entire scenes of the group having their own individual conversations with plushies. Other moments show an unguarded character simply struggling to make it out the door. Occasionally the film will switch to the POV of the plushies, as if to suggest that they really are listening.
It’s fair to say that PEOPLE WHO TALK TO PLUSHIES ARE KIND is a unique film, and one that will fly under the radar – much like the characters who inhabit the film. Yet after two years with long stretches of isolation, and increasing levels of social anxiety across the board (especially in Japan), it’s such a timely exploration and well worth seeking out.
2023 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Yurina Kaneko | WRITERS: Suzuyuki Kaneko, Yurina Kaneko (based on the light novels by Ao Omae) | CAST: Kanata Hosoda, Ren Komai, Yuzumi Shintani | DISTRIBUTOR: Fantasia Film Festival | RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 20 July – 9 August 2022 (Fantasia)
