The original Japanese title of "Perfect Days," the Wim Wenders film nominated recently for the foreign language Oscar, was "Komorebi." I'm told that means "sunlight leaking through trees." Neither title matches the tone of this portrait of Hirayama, a vaguely troubled middle-aged man who lives alone and follows a set routine, cleaning the public toilets of Tokyo by day, stopping in at a bar after work where everyone knows him, and spending his evenings at home reading Faulkner, Patricia Highsmith, and Aya Koda.
Hirayama is good at cleaning toilets, but there isn't much Zen in his approach. He's fast, careful, methodical, and efficient. He rarely speaks to his assistant or anyone else, often spending lunch breaks on a bench in a park photographing the branches of a nearby group of trees as they're jostled by the wind. In short, Hirayama has crafted a simple lifestyle that works well for him, though it seems to be driven less by enlightened satisfaction than caution and circumspection, and even hints of latent fear, like a dog who had a cruel master years ago and can't quite get over it.
Koji Yakusko won the best actor prize at Cannes for his portrayal of Hirayama, and we spend much of the film watching subtle changes in his expression. Though they're sometimes hard to read, Hirayama is clearly moved from time to time by a childlike glee, as when he watches a homeless man doing pantomimes in the park. On the other hand, when a woman sits on a bench near him twice in the same week to eat her sandwich, he's spooked; he doesn't know what to make of it.
The central mystery of Hirayama's back-story gurgles quietly beneath a succession of minor incidents involving, for example, his goofy assistant, whose demanding girlfriend steals one of the cassette tapes Hirayama plays every day on his way to work—The Velvet Underground, the Kinks, Otis Redding, Patti Smith. Some critics have taken Lou Reed's "Perfect Days" and Nina Simone's "Feelin' Good" as anthems of Hirayama's inner contentment, though it seems more likely that this music serves as an early morning pick-me-up to go along with the canned coffee Hirayama invariably buys from a vending machine in the alley before heading off to spend another day polishing sinks and urinals.
Critics have also found it significant that Hirayama is still playing cassettes, as if he were nobly eschewing streaming technology, but the simple truth is that he drives a dilapidated van fitted with a cassette player. What else is he going to do?
Fans of Wenders' early films such as Alice in the City and Kings of the Road will relish the relaxed pace, subtle humor, and seemingly random digressions that occupy much of Perfect Days, but when Hirayama's young niece, Nico, shows up at his apartment one night, out of the blue, and asks if she can spend a few days—she's run away from home—it gives the film an added dimension.
Some movie-goers will be disappointed, no doubt, by a film in which very little happens and not all is revealed. But often the things we remember best are those that remain unresolved--active little seas, dangerous at times, across the surface of which we live our lives.
Notes: This film began its life when the city of Tokyo hired Wenders to direct short videos about a few of their new public toilets, which had been newly designed by world-famous architects prior to the 2020 Olympics. Also worth a note--in Japanese public schools the students are typically assigned to clean the toilets.
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It's clear the cooks have been working together for a long time—Dodin Bouffant, Eugenie, and her young assistant Violette. The instructions they send back and forth across the capacious kitchen are kindly, and they don't look like servants. At this point we have no idea who these people are, nor do we know who they're cooking for.
We're eventually introduced to four or five well-dressed men sitting at a table in the next room. Dodin joins them. He's the master of the house, a true gourmand, and these are his aristocratic friends, all of whom share his passion for fine dining. They tell stories about Carême, Balzac, and Estouffier, glory in the subtleties of Meursault and Chambolle-Musigny, and have a jolly good time. Dodin and his friends gratefully acknowledge that Eugénie is the kitchen mastermind and deserves a large share of the credit for the results, and they've invited her to join them more than once. But she cheerfully declines, pointing out that it would be impossible in that case to keep the dishes coming.
The film's plot-points, such as they are, revolve around an exchange of dinners between Dodin and a Eurasian count of great wealth but limited taste; Dodin's fruitless efforts to get Eugenie to marry him—they've been lovers for years; and best of all, their attempts to educate Violette's young niece, who has an extraordinary gift for discerning flavors, in the culinary arts.
But plot and character remain subordinate to the food—how it's prepared, what it looks like. The settings are appealing, the lighting is exquisitely subdued throughout, and the stews, fish, vegetables, and desserts invariably look scrumptious. Eugenie puts a cheery face on things, though she often looks a little tired, and occasionally comes close to fainting. Dodin is a cypher: Where did he get his wealth? Is he writing a cookbook? You don't have to be a Marxist to ask, more generally, whether eating well can serve as the be-all and end-all of authentic living.
Director Tran Anh Hung never asks that question, and he doesn't have to. From an aesthetic perspective, The Taste of Things serves up a lovely meal, though perhaps a bit lukewarm. Maybe because we never get a chance to taste the food?
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The Strangeness is a gem of a film depicting a few days in life of Luigi Pirandello during which he returns to Sicily to attend to the death of the nanny who cared from him as a child. Along the way he discovers that Onofrio and Sebastiano, the two gravediggers handling the funeral, are also collaborating on a community play. Pirandello is suffering from writer's block, and while waiting for the interment he begins to take an interest in these two would-be dramatists, whose constant bickering constitute a running comedy routine.
I had no idea while watching the film that the actors playing the gravediggers were Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone, a well known comedy duo in Italy. Toni Servillo, whom you might recognize from The Hand of God or La Grande Bellezza, is also perfectly cast as the melancholy playwright, who sometimes stays up at night conversing with characters from his plays. Other townspeople, including Onofrio's sister and other members of the cast, also figure prominently in the film.
Opening night becomes a scene of mayhem, full of gaffes and accusations. The play cuts too close to home (as intended) and members of the audience who recognize unflattering versions of themselves on stage are outraged. A riot ensues. Pirandello watches it all from a box on the mezzanine. A few years later, he writes his masterpiece, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Not much of this story is true, though Pirandello was invited to Sicily to deliver a speech in 1920. But it doesn't really matter much. The joy in the film lies in the humor latent in small-town vanities and anxieties that are exposed during rehearsals and performance, and also the growing appreciation Pirandello feels for these Sicilian crooks and bumpkins, who possess their own flavors of sincerity and genius.
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