Introduction

While Masaaki Kudo has worked as an assistant director for directors like Sion Sono, Yoshimitsu Morita, Yojiro Takita, Isshin Inudo, Isao Yukisada, and Shinji Higuchi, his career as director is only fledgling. Can he, by relying on the rich experience he gained under the wings of well-known directors, carve out a space for himself?

Review

To make ends meets, 17-year-old Aoi (Kotone Hanase) decides to start working illegally at a hostess bar. Luckily, she can rely on her grandmother to take care of her son Kengo (-). Less reliable is Masaya (Yoshiro Sakuma), her husband. While he works, her drinks away his pay.

One day, a discussion between Aoi and Masaya on who is going to pay the rent leads to Masaya hitting Aoi. Not that much later, the police raid the bar she works at and she is, after a long chase, apprehended. Masaya, on the other hand, suddenly disappears.

A Far Shore is a socially engaged narrative that does not only illustrate the ravage a man can be for a woman but also reveals the devastating effects of a societal field that refuses to reach out and, thus, erases a subject that refuses to scream for help. Aoi’s tragic subjective trajectory illustrates that, while societal aid is available, this aid fails, for various societal and subjective reasons, to reach the targeted subjects.       

Aoi is caught, as is made evident in the opening half an hour of the narrative, within a highly volatile relational dynamic. While Masaya’s drinking evokes that he feels paralysed by his state of castration, the crude confrontation with this reality by Aoi causes him to violently lash out. Masaya revels within his phallic failure – i.e. this state of not having what the Other desires, but refuses to accept this truth when the Other’s signifier lays it bare for all to see. His violent response is not, as one might assume, an attempt to repair the fantasy of possessing the phallus, but to radically silence the Other and repress the consciousness of the truth that, nevertheless, imprisons him.

This fear of being confronted with the failure he brings into being through his acts and signifiers is also evident in his avoidance of responsibility. This inhibition, which reverberates his castration to the Other, aims to escape in the crude confrontation with his failure. For Masaya, who is caught within a logic that perpetuates the state of subjective failure, taking the step of responsible action can only lead to an encounter with the truth of his inhibition, with the very impossibility for him to gain success. It should thus not surprise us that Masaya prefers to wash his failure away with alcohol (Narra-note 1). Of course, this inhibited stance conflicts with Aoi’s only demand: that he assumes responsibility as father and husband; that he, with signifiers and acts, supports his family. So, will Aoi wait for Masaya to change or will she take matters in her own hands and seek a different solution for the disruptive fatherly problem (Narra-note 2)?   

Aoi’s encounter with the police is, despite its fleeting character, quite revealing. What is important to notice in the interaction between the police officer and Aoi is that the officer’s signifiers, by violently referring to the law she broke and her failure to fulfill the societal motherly image, erases her subjectivity. While the functioning of the law cannot do without a form of desubjectification, it is quite sad to see that the very reason of Aoi’s transgression is not questioned. The Other of the law remains, as it merely seeks to criminalize subjects, blind to the ills (e.g. poverty) that fester within the societal fabric. Such blindness of the societal Other has, as A Far Shore shows, detrimental effects on the trajectory of the ‘criminalized’ subject.

Aoi’s encounter with child welfare services follows a similar dynamic. As the child’s wellbeing forms their priority, they necessarily need to bypass the mother’s subjective position. They need to act in response to as well as against the parent’s signifiers and acts to safeguard the child’s subjective position (Narra-note 3). 

Yet, while both encounters have a certain effect of subjective erasure, it is also obvious that Aoi refuses to bring her subject into play. She plays the fool in front of the police to avoid punishment and she brushes off the invitation by the workers of the child welfare services to give expression to what ails her as a subject. A Far Shore, in fact, introduces a very pressing societal problem: how to reach a subject who refuses to cry for help, who rejects any kind of intervention coming from the societal field.  

The composition of A Far Shore, which offers a balanced blend between static and dynamic shots, pleases the spectator with its beautiful tracking shots and its slow spatial dynamism. Yet, what truly allows the narrative to come emotionally to life are the long takes. The long takes, by focusing on the shifting facial expressions of Aoi, bring her subjectivity closer to the spectator. Yet, the glance the spectator is given into her subjective world is only so revealing and effective in establishing an emotional connection because Kotone Hanase, who portrays Aoi in the narrative, delivers an acting tour-de-force.

A Far Shore offers a highly engaging story that explores the destructive effects of a societal field that fails to reach out to subjects-in-need. Kotone Hanase, by delivering an acting tour-de-force, ensures that Mami Suzuki’s narrative comes to life and becomes able to deliver an emotional punch-in-the-gut.

Notes

Narra-note 1: Masaya’s subjective logic is, as indirectly pointed out later in the narrative, determined by his familial situation. While it is not explicitly visualised, the spectator is easily able to assume that he, during his childhood, was subjected to a familial Other that kept violently pointing out his phallic failure, his inability to be what the Other desires.

By pointing this out, the spectator can also understand that Masaya’s violence towards Aoi is, first and foremost, aimed at his verbally abusive parental Other. He wants, in other words, to hit the parental Other in Aoi.

Narra-note 2: The ending of A Far Shore can be interpreted in different ways, but, in our view, the final images create an answer to the fatherly problem. Let us say, without spoiling too much, that Aoi gambles on the motherly solution.

Narra-note 3: Both encounters subtly echo that the Other considers the subject fully responsible for his life’s trajectory and that this Other remains blind to its own short-comings.