(Review of Remembering Every Night)
REMEMBERING EVERY NIGHT.
When Tama New Town was built outside Tokyo in the mid-1960s, it symbolised Japan's recovery from the devastation of the Second World War and the humiliation of American occupation. Six decades on, the new town is starting to show its age. As are the residents who once viewed it as a beacon of hope for a better future. Director Yui Kiyohara grew up amidst the neatly laid out housing, parkland, and communal facilities and she reflects upon their decline as a multi-generational in Remembering Every Night, her second feature after debuting with the 2017 ghost story, Our House.
Following a brief eavesdrop on a small band sitting under a park tree planning a forthcoming performance, the focus falls on Chizu (Kumi Hyôdô), as she sorts her post. Among the items is a moving notice from some old friends inviting her to drop into their new home.
Having failed to find anything suitable at the job centre, Chizu meets up with a friend at a pastry shop. She had to walk back, as she had taken the wrong bus and explains that she is finding it hard to cope after being coerced into leaving a job she liked because she was deemed unsuitable as an unmarried 44 year-old. Wandering home, she spots a couple of kids trying to reach a shuttlecock caught in a tree. She climbs up to fetch it, only to be left stranded when the youngsters wander off.
Chizu's plight is noticed in passing by Sanae (Minami Ohba), a thirtysomething gas meter reader on her rounds. A lonely woman calls her to her balcony for a chat and she claims things have changed in the neighbourhood because everyone got old together and the young people moved away. She foists a bag of fruit on Sanae, who pads past a tennis court on her way to her next appointment. A tannoy in the park announces that a 93 year-old dementia patient named Takada (Tadashi Okujno) has gone missing and Sanae spots him from the given description. He explains that he went home, only for his key not to work and Sanae realises that he's got lost. Offering to walk him home, she realises he has no idea where he's going and wonders what to do when he keeps ringing the doorbell at the wrong house while wondering why his wife doesn't answer.
Meanwhile Chizu can't resist joining in with the dance moves 22 year-old student Natsu (Ai Mikami) is doing in the park. She is cycling to see the mother of Dai, a classmate who had died a year ago to the day, and she is disappointed when the woman declines a ticket to collect some undeveloped photographs that her son had taken. Instead, she cycles along a wide and largely empty carriageway to meet a friend (Guama Uchida) for a museum visit. They look at artefacts unearthed during the building of Tama New Town and ponder the fact they are the only things left behind by the Jomon people, who had lived on the site centuries before. When they find a machine that replicates the sounds made by Jomon bells, they beat the rhythm on their thighs and giggle.
Over drinks, Natsu tells her friend she wants to be a dancer when she graduates and mentions that a strange woman had copied her routine while she was practicing in the park. Chizu is still wandering in the vicinity and hears a tannoy message about Mr Takada getting home safely. This is also heard by Sanae, who has gone to a house where the outdoor meter is running, even though the house isn't registered for gas.
The outcome of this incident goes unreported, as Sanae mooches in a fancy goods shop and buys a mug that plays a tune when you lift it up. Chizu asks for directions to find her friend's house, but learns from the neighbour that they had moved out six months earlier and she's saddened to realise that has probably lost contact for good. Meanwhile, Natsu goes to collect the photos taken by her classmate, but the docket is out of date and the assistant (Yûya Shintarô) says he will have to check the files to see if they still exist.
He is converting some home movies to digital and Sanae is watching him. When a cat appears on the screen, she tells him a story about a stray that she had tried to adopt, only for her parents to demur. She thought she saw the cat some time later riding in a cycle basket, but she couldn't be sure. Scenes from the tapes show lots of young children blowing out birthday candles, which reinforces how few kids currently lived in Tama. Contrasting with the candles are the sparklers that Natsu and her friend light in memory of Dai. He had taken pictures of them playing with fireworks before he died and they wonder who will remember him in 4500 years time because he didn't leave behind clay figurines like the ones they had seen in the museum.
Chizu sits on a bench and finishes the coffee in her flask. She watches the girls light the last of the fireworks, just as Sanae's friend sorts through the photos Dai had taken of the pair the previous year. As the darkness deepens, Sanae plays with the musical mug, as she watches the bus pull into the stop beneath her balcony. Chizu sits at home with a cuppa and a snack, while Natsu cycles home and parks her bike before going inside.
Such Dielmanesque details remind us of the discreet charm of the inconsequentialities that make up so much of our days. Kiyohara and cinematographer Yukiko Iioka capture the unremarkable comings and goings without prying, as they play out in a setting that becomes a character in its own right. The boxy buildings and wide roads receive less attention than the nooks and crannies and the glorious greenery, as Chizu gets unconcernedly lost, Sanae diligently does her rounds while keeping an eye on the elderly residents, and Natsu flits between moments of quiet reflection and upsurges of terpsichorean exhilaration. But a real sense of Tama New Town emerges, complete with the good intentions behind its planning and the unfortunate realities that have undermined them, as Kiyohara touches on everything from the enduring legacy of economic recession, the shift away from public housing, the impact of social conservatism on the lives of Japanese women, and the ongoing decline in birth rates.
The godfather of neo-realism, Cesare Zavattini, once claimed that `the ideal film would be ninety minutes in the life of a man to whom nothing happens'. Despite adding two women and an extra half-hour, Kiyohara takes him at his word here, although one also senses the influence on her and editor Azusa Yamazaki of such fine pacers of quotidian action as Naomi Kawase, Hong Sang-soo, and, of course, Chantal Akerman. It all adds up to an intriguing snapshot that leaves the viewer thinking they have got to know the three (deftly played) women, while not actually learning very much about them at all.
The same goes for the ad hoc combo in the opening scene, although it's tempting to suggest that the delightfully quirky score (actually by jon no son) is them in action. Complementing these short snatches is the sublime sound mix produced by Hwang Young-chang, which irresistibly draws attention to the number of foliage-rustling trees dotted around Tama New Town. They gracefully reinforce the notion that immediacy, ephemerality, and memory are forever jostling in any given life and that we should make the most of every second and respect even the most distant background players in our own little dramas.
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