Mother’s Day
Yoji Yamada is back doing what Yoji Yamada does, and you’d have to be black-hearted not to be a little charmed.
Mom, Is That You?!
Director: Yoji Yamada • Writers: Yoji Yamada, Yuzo Asahara, based on the novel by Ai Nagai
Starring: Yo Oizumi, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Mei Nagano, Akira Terao, You, Moe Edamoto, Rosa Kato, Min Tanaka
Japan • 1hr 50mins
Opens Hong Kong October 12 • I
Grade: B
In old school and, let’s face it, old, Japanese director Yoji Yamada’s Mom, Is That You?! | こんにちは、母さん the filmmaker best known for his gentle, picaresque sketches of ordinary Japanese life via his 48 Tora-san movies strikes again. I’m not slagging Yamada’s age (a clearly robust 92 now), however it does inform his aesthetic and, more importantly, his worldview, neither of which has changed all that much since his first films in the early 1960s. Yamada films have a creepy optimism and a wilful sweetness about them that’s not for everyone, but his characters also have a thread of recognisability. Most of us would advise sad sack salesman Tora-san to just let go of the lovey dovey nonsense, but not Yamada. And despite a detour into samurai drama in the 2000s (The Hidden Blade, The Twilight Samurai, Love and Honor) he went right back to domestic dramedy with the What a Wonderful Family! series in the 2010s.
So Yoji just keeps doing Yoji, and – surprise surprise – Mom, Is That You is one of the most delightful of his recent films, for fans and sceptics alike. And that’s just it: it’s delightful, the perfect description for this kind of trifle. The frothy (on the surface) film follows Akio Kanzaki (Yo Oizumi, Phases of the Moon) through a vaguely defined mid-life crisis. He’s getting a divorce, his university-aged daughter Mai (Mei Nagano) hates him, his job in HR has taken a turn for the grim, and worst of all his widowed, semi-retired mother Fukue (veteran post-war actor Sayuri Yoshinaga, Tora-san’s Lovesick, Kon Ichikawa’s Ohan) has gotten all horned up for the local pastor Naofumi Ogyu (Ran, and Tora-san regular Akira Terao).
Romance never dies
That set-up is basically there as a way for Yamada and co-writer Yuzo Asahara to launch into dual-track explorations of happiness at all stages of life, and finding the courage to act on what you want – to a degree. This is still Japan, so there’s a lot of restraint at play, which is also a big part of the story. We discover Fukue’s renewed sense of self and her late-life spark of excitement along with Akio. Wallowing in his divorce misery and dealing with the stress of having to downsize a friend, Kibe (Kankuro Kudo), who abjectly refuses to be downsized, Akio of course retreats to the welcoming domestic calm of Fukue’s home (intimately shot by Masashi Chikamori in warm browns and natural light), hoping for some maternal comfort and a shoulder to whine on. He gets it, but he’s quick to learn he’s just one part of Fukue’s very full life. She volunteers feeding the unhoused, she raises money for charities, she makes the traditional tabi and slippers her husband did in the shop she still keeps, and she’s very tentatively wooing – they old, they say “woo” – Ogyu. And she’s liking it. Akio, of course, is confused in the way many of us are at the thought of our parents with a life outside of us.
There’s not much more to Mom, Is That You? than that. Everyone gets their growth arc, powered by some truly inspired comic bits, and learns a little something about themselves and their family, reconciles with their innermost fears, or reclaims something that was previously lost or buried. The thing about Yamada is that he speaks to his audience directly. Akio eventually dumps his demanding child act, which was often just a mask for his own professional and personal frustrations, born of outside pressure and expectations. Kibe, in very un-Japanese fashion, lets loose and kicks up a stink about his unfair dismissal. Part of Fukue’s attraction to Ogyu is rooted in her own fear of being alone in her last years. You don’t have to be Japanese to feel seen watching Mom, Is That You?!, but it will land a little harder. And that connection is why Yamada is still making films at 92. Ganbatte, Yoji. — DEK