Fukagawa Yoshihiro’s dramady Girls for Keeps has drawn the inevitable comparisons with Sex and the City since, like the long-running American TV series, the film centers on four women over or around thirty who are close friends. The film, however, is less about sex (though the heroines all have men in their lives) than their struggles to function as empowered individuals in a society that still slots women into rigidly determined roles: self-sacrificial wife or daughter at home and deferential support staff on the job. Their mothers may have put up with these strictures, but our heroines won’t, mostly.
The youngest of the group, Yukiko (Karina), is approaching her 30’s with a determined nonchalance. While working for a big ad agency, she is as dedicated to shopping sprees for frothy fashions as any teenager, claiming the frocks ease her stress. But her friends tell it’s time to get serious about her life and career, since 29 is not 19. Though she hates to admit it, Yukiko starts to think they may be right, especially when a hardnosed client (Kato Rosa) treats her and her ideas with barely disguised contempt.
At the opposite end of the child-to-adult scale is Seiko (Aso Kumiko), a mid-level executive at a big real estate developer. A thorough professional, she becomes frustrated and angered by an arrogant, if handsome, subordinate (Kaname Jun) who insists on treating her like his assistant. Meanwhile, her ever-patient husband (Kamiji Yusuke) seems content that she earns more and ranks higher on the social scale than he does – but is he simply hiding his discontent that she isn’t fulfilling her womanly role, such as providing him with an heir?
Yoko (Kichise Michiko) is another career woman, working at a old-line stationery company. Assigned to train a dishy young new hire (Hayashi Kento), she studiously ignores the looks and whispers of her envious female colleagues, while valiantly suppressing her own age-inappropriate feelings.
Finally, there is Takako (Itaya Yuka), a single mom working for a car company and trying hard – maybe too hard – to also be a dad for her preteen son. In addition to rushing home after work to spend quality time with him, she diligently practices her baseball skills so she can in turn help him polish his, but all this effort leaves her exhausted. What’s the solution?
Based on a novel by Okuda Hideo acclaimed for accurately reflecting the feelings of thirty-something Japanese women, the film similarly skews toward real-world truths and away from formulaic fantasy. Also, though all four heroines can use some support from the significant others in their lives, they are never helpless. Instead they battle and bumble through. Fukagawa (whose earlier films When the Show Tent Came to My Towan, aka Wolf Girl, and Peeping Tom also screened at FEFF) presents their stories with infectious energy and a pleasantly fizzy undercurrent of humor.
Yes, Girls for Keeps is feel-good entertainment, but more than many long-faced dramas, it is also a faithful group portrait of Japanese women (not superwomen) today.