The tragedy at the center of “Love Life,” the new film from Japanese director Kōji Fukada which premieres in Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, does not come to disrupt a perfectly happy family. Cracks are visible in the facade of the life shared by Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) even before the fatal accident that claims the life of Keita (Tetta Shimada), her young son from a previous marriage. But Taeko, who cares for her son, her husband, and her clients through her job in social services, can just about keep all the plates spinning until that fateful day. When Keita dies, formerly dormant problems bubble up to the surface, while others that once seemed crucial now appear completely trivial.
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Fukada’s usual mode of restrained melodrama is a good fit for stories that involve secrets and things unsaid. In his pulpy thriller/melodrama “A Girl Missing,” the sometimes extreme and almost implausible behaviors of his characters could find at least partial justification in a style that already implied a degree of inscrutability. However, this aesthetic slightly confuses things in “Love Life,” where it often seems unclear whether the muted reaction from the characters is their genuine response or simply a condition of the film’s style.
As such, the scenes taking place in the immediate aftermath of Keita’s death feel somewhat artificial, Taeko and Jiro almost entirely impassive as they go through the motions of administration. In that context, the moment during the funeral sequence when a drunken man crashes the ceremony, bursts into tears, slaps Taeko, and runs away, feels at first like a self-consciously contrapuntal moment more than a genuine emotional beat — a shocking burst of violence that suggests we are watching a melodrama which trades only in extremes. That impression is only heightened when we learn that the stranger is, in fact, Taeko’s previous husband, Park (Atom Sunada), a deaf man who abandoned his family when Keita was small and is now homeless.
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It is quite a twist, but it allows Fukada to hit the film’s first genuinely intriguing beat. When Taeko goes to visit Park, the two turn out to have a very calm and adult relationship, despite his appearance at the funeral and the many years without contact. These estranged former lovers are the first two characters seen talking to each other frankly and without drama in the film. When Park, who only speaks Korean sign language, asks Taeko to help him sign up for benefits, the two calmly work together on getting him sober and back on his feet.
It isn’t hard to understand the appeal of this sort of “project” for the stony-faced Taeko. Resisting all of Jiro’s admittedly feeble attempts at conversation, she is clearly looking for a reason to get out of the house and for a way to expunge her feelings of guilt. Fukada carefully maps out the contrasting positions that the two parents find themselves in following Keita’s death, and while Taeko’s is obviously awful — she is the child’s mother — Jiro’s is peculiar and perhaps even more isolating. Though the opening scenes show him as close and affectionate with Keita as any parent can be, the world does not seem to want to let him forget the fact that he was not his biological father. Kento Nagayama is moving as a man who tries to rise above his own feelings of insecurity, even as he sees his partner reconnect with the child’s “real” dad. While Taeko seeks refuge in the Park project, Jiro briefly finds the attention and validation he craves in a former lover, and Nagayama’s performance of reluctance and defeat, as a man both aware of what is pushing him to betray the woman he loves and too despairing to stop it, is the most believable in the film.
Unlike many melodramas, then, some of the characters here do display a degree of self-awareness about their own emotions, and the film is at its most gripping when it shows characters admitting their mistakes or confessing their most shameful thoughts. “Love Life” is perhaps a little cheesy in the way it imagines people not just profoundly changed by such a tragedy, but also able to be very articulate about their own transformation. However, this is the kind of emotional disclosure that melodramas are built on, and it is at the heart of one of the most intriguing and sophisticated throughlines in the film: once opposed to their son marrying a divorced woman, Jiro’s parents admit they are now full of regret over ever harboring such thoughts.
The film however focuses largely on Taeko, whose journey out of denial is a lot more tortuous. From her desire to be of use and help Park has blossomed what seems to be an ideal, emotionally fulfilling, and kind relationship with her ex-husband. Park indeed appears almost wise in matters of the heart, and his encouraging and reassuring words to Taeko genuinely soothe her — to the point where she does not want to let go of him. An astonishing and frankly bizarre penultimate scene shows Park for who he really is, but also reveals to Taeko that more than distraction or the vague promise of a new life, what she does in fact desire is true connection.
A busy web of interpersonal dynamics, “Love Life” often feels more concerned about its characters’ storylines and the way they all fit into each other than about what the audience might be getting out of watching it all play out. This results in an uneven tone throughout the film and some implausible developments that make it hard to remain consistently engaged. By the film’s final scene, Fukada has landed on a sober yet moving note about the true nature of intimacy and the reality of grief, but it feels like too little, too late. [C]
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