Nanayomachi (2008) Online

There is something both strangely compelling and very frustrating about Nanyo. It seems like an intelligently crafted work that took a big swing and missed. The film starts off well enough. Ayako (Kyoko Hasegawa) arrives in Thailand, for reasons unknown and never explained, sweaty, braless in a tank top, and improvises her way around for a bit, deals with language issues and tries to get help in locating her hotel. She's very engaging and the milieu is rich.

I point out that she is sweaty, braless, and wearing a tank top because the way the director films this woman and plays with sensuality throughout the film is a constant but I'm not sure as to what end. And I point out improvising because this film is clearly half improvised and half scripted; the former being quite good and the latter somewhat of a preposterous mess. Kyoko Hasegawa exudes a confident and charming strength and sexiness while she is improvising but gets lower marks for the scenes where she is called upon to act.

After the steamy introduction we witness Ayako witnessing a Thai girl and white guy getting out of a taxi. The white guy is angry and screaming at the driver: "You are sh!t, I should kick your a**!" Ayako decides, against MY better judgement but apparently not hers, to ask this cab driver to take her to her hotel, if he knows where it is. The driver seems uninterested but waves her in. She has to open the trunk of the cab and put her big heavy suitcase in there by herself. We're getting some pretty good character development on this taxi driver guy right away.

After getting in the cab, Ayako asks the driver if he knows where her hotel is. The driver doesn't seem to understand but they drive away. Ayako rubs some lotion on her chest in a rather sensual manner and notices the driver eyeing her in the rear-view. More character development on that guy. She puts on her sunglasses and falls asleep. When she wakes up they appear to be in the woods. The driver opens one of the rear doors and signals for Ayako to get out. She fears she is about to be robbed, or worse, and crawls out the other side. The driver chases after her along some wooded trail as Ayako throws things at him and eventually gets away. The cab driver has a scary-movie-limp so it wasn't difficult but she's left all her belongings either in the taxi or on the trail.

Ayako runs further into the woods, where some monks are walking about, and eventually into the arms, literally, of some guy who turns out to be French. She cries on his chest while he strokes her hair. Strange and creepy. He takes her to the home where he is staying and studying the fine art of Thai massage from the matriarch of the place. I'm not making this up.

They all drink some tea, the French guy behaving way too touchy-feely with Ayako for MY taste, and then the taxi driver walks up. Turns out he is the brother of the massage teacher. Oops.

Before you know it, taxi man is lying there getting a massage from his sister and Ayako is instructed to lie down beside him so the French guy can practice on her. All of a sudden Ayako is on top of the French guy, massaging him but she digs her fingernails into him so he throws her off and she lands with her head on the taxi guy ... and just lays there for a very uncomfortable moment. Uncomfortable for me, at least, because we have not had the character development turn-around where we're supposed to think we've misjudged taxi man's behavior. That comes later. As does one of those "I have no idea what you are saying but I understand you" moments where the French guy tells Ayako he's gay. Presumably, we are to reassess our first impressions of the French guy.

Pretty soon everyone is having fun together, shopping, eating, dancing, and etc., until the massage teacher's little boy turns up missing. Big loud cross-language arguments ensue. The French guy's been just chillin' in Thailand to center himself, practicing yoga. We've seen him do a headstand and child's pose. I can't for the life of me understand why he hauls off and whacks Ayako during this argument.

Ayako heads out into the woods to find the little boy. She gets stuck in some kind of boggish swamp and we can see through her muddy and damp sweat pants that she's wearing a sexy thong. (I'm not looking for this stuff). This struggle tires her out so she naps against a tree and dreams about this other unknown, unexplained character who gets to play the massage game with a clearly naked but not revealing Ayako in one

of the film's momentarily erotic and cinematically sensual scenes.

Ayako wakes up and finds the boy. Everybody sings and dances, there's some family drama about sending the boy to temple or not, and a couple ducks fly up the river. Roll credits.

As there are relaxation musics (which means musics without great originality nor depth, created to put the audience in a state of relaxation), NANAYOMACHI is a "relaxation movie". This movie is made of a succession of sequences (massages, low voice lines, etc.) very calm and soothing. With this kind of movies, a lot of directors would have made a terribly boring film; KAWASE NAOMI did manage to create extremely simple moments (to the extent that we could ask ourselves why and how to appreciate such an empty movie !) and to catch them with a lot of subtleties. The choice in lighting, filming, editing - which, to give you an idea, is close to the "Lightness-of-Life"-style of the best advertising for perfume - shows the formal talent of KAWASE. Right after, I watched another movie, but my mind was still on the sensory trip that NANAYOMACHI offered to me.

To me, the only thing missing to make this movie a masterpiece, is a little depth. For example, Saiko never really explained why she left Japan. It could have been explained into details, to give a little bit more "sorrow", more "depth" to the character; that, at the end of the movie, there is not a feeling of having just seen a touristic movie.

Unfortunately, the lack of depth of this movie makes its sensation vanishes as the memory of a massage, or a meditation... Let's believe that KAWASE did it on purpose to make us see her movie often. And as far as I'm concerned, I'll often see it...

KAWASE's movies :

Moe no suzaku 7/10

Sharasojyu 10/10 (one of my all time favorites!)

Mogari no mori 5/10

Nanayomachi 8/10