There is a world of film that only certain people in Japan can get into touch with – the jishu-eiga, the ultra-independent scene of filmmaking. To get a glance at what these directors create one must visit what is called a mini-theatre in Japan.

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Luckily, Thanks to Third Windows Films, film-lovers can finally have taste of this vibrant scene from the comfort of their own home. Fans of Third Windows Films will be happy to hear that the first New Directors From Japan, which introduces Takashi Ono to international audiences, does not only feature his first feature film I Am Baseball but also his earlier shorts. This time, we shine our light on Cheating Office Lady: Wet Galaxy, a short less erotic than the title evocatively implies.

Ono’s narrative commences when section chief Hasegawa (Mitsuho Osuga) disrupts the romantic atmosphere between him and Kumiko Fujimoto (Misako Fujimoto), his subordinate, by asking not to visit his apartment for a while as his wife will be coming back. Devastated, she leaves his apartment – the cake she bought for them to share unopened.

Not that much later, she sneaks into his apartment. Hasegawa turns up and tries to console her – absence does not mean that the affair is finished. As he hugs her, the doorbell starts ringing: his wife, Ma-za, has come home (General-note 1). 

Cheating Office Lady: Wet Galaxy is, in short, a film that depicts the trajectory of a woman who repairs the wound inflicted by her married partner. Ono starts by staging the infliction of the wound and depicting the mental turmoil caused by being brutally confronted with the riddle of what one’s function is within the desire of the romantic other. Kumiko, precisely because she lacks symbolic proof of his love to her – she lacks a symbolic nomination, cannot define what she is to him; she is caught between the fear of having just been an object in service of his sexual gratification and the faint hope that she, as subject, is loved by him.

However, the spectator is also led to question what Kumiko sees in Hasegawa. Ono, with some subtly, evokes that, for Kumiko, Hasegawa is tasked to give her signs of his love – she works hard for such sign to be produced for her.

Yet, the confrontation with the shape of Hasegawa’s wife allows Kumiko’s subjective turmoil to take a different shape and open a path to its resolution. Her unvocalized hysterical question of what Hasegawa’s wife has what she does not have is turned into pure frustrated disbelief – how can you reject me for that. Hasegawa has unknowingly disqualified himself of being worthy of her love, her romantic interest.

To bring the narrative of Cheating Office Lady: Wet Galaxy to life, Takashi Ono relies on a concatenation of static and dynamic shots. Ono utilizes the static shot in interesting ways, crafting interesting shot-concatenation by employing a variety of shot-types (Extreme close-ups, close-ups, medium-shots), interweaving evocative imagery – and transitions, and playing with visual repetition.

Ono inserts moments of fleeting dynamism into his composition – either to focus on an object that moves (e.g. the hamburger in Kumiko’s coworker’s hand) or to shift the attention of the spectator, often in accordance with the character’s displacement of attention. However, he also turns to rougher dynamism within his composition – e.g. to stage Kumiko’s remembrance of Hasegawa’s move on, Hasegawa’s discovery of Kumiko in his apartment, Kumiko’s training in karate, and her final fight (Cine-note 1).

The costume design (Hasegawa’s wife) and the practical effects (e.g. the stop-motion, …) do not only prove that budget-constraints do not limit creativity – in fact, they foster creativity, but also that these low-budget crafts, while unmistakeably fake, have a charming quality and can be highly effective within a given narrative context. The vacuum-cleaning shape of Hasegawa’s wife will both shock and visually please the spectator.     

Cheating Office Lady: Wet Galaxy delivers an absurd sci-fi horror-comedy that must be seen to be believed. While the practical effects are cheap, Ono and his cast’s enthusiastic dedication to the absurdity fills the film with a winsomeness that allows the short to surpass its limitations.

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Notes

General-note 1: Ma-za bears a strong resemblance to the way Japanese people pronounce the English signifier mother. And her facial area echoes the imagery of the vagina dentata.

Cine-note 1: In some cases, Ono utilize rougher dynamism to emphasize the effect Hasegawa has on Kumiko – e.g. the expression of his desire, the effect of being asked to distance herself from him.

Sound-note 1: What echoes the Showa era in this short is the sound-design and the use of sound-effects.