Romance, romance. Every year, even in Japan, audiences are bombarded with romantic fantasies. However, such presence of romance does not sort any effect on audiences – marriages are at an all time low and child-births are slowly decreasing. The main reason why romance films fail to sort any effect on is because they play with a fantasy that cannot, due to current socio-economical circumstances, be easily imagined – the willingness to write a sexual relationship together with another subject has sharply decreased.     

While the genre does have little social impact, many spectators still flock to the cinema or to streaming sites to get their injection of romance. The spectator’s enjoyment of these narratives depends, first and foremost, on the way the director exploits the ideological assumption that The sexual relationship can be written – the fictive idea of a perfect harmony between two members of the opposite sex. Otonari, written by Yukiko Manabe and directed by Naoto Kumazawa, plays with the same assumption. They deliver a heartwarming story that neatly colours within the lines of what a romance narrative should be, offering the spectator a cozy re-affirmation of the deceit of the writability of The sexual relationship.

Within Otonari, Naoto Kumazawa traces out the trajectory of two people who lives next to each other, Satoshi Nojima (Junichi Okada), a photographer at a modelling agency, and Nanao Noborikawa (Kumiko Aso), a florist. Satoshi is called into the office by his boss. His boss, knowing of his plans to leave the company and dedicate himself to natural photography in Canada, asks him to postpone his plans to support Shingo (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi), his friend and one of the agency’s top models, in overcoming his lack of self-confidence on the film-set. In return, he offers him his help in getting his future photography books published. One day, Akane Ueda (Mitsuki Tanimura), Shingo’s pregnant girlfriend, barges into his apartment in search of him and, upon not finding him, decides that she going to crash at his place until he shows up. 

Nanao, on the other hand, is dedicated to her work as florist – teaching Yamaga (Hidetaka Yoshioka) the ropes of the profession, visiting local businesses to arrange flower decorations. Yet, one day, Hajime Himuro (Yoshinori Okada), who works at the nearby convenience store, visits the flower-shop to buy a bouquet. She helps him out, not realizing the bouquet is meant for her, on object to accompany his love confession (Psycho-note 1).

Otonari starts out, not surprisingly, by tracing out the lack that marks both protagonists – or, to put it more correctly, by introducing to the spectator how Satoshi and Nanao deal or attempt to deal with their own lack.

Satoshi’s intensified dream to shoot landscapes in Canada is, in our view, a reformulation of his wish to break the suffocating hold that working for the modelling agency has on him. For him, the imposed schedule is not a frame that he can fuel with his own desire, but a prison, a slow-working poison that deflate and extinguishes his desire (Narra-note 1). His decision to photograph landscapes in Canada is, in this sense, not only a reaffirmation of what he, as subject, loves about photography, but also an attempt to inhabit a radically different physical space to become desiring again.       

Nanao’s dedication to her work as a florist, on the other hand, is a defence against the lack (of romance), a defence against desiring. The flower is the imaginary object that she has installed to close of the lid of her own lack and attempt to short-circuit the desire to desire. Nanao’s coming studying trip to France is, in this sense, not the result of her desire, but of her radical dedication to her own solution to the little problematic thing called lack and desire (Narra-note 2, Narra-note 3).  

However, both Satoshi and Nanao’s subjective stances are put to the test as the sounds of their neighbour leaks into their living space – two daily rhythms of life melt aurally together. This continuation of this blending of sound-scapes – an aural presence delineating a physical absence, ultimately invites Satoshi to consider the object of the landscape a simple mirage – a false object that deludes him – and Nanao to take her lack (in love and desire) that she has been trying to erase seriously.

Yet, the spectator also easily discerns that Kumazawa’s narrative implies that the lack they both are forced to accept as their own can be resolved ‘romantically’. Otonari neatly fits with the phantasmatic message, the ideological fiction, that supports the romance genre: The sexual relationship can be written. This fiction many (must) believe in is directly introduced within the narrative via the notion of the key-note: a familiar sound that sorts a soothing effect on people but, when absent, makes him feel like he is missing something. Or, to put it differently, the key-note is the phallic sound that creates non-lacking harmony between a man and woman.    

The composition of Otonari features lots of long takes (i.e. static and dynamic) and an inclination to keep, despite cutting and concatenating shots, the spatial consistency of the narrative spaces. By not breaking the consistence of the framed spatial space, by giving his concatenation of shots a similar perspective to follow the movement of his characters, Kumazawa seeks to emphasize that both Nanao and Satoshi, despite missing each other repeatedly at a scopic level, inhabit the same space. 

Kumazawa, moreover, seeks to breathe a sense of realism into Otonari via two stylistic means. The first stylistic element he relies on is a crude, yet wavy dynamism. This dynamism infuses a sense of realism in the narrative not only because it allows him to create a frame to amplify the naturalism of the performances, but also because it gives the absence of the camera a subtle presence – inviting the spectator to invest in that movement of the voyeuristic camera as such (Acting-note 1).      

The second stylistic element concerns the lightning and colour-design. The subtly faded colour-palette lends its support to establishing a fictional frame of realism, but also seeks to reverberate the dimension of subjectivity. The subtle forlornness that is infused in the film’s atmosphere does not seek to critique the societal field as such, but to indicate something of the subjective state of the two protagonists as caught within the Other. The spectator will have no difficulty in translating this visual forlornness into an echo of solitude, of the silent unverbalized impact of the lack of romantic connection on Satoshi and Nanao.   

The visual elegance does not lie in the composition as such, but in the way colours and lighting are utilized in function of the framing – the lines of composition. The slightly faded nature of the colours function as a base coat upon which Kumazawa can play with shadows and lighting-contrasts to accentuate certain visual lines and geometrical elements and, thus, elevate shot-compositions.

The musical accompaniment gives the subjective solitude of the main protagonists a certain gentleness. This musical gentleness echoes, in our view, that neither Satoshi and Nanao truly discern what they are truly missing – Satoshi dreams of another physical place, a false stand-in, and Nanao can only see the forest of flowers in front of her.  

Given the title of the film – oto means sound, tonari means neighbour, it is not surprising that Kumazawa took great care in creating the sound-scapes of daily life and put a lot of thought in creating contrasts between the visual space and the intruding aural signs of the life next door (e.g. the front door that opens, the doorbell, footsteps, the closing of shoji, voices, music, coffee grinder,… etc.). He even succeeds in letting the spectator realize that mere sounds have an equivocal quality – their meaning can be misheard.   

With Otonari, Naoto Kumazawa and screenwriter Yukiko Manabe succeed in giving the fundamental dynamic that structures the romance film a fresh coat of paint. By focusing on the quiet intimacy of blending sound-scapes, they give the lack-of-being that pushes the subject, whether he wants it or not, towards the Other a cozy heartwarming interpretation. So, spectator, grind some beans, pour oneself a hot cuppa coffee, sit back in the sofa, pull a blanket over oneself, and let the film do its romantic magic.  

Notes

Psycho-note 1: The confessional scene highlights the radical imaginary nature of falling in love, of discerning in the bodily presence of the other a vague sign of the presence of the (radically absent) phallic object. The sign, the phallic shine on the body of the other, is what imprisons desire, gives it its object-aim.  

Narra-note 1: Satoshi relies on his long-held dream to become a landscape photographer to break away from his dependency on Shingo’s demand – he cannot model without him. Yet, as the drama with Akane underlines, Satoshi is plagued by a fear that Shingo considers his choice selfish – a cause for resentment – and a lingering guilt that his choice caused his disappearance.

This fear is why he kept postponing informing Shingo of his plan and what animates his (projecting) outburst towards Akane, the woman whose hobby is being dependent on Shingo – a dependency that, nevertheless, arouses insecurity: am I truly needed, am I the only object of his desire?       

Narra-note 2: The way Nanao handles the edition of magazine Bloom dedicates to working women in their thirties as well as her surprised reaction when realizing Akane stayed over at her neighbour’s place implies that, despite her dedication to her occupation, her lack is not silenced.

Narra-note 3: Her struggle with the element of lack manifest itself beautifully when she, after finishing her exam early and despite her employer’s advice to take the day off and rest, still shows up at the flower shop.

Acting-note 1: The compositionally-induced sense of realism also helps give the performances of Junichi Okada and Kumiko Aso a more genuine feel and heightens the heartwarming impact of the narrative’s resolution.