Oh, It’s a Tear-jerker
the Real reason to cry is the loss of 137 minutes of your life… Unless REtrograde Melodrama is your jam.
And So The Baton Is Passed
Director: Tetsu Maeda • Writer: Hiroshi Hashimoto, based on the novel by Maiko Seo
Starring: Mei Nagano, Kei Tanaka, Satomi Ishihara, Kenshi Okada, Nao Ohmori, Masachika Ichimura, Kurumi Inagaki, Naho Toda, Hana Kino
Japan • 2hrs 17mins
Opens Hong Kong December 8 • I
Grade: C
Okay, let’s just get this out of the way right off the bat. The “baton” of the title in And So The Baton Is Passed | そして、バトンは渡された is a child, a little girl, and later in the film a young woman, nearly agency-free humans who are passed from one shitty parent to the next, and finally handed off – for the win! – to another dude, a husband, like a burden to somehow carry and dump as soon as possible. In a world where Yukisada Isao’s execrable Narratage exists, And So The Baton Is Passed comes on to the “romance” landscape and gives it a run for its money for cinema standard bearer of retrograde gender politics and inappropriate relationships mistakenly identified as “cute.” Director Tetsu Maeda has really made an effort to bring the year’s least modern, most infuriating woman to screens. This is baffling.
Now, let’s also be clear: I hate shit like this, but I will acknowledge there’s a market for it. Romance is about wish fulfilment and fantasy, and making the nuttiest of 19th century concepts somehow adorable. On that front, Maeda and screenwriter Hiroshi Hashimoto have a raging success, and on top of that they’ve tossed in a heaping pile of family drama. And to be even clearer, I’m in the minority here. The film’s Japanese PR used the odd metric of percentage of viewers who cried during the film (allegedly 92.8%), the book Baton is based on was a massive bestseller, and box office at home was through the roof. For many, Baton is an emotional, uplifting tale of familial bonds, forgiveness and love. For everyone else it’s 2 hours and 17 minutes of bad parenting, poor choices and weepy melodrama. Choose your team.
So many glycerin eyedrops
We start with eight-ish Miitan (Kurumi Inagaki, bogged down by glycerin tears for most of her screen time) and her widower father Mito (Nao Ohmori) muddling through on their own, when he meets Rika (Satomi Ishihara, Shin Godzilla), a golddigger who takes a liking to Miitan. When Mito declares they’re moving to Brazil so he can live his chocolate dream, they balk, so he takes off and leaves them in Japan. Nice. Elsewhere, middle schooler Yuko (Mei Nagano) and her single dad Morimiya (Kei Tanaka, Haw) muddle through on their own, Morimiya doing his best to be a good father after Yuko’s mom dumped them and split for parts unknown. If you cant’ see how these two stories will intersect, may I direct you to David Cook’s A History of Narrative Film, Fifth Edition. Anyway. Yuko is ceaselessly cheerful despite a messy school life, always trying to keep her simmering mommy issues at bay. When she gets to high school she meets Kento (Kenshi Okada), a piano prodigy (it’s always piano) who give her some pointers to get her through graduation recital ’cause she sucks at piano. Then she wants to be a chef (or cooking. It’s piano or cooking). While this is happening, Rika the golddigger is targeting rich dude Izumigahara (Masachika Ichimura) and possibly lying to Miitan about mailing her letters to her father. This is the tip of a very large, very high concept iceberg that gets more and more tragic/ridiculous each passing minute.
Girls can do piano, food…
…or golddigging.
And So The Baton Is Passed has, hands down, the most galling, reprehensible messaging found in any movie in 2022 – and this was a year that saw the release of Marilyn Monroe talking to her foetus in Blonde, whatever the hell 365 Days: This Day is, and right wing hysteria in Purple Hearts. Take your pick: Girls/women must have a man guiding them through life, father, step-father, fiancé. Any will do. Those who fail to find a Man Guide will wallow in misery or become golddiggers. Possibly both. Children are accessories that can be handed off to more interested parties at a whim when they get in the way of personal ambition. There will always be absolution for garbage parenting as long as they “meant well” and/or there’s a tragedy lurking. That’s not a spoiler; the mawkish twists and turns are signposted well in advance for anyone paying attention. Assuming you haven’t gouged your own eyes out.
But, as stated, plenty of movie-goers are happy to skip over the messages and zero in favour of the sentimentality and a good cry. For them Tanaka and Nagano’s charmingly lived-in dynamic will go a long way (though the threat of having them hook up in the end is there for way too long). Ishihara, sadly, only looks the part of a golddigger and lacks the nuance needed to make the character as complex as she should be – though Hashimoto doesn’t give her much to work with. Maeda doubles down on the pedestrian melodrama in Act Three and really goes for the waterworks, which, admittedly, is what most of Baton’s audience came for. At least there was no crazy wife in a burning shed. Looking at you, Narratage. — DEK