Dispatches from Tokyo International Film Festival 2023: On the Edge of Their Seats, Who Were We?

 

From a career making direct to video Pinku Eiga, Hideo Jojo has branched out to carve out a diverse filmography of everything from dramas to romantic films. Filmed and released on the cusp of the pandemic, Jojo's 2020 film On the Edge of their Seats is based on the play of the same name, and its theatrical elements are clearly evident in the final work. Taking place over the course of a baseball game we never see, the film follows four characters as they grapple with personal setbacks: Asuha (Rina Ono) is a member of the drama club, and her greatest dream to be able to participate in a national drama tournament has been derailed thanks to a classmate getting the flu right before the performance. Hikaru (Marin Nishimoto) is that classmate, and she's been thinking how to make it up to Asuha and the club. Fujio (Amon Hirai) left the baseball club realizing he'll never be selected to play for the team, even as classmates worse than him strive to do so and remain, and nerdy Miyashita (Shuri Nakamura) gets second place at the only thing she's good at - studying - as she is distracted by the team's star player.

In contrast to the usually hopeful and optimistic characters of these youth dramas, the characters of On the Edge of Their Seats are trapped by their own personal demons cynically declaring that the effort is simply not worth it. Ironically, it's the adults who engage in this unabashed optimism - or rather, dogged determination - embodied by the tea ceremony coach with dreams of baseball stardom, who screams himself hoarse trying to cheer on the school's baseball team.

In the end, these characters realize that a setback doesn't have to mean the end of the road, and an epilogue puts this in context, showing how insignificant these problems really are. Much like the ending of 1969's A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the titular character may not have gotten what he wanted, but the world keeps on spinning regardless.

A woman (Nana Komatsu) wakes up in the abandoned gold mines in the island of Sado, in Niigata. She does not know her name or even how she got there. She meets others like herself and chooses a new name: Midori (Green). Some time passes and she meets a man (Ryuhei Matsuda) who has arrived under the same circumstances. He calles himself Ao (Blue.) The two feel a strange connection, but are unsure what that connection is. As the two go about their motions around the island, they meet more people like them. One in particular, Murasaki (Shizuka Ishibashi,) feels a strange connection to Ao...

At one point in Tetsuya Tomina's Who Were We? the camera pans to what looks like a Noh performer wearing a mask denoting his status as a spirit. And that's basically what the film is: a modern-day, arthouse Noh play about two spirits who find themselves finding each other again in a limbo, denoted by the boxy 4:3 frame that imprisons them. It's rather appropriate that Tomina chose these mines as the place of their meeting and incarceration; the Sado mines were historically a place where criminals and other undesirables were made to work, until their death a prison that was physical as much as it was spiritual.

That said, in this tale of love divorced from memory, that disconnection in itself is the film's greatest weakness. We never do find out the answer to the question Who Were We? - indeed, the ending of the film posits that an answer is unnecessary. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to attach to the two central characters, despite the enormous talents of both Komatsu and Matsuda. At least for the two of them, the proceedings feel sterile and cold. Instead of concerning itself with the circumstances behind Midori and Ao's past, most of the film's languid running time concerns itself with the question Are We Even Alive? even though that question has already been answered half an hour in. Instead, the film's strengths lie in its side stories, where memory is far more evident: an elderly woman (Shinobu Otake) serves as Midori's mentor and works as a cleaning lady, perhaps living and reliving the last thing she ever did; and a young boy, Toru (Kabuki actor Sennosuke Kataoka) was driven to death for being effeminate, wishes to be reborn as a woman but is unable to die a second time to be reincarnated.

Ironically, even as the film declares that love is enough, memories of a relationship, of a place now abandoned, of things left unsaid, give that love meaning. While I appreciate the intent of Who Were We? it tends to be too elusive for its own good.