Italian Premiere | In Competition
Japan, 2024, 108’, Japanese
Directed by: Yoshida Daihachi
Screenplay: Yoshida Daihachi
Cinematography (color): Shinomiya Hidetoshi
Editing: Sone Shuiichi
Music: Chiba Hiroki
Producers: Ozawa Yuji, Emori Toru
Cast: Nagatsuka Kyozo, Kurosawa Asuka, Takeuchi Kumi
Date of First Release in Territory: January 17th, 2025
Winner of three well-deserved prizes at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, including best picture, Yoshida Daihachi’s Teki Cometh, scripted by the director from a 1998 novel by Tsutsui Yasutaka, is the latest in a procession of Japanese films about the plight of the elderly in a rapidly aging society.
It is not, however, yet another domestic drama about a slide into dementia or a generational conflict between conservative age and rebellious youth – themes now as tired as a white-haired gent dozing on a mall bench while his wife shops.
Instead, the film’s protagonist, a retired professor of French literature played with finesse and power by Nagatsuka Kyozo, is introduced as a sort of model senior citizen. Living alone in a traditional Japanese house following the death of his wife, he stoically adheres to a daily routine that includes the preparation of simple but appetizing meals. And rather than drift in idleness and social isolation, the professor, Watanabe Gisuke writes articles, gives lectures and interacts with others both in and outside his home.
But darker undercurrents soon emerge, deepened by black-and-white photography that makes his reality look somehow less than real. (It also drains the meal shots of their foodie-movie glamour.)
The professor faces a dwindling of his earning power, particularly when a travel magazine editor – a former student – abjectly tells him that his series on French culture is getting the axe. Gisuke also feels his chances for romance ebbing away, as implied by his abrupt cancellation to an online dating service.
He receives a stranger, ruder jolt when a notice pops up on his computer cryptically warning that “the enemy is coming from north.” What this means is not immediately made clear, but Gisuke’s dreams begin to segue from the comically absurd, such as a colonoscopy from hell administered by a steely-eyed female doctor, to the disturbingly uncanny, with his dead wife (Kurosawa Asuka) appearing to berate him for his platonic relationship with a seductive former student (Takeuchi Kumi).
Are they just dreams? The film’s answer is ambiguous with no clear stylistic demarcations between Gisuke’s real and dream life. Also, we get no pat explanations for his descent into a surreal abyss: He shows no signs of senility or insanity. And the sins exposed in his dreams (assuming that they are dreams) are belied by his seemingly innocent behavior when he is unquestionably awake.
Yet in Nagatsuka’s finely layered and calibrated performance we sense that Gisuke is not always the gentlemanly scholar of Moliere and Jean Racine, that baser motives lurk and disgraceful acts may have been committed.
That said, in the hypnotically baffling and compelling Teki Cometh, meaning and message are open to interpretation. And Gisuke’s dilemma is universal: Even if you try to age well, carefully planning out everything from your next dinner to your last rites, you can’t control your nightmares – or still the inner voice that accuses and condemns as your enemy, now more deadly than imaginary, inexorably advances.
GUEST:
YOSHIDA Daihachi, director
Yoshida Daihachi
Yoshida Daihachi (b. 1963) entered TYO, a TV commercial production company, in 1987 and over the next two decades made many TV commercials, music videos and short films. His first feature film, the comedy Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! (2007) was selected for Udine FEFF10. Yoshida returned to Udine with the 2018 drama The Scythian Lamb. His latest film, Teki Cometh, premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where it won three prizes: Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor for lead Nagatsuka Kyozo.
FILMOGRAPHY
2007 – Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!
2009 – The Wonderful World of Captain Kuhio
2010 – Permanent Nobara
2012 – The Kirishima Thing
2014 – Pale Moon
2017 – A Beautiful Star
2018 – The Scythian Lamb
2024 – Teki Cometh