The disingenuous act like the tiktok divestment bill is an attack on the Interstate Highway system, but apps come and go all the time. When did you last check your Myspace page? In this film, the Mimi app is already past its prime, but one of its most viral users still pulls a frustrated office drone into the mystery of her life in Takamasa Oe’s Whale Bones, which screens today during this year’s Japan Cuts.
Poor tragically-average Mamiya is blindsided when his fiancée dumps him, so he goes on a traditional hook-up app, where he meets the woman whom he will know as Aska. This film really is not about that app. Instead, it is all about who Aska is, or was. Even though he quite likes her, their date takes a surprisingly dark turn, leaving him wondering about her.
Aska explained her status as one of the top users of Mimi, which is sort of like tiktok, except each video is geo-synched to a particular location. To see the video, you must be at the spot where it was “buried.” To sleuth out the truth of Aska, Miyami must discover all the videos she buried. Some are well known by her followers, who still revisit them often, but others remain largely secret.
In some ways, Whale Bones (a terrible, misleading title for an otherwise very smart film) feels more speculative than it probably is. Quite strikingly, Oe stages each buried video as if Aska is in the room talking to Miyami, like a full-size hologram, even though she is really just a video on his smart phone. As a dramatic technique, it is brilliantly effective—sometimes devastatingly so. It also would make an amazing double feature with Morel’s Invention, which would be spoilery to that Italian film to explain.
J-pop singer Ano is also absolutely remarkable as Aska. It is an acutely sensitive and deeply haunting performance. Motoko Ochiai work as Mamiya somewhat “flies under the radar,” but his eventually awakening and maturation turns out to be surprisingly rewarding.
That is rather true of the film itself. It starts slowly, but it pays off enormously. It is a keenly intelligent meditation on how technology effects the ways people relate to each other, for better and/or worse. Very highly recommended, Whale Bones screens today (7/14) as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.