Hirayama Hideyuki's Three for the Road Premieres at Lincoln Center

Jim Van Maanen attended a Japanese film premiere in NYC, and reviews the evening for us, covering raccoons, Kabuki theater and warm baths.

It's a good thing that Japanese film director Hirayama Hideyuki told his audience at yesterday's world premiere of his new film Three for the Road (Yajikita dôchû Teresuko), at New York's Walter Reade Theater, that he has always loved those half-dozen Hollywood "Road" movies that starred Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Otherwise some of us occidentals in the crowd might not have known quite what to make of this charming little "throw-away" concoction. One of the film's three stars, Kanzaburo Nakamura, in his enjoyable pre-movie remarks, told us to think of the film as a nice, warm bath. "Nothing much happens, but you'll find it relaxing." He also warned us, "If you don't enjoy it, I don't want to know."

Not to worry, Kanzaburo-san: your film is sweet, silly, occasionally funny and -during that fantasy reconciliation with your character's dead wife and child- even a bit moving. My favorite moments, however, belong to a trapped raccoon - initially meant for dinner - who is freed and then morphs into a child, various animals and even one in a pair of dice, thus saving our beleaguered trio during their visit to a rigged gambling den. Yes, it's that kind of movie, and if you were expecting a more classical Japanese film a la Mizoguchi, Kurosawa or Ozu, never mind. The film is of the light, popular sort that we rarely see here in America, probably due to cultural differences and references that go right over our collective head. (Mr. Nakamura's bath metaphor was not, as it turned out, inappropriate; I had to pinch myself a few times along the way to stay awake.)

Nakamura, one of Japan's more famous Kabuki actors, just the previous day finished a run at the yearly Lincoln Center Summer Festival in "Hokaibo," for which he received glowing reviews. His performance in Three for the Road is as relaxed and easy-going as Kabuki is stringently traditional (though his performance in Hokaibo was certainly not stringent), so it will probably be a treat for his fans to see him in such a role when Three for the Road opens in Japan this coming November. His two co-stars, Akira Emoto and Kyoko Koizumi (in the Lamour role) are also popular staples of Japanese cinema and television, and they work together like good old friends. (All three stars, dressed in the 19th Century garb of the film itself, were present at the premier, and addressed the audience genially, even posing for photographs.) The screenplay by Abe Teruo begins with a comical suicide pact between elderly lovers interrupted by a Jaws-like moment from the deep--which leads to the problem of "naming" the sea monster and then sprawls into everything from Kabuki to geishas, marriage vows, whacked off pinky fingers, and that raccoon. Mr. Hirayama's direction serves this pastiche as well as could be expected, and technically, the movie is certainly up to snuff: seamless, slick and full of beauty.

A colorful and fascinating article on Kanzaburo Nakamura and Kabuki appears in the 2007 Summer issue of KIE (Kateigaho International Edition), the magazine of Japan's Arts & Culture.