Rebirth

JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL: The synopsis for this film focuses on its kidnap plot. It makes it sound like one of those ‘ripped from the headlines’ movies. In the story, a young woman Kiwako (a sublimely and delicately nuanced performance from Hiromi Nagasaku) kidnaps her married lover’s newborn girl and for four years, raises the child as her own. The case becomes a media sensation because of its peculiar contours and strange, unexpected character. Kiwako and the child’s mother Etsuko (Yoko Moriguchi) know each other as rivals. Etsuko would call Kiwako and abuse her. (Kiwako cannot have children, a result of an abortion, a fact that Etsuko plays on.) Motivated by anger and revenge, Kiwako hits back at Etsuko in a way that is primal and cruel. Complicating all moral judgment is the fact that Kiwako loved and cared for the child; there is nothing abusive or dangerous about her personality. When the child, Erina is finally returned to Etsuko, she is so distressed she wets her pants. As she grows older she suffers separation anxiety, distressed because her real mother is not the one she once knew and loved without qualification.

This summary, I reckon, is pretty accurate, and as it plays out on screen, it is as emotional as my description perhaps implies… and yet this is no feverish melodrama nor is it a kind of pseudo-doco. It’s boldly and unapologetically psychological in character and told in a visual style that’s poetic and even grand at times; the kidnapping is staged on a rain swept street and the intricacies of the plot are delivered with a concise ease. Still, it’s the emotional, internal drama, and its impact on the characters as people that seems to interest director Izuru Narushima the most. Again and again he returns to quiet scenes of contemplation where his characters are enduring the pain of a memory and the consequences of poor choices and impulsive actions.

Told in a maze of flashbacks, and time shifts (a formal idea that powerfully suggests how the characters are haunted by their shared past), the film opens in a courtroom where Kiwako is awaiting sentence. We first hear from Etsuko, who talks of her grief and her desire to have Kiwako killed for her crime. Then we hear from Kiwako; she won’t apologise because she has lost a child, her way, too. But Narushima shoots this sequence in stark close-ups where the actor’s directly address the camera like they were in a theatre; he even has the light rise and fall like stage lighting.

Based on a popular novel by Mitsuyo Kakuta, the screenplay by Satoko Okudera has much of the narrative trace the story of the grown-up Erina (Mao Inoue), who endures a fractious relationship with her mother, and lives in anonymity until a journalist tracks her down. The film cuts back and forth between grown Erina and Kiwako’s story of how she was able to live and survive and raise the child while on the run from the law, finally building to the moment where Erina has to confront her own mixed up feelings about her past.

Narushima directs the cast in a sort of flat, unsentimental way. There’s a lot of angst to be sure, but most of the time it’s suppressed, and in those climatic moments where the emotions finally break through, it’s all the more explosive and cathartic – for both characters and audience.

Despite the title, which seems to promise uplift and regeneration, this unsentimental, rich and deep film is not so much about moving on from pain, but about confronting it. These days, when easy answers hold sway, that seems courageous thing to do and it seems all the more valuable for it.