Miwa Nishikawa is one of the most talented Japanese female directors working today. Her first feature film, Wild Berries (2003), produced by Kore-eda, garnered many awards – e.g. the Best New Director award at the 2004 Yokohama Film Festival and the 13th Japanese Professional Movie Awards. With Yureru (2006), Nishikawa delivered another award-winning filmic experience. So, what makes Nishikawa’s second feature film so special? Let’s find out in our analysis (general note 1).

Nishikawa’s narrative starts when Takeru Hayakawa (Odagiri Jo), after hearing his mother has passed away, returns to his hometown to attend her funeral. Yet, neither his father Isamu Hayakawa (Masatô Ibu) nor Minoru (Teruyuki Kagawa), his older brother who took over the family business, are happy to see him.

His encounter with his ex, Chieko Kawabata (Yôko Maki) ends between the sheets. Dreaming of a better life in Tokyo, she asks him to take her to Tokyo, yet he ignores her. The next day, Chieko repeats the same wish. Once again, Takeru ignores her and leaves.

Later that day, in the forest, Takeru happens to see Chieko cross the bridge. She stumbles and Minoru, who has followed her, tries to catch her. He fails and sees Chieko falling to her death.  Not that much later, Minoru gets arrested for murder.

The narrative of Yureru explores how the return of Takeru, as an estranged and strange element, affects the subjects around him. In Chieko’s case, the return of Takeru confronts her with her unexplored fantasy of lacking a future and her vain desire to escape her hometown and leave her neurosis behind (psycho-note 1). The reawakening of Chieko’s desire reveals that what animates the narrative – its catalyst – is the tension between city life, a fantasy screen represented by Takeru, and the countryside, the mundane reality that phantasmatically imprisons Chieko and finds its support in Minoru, his father, and even the gas station.

What makes Nishikawa’s narrative so engaging and rewarding is the choice to make Takeru opaque to himself and to the spectator – one cannot get a frim grip on his subjective position and the desire that animates his actions. Why does he have a one-night-stand with Chieko while being fully aware of Minoru being set to marry her? Nishikawa insinuates jealousy as a motive, i.e. envy underpins Takeru’s sexual act, a quantum of agression towards his brother seduces him into trying to destroy the close relationship between Minoru and Chieko. The guilt that arises from his one-night-stand – the confrontation with his own agressive desire – seems to be the main motivator for Takeru’s further actions.

The narrative structure of Yureru, notwithstanding its chronological nature, has a rather unusual structure as it elides the objective truth of what happened on the bridge, only to slowly introduce, as the murder trail progresses, different subjective recollections, the whole of memory fragments glued together by the subject’s signular logic. The progression of the narrative keeps producing questions and, with each new piece of memory, earlier information is put into a new perspective.

Yureru‘s unusual structure is also function of the lie, the narrative’s central dynamic. The narrative explores in an elegant manner the way Minoru, Takeru and Chieko relate to the act of lying and its effects (e.g. guilt) (Narra-note 1). Yet, if we focus too much on the element of the lie, we run the risk to overlook the more radical truth Yureru stages: the inherent mendacious nature and the misrecognition characteristic of the (formation of the) ego (psycho-note 2). When Takeru is introduced to ‘more’ objective evidence, he is brutely confronted with the deceiving nature of his own ego – self-deception to deceive the other – and the desire that underpins this dynamic of deception. This revelation does not only have far-reaching emotional effects for Takeru but also  upsets the spectator. The vivid way in which the narrative reveals the unconfortable truth of the ego is, in fact, one of the reasons why Yureru must be considered a masterpiece.

Yet, besides the thematical depth, Nishikawa also creates an effective visual envelope to brings the story to life. What stands out in the composition is the way Nishikawa utilizes narrative space to staging of speech and, more importantly, silence (cine-note 1). The compositional simplicity (i.e. the long takes and fixed camera viewpoints) allows Nishikawa to ground speech in the narrative reality but also imply the presence of subjectivity by emphasizing silences – moments of silent reflection.

Nishikawa fully understands that subjectivity can only be evoked by rendering it inaccessible, by raising questions – what is he/she thinking? – instead of providing answers (Cine-note 2). The interplay of subjective silence and speech, as captured by the longer takes, infuse a certain forlorness into the atmosphere, while also generating some quantum of tension.

Subjectivity is also implied by the effective juxtapositioning of shots depicting narrative reality and shots that visualize subjective memories (narra-note 3). The emotional impact of the cinematography and the narrative it brings to life is further empowered by the sublime acting-performances. While each actor/actress provides depth and emotion to his/her characters, grounding them realistically in the dreary narrative reality, Teruyuki Kagawa does steal the show with his pitch-perfect performance.

While Yureru is only Miwa Nishikawa’s second feature film, her tale of deception and desire is a veritable cinematic masterpiece. Its brilliance does not lie in the narrative per se, but in the way Nishikawa structures her narrative to stage the mendacity of the ego in all its glory and how she utilizes compositional simplicity to imply subjectivity and render characters opaque to themselves – and the spectators. Anyone who considers himself a cinephile should check this intimate emotive meditation on the mendacity of the ego and the way reality is percieved out. The sooner the better.

Notes:

General Note 1: This review first appeared in 2015, but was revised in 2024.

Psycho-note 1: In a way, the movie underlines the fact that it is the distance between her and her dream, a distant screen – the screen is Tokyo and Takeru the one who represents is – where she projects her desires on, that keeps the dream alive.  It is Takeru who by his return makes this distance tangible, and as such brutally confronts her with this desire; this is beautifully shown in the shot where Chieko smells Takeru’s discarded cigarette packet. Nevertheless, and this is a fine touch, it’s Takeru himself who points Chieko – not that she wants to hear it – to the falseness of her fantasized Tokyo – in a way he even touches upon that fact that one cannot escape one’s neurosis.

Psycho-note 2: The memories Takeru has of the incident/ murder, the interpretations he made of that what he has seen are marked by his ego. In other words: his ego and especially the subjective recuperation of his personal history that this ego conditions, is that what determines Takeru’s interpretation and recollection.

Narra-note 1: For example, Chieko lies about her relation with Takeru, Takeru lies about his get together with Chieko, and Minoru ignores Takeru’s obvious lie.

Cine-note 1: Even though music is not often used in yureru, it is utilized effectively. The funky, bluesy diegetic music that accompanies Takeru’s driving reveals Takeru’s fashionable identity, while the piano music is successfully used to implicate feelings and to generate a shared atmosphere.

Cine-note 2: In the scene where Takeru is driving Chieko home, for example, the focus on Chieko’s lack of speech and the stillness of her facial expression renders Chieko, as subject, opaque to herself and to Takeru, who asked her a question.

Cine-note 3: The longer takes are for instance used to stage the anger bursts of the father – the one at the memorial service scene and the one in the kitchen, in an impactful way. Such longer takes are, also utilized to stage the Takeru’s affective erruption while showering and to frame Takeru’s and Minoru’s memories at the trail while Minoru is confessing.