Japanese college students may be the nation’s leisure class, known more for their partying and playing than studying, but their seemingly carefree minds are often clouded by worries about a post-graduation job.
Even serious students – yes, they do exist – have to sweat through arduous and frustrating job searches, starting in their junior year or sooner.
And then there is Tamako (Maeda Atsuko), a recent graduate of a college in Tokyo who has returned to her home in Kofu in rural Yamanashi. Instead of beating the bushes for work, she spends her days lolling about her father’s sporting goods store, not bothering to cook or clean or otherwise keep the household wheels turning. That’s Dad’s job isn’t it?
The unemployed eponymous heroine of Nobuhiro Yamashita’s new film Tamako in Moratorium (Moratorium Tamako) is a type increasingly common as full-time jobs become harder to find. Neither a rebel nor a depressive, she feels a vague sense of desperation that, as the seasons inexorably change, slowly grows. What in the world is she supposed to do with herself, other than sleep, snack and read manga?
Those familiar with Yamashita’s earlier films about post-adolescent slackers and misfits, including No One’s Ark (Baka no Hakobune, 2003), Ramblers (Realism no Yado, 2003) and last year’s The Drudgery Train (Kueki Ressha), may assume Tamako will be more of the same, but Yamashita, working from a script by frequent collaborator Mukai Kosuke, tones down his signature black humor, while showing than usual sympathy for his do-nothing heroine.
Perhaps this kinder, gentler approach, with its smaller number of cruel-but-funny gags, was motivated by the casting of Maeda Atsuko as Tamako. In The Drudgery Train, this former leader of the AKB48 girl pop group played a sweet-tempered book store clerk who bonds with the loser hero over their mutual love of mysteries.
With her smiling tolerance of the hero’s eccentricities and perversities, she was every otaku’s dream girl – and Tamako is something of a carry-over, with her faults and weaknesses inspiring affection rather than scorn.
And yet Maeda is more than another idol-turned-actress and her Tamako is more than a lonely-guy fantasy date.
In her shouting matches with her father (Kan Suon), her awkward encounters with “normal” former classmates, and her unusual friendship with a junior high school boy (Ito Seiya) who is a budding photographer, Tamako reveals herself as entitled, isolated, and deluded (she wants the boy’s portrait pics for a one-chance-in-a-million idol audition).
At the same time, there is something admirable in her stubborn determination to steer her own course – or simply let the boat drift.
There is not much of a plot. As the weeks of Tamako’s “moratorium” stretch to months, changes do occur, however, and not always to her liking. When she hears that her divorced Dad has struck up an acquaintance with a pleasant middle-aged woman (Tomita Yasuko), she decides to investigate, setting off a train of events that upset her queasy equilibrium – or rather stasis.
The following scenes include some of the film’s funniest, while the threatened changes reminded me of the family dramas of Ozu Yasujiro that ended with the daughter (the angelic Hara Setsuko) sadly leaving the father (the saintly Ryu Chishu). The film subverts this story line, while retaining an Ozu-esque pathos. Find out why for yourself.
Mark Schilling