In “Desert of Namibia”, leading character Kana frequently appears on screen wearing a T-shirt with the word for “shaman” on it. Intentional or otherwise, it’s a pitch-perfect description of the character or maybe even the film itself. Through a 22-year-old’s struggle in her relationships with two very different men and the freedom and limits they impose on her, Yoko Yamanaka’s second feature channels the listlessness of a generation of suppressed Japanese women in the most powerful of ways.
Boasting a barnstorming performance from Yuumi Kawai (Plan 75), Desert of Namibia takes a seemingly banal love-triangle premise and runs with it in the most surprising, gripping and anarchic fashion possible. Unleashing a fiery beast of a character who questions everything and accepts nothing as an answer in nearly every interaction in her life, Yamanaka has delivered a film that is as raw and dynamic as her 2017 no-budget indie debut Amiko.
The provincial-set, Berlinale-bowing Amiko was famously made for just U.S. $2,500, about a fifth of it allegedly used to repair the car Yamanaka totaled while driving to the shoot. Now backed by more resources, bigger stars and certainly a bigger budget, Desert of Namibia will find fertile ground on the festival circuit after its premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. It’s nothing more than the young cineaste deserves, as she establishes herself as one of the most distinct voices in Japanese cinema.
But first things first: apart from a blink-and-it’s-gone glimpse of some sandy landscape in a video on a cellphone, neither deserts nor Namibia feature in the film. Perhaps the title is merely symbolic, a reference to the way the 22-year-old Kana (Kawai) seems to be perennially quenching the thirst of her desires. At home, she enjoys the unfettered love, delicate cooking and unwavering faithfulness of her sweet and sensitive realtor boyfriend Honda (Kanichiro). But she is ready bolt from home on a whim and a phone call, and spends hours in bed with her lover Hayashi (Daichi Kaneko).
All in all, Kana is a walking car crash who has no time for etiquette or empathy. In the very first scene, she arrives at a café to meet her former high school classmate and swiftly digs into her friend’s yet-untouched sundae. She fidgets impatiently when told about the suicide of someone they know, and then invites her friend to go and have fun with her at a toy-boy nightclub.
In that one sequence alone – plus the way she puts off a haranguing pimp as she leaves the club – Kawai delivers all of Kana’s idiosyncrasies to a tee. Her nuanced delivery is further highlighted as she plays meek and compliant on her job operating laser-fueled hair-removal machines on elderly women in a beauty salon. Kana’s docility isn’t merely about professionalism; it’s also about her barely-suppressed fear that youth is passing her by, an anxiety enhanced with the arrival of an even more irreverent teenage trainee.
Stifled by the sweetness and light of life at home, Kana finally finds an excuse to start anew when Honda confesses she visited a sex club during a business trip. Moving in with Hayashi, whose first wish for their new life is to “help each other grow”, she soon becomes bored and unsettled by the square side of a man she once deemed edgy and fun. Her anxiety is amplified when she attends a lavish camping holiday with Hayashi’s wealthy family and discovers how her New York-born boyfriend has remained very much a momma’s boy.
Admittedly, these seem to be well-trodden storytelling tropes. To reduce Desert of Namibia to merely a mix of clichés, however, would be doing the film a major disservice: what matters is not the twists and turns, but what happens in between them. The pair’s endless brawling, bawling and rapid reconciliations might look jarring in the context of a melodrama, but completely normal when they are seen as part of genuine romantic relationships.
But it will take Kana’s visit to a psychotherapist for the film to go into surreal mode, including an out-of-body experience, a parallel universe, a campfire sing-song and panda ants. In this final reel Banri Nagase’s sharp editing and Tomohiro Kobata’s production design really come to the fore.
And it’s during this grand finale that Kana finally verbalises the one thought that has bugged her along: how so many people get along in life by acting differently from what they think. With Desert of Namibia, Yamanaka continues to challenge this malaise to maximal effect.
Director, screenwriter: Yoko Yamanaka
Cast: Yuumi Kawai, Daichi Kaneko, Kanichiro
Producers: Keisuke Konishi, Shinji Ogawa, Masafumi Yamada, Tokushi Suzuki
Executive producers: Keisuke Konishi, Sanggi Choi, Shinsuke Mae, Mizue Kunizane
Director of photography: Shin Yonekura
Editor: Banri Nagase
Production design, sound design: Tomohiro Kobata
Music composer: Takuma Watanabe
Production companies: Happinet Phantom Studios, BRIDGEHEAD Co., Cogitoworks
World sales: Happinet Phantom Studios
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight)
In Japanese
137 minutes
