Ando Momoko’s second feature 0.5mm is a family affair – Ando and star Ando Sakura are sisters, while the film’s executive producer, veteran actor and director Okuda Eiji, is their father. Which may make this film about an enigmatic caretaker for the elderly sound like a glorified home movie; it is nothing of the kind.
Based on Ando Momoko’s own novel that she adapted for the screen, the film gambles with audience patience in both its seemingly downbeat subject matter and its rambling road-movie execution, with a 196-minute running time that plays directly into the ‘Japanese movies are too long’ meme.
But Ando, whose previous film was the 2010 lesbian-themed drama A Piece of Our Life – Kakera, has won her bet in grand fashion, with 0.5mm being selected as one of the year’s 10 best Japanese films by the Kinema Junpo magazine’s critic’s poll and the Best Film by the Hochi Film Awards, while Ando Sakura has won Best Actress prizes for her turn as the caregiver from the Kinema Junpo Awards, the Blue Ribbon Awards and Mainichi Film Concours, while being nominated for a Japan Academy Award.
Along with this critical acclaim, the film also enjoyed a long run since its November 2014 opening in Japan. One reason for this popularity is that, in contrast to the many sober-sided Japanese films about the problems of the aged, 0.5mm actually tries to entertain instead of jerk tears or make a statement, though the way it goes this is anything predictable.
Some scenes are darkly funny, while others are frankly hard to watch, but the mystery of the heroine’s motives intrigues and the strange and pathetic characters she meets both fascinate and appall. Also, though the story may appear to simply proceed from episode to episode, its subtly laid narrative and thematic threads ties together powerfully at the end, though it give no pat answer to the film’s central question: Who is this woman and what does she want?
She is Sawa (Ando Sakura), who begins the film as the caregiver to a bed-ridden elderly man (Orimoto Junkichi) who still craves intimate female companionship but not, says his stressed adult daughter (Kiuchi Midori), sex. Sawa reluctantly to share his futon for one night, but unintended consequences soon have her looking for another job – or any way to financially survive.
Resourcefully, if not ethically, she finagles her way into the lives of one old man after another, including an aged bicycle thief and fetishist (Sakata Toshio) she discovers puncturing tires and a former university professor (Tsugawa Masahiko) she pounces on when he shoplifts a skin book. But as scheming as she seems, she takes a genuine interest in the welfare of her new ‘clients’ – until something happens to send her out in the streets again.
Then she finally meets her match in the wiry, volatile Sasaki (Emoto Akira), the errant father of Makoto (Tsuchiya Nozomi), a sullen teen whose grandpa was briefly Sawa’s bed companion. This time it may be Sawa who needs help.
As Sawa, Ando Sakura is hard to read, but always fascinating to watch, as she smoothly shifts from caring professional to conniving hustler – and back again. Her Sawa is more than a puzzle to be solved, however; she is also the face of Japan’s social and economic underside, where millions of young people are subsisting on temporary and part-time work rather than building careers.
Meanwhile, a rapidly growing legion of elders is struggling with all the problems of aging, with ever less help as the labor pool shrinks. Better Sawa than nothing.