Tokyo Sonata

While arthouse aficionados may find much to stroke their goatees over, it’s doubtful that Tokyo Sonata will bring much joy to the fans of Cure, Pulse and the various other frightfests for which director Kiyoshi Kurasawa is renowned.

It begins as a wry study of one man’s determination to save face, Kagawa’s redundant stiff Ryuhei pretending it’s business as usual at home while spending his days queuing up at job centres and outdoor soup kitchens with his similarly “down-sized” friend.

Inevitably, he takes his frustrations out on the family, flying off the handle when his eldest son signs up to join the US military in Iraq and, later, when he learns that his youngest, Takashi, has been blowing his lunch money on piano lessons.

But as pride, hypocrisy and the failure to communicate slowly steer the drama into kitchen-sink territory, Kurasawa suddenly decides to crack open the Red Bull.

Over a mad half-hour, Ryuhei is run over after finding an envelope full of money while cleaning toilets in a shopping mall, his wife (Kyoko Koizumi) is kidnapped by a self-loathing burglar (with whom she develops an instant case of Stockholm syndrome), and Takashi helps an asthmatic schoolfriend run away from home.

These episodes turn out to be completely irrelevant as, minutes later, it’s though none of them ever happened.

With calm restored and the music of Debussy bringing matters to a serene close, some will undoubtedly feel the need to contemplate their purpose in life and the nature of contentment.

Others, meanwhile, will be wondering what the heck that was all about.

Intended as a satirical commentary on Japanese society, Tokyo Sonata frustrates mainly because its sharper insights are lost in the hotchpotch of ponderous drama and head-scratching farce.

It’s certainly a departure for Kurasawa but while he picked up a Jury Prize at Cannes, his regular audience should translate the critical accolades ‘radical’ and ‘unique’ as ‘it’s not horror’ and ‘let’s hope it’s a one-off’.

Elliott Noble