The Hand Puppet and the Maidens Three

Sometimes I really wonder about my subconscious choices. I'd just been complaining about how many bad movies I've been coming across and what did I do? I watched 2022's The Seed, a Shudder original movie. This post-deconstructionist, post-irony horror film consciously locks itself into only the most tired '70s and '80s horror movie formulae. It's like a Tarantino or Eli Roth movie without a soul.

Three beautiful young women played by mediocre actresses decide to holiday out in the middle of nowhere, the desert. Each one is more of a type than a character--there's the ruthless bitch, Dee (Lucy Martin), the wishy washy rich girl, Heather (Sophie Vavasseur), and the virtuous Final Girl (Chelsea Edge), Charlotte. Charlotte's the only brunette, the other two are blondes. The paths their characters take in the film are so clear from the beginning they might as well have had synopses printed on their bikinis.

The monster turns out to be an alien that falls from the sky during a meteor shower. It's obviously a hand puppet. The director, Sam Walker, claims to have been influenced by Eraserhead and it does have kind of a Gauze Baby quality. But I'm afraid its face reminded me more of Laserblast, as did the quality of the film generally.

The Seed is available on Shudder.

Twitter Sonnet #1564

The desert wages ate the fam'ly sketch.
The air encircles bats below the ball.
A crying dog denies commands to fetch.
The palace only left the banquet hall.
To leave behind pianos butts the train.
Entire staffs assort the cards for lunch.
Convening stars could crunch the harvest grain.
The cow bananas mooed about a bunch.
A ginger tea replaced the turtle's shell.
A breathing organ changed the lung for keys.
To start the car, the maiden rings a bell.
A falling star awoke the sleeping trees.
For tranquil dreams the bearded man returned.
Van Winkle sought the shade of fate unlearned.

The Middle of Mars

Last night I read two Sirenia Digests, numbers 188 and 189, which contained parts one and two of M is for Mars, a novella Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote back in 2016. It's a nice peek into a world Caitlin has explored in other stories, a fictional, colonised Mars inhabited entirely by women due to an infectious agent in the atmosphere that affects only biological males.

M is for Mars feels a lot like the middle of a longer story. It follows a professor names Babette Flanagan who gets mixed up in some business involving a crashed ship. We learn that she fled from another town where she committed a crime of some kind but we never learn what that crime was. It's kind of an interesting Rorschach test for the reader. Some readers will be inclined to assume she didn't do anything particularly bad and that it was only tyrannical laws that got her in trouble, others will assume she's really guilty of something terrible and ought to seek atonement.

That's half of what turns out to be what you might call book-ends of blanks. The story ends without really providing the answers to tantalising prompts that come up. Like a lot of Caitlin's fiction, M is for Mars also features a lot of dialogue between characters asking each other questions and avoiding answering any of them, usually with a lot of swearing. It's good.

On another subject, lately I've been experimenting with putting my blog entries on YouTube. So far I've made videos for Snow White and Raya and the Last Dragon. Enjoy.

All Too Fitting

Want to see perfection? It's available for twelve more days on Amazon Prime. Now streaming is 1961's The Misfits, one of the most perfect movies ever made. Marilyn Monroe stars in a movie written by her husband, the great playwright Arthur Miller. And it's kind of a movie about her as well as more generally about people adrift in a world that has no place for them.

It's funny to say that about Monroe or her character, Roslyn. If anyone has a place in this world, surely it's Marilyn Monroe whose image even to-day, even here in Japan, is instantly recognisable. But Arthur Miller and director John Huston's portrait of a woman increasingly desperate to make connexions with men even as she's surrounded by men who adore her is keen as a razor.

Somewhere between the fantasy she can't live up to and her own need for affection is a place of complete psychological isolation. One suspects Monroe knew a lot of guys like Eli Wallach's character, Guido, whose fervour is all about his needs. "Give me a reason," he says, like the Portishead lyric, and that's when she realises the former bomber could "blow up the world" and all he'd be sorry for was himself. How far would Marilyn have to get with a guy before she realised all of his demonstrations of love were entirely selfish? It would be hard enough for most people in her shoes, it was probably twenty times harder in a Hollywood filled with narcissists.

Clark Gable's character, Gay, is the best guy for her, the dream man that probably never existed. "How do you just live?" she asks him when he tells her how simple his life is as a cowboy. In the climax we find his freedom does come at a price his conscience is finally no longer willing to pay. But he'd probably always have a certain equanimity about him, a quality that allows him to tell Roslyn she's so beautiful, "It's kind of an honour," just to sit next to her. But not greedily clutch at her the way Guido does or pathetically the way Perce, Montgomery Clift's character, does.

He's another lost soul perfectly cast. But he's looking for a mother, that's clear from his introductory scene where tries to make his real mother proud of his rodeo achievement in a pathetic phone call. He's not as independent as Gay but both of them want something at that dangerous rodeo that Roslyn can't understand. She screams in despair every time Perce falls off the horse. She's always trying to patch up wounds in others that may not even exist, much to Gay's evident irritation. And finally it seems obvious that her response to her own psychological pain is to project it on others rather than try to heal it in herself. Maybe that wasn't even possible.

They keep making biopics about Marilyn Monroe but they needn't bother. Nothing's ever going to top The Misfits.

O for Six

A brilliant cellist called Felix invites a biographer to his estate packed with beautiful women in 1964's All These Women. Roger Ebert called it Ingmar Bergman's worst film and, yeah, I guess I can buy that. Though he shouldn't shoulder all the blame since the screenplay was co-written by actor Erland Josephson, who does not appear in the film. Unlike Bergman's other comedies, the humour in All These Women relies on postmodernist, fourth wall breaking. Yeah, it was tired decades before everyone thought Deadpool invented it.

I'm not having good luck picking movies lately. I really want to see something good I'd never seen before. Normally, I can always rely on Bergman but the only part of this movie that made me laugh was when I misread the credit for makeup assistant Britt Falkemo as "Butt Volcano". That's what you get for putting your credits in decorative script.

It is Bergman's first colour film and it is beautiful. I just wish these images were in service of something besides dumb slapstick.

Look how eerie that image is. Let's pretend it's not for a scene with a tone akin to Yosemite Sam chasing a varmint.

There are several beautiful women--Bibi Andersson, Harriet Anderson, Eva Dahlbeck, and Mona Malm all look great. Sadly, most of the movie follows Jarl Kulle as the biographer, mugging for the camera and knocking over statues.

All These Women is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1533

The phantom mail was waiting hours late.
The cheesy shield was weak against a witch.
To bring a wrench would change the screwy fate.
We called the hazard trench a quaky ditch.
The pixels died beneath the waves of light.
A play of green and black and gold commenced.
Against the boat, the surface picked a fight.
You'll never squash what foam and wash foments.
The cherry syrup masks the legal dream.
Escaping stars convened to map the gold.
Approaching trees are what they always seem.
The wooden posts a chilly ceiling hold.
A perfect cake cannot conceal the pie.
Another buzzing pixel swelled the lie.

On Ondine Time

Trying to decide what to watch for Saint Patrick's Day last night, I searched for "Neil Jordan" on HBOMax and only Ondine and Mona Lisa came up. So I started watching Ondine, though I reviewed it back in 2013 and, though I liked it, I didn't remember it making a big impression on me. It still doesn't blow me down but the cinematography is awfully pretty, as is Alicja Bachleda.

Where's she been since Ondine came out in 2009? According to Wikipedia, she hasn't made a movie since 2016 and her latest credit is a 2019 Wolfenstein video game. I hope she retired out of choice.

She had a son with her Ondine co-star, Colin Farrell, in 2009, the same year Ondine was released, but she and Farrell separated the next year. So much for the fairy tale.

They both give good performances in Ondine, which is kind of like an anti-Secret of Roan Inish. Like Secret of Roan Inish, it's about a woman believed to be a selkie and there's an adorable, precocious little girl involved in the story. In Ondine, she was born with a diseased kidney and at her young age, Annie (Alison Barry) is forced to go about in a motorised wheelchair.

There's an incidental plug for the Irish healthcare system. A girl from a family of like economic circumstances in the U.S. would probably have to make do with crutches. Though I imagine crutches from a hospital in the U.S. don't go for less than two grand.

If there's a real problem with the film, it's that it spends too little time on the moral problem of the third act, when someone dying unexpectedly ends up benefiting the main cast. The movie completely glosses over how Annie feels about it.

The film's at its best when it's just a sweet, well photographed romance. When Ondine (Bachleda) is traipsing about half naked and Circus (Farrell) is watching her, perplexed by her beauty and her ability to summon salmon by singing a Sigur Ros song.

I had grilled salmon for dinner last night while watching the movie, along with boiled cabbage and potato I'd boiled then fried in butter. It seemed decently Irish to me.

Ondine is available on HBOMax.

The Discount Plough and Imported Stars

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone, from where it starts early, Japan. I decided to watch an Irish movie last night and chose 1937's The Plough and the Stars. Really it's an American film though it has an almost entirely Irish cast and was directed by first generation Irish American John Ford. Based on an Irish play of the same name about the Easter Rising of 1916, Ford was unhappy with the finished product due to changes made by RKO to it. It has its good qualities, particularly from the supporting cast, but it's far from the best of Ford's career.

The studio mandated the inclusion of Hollywood stars in the leads. Preston Foster and Barbara Stanwyck play Jack and Nora Clitheroe. Jack's in the IRA and has just been promoted to a command position despite Nora's desire that he stay out of the fighting.

I love Barbara Stanwyck but this was not her finest hour by any stretch of the imagination. She spends the whole film on the same whiny note, begging her husband not to fight the British and complaining to everyone else that her husband's fighting the British.

Some of the supporting cast would go on to be Ford regulars, most notably Barry Fitzgerald whose amusing antics in the pub are definitely the highlight of the film.

The Plough and the Stars is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1532

A syrup jam results in flooded cakes.
And yet, we never thought to break the fast.
For eating right we read for extra steaks.
Supplies exhausted, skies provide repast.
A thinning face revealed a working brain.
As time conspires now for twitching nose.
The little phantoms load a gun with grain.
The scattered seeds produce a picture pose.
Her latest int'rest seeks her only feet.
A tiny smudge of paint could change the house.
We built the palace steps of moss and peat.
The place exceeds the plans of dreaming mouse.
The screen in shades of green displayed the hills.
With hours, dimes, and sweat, we paid the bills.

Meaning Dissolves into Song

I have to admit, I've never been a fan of 1961's West Side Story. I love a lot of its components. I love several of the songs, particularly "Somewhere". I love the cast, especially Richard Beymer and Rita Moreno. I love Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare play on which the story's based. The trouble is, most of the three hour runtime is dominated by gang business and I never understood the gangs' motivations, something which is undercut even further by the fact that they dance half the time. I disagree with the film's interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, which I don't think is about the redemptive power of love but about the tragedy of two young people who get carried away with their feelings before they know any better. And, certainly, Shakespeare's dialogue is a lot better than Ernest Lehman's.

It's not like I don't "get" '50s American gangs. Show me The Wild One or The Outsiders and I'll be happy. Those movies make it very clear what motivates the young men, the alienation they feel from their society and their confusion manifesting in naturally aggressive instincts. We never even see any parents in West Side Story. The characters talk about them, about this or that their parents might not approve of, but we never see them to judge for ourselves just how valid these complaints are.

The Puerto Rican gang is a little more plausible than the Jets when the police detective clearly seems to be taking a side against them based on race. But it doesn't seem clear why they would fight the Jets instead of the cops, or target property owners or other people who could be seen as more directly connected with a system that shuts them out.

Tony (Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) are actually a little annoying. Without Shakespeare's dialogue vividly putting you in that place of being madly in love, they just seem kind of dumb, and irritatingly so, especially when Maria insists that Tony stop the rumble. What did they really think would happen when he tried it?

The only character in the movie who really works for me is Anybodys (Susan Oakes). Her motivation is clear--she wants to be part of the gang. The obstacle between her and attaining her goal is also clear--she's a girl (biologically; she may be transgender). So when a member of the gang calls her "buddy boy" after she manages to help the Jets, there's a real sense of triumph as well as concern for her that so much of her self-worth is tied up in a doomed bunch of hoodlums.

Otherwise, I can enjoy the musical numbers and some of the sets, but mostly I spend a viewing of West Side Story waiting for it to finally end.

West Side Story (1961) is currently available on HBOMax.

The Man and the Marlin

An old man risks his life for his livelihood in Ernest Hemingway's final completed work, the 1951 novella The Old Man and the Sea. Just an average old man in Cuba, going out to sea to catch fish. But extraordinary because of all he knows about the sea, because of all he's able to endure not just for his age but for anyone. And, yet, again, this kind of extraordinary must be kind of ordinary in such a fishing community.

We're treated to little snippets of the man's past. Maybe he's not so average. He reminisces about winning an arm wrestling competition and about the Canary Islands and lions on an African beach. Mostly he's alone throughout the story and Hemingway uses a nice technique for dialogue, having the old man give a back and forth between what he speaks and what he thinks. It's one of the most natural internal dialogues I've ever come across in fiction.

This one old man manages the tiller and the sail on his little skiff while worrying about his harpoon and the line that finally connects him to an enormous marlin. He's old and he can't do this forever. But what else can he do? Anyway, it's a magnificent way to live as well as wretched.

William Hurt

William Hurt died yesterday. A great leading man in the '80s, by the late '90s he'd established himself in a solid career of great supporting performances. Suddenly William Hurt would turn up in a movie and he'd either elevate or perfectly complement the material.

I haven't seen most of his famous leading roles. I only recently saw Body Heat, a neo-noir from 1981, the year he became a big name. In that movie he has to be vulgar and sophisticated, carnal and canny, and he pulls it off. It's this mix of inviting warmth and selfish sensuality that made him so effective, that made him so good in small roles. Because he needed hardly any time to get the ball rolling.

I remember how stunned everyone was when he turned up as a mob boss in David Cronenberg's History of Violence in 2005. Everyone had somehow gotten used to him in softball, romantic leads. Suddenly that carnality from the '80s was working for him to make an effectively frightening gangster.

And then there are plenty of roles that weren't so much talked about but were crucial to making their films what they are. The father figure and robotics engineer in Spielberg's A.I., Thaddeus Ross in the MCU, and the real life knight, Sir William Marshal, in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. He was one of the few things I liked about that movie.

Last year I also listened to him read me Ernest Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises in audiobook. That mix of earnest empathy and indulgent vulgarity made him perfect for a young Hemmingway. There was certainly no other actor quite like him.

That Old Batman is Young Again

Once again, another man dons the cowl and beats up bad guys in Gotham City, and this time he's Robert Pattinson. 2022's The Batman has neither the anxious realism of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight nor the outright fantasy of Burton's films, coming somewhere in between. The result is a decent, kind of cosy Batman film. Director Matt Reeves' muse seems like a marble that circles in the funnel of Batman expectations to settle in the middle of what everyone is comfortable with. So, on the same token, it takes the fewest risks of any Batman film I've seen. But it's a decent way to spend three hours.

The strongest part of the film, for me (and a lot of other critics), is Michael Giacchino's score. Nirvana's "Something in the Way" is significantly featured in he film and Giacchino's grim, minor key, bass heavy score flows perfectly with it (though Giacchino claims it's a complete coincidence).

It serves to help create a sense of Gotham City as a place with an identity distinct from any real world city, something no filmmaker has really managed since Tim Burton. Reeves' Gotham is a place of dim copper light and Expressionistic shadows. Greig Fraser, the cinematographer behind Rogue One and the recent Dune, delivers once again.

Pattinson's Batman is a younger and much angrier take on the role than we've ever seen on film. Part of the point of the plot is that his Bruce Wayne is like a malnourished limb while all the nutrients are poured into his masked persona. He's consumed with the desire to fight an unending tide of criminality. Here's where an R rating would've helped this film tremendously. To help us get into Batman's mindset, it would have really helped for the audience to be oppressed a bit by the grim, unrelenting details of crime in the city. Instead, we go straight to a sequence about how Batman uses psychological tactics, making criminals believe that every shadow could be Batman.

Which is great but would've been better if it had been a response to just how scary Gotham is. Similarly, there's the cool car chase from the trailer where Batman just can't be stopped in his pursuit of the Penguin (Colin Farrell). It would've been much better if we'd had some idea of just what the Penguin's guilty of at that point, maybe a few very loathsome things that make us hate him so much that Batman's victory is a catharsis.

Farrell's performance is certainly the most interesting in the film, though he's basically doing a Robert De Niro impression. But there are plenty of good performances in the film. Jeffrey Wright is solid as Gordon as is Andy Serkis as Alfred. Paul Dano as the Riddler has one excellent moment when he realises he was wrong about something regarding Batman. Pattinson is fine as Batman. He's neither the revelation Michael Keaton's oddball casting was nor the pure force of nature Christian Bale is. Pattinson and the suit accomplish a lot with mere physical presence and one of the best ideas this film has is that Batman can accomplish a lot when he does very little.

Zoe Kravitz gives an adequate performance as Catwoman but the script doesn't make much of her. It's not quite clear to me why she needs to be Catwoman, she could easily have been just any ordinary young woman who happens to get mixed up in all this. She's certainly never at any moment in the villain category.

I would have liked some idea of how the general populace viewed Batman. There are some headlines and plenty of comments from the cops but, unlike the Nolan movies, you never get a sense of whether the people of Gotham consider him a hero or a menace or if there's debate about it. This becomes a problem when the final act of the film hinges on the impression Batman creates in both his foes and the ordinary denizens of Gotham. There's a nice moment where Batman realises he needs to expand his repertoire that would've been much better if we knew how most people thought of him.

The fight scenes are good and, like with the Ben Affleck iteration, they were clearly influenced by the Arkham Asylum video games, much to their credit.

Overall, this movie's like putting on a comfortable old shoe. It so much has the tone of an average issue of the comic or episode of the animated series, it feels instantly familiar. There are few surprises but sometimes it's nice to know what to expect.

Twitter Sonnet #1531

Another paper's pasted over blinks.
A burning brand absorbed the talk of Force.
A solemn setting ruined Mister Binks.
Computer changes hid the earthly horse.
A baby key was kept before the light.
The power song was lost behind the tank.
A scarlet moon observed the panda's plight.
A plastic sword advanced another rank.
Familiar faces soak in copper pools.
The heat required melts the waffle cone.
But March arrives and Duchess cools.
The waiting pepper pot engaged the tone.
The city copper floods behind the eyes.
The ark was baked in ham asylum pies.

A Girl Absorbs the Red Puberty Panda

In the heart of every straight-laced young girl, there lurks a raging red panda, waiting to let loose. That's the idea behind 2022's Turning Red (the idea's not about turning Communist, thank goodness). The latest film from Pixar to be dumped straight to Disney+ is once again better written than the films Disney has recently released theatrically. It's an adorable and surprisingly raunchy teen comedy, almost like a John Hughes movie, an impression heightened by the main character's resemblance to Molly Ringwald.

But actually Mei (Rosalie Chiang) is of Chinese ancestry, the film being set in Toronto--for no apparent reason in 2002. Except maybe it's to be close to the time of writer/director Domee Shi's childhood as I suspect the film is very personal. I don't agree with the current politics that say every story's subject matter should be matched for the gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of its writer/director but Shi has real passion for writing about a teen's struggle with emotional repression. This movie is the true successor to Frozen, though it doesn't have any musical numbers as strong as "Let It Go", despite all the songs being co-written by Billie Eilish (despite the fact that Eilish isn't Asian).

Surprisingly, all the songs Eilish co-wrote with her brother, Finneas O'Connell, are for a fictional, typically sugary, boy band called 4*Town. Thirteen year old Mei and her circle of friends are obsessed with this group, something that strongly reminded me of the junior high school girls I teach here in Japan. Believe me, it takes very little prompting to induce them to expostulate at length on the virtues of Snowman, Johnny's West, or Strawberry Prince. That's another reason I don't see why this movie needed to be set in 2002. Maybe Shi just didn't want to figure out how to incorporate texting into the plot.

Toronto sure is a lot more colourful than it is in David Cronenberg movies.

Mei's relationship with her mother, Ming Lee (Sandra Oh), is at the heart of the film's drama. At the onset of puberty, the women of their family start turning into giant red pandas whenever they feel strong emotions. The metaphor for real teen anxiety is obvious and, of course, has been mined many times for stories, though usually stories about boys. But I was reminded of Kare Kano or maybe even Carrie. And, of course, Frozen.

The tight psychological grip Ming Lee has on her daughter is of a kind pretty famous in East Asian cultures. And, oh boy, can I certainly see it here in Japan. Some of the wilder, more transgressive students tell me about it directly, but even they're a bit reluctant. I remember one girl confiding to me that her mother is "an ogre". She must have looked up the translation for "oni" before talking to me. It's a relationship that extends beyond the family and girls will look to other older women for approval before they do anything. I remember talking to a young woman in a restaurant who looked to an older woman present for tacit authorisation before she responded to one of my questions. The older woman smiled and nodded and suddenly the young woman became quite talkative.

It's pretty bold for a Disney film to so directly criticise such a deeply entrenched cultural practice. There's no even-handedness about it, no moment where Mei realises maybe it's a good thing her mother's so much in her business sometimes. No, Ming Lee is the embarrassing helicopter mother who hides behind a tree to watch Mei in class and then tells her, in front of everyone, that her daughter forgot to bring her tampons to school.

Mei finds she can control her panda by remembering her love for her circle of friends, which is sweet, though I wonder if the implications of transferred codependency occurred to Shi. One teen problem at a time, I guess.

Turning Red is available on Disney+.

Carried to Nothing

Caitlin R. Kiernan's Sirena Digest #188 came out to-day but I just caught up with #187, the second part of "A Barrenness of Daffodils, A Lerna of Ills". I liked this second part more than the first, and I liked the first. There's a warmer melancholy about it. It follows an innocent protagonists as she navigates life in a post-apocalyptic New York. I especially liked a sequence with a doomed, red-headed time traveller from the '80s, who might almost be Mel from Doctor Who except she's not annoying. Her scene and one in a museum helped convey the idea of lost dreams, an inevitability in Hell.

Caitlin's description of what happens to pregnant women who are victims of the plague reminded me of Sin in Paradise Lost or Errour in The Faerie Queene.

And as she lay upon the durtie ground,
Her huge long taile her den all overspred,
Yet was in knots and many boughtes upwound,
Pointed with mortall sting. Of her there bred
A thousand yong ones, which she dayly fed,
Sucking upon her poisnous dugs, eachone
Of sundry shapes, yet all ill favored:
Soone as that uncouth light upon them shone,
Into her mouth they crept, and suddain all were gone.

Thinking about the problem in a story set in a future where few, if any, babies can be born, I found the contradiction a bit chilling. Like I was reading about ghosts who have shaped reality to serve their delusion of life.

Somewhere, a Cop

Beverly Hills might be famous for how hip it is but it's a cop from Detroit who's hippest of all in 1984's Beverly Hills Cop. This action comedy succeeds largely on the strength of its performances, particularly Eddie Murphy's in the lead role. But there are many valuable performances of cluelessness to help convey just how clued in Murphy's Detective Foley is.

The most notable probably being Judge Reinhold as Detective Rosewood who readily accepts as truth Foley's assurances of good intentions and affection. Seeing him crestfallen at the strip club when he realises Foley's making fun of him is effectively hilarious for how honest it comes off.

Two years earlier, of course, Reinhold was caught masturbating by Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. '80s cinema was just constantly hazing this guy. But in Beverly Hills Cop, he's the Nigel Bruce Watson to Murphy's Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes.

Foley's talent, drawing on Murphy's committed impressions and comedic timing, is for pulling scams. He can bluff his way easily into an expensive hotel or country club, or pass himself off as a customs agent in a gangster's warehouse. He has a satisfyingly Buggs Bunny-ish, wiseass quality that's all the more satisfying because you can see his victims, particularly Ronny Cox, are conscious of being had even as they're equally conscious of their impotence.

The action sequences are never quite as effective as the comedy, especially in the climax which involves a lot of machine gun fire miraculously missing its target. But the comedy and the personalities at work are so good you forgive it.

The personality of Detroit in the beginning of the film is a lot more interesting than the scenes of Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is still such an over-exposed place cinematically but it's been a long time since Detroit made regular appearances in American films. It sure seems to have been a popular place for movies in the '80s, though. Just off the top of my head, it wasn't just a setting but highlighted in Flashdance and Dr. Detroit.

Beverly Hills Cop is available on Netflix.

Twitter Sonnet #1530

The dripping frond exists in velvet shade.
A hazy mark appeared beneath the tide.
A sudden giant ran to take the glade.
The turn of fear compelled the men to ride.
Confusion rushed from country past revenge.
Assorted blades became resplendent lawns.
Erupting lashes closed azure to binge.
Reflexive hazel held ten thousand dawns.
Banana methods seal the queen's valise.
With marble people watching, stairs were made.
A village mine would need the finest cheese.
For only cake would workers make the trade.
A timer told the kids to go to school.
A weed controlled the depth of lover's pool.

A Fantastic Event at an Abnormal Time

A high school girl's affections are torn between a fellow student and her homeroom teacher in 2017's Daytime Shooting Star (ひるなかの流星). It's a pretty lightweight romantic comedy that very gently flirts with the idea of a high school girl dating one of her teachers, a bit more conservatively than After the Rain. The film is filled with safely cliche beats but the leads are genuinely cute and charming, particularly Mei Nagano as Suzume.

Suzume's a girl from the country who goes to live with her uncle (Ryuta Sato) in Tokyo. She's overwhelmed by the city and faints when she spots a shooting star in the daytime. A scruffy young man catches her who turns out to be a friend of her uncle's--as well as her new homeroom teacher, Shishio (Shohei Miura).

On her first day at school, the nervous but earnest Suzume finds she's also sitting next to a handsome boy named Mamura (Alan Shirahama) who gallantly offers to share his text book with her. But he recoils when she accidentally brushes his hand and cgi gives him a fierce blush. It turns out he's deathly afraid of girls.

Suzume also makes a female frenemy, Yuyuka (Maika Yamamoto), who has a crush on Mamura. In a pretty standard scene, Yuyuka tries to pull a prank on Suzume but, when it looks like she'll be caught in the act, Suzume covers for her, and the two are friends after that. It's amazing how cliches can cross cultural boundaries.

For most of the film, it feels like Suzume's going to end up with Shishio and Yuyuka's going to end up with Mamura. That would be a pretty radical outcome, though, in a country where I just read about the latest four teachers to be arrested for sleeping with students (and I hear about a lot more that don't get caught). It's a sad problem. Girls should be free to innocently fantasise about this stuff without adults who take advantage of their innocence.

I watched this movie because many students recommended it to me in the letters they wrote to me. Now I know why they kept asking me if I like Mei Nagano. She's cute. With her big nose, she kind of looks like Setsuko Hara. For some reason, the kids aren't thrilled when I recommend Mikio Naruse movies from the '50s.

Daytime Shooting Star is available on Netflix in Japan.