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The UK’s largest festival of Japanese cinema is back. Here, James Balmont takes us through a mix of vibrant films which showcase the country’s lively and versatile national cinema
Apr 8, 2021
Today’s viewers may have grown desensitized to screen violence and CGI spectacle, but there’s still something bracing about seeing an actor go beyond the call of duty for a role.
Ryuichi Hiroki’s “Ride or Die,” which will be released worldwide on Netflix this month, is likely to get people talking in a way that few of the streaming giant’s Japanese originals have managed so far. The film is a torrid, emotionally bruising tale of sexuality, class, domestic abuse and murder, featuring a pair of extraordinarily committed performances by its stars, Kiko Mizuhara and Honami Sato.
Japanese
One such is Hanako Haibara (Mugi Kadowaki), the sheltered daughter of a well-off doctor. As the film begins, she has just broken up with her fiance and launches a frantic search for a replacement. At the advanced age of 27, she is ready to settle down just as many women in her elite circle have done before her. But a series of laughably disastrous encounters with the wrong sort of men gets her nowhere.
Then she meets Koichiro Aoki (Kengo Kora), the gentlemanly scion of an impeccably upper-crust family. “They’re a class above us,” her level-headed violinist friend Itsuko (Shizuka Ishibashi) warns her, but Hanako is already head over heels. And Koichiro is smitten with her. A proposal soon follows.