Delivery boys hardly make interesting film subjects; all the more remarkable, then, that Go Furukawa conjures one with grace, poise and humanity in his first feature, Kaneko’s Commissary. Admittedly, this is not an ordinary courier, but someone who delivers packages to prisoners; even so, the Japanese filmmaker deserves credit for veering away from melodrama and plot twists to make his work more appealing, as he teases finely nuanced performances from his cast in a simple story about simple moral dilemmas.
If one is to look for an equivalent to Kaneko’s Commissary, the nearest example would probably be Departures, Yojiro Takita’s Academy Award winner from 2008: both films zero in on an angst-ridden man’s search for redemption through a job that’s largely regarded as socially transgressive. If Departures is a cello concerto, then Kaneko’s Commissary is a fugue.
Ryuhei Maruyama’s excellent central performance is augmented by his fellow actors. His pairing with Yoko Maki (Like Father, Like Son), who plays his wife, is particularly in sync, even in the smallest physical gesture. His character’s experience – as someone who did bad things, and then had to confront people doing bad things with or without sound motives – is counterpointed in parallel narratives. Bowing in the Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents competition, Kaneko’s Commissary offers conflicting sentiments, food for thought and emotional balm to viewers, just what the on-screen Kaneko couple present to their clients.
Set in a small, tightly-knit neighbourhood in a Japanese city, the film revolves around Shinji (Maruyama), a mild-mannered man running an “inmate package delivery service”. Perhaps unique to Japan, the service is born out of two traits of Japanese society audiences might have seen before: first, the country’s infamous adherence to rules and regulations that render packing supplies a pain, and make visiting hours out of bounds for working people. Second, the culture’s emphasis on subservience and order make relatives ashamed or hesitant to venture into prisons. And so Shinji makes his living bringing blankets, clothes or even divorce papers to the incarcerated.
While all seems well, discontent towards him and his family is never far from the surface. This is brought vividly out in the open when their neighbour’s daughter is murdered, and Shinji accepts a request by the murderer’s mother to pass a blanket and a message to her unrepentant son (Takumi Kitamura). The other mothers in the neighbourhood openly shun Shinji’s wife Miwako (Maki) while their son, Kazuma (Kira Miura), is relentlessly bullied in school. Once a hot-tempered convict himself – something the viewer is treated to in the film’s prologue – Shinji’s calm veneer slips, revealing his trauma and regret towards the past, and his rationale for doing what he does in the here and now.
As Shinji unravels, his salvation arrives in the shape of a high-school student (Mawa Kawaguchi) who he runs into all the time in the prison waiting room. As he learns more about the boy’s intention to meet the middle-aged former gangster (Goro Kishitani) who killed his mother, Shinji’s despair about the world takes an optimistic turn, as Furukawa gently guides his protagonist and his film in a mellow, hopeful, feel-good direction. Furukawa, who also wrote the screenplay, proves his humanist credentials by exposing the hidden schisms in a seemingly genteel society, in the most subtle of ways.
Editor Tomoka Konishi and composer Benjamin Bedoussac are instrumental in paving the film’s fluid rhythm with their unobtrusive splicing and score.
Director, screenplay: Go Furukawa
Cast: Ryuhei Maruyama, Yoko Maki, Kira Miura, Akira Terao
Producers: Naoto Inaba, Yasunori Naruse, Yuko Hiraoka
Director of photography: Tomoo Ezaki
Editor: Tomoka Konishi
Music: Benjamin Bedoussac
Production company: Free Stone Productions
World sales: Kadokawa
Venue: Busan International Film Festival (New Currents)
In Japanese
126 minutes
