Hideko Yoshida
- 2005
Decades after burying the final reel of a silent melodrama detailing the ill-fated romance between a pretty flower seller (Kikuyo Takahashi) and a kindly violinist (Shojiro Kataoka), a former studio errand boy attempts to make amends with the past by connecting with his granddaughter and unearthing the film in writer/director Takushi Tsubokawa's nostalgic labor of love. Years after the death of her father, Nami (Takahashi in a duel role) and her mother (Hideko Yoshida) remain locked in a melancholy state of perpetual mourning. As a child Nami's grandfather ran errands for a big movie studio. Spellbound by the romance that unfolded in the film that was then in production but devastated by the downbeat ending, the young assistant absconded with the final reel and hid it in the one place that nobody would ever suspect. Now and old man who has come to live with his grieving daughter and reluctant granddaughter, the former errand boy realizes just how much damage can be done when one refuses to acknowledge the wrongs of the past. Shot over the course of eleven years, Clouds of Yesterday accurately recreates the look and feel of a silent film during the scenes in the present while presenting the flashbacks to the past in vivid color. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hitoshi Takagi, Hideko Yoshida, (more)
- 2000
Celebrated Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo, at 88, was the world's second-oldest working director when he made this biopic of character actor Taiji Tonoyama (Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira, age 91, held the distinction of being the oldest). Tonoyama, who acted in 250 films throughout his career -- many of which were directed by Shindo -- began working as an actor in the 1950s. His first lead role was in Shindo's The Island (1960), a dialogue-free film shot while Tonoyama was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. Despite his prolific output, the actor was more widely recognized for his off-screen activities, which included womanizing and excessive drinking. Shindo's biopic opens with Tonoyama (played by Naoto Takenaka) flirting with the 17-year-old Kimie, with whom he would maintain a relationship for the rest of his life, despite his quasi-legal marriage to wife Asako. Over the course of the film, much attention is paid to the competition between the two women, and it becomes clear that their relationship was as compelling as their respective ties to Tonoyama. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Naoto Takenaka, Hideko Yoshida, (more)
- 1999
Veteran filmmaker Kaneto Shindo, who was 86 at the time of making this film, tackles the graying of Japan's population. The film opens with Yasukichi (Rentaro Mikuni), a retired chemist who lives with his middle-aged daughter, Tokuko (Shinobu Otake), drunkenly decrying the younger generation's poor treatment of the elderly in his favorite drink hole. When the bar's matron (Naoko Otani) admonishes him for being too loud, he continues to drink and rant until he wets himself and passes out on the floor. He wakes up in a hospital, cared for by the doctor (Akira Emoto) who found him out cold in front of the bar. Yasukichi's loutish behavior suddenly changes. His daughter, however, does not buy it for a second. His drunken tirades have pushed away Tokuko's siblings and driven her to the brink of mental illness. She tells the old man that if it were up to her, she would leave him at the hospital. The clinic is not, as the doctor points out, a nursing home, and Tokuko grudgingly lets him return. Yet Yasukichi knows that an old folks home is in his future. About the same time, he becomes obsessed with the legend of Obasuteyama village near Nagano, where the elderly are supposedly left to die in the mountains. Yasukichi soon starts to see the nursing home and Obasuteyama's notorious traditions as being roughly the same. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- 1999
Yoshimitsu Morita's long filmography includes everything from art-house hits to romantic drama by way of porno comedies, but Keiho is his first psychological mystery-thriller. Keiho diverts from recent Japanese thrillers as its focus is not so much a journey into existential darkness, but emergence of long-hidden secrets through patient investigation. Stage actor Masaki Shibata Shinichi Tsutsumi has murdered a man and his wife. He confesses his crime; he says his motive was that the woman, who is five months pregnant, criticized his one-man show. It could be an open-and-shut case except for the 'diminished responsibility' clause of Japan's criminal law. Masaki has to go through psychological examination to determine his sanity. A police psychiatrist declares he has a split personality, but his female assistant, named Kafka as a result of her father's literary tastes, does not agree. She begins her own research into Shibata's background and comes up with disturbing discoveries. On the other hand, a cocky police detective is also busy doing his own investigation and comes up with evidence that the victim raped and killed a girl when he was a teenager, but escaped punishment for the crime because a psychiatric examination found him not guilty. Further investigation reveals hidden identities, but the mystery is never solved. As the curtain falls, we are informed that the case is still continuing. It is not the crime or the criminal that is being explored so much as the complications of human psyche, but it is somewhat too confusing for the viewer, whose interest cannot be sustained with the incomprehensible twists and turns of the plot. Keiho Dai sanjyukyu jyo was one shown in competition at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival in 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kyoka Suzuki, Shinichi Tsutsumi, (more)
Peter Greenaway directed this elliptical and visually intricate tale of the far side of erotic and intellectual attraction. As a girl, Nagiko would receive a special gift each year from her father: a calligrapher (Ken Ogata) who would carefully paint a poem on her face, as her aunt (Hideko Yoshida) read aloud from The Pillow Book, a classic Japanese text on the art of love. As Nagiko (Vivian Wu) reached adulthood, her father insisted on putting a stop to this ritual, and he persuaded her to marry the nephew of his publisher (Ken Mitsuishi). But Nagiko is not satisfied with her husband, and after finding success as a model, she seeks a lover who will indulge her fondness for literature by writing verse on her naked body. In time, she finds happiness with a British expatriate named Jerome (Ewan McGregor), who persuades her to use his body as paper for her poetry, but the interference of her father's publisher (Yoshi Oida) gives their relationship a tragic turn. Greenaway deliberately mistranslated some of the French and Japanese dialogue for The Pillow Book, hoping that the occasionally fractured language would give the film a "Tower of Babel" quality. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vivian Wu, Ewan McGregor, (more)
- 1980
Kosuke Kindaichi is a popular detective found in Seishi Yokomizo's novels, and this is one of several movies that have been made based on his character. Yokomizo's plots have more twists and turns than Japanese calligraphy and loudly invite parody. This film is not an RSVP to that invitation. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi has not parodied Yokomizo's style so much as imitated it. Kindaichi (Ikko Furuya) is called in to discover who has decapitated a precious statue and to find the missing head so it can be reattached. With this simple premise, a long series of circumstances lead the detective into many blind alleys as corpses litter the landscape and inept policemen bungle their jobs. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ikko Furuya, Kunie Tanaka, (more)
