Rent-a-Cat

The films of Ogigami Naoko are an antidote to everyday urban stress. Beginning with her 2006 hit Kamome Diner (Kamome Shokudo), a dramady about a middle-aged Japanese woman who finds a second start running the title eatery in Helsinki, Finland, she has made one film after another that detox their mainly female audiences with gently comic, enticingly homey visions of a less-hurried way of life. This is not to say she is making the cinematic equivalent of aromatherapy: Smart insights into the vagaries of the heart are served up with the scrumptious-looking home-cooked meals. Ogigami’s latest, Rent-a-Cat, is more on the fabulistic side than her previous work, beginning with its title occupation, practiced by the tall, boyish, thirty-something Sayoko (Ichikawa Mikako), who lives alone surrounded by a dozen or so cats. One sunny day we see her trundling six of them along Tokyo’s Tamagawa River in an umbrella-topped cart, calling out to all and sundry with a small loudspeaker that she is renting the felines to “lonely people.” Her “customers” include an elderly woman (Kusamura Reiko) living alone after her husband’s death, a businessman (Mitsuishi Ken) living apart from his family and a robotic car rental shop clerk (Yamada Maho) who never sees a customer. The story takes a new, romance-novel turn with the appearance of a handsome former classmate (Tanaka Kei) who is more interested in her than her furry merchandise. As is usual with Ogigami, the simple premise is worked out with close attention to visual detail, from the heroine’s charmingly decorated Japanese-style house to her casual but perfectly coordinated wardrobe. Also, the fairy-tale-like story is told with enough variation to ward off monotony, including periodic appearances by a nosy old neighbor (DJ in drag) who always says exactly the one thing that wounds Sayoko, if never fatally. Outwardly the most stylish, coolly self-assured cat lady ever, Sayoko is inwardly a mess: wanting to marry, but without a partner, and still mourning her beloved grandmother years after her death. She is, we see, one of the lonely people, in need of her cats the most. Does her fable have a happy ending?