Sachio
Kinugasa writes under a pen-name, because he is the namesake of a famous
Japanese baseball player, but most viewers will simply think of him as the
cheating jackass. When his long-suffering wife dies in a bus accident, it
hardly phases him at all. However, he might finally start feeling something remotely
human when (to his own surprise) he befriends the grieving family of his wife’s
best friend, who died alongside her, in Miwa Nishikawa’s The Long Excuse (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.
Kinugasa
is rather put out that he now has to cook and clean for himself, but that is
about as far as it goes. On the other hand, Yoichi Omiya is utterly destroyed
by the loss of his wife. Assuming they share a kinship in their grief, Omiya
reaches out to Kinugasa, who goes through the motions, lest the world find out
what cold-hearted jerk he is. However, a minor emergency will force him to briefly
mind sixth-grade Shinpei Omiya.
It
turns out Shinpei is a smart kid, who starts to bond with Kinugasa. Pre-school-age
Akari also takes to him as well. Soon, he is regularly tending to the kids,
while their father, a long-haul trucker, is away on a run. It is exactly the
sort of TV-movie-style arrangement the celebrity-media he previously courted is
eager to exploit, but Kinugasa is of two-minds regarding their offers. Of
course, that is not a hard and fast no.
Excuse is the kind of film
that just lays a beatdown on viewers, yet there is absolutely, positively no
cheap, unearned sentiment to be found within it. Frankly, it is debatable just
how much Kinugasa evolves over the course of the narrative, but nobody could
say he emerges unscathed. Excuse is
probably the messiest emotional tangle you might ever see on film, but it is
all bitterly realistic, just like life.
This
is Masahiro Motoki’s most prominent film role since the Oscar-winning Departures, which is fitting, because Excuse could almost serve as a thematic
sequel. Both are all about grief and regret, but Nishikawa (adapting her own
novel) is too honest to wrap it up with a big pay-off. Regardless, Motoki
serves up his performance from the depth of his soul as the self-centered,
self-loathing Kinugasa. It is not pretty, but it is truly devastating.
Despite
their youth, both Kenshin Fujita and Tamaki Shiratori are absolutely extraordinary
as Shinpei and Akari. Pistol Takehara arrestingly conveys Omiya’s overwhelming
grief, while Maho Yamada is sweetly vulnerable as the woman he eventually
meets. Yet, Eri Fukatsu literally haunts the film as the smart, pretty, mature,
and ever so unappreciated Natsuko Kinugasa, only really seen and heard from
early in act one.
