Strawberry Shortcakes
Director: Yazaki Hitoshi
Year: 2006
Rating: 6.5
Loneliness and emptiness with a slight tailwind of hope waft through this
film like an effortless breeze. It depicts the lives of four single Japanese
women in their 20's living in Tokyo whose love lives and work lives have
come to a standstill and they seem unable to change that. It begins to weigh
you down as the viewer because these are not bad people - in fact one's affection
for them grows as the film snatches little pieces and details of their lives
and puts them together. The film does it slowly and sporadically as it jumps
from character to character but rarely stays for more than a few minutes.
It is based on a manga from female writer Kiriko Nananan, who also wrote
Blue that was adapted for film. It is directed by a man though, Hitoshi Yazaki,
and I wonder if a female director would have brought a different approach
to this film. There is a fair amount of nudity and sex which I wonder if
a female would have done - or perhaps that is right from the manga. And the
writer was right there. It just felt a tiny bit exploitive to me.
The women are very different from one another and they never really all connect
in a tangible manner. We first meet Satoko (Chizuru Ikewaki - Josee, the
Tiger and the Fish, Shoplifters) as the film opens and she is narrating to
the audience "I was dragged by a man" and the camera pulls back to realize
that she is actually hanging on to a man's leg who has just broken up with
her as she is pulled down the street. After he kicks her loose, she says
"I wanna fall in love". She is a receptionist at the Heaven's Gate escort
agency. And all she really wants is to fall in love with a special man who
thinks she is special.
Working there also but as an escort girl is Akiyo (Yūko Nakamura) who wants
to earn enough money to buy a condo above the fifth floor - so that when
you decide to kill yourself, you are high enough. She sleeps in a coffin
which also comes in handy as a kitchen table to eat off. Her encounters with
men "I am Akiyo. Am I to your liking" are pretty awful.
Chihiro (Noriko Nakagoshi) is a tea girl in an office - very pretty and very
much needs a man in her life. Her life is a romantic novel of falling in
love and being dumped. She rooms with Toko (played by none other than Kiriko
Nananan, the writer of the manga). Toko is a tough character to quite understand
- an artist obsessed with her art - a bulimic who throws up when Chihiro
is not around and when Chihiro is at works she reads Chihiro's diary and
masturbates. It wasn't really clear to me if she was in love with Chihiro
or just obsessed by a girl who seemed so simple and single-minded.
In one sense their lives are fairly ordinary - even for Akiyo who when not
working dresses down in a t-shirt and jeans and tries to win the heart of
a man she knew at university. A part of me kept expecting one of them to
commit suicide but as a spoiler no one does. The end doesn't really bring
closure or happiness - but has a satisfying feel to it. Life continues. Don't
give up.
