Bless
her poor soul. All she ever wanted was to do right by her loved-ones.
All she ever did was to give a part of her self with little expectation
of reward. But hers was not a perfect world. Life would boomerang on her
despite her best efforts. This, in essence, is the sad trajectory of
Matsuko's worldly existence.
At
first blush, it seems like a subject matter meant solely for a downbeat
film. Memories of Matsuko, however, manages to achieve a more complex
feat, a more multifaceted and more polyphonic film than might appear on
paper. It tones down the tragic in favor of a hyper-realistic portrait
of the comic and the dramatic. It’s a movie that tries and succeeds in
not playing it straight and yet retains the sad eventfulness of its
heroine's story. Oscillating between its evocation of humor and pathos
in 127 minutes of sheer emotional push and pull, it aims true for the
heart.
We
learn about Matsuko, however, through second hand and in flashbacks. By the
time the film begins, she is a box full of ashes. Her nephew Shou, a
directionless youth, has been tasked by his father to clean out his dead
aunt’s apartment. Shou hardly knew her. Yet in death, Matsuko might just affect the tenor of his disaffected life.
Matsuko’s
fall from grace is rooted in childhood -- her father rejecting her in
favor of her sickly younger sister -- but culminates when she protects
her high school student who is suspected of theft. She takes the blame
for it and is discharged from her duties in dishonor. Her family, most
especially her father whose approval Matsuko seeks, disowns her.
Thrown
out of the family, Matsuko rebounds from one abusive relationship to
another, as she looks for companionship that has long eluded her. Almost
all her lovers, however, prove to be wrong choices: There’s an aspiring
but heavy-handed writer who takes his own life, a married man who is
simply jealous of the writer, a pimp, a yakuza thug who is as fearsome
as his tattoos. When she seems to have found the right man, she is
thrown into jail for a crime she has been running away from.
Finely balanced between comedy and drama, Memories of Matsuko is leavened by pop tunes
and musical numbers whose lyrics are relevant to the moment and the
fate of its heroine. It’s a film that mixes tone in just the right
proportions and emerges as both entertainment and as serious meditation
on a life tracing a downward spiral.
The life of Matsuko is pretty much the stuff of soap operas – only her life seems without
payoff and redemption. The film, however, never faults her for her
ill-advised decisions, although there is a lot of them. Prostituting
herself? No. Murdering her lover? No. Refusing help when she most needs
it? No.
This is the achievement of Nakashima’s film: Matsuko remains sympathetic all throughout despite her flaws. Memories of Matsuko feels neither too oppressively heavy nor too insistent on pulling at our heartstrings – at least not until the end. We are simply dazzled by the visual sumptuousness on the screen, the gloss and the crisp, rich colors that recall the best color movies (Gone With the Wind is one of the conscious references.). We are likewise diverted by the many incarnations of Matsuko, as well as the colorful characters that she meets: her shady jobs, the porn actress, the suicidal writer, the yakuza gangster, her bedridden sister, the boy band.
As her murder unfolds at film's end, the bittersweet irony clarifies: Matsuko has genuinely touched a few lives, even those who could only respond with treachery. When it's all over, there is but a single abiding image: her face and lips puckered at us, a woman not ashamed to make herself look silly just to make our day.
Reviewed: July 5, 2009 (Northern Portrait/The Persistence of Vision)
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