Hospitalité (Fukada, 2010): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.20pm
To celebrate the release of Love Life and further exploring the domestic space in Japanese life that lies at the heart of the BFI Southbank's Yasujirō Ozu season, the cinema looks back on three key titles so far in Kōji Fukada’s career. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review:
A shy, middle-aged printer (Kenji Yamauchi), living in a Tokyo duplex
with his grown daughter and second wife, takes in an eccentric
slacker (Kanji Furutachi) as an employee and lodger, only to find the
stranger inserting himself into every aspect of his life. This
charming comedy begins as a very Japanese joke about limited privacy
but deepens into something more ambiguous. The stranger’s motives
are never made clear until the end; his behavior is irritating and
occasionally malicious, yet he also wants to bring the printer out of
his shell. Director Koji Fukada’s deadpan visual style recalls that
of Aki Kaurismaki (Le Havre), but his direction of actors is
far less mannered. He and his two leads are veterans of Tokyo’s
long-running Seinendan Theater Company, and the players temper the
cartoonish writing with intimate, naturalistic performances.
Ben Sachs
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