vs.
Okoge (Takehiro Nakajima, 1992) This had such a promising beginning. Not too many films from this bracket manage to elicit a lol within the first 5 minutes and this one totally succeeds on that account. The idea of a group of women with little kids ending up at a beach predominantly inhabited by gay men in skimpy thongs may not be the most original source for a lol but it works anyway. Plus, the film looks really rather colorful which is always a plus.
It's a little hard for me to review this film because it really feels like two films in one; one of which I like whereas the other left me mostly cold. So the first half of this movie feels really tender and genuine and heartfelt. We basically have a straight woman befriend this mostly closeted gay couple and she offers them the use of her apartment for their romantic trysts. The three of them end up developing this really tender and sweet relationship and this half of the movie focuses mostly on developing these three characters and the dynamic between them. At this point, I was really interested in this film. Firstly, barring a few scenes (characters wondering aloud about the nature vs. nurture debate w.r.t. homosexuality or about homosexuals in the army and so on), for the most part, the film avoids sermonizing and seems to let the story and the characters drive the agenda and the message. Even if it has a clear stance and takes a few potshots at homophobes, most of it feels good-natured and well-intentioned and sincere.
At this point, I was really excited about where this film was going. We could clearly see that the female character was getting overly invested in the two men and their relationship. Where I thought the film was going was to investigate where a dynamic like this could possibly lead. Here we have a dynamic thats basically warm and affectionate and yet dysfunctional and I was pretty amazed that a film that seems so obvious and simply melodramatic on the surface was trying to tackle something so nuanced.
Unfortunately, my prognosis regarding the second half was far from correct. One of the three main characters basically disappears for most of the second half to the film's detriment imo. The remaining two central characters go on to do really inexplicably stupid things (all of which conveniently involve lots of full-frontal nudity) that are neither consistent with the way their characters have been developed in the first half nor explained properly via plot points. They just seem random and idiotic. Following these shenanigans, we have twenty minutes of melodramatic plot resolution. Here again, we have some rather unnecessary drama and some heavy-handed monologues that seem out-of-place given the first half of the film.
So yeah, like I said before. It's two movies in one and the first one really deserves credit for being a reasonably realistic portrayal of the difficulties associated with a gay lifestyle in a conservative/rigid society, especially when it's presented from a straight woman's PoV. The second half, unfortunately, has no such nuance and just feels silly and ridiculous.
I Like You, I Like You Very Much (Hiroyuki Oki, 1994) Part of my eagerness to take on these Japanese dramas about homosexual relationships probably stems from my experience with Ryosuke Hashiguchi's
Like Grains of Sand which is one of my Top 5 discoveries from this bracket. I think what I was hoping for was a similar emotionally-resonant, subtle take on homosexuality in a mostly repressive society.
On the one hand, I was kind of happy to note that this wasn't Oki's agenda at all. Rather than take on the difficulties faced by gay couples because of the largely-heterosexual society that surrounds them, Oki is more concerned with the obstacles that the central couple in the film create for themselves. These obstacles being mostly the temptation posed by passing attractive strangers, ex-lovers and the like. But the film never really scratches beyond the surface of these transient temptations.
The film is shot in this really artsy way with lots of handheld camerawork and random jumpcuts and asynchronous voiceovers and the like. Most of it didn't really work all that well for me. It makes for some pretty screenshots etc. but most of it felt mostly unnecessarily elliptical to me. This is a pinku film and there's lots of sex scenes that I think are meant to feel mechanical and monotonous which they definitely do but unfortunately 30 minutes of that stuff in a 60 minute film makes it hard for me to figure out if it's the film or just these scenes that I'm finding boring.
I think the film sort of grew on me eventually and towards the end I found myself feeling bad for the central couple and hoping that they'd find a way to be happy together and what not. So I guess the film does succeed in evoking some genuine sentiment after all.
I apologize for such a sketchy review but I really don't have much else to say about this one. It just felt ultimately hollow and amateurish.
Verdict:
If I were to compare the second half of
Okoge to
I Like You, the latter would get a clear pass to the second round. But the first half of
Okoge is better than a lot of other stuff I've watched as a part of this bracket. So I'm going to move
Okoge forward pretty much on the basis of the strong first half and wait to see if pix sees more artistic merit in this award-winning pinku!