Yes,
this is another one of those movies from Nikkatsu, but you would hardly know it
from watching. Technically, these women are escorts, not prostitutes, but that
is only a legal-semantic distinction. Regardless, when they ply their trade
it is often unseemly and sometimes downright alarming, but never titillating.
Human nature is as grubby as ever in Kazuya Shiraishi’s Dawn of the Felines (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.
Ironically,
Masako frequently lacks a bed to sleep in, because the debt-laden former
professional is essentially homeless. She usually sleeps in internet café booths,
but Takada, a financial self-sufficient hikikomori client, extends an open
invitation to sleep over, with no quid pro quos. It sounds like a good deal,
but something about the way he embraces the worst impulses of the internet
makes her wary.
Rie
is actually the only housewife employed by the agency supposedly offering wayward
home-makers. She caught her husband cheating, so she now secretly returns the
favor multiple times over, but without any emotional entanglements. At least
that was the plan, but instead she draws a grieving widower as a regular
client. It is not clear what he wants from her, but it is not sex. That’s just
not happening for him anymore.
Yui
seems like the perkiest and most upbeat of the focal trio, but the bruises on
her little boy Kenta suggest otherwise. She will disappear for days, leaving
Kenta in the care of a veritable stranger, but that Craigslist sitter is easily
the most redemptive man in the film. Thanks to him, Dawn cannot be accurately characterized as anti-male, but he is
mistreated rather badly for his efforts. No good deed.
If
any of this turns you on seek professional help immediately. The title
deliberately echoes the 1972 naughty Nikkatsu Night of the Felines and Kazuko Shirakawa, the star of the Apartment Wife franchise, appears in a
cameo, but the tone of Dawn is much
closer to Michael Glawogger’s observational expose, Whores’ Glory. Best known for gritty crime dramas, like Twisted Justice and The Devil’s Path, Shiraishi brings the same sensibilities to bear when
portraying the oldest profession.
Furthermore,
these are a far cry from the sort of performances you typically find in
exploitation films. Juri Ihata’s portrayal of Masako is richly complex and
rigorously unsentimental. She plays her tough and smart, but also quite
vulnerable. Satsuki Maue effectively brings out the Jekyll and Hyde in Yui, but
the one-named Michie probably takes the honors with her mature yet frequently
surprising work as Rie.