Inspired by French cinema's nouvelle vague style, Nobuhiro Suwa's debut is an ambitious piece of amateur arthouse cinema that is raging with ideas and techniques, in a battle with the constraints of the 8mm format. A noir, gangster, road movie, it flirts with each of these genres, without ever fully becoming one. But one thing it is, is very meta.
“Hanaseru Gang” is Playing as part of Metrograph's Hachimiri Madness: Japanese Indies from the Punk Rock years
The plot is difficult to follow, though feels largely irrelevant, introduced to us by the two leads at the start, with each of Rie Ito and Takayuki Kamura (as their namesakes) telling their interpretation of the story, letting us know what will follow. The outcome, therefore, is known from the beginning. But how it plays out is less straightforward.
Kamura and his partner in crime bump into young Rie on the streets. She and Kamura converse, with the young woman soon embroiled in a robbery, going on the run with Kamura.
A playing with the chronology of the story, combined with narration from the leads talking over scenes – as if a director's commentary – working within the constraints of 8mm filmmaking, make this far from an easy viewing. Dialogue is often hard to pick-out, with lighting sometimes leaving the screen almost blank. Perhaps Suwa's ambition outweighs his budget, and at close to 90 minutes, is perhaps too long for the 8mm format. Indeed, much of the dialogue is Rie reading Mark Twain to Kamura, and while it serves a purpose, it is perhaps used too often.
But “Hanasareru Gang” switches between the amateurish and the arthouse. Acted scenes are often slow and difficult to follow, though the meta elements make this more interesting. The narration giving away the story as we go makes this almost like a silent film, adding humour. Indeed, Rie and Kamura talking over each other, plotting their escape on a boat has a hypnotic, flowing rhythm and an idea that needs revisiting. Rie's writing on a chalk board to the supposedly deaf Kamura adds further humour.
The more experimental elements, therefore, work better than the more conventional, showing Suwa as a student of cinema, keen to get his ideas out there. Perhaps this is a little too ambitious a debut with what he had to work with. Dialogue scenes on a Ferris wheel as the camera spins around the duo work; though when sat in a static, disused train carriage with poor sound recording, it becomes hard to follow and easy to get lost, in story and interest.
Making this shorter and having the two leads narrate spoilers over the whole work could have been a better choice, putting the camera to use for creative visuals, with the narration a playful experiment in filmmaking. In its current format, however, it is a little too inconsistent to fully satisfy.
However, that is the nature of 8mm's charm. A playground of ideas for young filmmakers working on a budget. And “Hanasareru Gang” is a great example of that.
