He
was the sort of guy who would always help a friend move. He would also loan them money without
grumbling. Yonosuke Yokomichi was a
mop-topped tool, but he had a good heart.
The impact he had on his college friends is slowly but surely revealed
in Shuichi Okita’s massively bittersweet A
Story of Yonosuke (trailer
here), which
screens today as a co-presentation of the 2013 Japan Cuts and this year’s NewYork Asian Film Festival.
In
the 1980’s, Japan’s booming economy had our opportunistic politicians worked up
into a protectionist fury. As a freshman
business administration student, Yokomichi would seem well placed to join the
economic elite, even if he is a naïve kid fresh off the bus from the coast. However, our protagonist’s college years will
be more defined by his involvement in the samba club than his course work.
Actually,
the samba club looks like a blast.
Characteristically, it was something he just fell into. Joining on freshman orientation day with two
recent acquaintances, he would stay, even after an unplanned pregnancy forced Kuramochi
and Akutsu to drop-out. Yet years later
as a happily married couple they reflect on how Yokomichi brought them
together.
Yusuke
Kato also has found memories of the title character, even though it took him a
while to warm up to the earnest doofus.
Nonetheless, it would be Yokomichi’s tolerance that the jaded Kato
remembers so fondly. Ironically, it is
Kato who introduces Yokomichi to Shoko Yosano, the great love of his life and
perhaps vice versa. It takes a while for
them to realize it though and given the film’s elegiac tone, it is probably safe
to assume they never really get in synch.
There
are no big known-down drag-out melodramatic episodes in Story. The film is too smart
for that kind of acting-out. Instead,
Okita focuses on the sort of small telling moments that become indelibly etched
in memory. When he finally delivers the
film’s Rosebud moment, it is devastatingly effective because of its casual
simplicity.
Somewhat
resembling a Japanese Louis Garrel, Kengo Kora is gangly and weirdly fidgety,
but he plays Yokomichi with a fresh-faced charisma that grows over the long
haul. The on-screen chemistry he forges
with Yoriko Yoshitaka’s Shoko Yosano is mature, complicated, and highly
credible. Likewise, her work as the one
who got away (or let him get away) is remarkably honest and multifaceted. As
her character evolves day-by-day and year-to-year, it is hard to say just what
their relationship truly meant to her, but it was definitely something. Yet, Ayumi
Ito is the film’s secret weapon, giving it unexpected bite as Chiharu Katase, a
scandalous older woman with whom Yokomichi develops a long-term flirtation.
