There is a haunting beauty to Takayuki Hayashi’s From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea.
Following the fortunes of three young people in a coastal town in Japan, it is a quite earnest example of the familiar genre of high-school dramas at which the country’s filmmakers excel. Adapted from an episode in Shun Umezawa’s manga anthology One and Ninety-Nine, Hayashi’s film is an exploration of detachment, using the kidnapping of a schoolgirl as a nexus around which different forms of dislocation and isolation coalesce. Receiving its world premiere at this year’s Oldenburg Film Festival, it is a patient film that rewards the same characteristic in its viewers.
This is perhaps evident from the outset, when – having opened with a biblical reference to lost sheep – its first scene is a single static take that watches Mai (Hanon) walk into a dark underpass at an excruciatingly slow pace for almost three minutes. Given the audience’s familiarity with the premise, it is not a sequence lacking in dramatic tension, but it also foreshadows both the wide framing that will come to characterise Hiroshi Yasuoka’s lensing and the deliberate cadence with which it conveys its story.
That story is about Mai’s incarceration for 49 days by an unknown abductor in his 20s – as a radio broadcast informs us – and her return to school, where she is mostly shunned by classmates after her experience. The only fellow student who deigns to speak to her upon her arrival is the misfit Ujie (Yu Uemura), who treats her as coarsely as he treats everyone else – a young man having a difficult time who is both bullied and lashes out in equal measure. Flashbacks to Mai’s time in captivity, where she remains in the cramped rooms of her unnamed imprisoner (Kaito Yoshimura). In both of these narratives, Mai plays an unusual role – almost like some kind of hollowed revenant that draws their attention to their painful solipsism and self-destruction. “You think you’re Mother Teresa?” Ujie rages at her after an unexpected act of kindness and intimacy, but it’s not that, she replies. Mai seems to be suffering from her own deeply felt remoteness, and these two strange relationships are perhaps attempts to shake herself and them out of their dissatisfaction.
It means that Hanon perhaps doesn’t have much to do in the lead role, as a character that is often fairly inert. “Wherever I am, it’s the same,” she tells her captor, “so I couldn’t care less.” He had tried to release her after just three days, but she chose to stay. He begins the film waxing lyrical about the horrible state of existence, but upon being confronted with Mai’s ennui, he begins to chide her doleful naivety and advocates a long life, well lived. She has a similar effect on Ujie. As a result, Hanon’s performance lives mostly in her physicality – often depicted in wide shots, insulated from those around her and defined by a slightly awkward rigidity.
She also comes alive in the odd furtive glance, that gives away a little of the interior life she otherwise tries to hide, and her reactions to two failed attempts at sexual intercourse are muted but telling about her desperation for some connection. One of these is with Ujie, who is far more animated in his portrayal by Uemura, but no less forthcoming. The exact nature of the “rough” times he’s having isn’t completely divulged – though he’s beaten up badly at one point and threatened with the same at another – but his response to them is far more openly hostile. He is charismatic, but with a manic edge that is tinged by the traditions of Japanese theatrical acting. It makes a stark counterpoint to Hanon, but they are well-balanced against one another.
Balance feels like a recurring motif – or at least the action of opposing forces against one another. Whether that’s a surprised Ujie being stopped from exploding in anger by a hug from Mai, or a perhaps debatable ethical point made by Mai about saving a life cancelling out the taking of one. Despite the darkness of its premise and the weightiness of its themes, From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea finds a great deal of warmth and wisdom in its tides of despair and undercurrents of hope.
Director, screenplay: Takayuki Hayashi
Cast: Hanon, Yu Uemura Kaito Yoshimura
Producers: Fumikazu Matsubara, Takeshi Daimon, Takahiko Kajima
Cinematography: Hiroshi Yasuoka
Editing: Koshiko Nakamura
Music: Mutsumi Hamano
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival
In Japanese
77 minutes
