[MOTF #57] Ohikkoshi (Shinji Sōmai, 1993)

Ohikkoshi
お引越し
Director - Shinji Sōmai, 相米 慎二
Year of Release - March 20, 1993
Duration - 124 minutes.
Genre - Drama
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Review
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Every once in a while, I'm honored to watch a film that has more than just a good story and good acting, but an ability to create emotional moments with it's imagery and cinematography. Ohikkoshi is one of these films. So few movies are able to capture moments in time on film that mean more than just what the dialogue wants us to believe. And so few directors are able to create films that capture human interaction with such meaning and purpose through subtle movements. Director Shinji Somai is able to make a battle over soy sauce at a dinner table and the warmth of a daughter holding on to a father while riding a motorcycle, symbolic and powerful freeze frame moments in time. How does he so effectively elicit his actors to smile at the exactly right moments, and in such perfect sync? Ohikkoshi is chalked full of these subtleties, almost as if Somai is playing with the audience, mocking us, by saying look, look how easy it is to capture such emotionally painful yet somehow beautiful human interactions on film. Most directors would kill to be able to capture just a few of these moments effectively, while Mr.Somai easily collages them in this film with little effort. Certainly too much credit is being given to the director for sure, because there is indeed an entire cast and crew behind him, which certainly require much of the credit, but this films obscurity in English databases has made it nearly impossible to find a crew list of who exactly was in the crew, including the director of photography? Irregardless he and Mr.Somai achieved a great accomplishment with this film visually. They were able to bring about empathy from characters whom we should hold in contempt. But life isn't as black and white as film often portrays. It's usually grey with many idiosyncrasies and reasons for people making bad decisions, and the actors offer a superb performance here, in capturing some of these moments.

The acting performance of our young shoujo Tomoko Tabata (Renko) was very significant. Her presence was immensely important to the success of the film. And she stepped up in a monumental way. Her charisma and personality jumps off the screen in a fashion not seen since Shirley Temple. She's been compared by another to a Miyasaki character, and I can't help but laugh and think no, it's the other way around, Renko is an example of a shoujo that Miyasaki based his archetypical little girl characters like Nausicaa, Kiki, or Chihiro on. Forced to become much wiser than her years, Renko is our ambassador, our guide through this visual masterpiece. She is our example of a child struggling to make sense out of her dissolving family. She takes us on a journey of psychological turmoil, and convinces us things must change and we must learn to accept this. The old perceptions of the traditional family are diverging in our modernizing society, but traditionalism is still very strong in a nation like Japan, beholden to it's long history and culture. Renko is forced to take the negative stigma of being a child with separated parents head on with her class mates. This is not just a struggle for the social acceptance of her peers, but a battle for her to accept this reality. The struggle to bring her parents back together, is ultimately something she realizes is futile and selfish. And still this movie adds more complexity, because Renko is not the only one struggling. Her father and mother are torturing themselves to make sense of their failed relationship and where Renko fits into it all. There are no clear cut answers in this film. The experiences and pain that are inflicted have purpose and are part of the healing process for the entire family. This story is not so much a tale about new beginnings, as it is about "moving on".

Somai takes us on enchanting journey of Japanese cultural beauty, the festival images symbolize the conflicting moral values in play, while never completely focusing on which is right or wrong. In many ways his message is philosophically skeptical. He Keeps twisting us around, making us believe that perhaps the moral is a traditional one, and that modernity is the evil that needs to be changed. It isn't completely evident that this false until the films end, when the title of the film's meaning reveals itself. His reminder with the title burning "Moving" on the mountain right before Renko takes the magical Motorcylce ride with with her father, stands as an excellent example of the pains that Somai took to weave his story together masterfully.

I'd like to thank chumlum for justifiably putting this film at the number 1 spot of his latest favorite Japanese film list. It was certainly a great find and one that I'm thankful he shared with us.

Orion1

Availability
[spoiler]
Ladies and gentlemen this film happens to be a gem that has never been in print anywhere outside of Japan. It has even apparently gone of of print in Japan. What does this mean? It means that unless someone like criterion or Eureka makes a very wise decision and decide to purchase the license from Geneion I believe, then this film will probably never get the blu-ray release it deserves. It's currently on YouTube so enjoy. If you don't want to watch it on YouTube you can also find it on ADC.