One of the best films of 2014, “Pale Moon” is also a great specimen of contemporary Japanese cinema. Based on the novel “Kami no Tsuki” by Mitsuyo Kakuta, the film tells the story of Rika Umezawa, a timid woman in her forties, who lives with her husband, although they do not have any children.
She works part-time at a bank doing house calls to sell bonds and other banking products and, in general, lives an utterly conventional life. However, once she convinces Kozo Hirabayashi, a slightly perverted older rich man, to buy a very expensive bond, her life changes radically. The people in the bank start to appreciate her more, while she meets Hirabayashi’s grandson, Kota, with whom she strikes an affair, after he pursues her relentlessly but briefly. Frustrated by her self-centered husband’s ignorance and non-appreciation for her, he lets him go by himself to Bangkok, where he is offered a job, and she proceeds in indulging every wish her young lover has, by embezzling money from her clients and the bank.
The film is set on 1994, shortly after the burst of Japan’s economic bubble, where banks were desperate to attract new clients, with house calls being a regular tactic towards that cause. The depiction of that era and the way the banking system worked, mostly with handwritten material instead of computers, is very realistic, and provides a logical frame for a low-employee to embezzle all that money. This realism extends to the way the employees function in the highly antagonizing finance world, with intrigues, secrets, and the higher-ups taking advantage of those below them in the hierarchy, even for sexual reasons. This realism benefits the most by Makoto Sigma’s cinematography, who did a great job of depicting the era, both in interior scenes like the ones inside the various houses and the bank, and on the exterior ones. He also presents some great images, like the one in the subway between Rika and Kozo. The way he makes the spectator understand that Hirabarashi is lusting after Rika is also impressive as it is subtle, with brief shots of her slightly showing legs.
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Daihachi Yoshida keeps a pace slightly faster than the usual implemented in contemporary Japanese cinema, with the events escalating rather fast in the 126 minutes of the film. In that fashion, he manages to create a movie that keeps the interest of the spectator for all of its duration, although Umezawa’s fate seems predetermined from the moment she begins acting in an unlawful way. To accomplish that, he is largely assisted by the elaborate editing of Takashi Sato, who keeps the continuous events flowing in harmony. Another point of excellence, and one not usually implemented in Japanese cinema is the combination of music and image, with some atmospheric pop and electronic track heightening the feeling Yoshida wanted to give to some scenes, while the music video aesthetics of those, make the film even more entertaining. Yoshida also included some brief and artistic sex scenes, in another unusual act for the industry, although without exhibiting any nudity.
There are two flaws with his work. The first one is that he does not seem to take a clear stance towards Rika’s actions, retaining a rather detached look towards them, which makes the film seem incomplete. The second one is a sequence with a choir occurring in a Christian school that appears at some points during the film, and seems out-of-place, even towards the ending, when the point of it is revealed, in another moral dilemma that Yoshida does not seem to take a stance about.
Yoshida based the film largely on Rie Miyazawa who plays Rika, and she delivers in astonishing fashion, portraying a character that despite her “irregular” behaviour, remains quite likeable for all of the film’s duration. The biggest asset of her performance is that she succeeds to retain the timidity of her character even in the scenes where she breaks the law, with her humble exterior breaking only when she is with her boyfriend and in a brief scene with Hirabayashi, towards the end. The portrayal of the agony that takes over Rika, when the events take a turn for the worse, is also impressive, as is the case with the film’s unexpected finale, in the sole scene where she lashes out. The awards she received from the Japanese Academy and the Tokyo International Film Festival were well deserved. Satomi Kobayashi, who plays a bank supervisor, is also great in her role, portraying the strict and unwavering nature of her character in wonderful fashion. The same applies to Renji Ishibashi, who is, once more, great in the role of the old pervert (Hirabayashi).
“Pale Moon” is a wonderful film, and one of the most accomplished mainstream Japanese films of the previous decade.
