Eiga Sai filmfest rides high once more

We have of late found ourselves watching more and more movies, reading more books, seeking talk shows, adventure and lifestyle material on TV to balance off the barrage of teleseryes on mainstream television. Nothing wrong with seryes, but surely we need a break from our daily dose of favorites Be Careful with My Heart, Mga Basang Sisiw, new serye hit My Husband’s Lover and Huwag Ka Lang Mawawala.

The past few days we’ve put into watching the Eiga Sai Japanese Film Festival at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall which has built quite a reputation in supporting film screenings from all over the world. We started watching Eiga Sai last year, but this year is even bigger in celebration of the Phil-Japan Friendship month and 40th Year of ASEAN-Japan Friendship and Cooperation.

(About Her Brother) Otouto is master filmmaker Yoji Yamada’s first contemporary feature in 10 years. The film that opens the festival deals with a widow Ginko’s unconditional love for her prodigal brother Tetsuro, a drunkard and unsuccessful performer. The sister Ginko runs a pharmacy in Tokyo and lives with her daughter, Koharu who is set to marry a distinguished doctor when Tetsuro ruins the occasion. Ginko was ready to disown him, but does she? We can’t tell you. But suffice it to say, Otouto was the closing film at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival.

From this year’s batch, we watched Always Sunset on Third Street, Rinco’s Restaurant, Mai Mai Miracle and Dear Doctor.

Always Sunset on Third Street is a 2005 film that comes across like the romantic Korean teleseryes that have taken Philippine television by storm (much like the Mexican teleseryes of old). Norifumi Suzuki runs an auto repair shop in a community where he lives with his wife and son. Mutsuko Hoshino comes to work as Suzuki’s apprentice. Across the street lives Rynosuke Chagawa, a would-be novelist whose love interest asks him to care for a young abandoned boy Junnosuke. Their lives intertwine as in a teleserye. Sunset ranked 15th at the Japanese box-office in 2005, won 12 prizes at the 2006 Japanese Academy and also got the Audience Award at the New York Asian Film Festival.

Mai Mai Miracle is a Japanese animated film that debuted in 2009 at the Locarno filmfest in Switzerland, with a rare seven-month run in Japan. The Shang audience of parents, kids and students connected immediately with this story of poor girl Shinko going barefoot to school and classy Kiiko whose dad is a doctor. The film shows how imaginings of Shinko through the cowlick on her forehead called “mai-mai” help erase the inequality in people. Overwhelming applause ends the film. 

How is one adjudged a hero or a villain? Dear Doctor (2009) doesn’t answer the question. Rather, it tells a riveting story of how one charts his own destiny, and the lessons we learn from it. Dr. Ino worked untiringly for years in a remote countryside village God had seemed to forget. Investigations from the big city open a pandora’s box and lay bare his sins ranging from illegal source of money, faking his identity, to commiserating with the underground. What does it tell of his longtime clients? Why does the city intern Keisuke and the doctor’s longtime assistant continue the charade even after they uncover Dr. Ino’s sins? Dear Doctor is our favorite from all we viewed.

Lovers of fastfood have lessons to learn from Rinco’s Restaurant (2010) which tells of Rinco who loves to cook and works hard to be able to open her own restaurant. However, a man she had fallen for leaves her, stealing all her savings. The heartbreak causes Rinco to lose her voice and return to her mother’s home. Enlisting the help of family friend Brother Tom, who lends her money and his construction skills, they transform a back shed into a delightful little restaurant.

The film, with its element of magic compounded by cut-out style animated sequences, is reminiscent of the popular film Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para Chocolate) in 1992, we had watched in another festival. It soon becomes clear that Rinco is not only a talented chef, but that her lovingly made food has the power to transform people’s lives.

These few samples we have watched make clear the underlying power of the Japanese style of filmmaking. You have until tomorrow to watch the films (free for everyone, but you need to queue for hours). Screenings at Shang until July 14, in Davao in July, Ayala Center in August in Cebu and at the UP Film Institute, Quezon City on Aug. 19 to 25.

Meanwhile, it’s time for our favorite homegrown teleseryes.

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