Ryo Sena is a 19-year-old student at Aoyama Gakuin University, Faculty of Business Administration in Tokyo. After completing high school, she momentarily set aside her creative aspirations to focus on her studies. However, her path took an unexpected turn when her debut film, “Hajimete no Yoasobi,” clinched the grand prize at the “Hulu U-35 Creators’ Challenge” in 2022. As part of her prize, she is currently in the process of producing a full-length feature film. “what YOU Eat” is her .
what YOU eat is screening at Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia
The film begins with the camera going inside a room that looks as if from a doll house, while a girl’s voice talks about women always wishing to appear beautiful, which is eventually accompanied by a rather fast played slide show showing a series of women. The next scene shows the girl the voice and the room belongs to, Asako, who is being admonished by her mother on the phone for spending too much time on cosmetics. Almost in tears, the girl states that she cannot live with being just beautiful, but wishing to be exceptionally beautiful. As such, when she spots a pimple, she is truly frustrated, even thinking that everyone is looking at her on the street.
The next scene has her inside her classroom, although instead of paying attention, she is checking plastic surgery options on her phone. However, when her teacher utter the famous words by Brillat-Savarin, the renowned French gourmet: “You are what you eat,” something significant changes in her. Surprisingly, she starts thinking that if she eats pretty things, she will be pretty too. Finally she seems satisfied with the way she looks. Three years later, a captivating and mesmerizing girl, Yu Amatsuka, transfers into her class, with everyone, including Asako, rendered speechless by her beauty. The two soon become friends but Yu challenges Asako’s world view revolving around prettiness.
Ryo Sena directs a film about the concept of lookism, which, although society seem to be progressing on a number of levels, remains quite prevalent even today. The constant pursuit of being pretty is what drives the cosmetics and fashion industry actually, not to mention show business, with Sena highlighting the two first particularly in her film.
At the same time, she presents the whole mentality as a kind of sociopathy, with Asako suffering intensely from it, to the point that her view of the world becomes completely absurd, as the concept of eating cute food will make you look pretty has her eating only candy highlights. That she essentially harms her body health apart from her mental one, adds even more to this comment. In that fashion, Sena presents the concept as a pressing social issue, which is intensified by the lack of (proper) parenting youths face, a problem that seems to be quite intense in Japan, at least if we judge from the cinema of the country, where parents shine through their absence.
At the same time, however, and particularly closer to the finale and through the presence of Yu, Sena also makes a more positive comment about lookism, that people wishing to be pretty and taking pleasure in witnessing things that are pretty and cute, is an inherent human element that can be the cause of many beautiful notions and concepts. As such, the issue highlighted here more than anything is obsession and the problems it causes.
Akana Ikeda as Asako highlights all the aforementioned comments in the most impactful fashion, through an excessiveness that works quite well here. Aki Suda as Yu presents a character that is both similar and opposite than her nicely also, with the chemistry of the two girls being rather good, finding its apogee in the lunch scene.
The cinematography is also on a high level, with the mirroring of Asako’s thoughts in the images being impressive on occasion, while the combination with the music is the main source of some horror-like moments that can be found in the short. The editing results in a relatively fast pace that works well for the type of the story.
Although the behavior of the two girls, particularly Yu’s reactions, seems somewhat unrealistic on occasion, “what YOU eat” emerges as a realistic and sincere film that takes a different and more accurate look at the concept of lookism, while boasting production values of quite a high level.
