'Love Life'
LIFE HACK: To find out if your husband really loves you, go through a major personal tragedy!
Sing a Song of Female Suffering
“Love Life,” the new melodrama by Japanese writer-director Kōji Fukada, is named for the 1991 song by Akiko Yano. The song also plays towards the middle and at the end of the film. It sounds very much like a tune from 1991 — tinkly, meandering vocals; plaintive guitar. A choppy translation of the lyrics indicates that it’s about love weathering long distances and mundane sorrows. It’s a perfectly nice little ditty. It is completely unclear why it is the centerpiece for this movie.
This film is, in many ways, a triumph. The scenes are intricately composed, unafraid to linger. Fukada’s finely-tuned atmosphere is apt to make you feel, for the 123-minute runtime, transported. But it’s unclear to what end this keen emotional manipulation is being employed. What is “Love Life” actually about? Certainly not the enduring devotion of the couple at its center.
Said couple are Taeko (Fimuno Kimura) and Jirõ (Kento Nagayama). They married fairly recently and are raising Taeko’s son, Keita (Tetta Shimada), together. As other family members come into the picture — namely Keita’s father and Jirõ’s austere parents — the complexity of their marriage comes to light. It turns out that Taeko has the deck stacked against her a bit. Jirõ’s parents don’t approve of her because she is a divorcee with a child, and she was Jirõs second pick for marriage. He was originally betrothed to another woman, but he did the honorable thing and married Taeko instead after he cheated on his fiancée with Taeko.
Oh, did I mention the woman Jirō was supposed to marry is a coworker of Jirõ and Taeko’s? And that Taeko doesn’t know about her?
There’s a lot going on in this movie, which is more concerned with its characters’ interpersonal dynamics than it is plot. That’s not to say nothing happens — a lot happens. Much of it centers on Taeko’s ex-husband, Park (Atom Sunada), a deaf man from Korea who reappears in her life after a major tragedy. The first thing he does upon said reappearance is smack her in the face. Nevertheless, Taeko, whose job is to aid the homeless, begins focusing all of her energy on helping him. Because, oh yeah, he’s also homeless, and he also only speaks Korean Sign Language, which Taeko also speaks.
While these labyrinthine backstories Fukada establishes will certainly keep you paying attention, you’d be faultless for wishing he knew how to self-edit. Particularly because if the central goal of this movie is to elucidate Taeko and Jirō’s relationship — as “Love Life,” the song, implies — the film does not succeed. While Taeko reels from an earth-shattering event, Jirō is just sort of there. Except for when he’s meeting up with the woman he was originally going to marry, of course.
Jirō’s arc is perhaps meant to gesture at feelings of guilt and displacement, but the film doesn’t spend enough time with him to properly communicate that. As a result, he looks like an absolute landfill of a husband, and much of the film is just about Taeko struggling not to drown in her own grief.
That’s not a terrible thing. Kimura is an excellent actress, and Taeko is a compelling character. But by the time the credits roll and Akiko Yano starts warbling again, Taeko’s immense suffering in the name of “love” feels pointless at best. If Jirõ’s companionship is supposed to be her consolation prize, she deserves a hefty refund.
Run time: 123 min.
Not recommended if you: have lost a child, hate infidelity, avoid melodramas.
I also reviewed “Oldboy” for my patrons this week. To access that review and many more, head over to my Patreon.