Never mind the Blues-, here are the Techno Brothers, and they are ready to conquer Japan. The music band in the film pronounced as a trio of geniuses on a par with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, The Beatles, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan by their agent Himuro (Asuna Yanagi), consists of real life Watanabe brothers (Hirobumi and Yuji) and Kurosaki Takanori, dressed up as if they came out of the Kraftwerk impersonators' competition. In case anyone wonders, yes – they are dressed in the signature red shirts and black ties, and they perform long electronic numbers in the most unlikely of places such as a recreation park and a green house to a very small, mostly unwilling audience.
“Techno Brothers” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival
There are evident film influences from the 1990s in the “Techno Brothers”, from Jim Jarmusch's “Stranger Than Paradise”, the above indicated Jon Landis musical hit, to Aki Kaurismäki's “Leningrad Cowboys Go America” (1989), the latter one thematic; a band consisting of out-of-the-way musicians are touring the country hoping to find fame, and ending up in awkward situations, whilst not trying to “resurrect” one of their members on stage when he gets hit by destiny. At the same time, despite of the film being optically very much into the stage aesthetics of the legendary German pioneers of electronic music, the tunes performed are inspired by YMO, the Tokyo band formed at the end on 1970s.
Yuichiro Watanabe appears in multiple side roles besides being one the members of the aspiring band. In one of the film's most bonkers scenes he is seen as a local song-writer who performs a song about “an ex who slit her wrists” on his electric guitar at the Murasakizuka City Music Festival. Later on, the same character will accidentally pop-up at different places to verbally challenge Himuro. Watanabe also plays a bored festival goer, an ignorant concert hall manager who barely says anything that isn't out of place, and an advisor to a mysterious ladyboss played by his muse Hisatsugu Riko, whose simple advice to the band's manager goes: “Learn to read the times, and think about what the public wants”. Those words resonate with irony in times when everything is about the ‘likes' and the number of followers on social networks.
The film kicks off and ends with The Kyrie section of Ligeti's Requiem both times abruptly interrupted by electronic beats. The other music numbers are delivered by local performers, from singer-songwriters, banjo- and guitar players to children performing solos on piano, singing popular songs or playing “Three Little Mice” on melodica. Responsible for this hilariously mixed bag of tunes is the director's brother Yuji, who doesn't only play a Techno Brother, but also serves (as in most of Watanabe's previous works) as the film's music director, and the co-producer.
Laden with dry humour, the story introduces the audience to the “Meta and meta pizza” in an Italian restaurant, to illegal cost-free “burials”, and strange conditional trainings for stage performances, while directly criticizing the impossible conditions under which contemporary artists work. The dog-eat-dog situation is given through the relationship between the cruel manager and the band that silently accepts her bullying. In Watanabe Hirobumi's 11th feature film, the precarious lives of artists are scrutinized with a large portion of irony. No success, no food, just tap water. No pain, no gain gets replaced by no winning prizes, no nourishment. According to the FEFF advisor Mark Schilling, Himuro's character was inspired by the former editor-in-Chief of American Vogue Anna Wintour which is given in her signature bob haircut and dark sunglasses, and a remake of a photograph with the cat the manager is using as the inspiration for success.
Hirobumi Watanabe is in Udine with two feature films, both dealing with artists' hardships on their way to recognition. He is also the lead actor in Lim Kah Wai's bitter-sweet dramedy “Your Beautiful Smile” which had its international premiere at Tallinn Black Nights at the end of last year, playing an independent Japanese filmmaker (pretty much as himself) who is reluctant to get his film released in his homeland.
“Techno Brothers” which has just had its world premiere at FEFF is an unusual, cleverly crafted work based on a witty script and well pulled-off ideas that is likely to win the sympathy of the international arthouse film audience. Or just any artist who relates to the message the story is conveying.
