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Once again, he is working from an original script, this time co-written with Hiroyuki Ohashi, and the story centers on a shaggy-haired slacker living in Shimokitazawa, a Brooklyn-esque neighborhood of artsy shops, clubs and theaters in Tokyo. Named Aoi Arakawa (Ryuya Wakaba), he works at a used clothing store and spends much of his downtime at a hole-in-the-wall bar.
The episodic story mostly concerns Aoi’s serial failures, starting with an aborted career as a singer-songwriter seen, thankfully, only in flashback. In the pandemic-less present, his girlfriend (Moeka Hoshi) abruptly dumps him, saying she has found another guy. Then a no-nonsense student director (Minori Hagiwara) casts him in her graduation film, but he blows his one scene which requires him to sit and read a book and ends up on the cutting room floor.
Over the Town : Offbeat locals give slacker s life color
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Death of Nintendo, Motel Acacia, Oda sa Wala to Stream on iWantTFC and KTX ph ⋆ Starmometer
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Apr 7, 2021
“Zokki,” the introduction on the film’s website tells us, “is impossible to categorize … Zokki is Zokki.” Fair enough, but all films, by an iron law of reviewing, must have a label and the one that fits best in this case, if crookedly, is “quirky comedy.”
Seeing it at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, I went in expecting “Zokki” to supply belly laughs but left disappointed. Seeing it again, I realized that it was closer in sensibility to the work of celebrated maverick Yoshiharu Tsuge, whose surreal, absurdist manga has inspired several films, including “Nowhere Man” (1991), the directorial debut of actor Naoto Takenaka.