While many spectators visit film festivals to watch films by already well-established directors on the silver screen, film festivals also function as places where the spectator can encounter new talent, unknown directors. This year, at the Nippon Connection Film Festival, Yoshiaki Arai is given the chance to present his graduation project for the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media.
Arai’s narrative follows Ando (Yoshihiko Hosoda), a cold and calculated man who, from behind his computer, directs his ‘employees’ to realize his carefully planned extortion schemes. Yet, one day, the 80 million yen meant for Mr. Minamioka (-), a man who appears to function like a boss, vanishes and he must acquire the cash meant to buy his freedom before he arrives.
Ando is not a pure thriller, but a character-study set within a narrative context that leans very close to what can be commonly found in thriller films. Yoshiaki Arai, by crafting a well-structured pattern of signifiers, a puzzle that slowly reveals its secrets, is able to introduce the spectator to the existential prison that is slowly began to suffocate Ando, turning his office into a tomb-like structure.
It is evident from the narrative structure that Yoshiaki Arai has challenged himself to create a narrative that, despite being largely set within a singly space, can generate tension and engage the spectator. The first trick that Arai pulls is delivering an opening sequence that, by combining dynamism (slow zoom-in movement, shaky framing) and musical accompaniment, confronts the spectator with the threat that emanates from the theft. Yoshiaki Airai visually signals and musically emphasizes that, due to this unforeseen theft, the net is closing in on him and his illegal dealings.
While Arai exploits this narrative moment to arouse a quantum of tension, he fully knows that he cannot sustain this tension within one narrative space with a mere concatenation of static shots and moments of tracking camera movement. To counteract the absence of ‘threatening’ dynamism and musical accompaniment, Arai relies on Yoshihiko Hosoda to add a dramatic weight to the cold calculated enunciations of his character – and this keep some sliver of tension lingering within the narrative. This is all the more important, because Hosoda is the only bodily presence within the singly narrative space that is able to amplify the dramatic flow of the Arai’s film – all the action happens outside the frame, we only have a concatenation of phone calls, a concatenation of signifiers that, by giving expression to all sorts of emotional states, hit Ando as subject and confront him with the slipping-away of control.
In certain cases, Arai aids his main actor and supports the evoking of tension by framing interactions with a shaky framing, subtly signalling the very experience of how the loss of control pushes him to the abyss of death – a sliver of existential dread reverberates through the composition.
Whenever Arai needs tension to heighten within the unfolding of his narrative, he re-utilizes a combination of slow dynamic movement and threatening music. Just like in the opening sequence, such combination also aims to give a certain narrative element a threatening and ominous quality – e.g. the names Baba, Rin?, Fujio on the city map, the newspaper clipping concerning an unsolved robbery and the picture.
Yoshiaki Arai gives his film a gritty visual feel by letting darkish shadows reign his narrative spaces – Ando works from the shadows, and by letting film-grain define the visual elements that, despite the oppressive presence of darkness, receive some light, qualify the orangish, greenish and blueish patches within the darkish space.
With Ando, Yoshiaki Arai delivers an engaging result to the challenge he set before himself – a well-crafted solicitation for bigger cinematographic projects. Arai might be the fresh blood that the thriller genre thirsts for in Japan. However, only time will tell.
