Yakusho Koji: Perfect Roles | Out Of Competition
Japan, Germany, 2023, 124’, Japanese
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Screenplay: Wim Wenders, Takasaki Takuma
Cinematography (color): Franz Lustig
Editing: Clémentine Decremps, Toni Froschhammer
Art Direction: Kobayashi Rakuko
Executive Producer: Yanai Koji
Co-Producers: Kunieda Reiko, Okuwa Yasushi, Takasaki Takuma, Tominaga Keiko, Wim Wenders, Yakusho Koji, Yabana Kota
Cast: Yakusho Koji, Emoto Tokio, Nakano Arisa, Yamada Aoi, Ishikawa Sayuri, Miura Tomokazu
Date of First Release in Territory: December 23rd, 2023
Non-Japanese directors who film Japanese subjects don’t always get them right – or even try. A prime example is Rob Marshall’s 2005 period drama,
Memoirs of a Geisha, whose exoticized version of geisha culture was roundly bashed in Japan.
And then there is Wim Wenders’ Zen-like
Perfect Days, which was selected as Japan’s best international feature nominee for the 2024 Academy Awards, a first for a non-native, non-resident filmmaker. Also, star Yakusho Koji was awarded the best actor prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
Wenders has long been a passionate fan of Japanese cinema, as evidenced in his 1985 documentary,
Tokyo-Ga, about master director Ozu Yasujiro. But for all its Ozu-esque touches, such as shots of two characters moving in tandem,
Perfect Days expresses its maker’s artistic identity and outsider’s perspective to – pardon the wordplay – perfection.
Also a co-writer of the film’s original script, Wenders gives us a hero in Hirayama (Yakusho), who lives in a rundown apartment near the Tokyo Skytree tower but exists in a world of his own, neither typically Japanese nor jarringly foreign. Meanwhile, his occupation as a toilet cleaner may make him sound down and out, but his workplaces are 17 public toilets in Shibuya Ward that, created by leading architects and designers, look nothing like the usual utilitarian washroom.
Hirayama signals his apartness from the average and ordinary in other ways, from his meticulous attention to detail, such as using a hand mirror to inspect the toilets’ hidden spots, to his avocation of photographing light filtering through trees using a film camera. And yet his daily routine unfolds with a monkish, analog sameness: He downs a can of coffee for breakfast, plays classic rock cassettes in his van as he drives to work and reads paperbacks by well-known authors (William Faulkner, Patricia Highsmith) in the futon before he goes to sleep.
In Yakusho’s multilayered performance, Hirayama becomes more than a famous German director’s fantasy Japanese: diligent in his habits, conservative in his tastes, sensitive to natural beauty. We sense early on that for all his joy in the everyday – expressed with Yakusho’s signature glowing smile – Hirayama has troubled corners in his psyche, as suggested in his phantasmagoric black-and-white dreams.
The film’s first half unfolds with Hirayama living and working in almost wordless solitude, interrupted by comic interactions with an excitable co-worker (Emoto Tokio) and his vampish girlfriend (Yamada Aoi). The latter tries to draw Hirayama out of his silence – and rattles him with a peck on the cheek.
But the story doesn’t truly get underway until the second half when his teenage niece (Nakano Arisa) casually arrives out of the blue. Intuiting that the girl has fought with her mother – his long-lost sister – Hirayama accepts her into his life, taking her on his rounds and to his neighborhood public bath, surprising the elderly regulars. Also, Hirayama gets a jolt when he discovers the proprietor (Ishikawa Sayuri) of his favorite bar in the embrace of an unfamiliar male visitor (Miura Tomokazu) – and we realize that his feelings for her may be more than platonic. These developments threaten to take the film in all-too-familiar directions, but Wenders opts for mood over plot, the poetically suggestive and evocatively playful over the prosaically explanatory. In the silent, revelatory climax, Yakusho movingly shows us why he won that acting award – and why
Perfect Days ranks high in Wenders’ distinguished filmography, with or without a “Japanese movie” label.
Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders (b. 1945) won notice for his “Road Movie trilogy” – Alice in the Cities (1974), Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976) – all filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Robby Müller. Among Wenders’ best-known films are Paris, Texas (1984), which was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Wings of Desire (1987) that earned him Best Director honors at Cannes. Starring Yakusho Koji, his drama Perfect Days (2023) was nominated for a Best International Feature Oscar. As a documentarian, Wenders received Academy Award nominations for Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Pina (2011), and The Salt of the Earth (2014).
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
1974 – Alice in the Cities
1984 – Paris, Texas
1987 – Wings of Desire
1999 – Buena Vista Social Club
2011 – Pina
2014 – The Salt of the Earth
2023 – Perfect Days