It
started with Alain Resnais and now another French crew has come to contemplate
the tragedy of Hiroshima. Of course, Akihiro’s interest makes perfect sense,
since he is a Japanese expat working for French television, but the assignment still
affects him more than he expected in Jean-Gabriel Périot’s Summer Lights
(trailer here),
which screens during the 2017 Japan Cuts Festival of New Japanese Film in New
York.
The
interview Akihiro records with Mrs. Takeda is so powerful, Périot lets it play
in its entirety as a twenty-minute uninterrupted prologue, before the opening
credits roll. In it, she tells how her beloved mother was lost without a trace
and her pretty older sister Michiko, a nurse who cared for the sick and dying,
eventually succumbed to radiation sickness. Akihiro is so overwhelmed by her
testimony, he abruptly leaves his crew to clear his head in Peace Memorial
Park.
However,
a rather forward woman in traditional dress seems determined to strike up a
conversation with him. She is a little odd, but he finds her company inexplicably
comforting. Through her, Akihiro will learn more about what the aftermath was
really like. Yes, her name also happens to be Michiko, from which you can
probably deduce more than Akihiro. Yet, the inevitable revelation and ultimate
takeaway are portrayed in such a simple and straightforward manner, they become
profoundly beautiful.
What
the Takedas endured is truly heart-rending. Of course, what is missing from Lights are the atrocities of the Rape of
Nanjing, the Bataan Death March, the terror-bombing of Chongqing, and the systematic
enslavement of so-called “Comfort Women,” none of which was likely to end
without a profound shock to rigid Imperial military hierarchy. Perhaps it would
be awkward for Périot to address such points, but the truth is always more
complicated than reductive peace slogans.
Regardless,
Akane Tatsukawa is absolutely remarkable as the deceptively light-hearted
Michiko. Appropriately, she has a fishing scene, because she reels us in and
then clobbers us. Hiroto Ogi’s Akihiro initially comes across as pretty dense,
but he sneaks up on the audience and crystallizes the entire film in the third
act. Yet, nobody can touch the plain-spoken power and dignity of Mamako
Yoneyama’s performance as Mrs. Takeda.
