If we could summarize Koji Fukada's cinematic style in four terms, these would definitely include his love for French cinema, his knack for experimentation, theatricality, and the concept of the stranger who appears suddenly and turns everything upside down. “Sayonara” seems to embody all of the four, with the last one having a meta hypostasis here, since the ‘stranger' is not part of the story, but of the actual production, with Geminoid F, a female android created by Hiroshi Ishiguro, having a protagonist role. The story is based on a play by Oriza Hirata, and was promoted as “the first movie to feature a Gynoid performing opposite a human actor”
“Sayonara” is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema
The story takes place in a not so distant future, when Japan has experienced another nuclear incident and is gradually becoming uninhabitable. The whole population has to evacuate to avoid radiation poisoning, with the government implementing a ticketing system regarding the order of the people leaving. Tanya is a foreign refugee and she is left behind in Japan because she ranks at the bottom of the evacuation order. The only support she finds is by Android Reona, but hope is not exactly part of the equation of her life.
In one of his most French-like titles, Fukada implements the usual low-tempo, laconic, artful and pretentious style so associated with the art-house cinema of the particular country, with the scenes where the protagonists recite a poem by Rimbaud (in French) being one of the apogees of this approach, which is though, quite permeating to the narrative. The theatricality is equally evident, particularly in the scenes where Tanya and Reona are discussing inside the house they inhabit, which take a rather large part of the narrative. This aspect is also mirrored in the dialogues, which frequently look like the actors are reciting instead of exactly acting, in an element that is also pretentious, and actually becomes annoying after a fashion. Perhaps Fukada wanted Bryerly Long, who plays Tanya, to act much like the android who plays Reona, perhaps he wanted to show that the destruction of the environment has made people completely detached, essentially robots themselves, but the fact is, that this approach does not work well for the movie. Furthemore, it dulls, to a point at least, Long's prowess in a rather demanding role, that has her doing essentially everything, including having sex and exhibiting a variety of emotions.
The presence of Geminoid F highlights Fukada's knack for experimentation, and is essentially the most significant draw for the movie, but the fact remains that the action on the part of the robot is, well, robotic, with the lack of facial expression being particularly off-putting on occasion.
One of the most interesting aspects of the movie however, is how Fukada focuses on foreigners in Japan, and particularly the impact the 2011 disaster had on them, as the whole story actually functions as a metaphor of the events that followed. That foreigners in the country are treated as third-rate citizens becomes quite evident here, in a rather pointed but also quite realistic remark, that also extends, ironically, to the fact that in the movie's setting, the Japanese are those who have to emigrate to other countries. On the other hand, the story of the white people in South Africa after the Apartheid and the violence that ensued towards them, seems completely out of place, even if perceived as a comment on what could happen if Japanese people continue treating foreigners the way they do now.
What Fukada definitely has working for him are a number of individual scenes that are audiovisually impressive. The one with the lighter, the dancing in the gym, the punk live performance and the paranoia of the movements of people, and the ending scene, which also comments on the difference between androids and humans, are all quite memorable, while also providing a very welcome relief from the aforementioned aspects of the narrative. Both Akiko Ashizawa's cinematography and Naohiro Urabe and Fukada's own editing find their apogees in these scenes, along with a number of other stills and a series of very beautiful frames, in an overall, very beautiful movie.
“Sayonara” is not without merits, and, particularly due to the presence of the android, is a rather original film. At the same time, however, the whole movie ends up being “too much” on a number of elements, essentially on the whole of Fukada's style as dictated by the four terms mentioned in the prolog. As an experiment, it has its value, but the truth is, that despite some individual elements, remains a failed one.
