The death of 6-year-old Keita occurs in the first twenty minutes of Love Life. Barely foreshadowed, the tragedy comes out of the blue and provides the catalyst for Koji Fukada’s paradoxical drama about love, grief and the resilience of human nature. The unfolding is perhaps more surprising than emotional, yet one is left with the feeling there is a lot of wisdom tucked into this story. Without ever turning into a comedy, the carefully modulated tone of Fukada’s screenplay swings from tragedy to near-farce, insisting that life is multi-faceted and unpredictable and that the broken characters have no choice but to accept it for what it is. Call it a Shakespearean vision resized to fit the microcosm of a family living in a Japanese housing complex: it is a conception of the world that keeps the audience off-balance until a beautiful, low-key resolution in the final scene spills into the end credits.
Like the writer-director’s much-admired 2016 film Harmonium, winner of the Certain Regard jury prize in Cannes, family and tragedy are the principle ingredients in this cocktail. It starts off in the most banal way possible: Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) are preparing a surprise birthday party for Jiro’s retired father, to the happy notes of bland piano music. While he organizes their friends and colleagues (both Jiro and Taeko are social workers), she plays board games with her joyful son Keita, who has just won an online contest rather sinisterly called “Othello”. The stage is almost set.
The father-in-law shuffles in, a dour man who has never accepted her marriage to Jiro. The reason is that Taeko is a divorcée and Keita is the child of her first marriage. The old man’s open hostility is countered by the kindness and tact of Jiro’s mother, who throughout the film comes out with honest reactions that bypass the conventions. But even she adds fuel to the fire when she blithely asks Taeko when she’s going to give them a grandchild of their own.
All this becomes insignificant after a terrible accident robs them of Keita’s funny, smiling face. And something else shocking happens at the funeral service, where a long line of black-clad mourners from the boy’s school pays their respects. A man dressed in the bright mismatched clothes of a homeless person (Atom Sunada) staggers to the open casket, wailing, and hysterically slaps Taeko hard across the face. The formal ceremony dissolves into chaos. This is the first husband, Keita’s father, a Japanese-Korean deaf man known as Park.
Twists like this are the soul of Fukada’s work; used sparingly, they are all the more powerful. The family narrative is that Park abandoned his wife and son, a story called into question by his sudden reappearance. Now Taeko looks for him in places the impoverished hang out. While Jiro and Taeko are properly middle class and attractive, Park sleeps in the park, literally, and has the humorous face of his son. The only person he can communicate with is Taeko, who knows sign language.
Unable to share her grief with Jiro (who cared for Keita but admits to wanting his “own” child), Taeko withdraws into herself and her work. They are community social workers – he seems more managerial with the paperwork, she more hands-on with the soup kitchen. Though Jiro encourages her to look after the wayward Korean, there is an undercurrent of jealousy he won’t admit. But Jiro himself is no angel around his ex-girlfriend (Hirona Yamasaki), so the grieving couple strikes a dangerous balance. The film becomes more fascinating as it goes on, teasing the viewer to guess how far the protags will go as they work through their grief and look for life after tragedy.
Masa Sawada’s Paris-based company Comme des Cinémas participated in this Japanese production, which explains several French names in the credits like Sylvie Lager, who worked with Fukada on the effective editing, and Olivier Goinard who composed the subtle background score. (The last scene takes place over Akiko Yano’s heart-felt song “Love Life”, said to be one of the inspirations behind the story.)
Director, screenplay: Koji Fukada
Cast: Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Tetta Shimada, Atom Sunada, Hirona Yamazaki, Misuzu Kanno, Tomorowo Taguchi
Producers: Yasuhiko Hattori, Masa Sawada, Yoshito Oyama
Cinematography: Hideo Yamamoto
Editing: Sylvie Lager, Koji Fukada
Production design: Masaki Owa
Costume design: Hanaka Kikuchi
Music: Olivier Goinard
Sound: Manabu Kagara, Nicolas Moreau, Romain Cadihac, Charles Valentin
Production companies: Nagoya Broadcasting Network, Comme des Cinémas, Chipangu
World Sales: MK2
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In Japanese, Korean, sign language
123 minutes
