“Your Lovely Smile” is a rather weird film. Despite the fact that is Lim Kah-wai's work, the style essentially follows Hirobumi Watanabe's low-budget, self-starring, self-deprecating, ironic and realistic approach to cinema, with the former's hand mostly showing in the fact that the movie is in color and follows a road-film path, although the last part also appears occasionally in the latter's titles.
“Your Lovely Smile” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival
Watanabe actually stars as himself here, playing a filmmaker who, despite having won a number of awards from festivals in Japan, finds himself once more facing the harsh realities of independent filmmaking, which seem to have grown even worse after the pandemic. As the story begins, he is stranded in his hometown doing odd jobs to make a living and pass the time essentially, occasionally meeting people from the industry with similar troubles. Eventually an opportunity for a new movie appears, but Watanabe finds himself having to deal with a delusional spoiled star (Shogen) who even wants to cast his girlfriend in the lead role and demands from the director to come up with a script in no time. The real difficulties, however, begin when Watanabe travels around Okinawa and Hokkaido, trying to convince various cinemas to screen his movie.
In a style that reeks of irony and self-deprecation, Lim channels his inner Watanabe in order to showcase all the difficulties independent filmmakers face nowadays, in an approach that despite being hilariously funny, is also bitterly realistic. As such, the only thing that seems to compare with the difficulties of shooting and promoting one's own film is actually to be hired to direct one, with the Shogen episode highlighting the latter quite eloquently. Apart from that, when Watanabe starts his travels, he stumbles upon small cinemas that either do not want to show his film because it will not attract audiences, have closed permanently due to financial issues worsened by the pandemic, or do not attract people at all. Among the tragicomical things Watanabe has to face is having to distribute flyers and try to sell tickets for his own movie, while the indignities he suffers in his endeavors with various cinema owners seem non-stop.
At the same time, the movie also functions as a road film, as we watch Watanabe visiting bath houses, cafes, bars and various other locations, including spending the night with a prostitute. His interactions with a dancer add an almost surrealistic element to the narrative, also showing that the difficulties of the show business are not exclusive to cinema people. Lastly, and in a scene that cements the overall narrative style here, the flash forwarded finale is probably the funniest and most bitter sequence of the whole movie.
The combination of Lim Kah-wai's cinematic style, particularly in terms of visuals, with Watanabe's trademark narrative approach works quite nicely here, essentially allowing both to move beyond their individual elements and come up with something new. Koichi Furuya's cinematography helps the most in that regard, with him capturing the various locations and episodes in a style that lingers between the documentary (the ending titles are indicative) and the film-about-a-film. Lim's own editing results in a style that is somewhat faster than what both directors has gotten us used to, which serves the episodic nature of the narrative nicely. Yuji Watanabe's music is also interestingly implemented here, as the score is mostly implemented to add to the overall irony.
Watanabe plays himself with gusto, with his stoic reactions being one of the main mediums of the deadpan humor here. Shogen as the extravagant actor is quite entertaining to watch, also due to the antithesis of his character with Watanabe.
“Your Lovely Smile” is a film that will definitely make the people who know what is happening to the (Japanese) indie movie industry laugh, and a title that will definitely appeal to those who enjoy Watanabe's directorial style.
