Udine Dispatch. 2.

With the festival in full swing, the spotlight is now on Asian musicals. As the festival notes, we are familiar with martial arts and horror films from Asia, but musicals are less known. A special honored guest from Japan, Inoue Umetsugu (b. 1923) was on hand to report on his successful collaboration with film producers from Hong Kong - the Shaw Brothers. They brought him to Hong Kong in the 60s because he could deliver quality films quickly and was skilled at the technique of musicals. All in all, he directed 116 features and over 300 TV dramas. He told me that at 27 he lived in New York and saw all the new musicals: My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and West Side Story and also studied jazz music. One of the films shown in the festival was Hong Kong Nocturne (1967), a film about three sisters who perform with their father, an old style magician. Due to his embezzlement of their salaries - he even tries to persuade one of them to perform nude - they strike off on solo careers as vocalists, entertainers and dancers. More than once they are forced to choose between career and love and are actually encouraged by the men in their life to give up their relationships in order to fulfill their passion for show business.

Inoue told me that he believes it is a filmmaker's duty to help to effect change in society with films that provide socially relevant content. In this case, gender equality is one of the progressive themes he chose to explore and believes the subject was not only important in Japan and Hong Kong during his career but universally. He noted how films in Hollywood that addressed civil rights had helped to change public attitude in the USA. "Maybe I am saying too much," he chuckled diplomatically. But the thematic subtleties of his films say it all.

Another Japanese director in Udine who agrees that the presentation of gender equality is important in cinema is Yamazaki Takashi, whose film Always won 12 Japanese Academy Awards this year including best picture, director and script. Kozo Shibazaki won the cinematography award, utilizing a 1950s color process similar to Tohoscope, the Japanese equivalent of Eastmancolor. The director told me that women are powerful in his film and "the way things turn out in [his] new film is found in the palms of their hands."

Judging by the audience response, Always is so far the most appreciated film in Udine; several standing ovations were given to the director in attendance for the European debut of his films. But he noted that there was one online critic who didn't like his film. Perhaps the popularity of Always makes these kinds of critics feel their importance is diminished, speculated Yamazaki. Well, the Udine public loved Always and the Japan-based film expert Mark Schilling, who has been invited since almost the beginning of the Udine festival, said this was the first film he recommended to this year's festival.

Always is based on a popular 1973 Saigan Ryohei manga that Yamazaki loved as a boy. Fans are pleased with it. Yet a faithful representation of the manga wasn't his goal. He also revealed how he tried to strike a balance with CGI effects and natural environments, and in this regard, the director has succeeded. His background is in graphic art and he told me his previous sci-fi films escaped the scrutiny of highbrow critics - as he explained sci-fi is not considered "cinema."

Always is set in 1958, the year that the Tokyo Tower was built - a symbol of Japanese economic rebirth after World War II. Yamazaki's film is rich with a myriad of imaginative touches. The story takes place in a Tokyo neighborhood and shows how technological advances such as the television set and the refrigerator helped to fulfill dreams. Neighbors crowd around the home of the Suzuki family, the first to acquire a TV set, and watch a boxing match. Shibazaki skillfully enlarges the match to full screen, visually recreating how early TV spectators felt. But Yamazaki reminded me of the dark element to technological development in his film, for example, the local ice merchant run out of business with the advent of refrigeration.

Among the many colorful characters in the film is Chagawa Ryunosuke (Hidetaka Yoshioka), a children's magazine illustrator who dreams of becoming a famous novelist. Hiromi (Koyuki), the local bar owner, asks him to look after an abandoned boy who turns out to be a huge fan of his work. Koyuki soon becomes Ryonosuke's flame, who, like the writer, is beset with financial worries. The growing resistance to women selling themselves like feudal geishas is alluded to more than once in this vision of 1958 Tokyo. Entwined with this theme is the emotional recovery of Japan from the war reflected through new family structures. Shinichi Tsutsumi, whose elocution is delivered in the manner of a traditional Samurai, is head of Suzuki auto repair, and Ryunosuke's childhood friend. Misrepresenting his enterprise as a large company in a job ad, he hires a young girl from a poor family in northern Japan to work in his small shop, and she soon becomes a part of his family.

Perhaps the only reservation I had with Always is its tendency to sentimentalize - especially with dramatic music, although the film score also won a Japanese Academy Award. However, even without all the violins, some of the scenes managed to capture the intricacies of the plot and might have helped that online critic come to terms with its superb craftsmanship.

Photos of Inoue Umetsugu and Yamazaki Takashi © Moira Sullivan.

Posted by dwhudson at April 25, 2006 8:35 AM