Takeuchi Hideki’s Thermae Romae was 2012’s surprise box office smash, earning nearly 6 billion yen, the second-highest total for the year.
Based on Yamazaki Mari’s hit manga, the film was about a bathhouse architect in ancient Rome, Lucius (Abe Hiroshi), who time travels to modern-day Japan, where he is dumbstruck by “advanced” Japanese bath culture and borrows ideas that revive his flagging career in Rome. He also meets a cute aspiring manga artist, Mami (Ueto Aya), who is mad about all things Roman and accompanies him back to his own time, though the super-serious Lucius is barely aware of her existence.
The film cleverly played on both sides of the superiority-inferiority divide, with Lucius contemptuously assuming that the elderly men he encounters in his first Japanese bathhouse are “flat-faced slaves,” while they comically regard him as another clueless gaijin (foreigner).
It also didn’t hurt ticket sales that Abe buffed up in the gym for the role of Lucius – and spent much of the film in the near altogether.
When the film had its world premiere at the Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, the Italian audience not only accepted nihonjinbanare (“Western-looking”) Japanese actors in the roles of ancient Romans, but laughed uproariously at all the jokes, including the gag of a portly Italian tenor (Walter Roberts) singing arias while Lucius travels back and forth in time by being involuntarily sucked into watery “time tunnels” of various sorts.
All of these elements, including the tenor, are present in the sequel, Thermae Romae II, which will also screen at Udine following its April 26 opening in Japan.
As the film begins, Lucius is given a commission to build a new bathhouse for gladiators at the Roman Coliseum, who find little relief from their aches and pains in the dank, gloomy thermae their masters have provided them. Once again, he is stuck for ideas – until he time travels again to Japan, where he reconnects with Mami, now a freelance writer specializing in baths, though she still dreams of becoming a manga artist. He also finds much that inspires him, including a soothing massage chair (which he imagines being operated by hardworking slaves behind the cushions) and a non-fatal form of mano-a-mano combat the natives call sumo.
Once back in Rome, he incorporates these innovations in his new thermae, if with limitations imposed by 2nd Century AD technology, and wins more plaudits from his superiors, including Emperor Hadrianus (Ichimura Masachika).
All is not well in the Empire, however. Hadrianus may be a peace-loving sort who prefers baths to battle, but senators with expansionary ambitions are plotting against him. One wild card is Ceionius (Kitamura Kazuki), a womanizing emperor-in-waiting who is battling barbarians up north. Will he turn on Hadrianus? And what can Lucius, a stout-hearted Hadrianus loyalist, do to keep the peace? The land of the flat-faced slaves may provide some clues.
Shot in Bulgaria on an elaborate open set of ancient Rome and in some of the more picturesque parts of Japan, Thermae Romae II is both a throwback to Hollywood sand-and-sword spectacles and an eye-candy travelogue that will have you taking notes for your next onsen (hot springs) vacation in Japan.
Takeuchi shows that he has not lost the knack for comedy he displayed in Thermae Romae, with even his cornier gags popping instead of fizzling. He also gets good value from his 5,000 extras and monumental sets, though some of the film’s best moments are its smaller ones, as when Lucius tries a water slide wearing only a towel – and comes up for air at the bottom without a stitch on him, gasping in terror and delight.
It’s a funny scene, though I suspect many viewers will be focusing on the flexing of his thoroughly worked-out glutes. Whatever sells tickets, folks.
Mark Schilling