Miyuki (CV: Aya Okamoto) ran away from home. Gin (CV: Tooru Emori) abandoned his family as he ran away from a debt. Hana (CV: Yoshiaki Umegaki) is a transvestite whose man passed away. As these three were looking through the trash for a Christmas gift Hana had found for Miyuki, they hear a baby’s cry. The homeless take the abandoned baby and start searching through Tokyo to find the child’s mother.
Although the holidays at the end of the year passed a long time ago, I’m writing about this film. It’s a drama with a bit of comedy directed by Satoshi Kon, who also have directed Perfect Blue and Paprika, two films I like for different reasons.
This is to me one of those films that make me feel good and start wonder about cause and effect. I personally don’t believe in the concept of pure coincidence, so yeah… Cause and effect. The characters – Miyuki, Gin and Hana – not only keep getting reunited each time they get separated, but it’s also pretty much “by chance” and they manage to avoid dying even though they end up close to accidents. All while they have a baby, which Hana named Kiyoko, to get to her real parents.
As they try to find her parents, they encounter the past they tried to avoid. We learn Miyuki stabbed her father after her cat, Angel, disappeared and that’s when she ran away. We also learn he’s a policeman and once in the film she sees him on a train after the snow stopped it, climbed out the window and hurried away when he had seen her and made a call. Gin gambled and drunk so much he ended up in debt and instead of shouldering it he left his daughter and wife. He not only meet the debt collector, but he ends up seeing his daughter. Hana is also forced to face the past as they can’t let Kiyoko be out in the cold and so he and Miyuki go to the place where he used to work and we learn a little more about this man.
It was good. As I have only seen Paprika and Perfect Blue before, to me this film is a typical Kon film. A bit weird, a bit thought-provoking, a bit “I got so concentrated in the story, I can’t even remember there was any music”. Being a music fan I usually listen for music, but in Kon’s films they are indeed a background thing. So much I don’t even notice them.
It was a very good film indeed.
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