How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 28 April 2014
This article is a review of THE LITTLE HOUSE.Seen at the Berlin International Film Festival 2014. (For more information, click here.)
|
“She died alone; she had every right to a happy ending.”
Director Yoji Yamada’s 82nd film. That’s right. Renowned for his sublime bushido warrior pics, THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI (2002) and THE HIDDEN BLADE (2004), his latest is a disappointing, melodramatic bore. Meant to be poignant and romantic, THE LITTLE HOUSE never enlivens.
Spanning decades, the historical sweep and emotional crunch of say ATONEMENT is absent. Taki (Chieko Baishô) has just passed away (it is 2009). Her relatives are boxing up possessions. An envelope is unearthed by nephew(?), Takeshi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), which triggers flashbacks to their conversations spanning nearly a decade. Takeshi’s visits encourage Taki to write her memoirs. An unassuming spinster, the young ladies man, and the audience, are mildly surprised at the emotional pain in delving into her past. When the movie concludes, we are even more surprised, as the secrets divulged are so anticlimactic.
Director Yoji Yamada’s 82nd film. That’s right. Renowned for his sublime bushido warrior pics, THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI (2002) and THE HIDDEN BLADE (2004), his latest is a disappointing, melodramatic bore. Meant to be poignant and romantic, THE LITTLE HOUSE never enlivens.
Spanning decades, the historical sweep and emotional crunch of say ATONEMENT is absent. Taki (Chieko Baishô) has just passed away (it is 2009). Her relatives are boxing up possessions. An envelope is unearthed by nephew(?), Takeshi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), which triggers flashbacks to their conversations spanning nearly a decade. Takeshi’s visits encourage Taki to write her memoirs. An unassuming spinster, the young ladies man, and the audience, are mildly surprised at the emotional pain in delving into her past. When the movie concludes, we are even more surprised, as the secrets divulged are so anticlimactic.
|
|
Now time shifts to 1936, an 18-year old Taki (played by Haru Kuroki – who surprisingly won the Silver Bear acting prize for a non-descript performance) has left her countryside home for Tokyo employment and eventual matrimony. Traditionally, young women gained work as maids in well-to-do homes, to acquire homemaking skills to aid them in future wifely duties. (Feminist implications are not commented upon.) Fortunately for Taki her mistress (Tokiko Hirai – Takako Matsu) and master (Masaki Hirai - Takatarô Kataoka) are benign. There she carries out various chores for the petit bourgeois, including looking after their son. So far, so what. Then Masaki’s new employee Itakura (Hidetaka Yoshioka) begins to be regularly invited, sending Tokiko aflutter. Chemistry and frisson are scrabbled for futilely. THE REMAINS OF THE DAY this is not.
Taki is meant to be our guide, but the character offers little insight. The crux of THE LITTLE HOUSE is an illicit relationship, the telling of which might have been a quiet divertissement 40 years ago; as it is, daytime television quality is the pervading sense. Even maestro music composer Joe Hisaishi (MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO, SONATINE) can’t inject feeling.
Stuck inside what looks to be a set on a studio soundstage, being moved among such artificial surroundings, that don’t enhance the story, by leaden camerawork, hammers home the ennui. Multiple time frames, for a narrative lacking the need for such a construct, make the eventual revelations all the more grating.
Sentimental melodrama of the most trying kind.