Introduction

With so many Japanese feature-length movies coming out, one would easily forget there is a very active short-film circuit in Japan. Every year, the Japanese Film Festival in Hamburg grants audiences a taste of the creativity of these short-film directors. This time, we have the honour to introduce one of Tomoichiro Setsuda’s latest works: Necessary & unnecessary.

Review

One day, in front of Satomi (Mutsumi Sato), the white-clothed Joy (Mutsumi Sato) and black-clad Sorrow (Mutsumi Sato) appear. While Joy is somewhat nice to her, her acts of kindness are often undone by the meanness of Sorrow. While she is bothered by their presence, they also reverberate and affirm her moments of joy and sadness.

Not much later her brother Toshiya (Rina Kamei), now in a female shape, returns after being missing for more than ten years. Yet, not much later, a man called Shinsuke Watanabe (Ippei Saito) comes looking for a women called Hinata.

How to understand those moments in the narrative where Satomi’s talking-partners suddenly assume her form to direct speech at her? In our view, what happens is that the Other within her ‘visualizes’ itself. This Other, this uber-ich, this expression of the will-to-enjoy of the Other, is function of the internationalizing of a variety of discourses in the symbolic field. In these fleeting interactions she is, strictly speaking, enjoyed by the will-to-enjoy of the Other. She is the object of the Other’s joyous but vile signifiers, signifiers she has internalized. 

By highlighting this dynamic, we can unearth what Setsuda’s short movie is truly about – without this key the film becomes a concatenation of unrelated fragments. The main consequence of this kind of uber-ich is that it inhibits Satomi, shackles her desire and silence speech-acts fuelled by her desire. For the blossoming of the subject, the viscous claws of this uber-ich are, strictly speaking, unnecessary. 

Setsuda introduces another riddle within his narrative, the riddle of the two subjective fragments, Joy and Sorrow. One should read these manifestations as a visual decoration to highlight the attempt Satomi makes to deal with the emptiness that marks her. As she lacks true functional social bonds, she escapes into the fantasy of being with three. Moreover, the failure of this attempt to erase her emptiness is what allows her uber-ich to manifest itself so viciously. 

The only thing that can rescue her, that can disrupt her emptiness and break the dominion of her uber-ich, is the formation of a functional symbolic bond. Can her long-lost brother be her partner that frees her subject?

The composition of Necessary & unnecessary consists mainly out of static shots. While there are some fluid tracking shots to be noted, it is evident that Setsuda aims to tell Satomi’s story in the static moments and aim, by playing with geometry, to deliver some nicely composed and visually pleasing shot-compositions.

Necessary & unnecessary is a quirky little narrative that explores the necessity of forming inter-subjective social bonds. Moreover, Setsuda shows with his short-film that once this need is fulfilled, other attempts to resolve one’s subjective emptiness become unnecessary.