‘Moon’ Shot
Start as a crossing-time-and-space romantic drama, end as a groomer/stalker waking nightmare. Why!?!
PHases of the Moon
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki • Writer: Hiroshi Hashimoto, based on the novel by Shogo Sato
Starring: Yo Oizumi, Kasumi Arimura, Ren Meguro, Kou Shibasaki , Kei Tanaka, Sairi Ito, Hinako Kikuchi, Sae Koyama
Japan • 2hr 9mins
Opens Hong Kong July 6 • IIA
Grade: C+
When director Ryuichi Hiroki broke out with Vibrator in 2003, an awkward romance about a bored, somewhat insular thirtysomething writer and a long distance trucker, my personal hopes were high for his next film, and the one after that and the one after that. Yes, the knee-jerk response to Hiroki’s early work was a bit skeevy – he trained in Japan’s soft core pink eiga scene – but his delicate, astute touch with female emotional beats and the dynamics of anxious romantic entanglements seems to have abandoned him since. Hiroki has never quite hit Vibrator’s heights in the years since – It’s Only Talk came close – and his adaptation of Shogo Sato’s book isn’t going to get him back there.
Thing is, Phases of the Moon | 月の満ち欠け starts strong enough thanks to a novel reincarnated soul hook, one that screenwriter Hiroshi Hashimoto and Hiroki keep clean and easy to follow amid multiple timelines and with multiple actors playing, essentially, the same character – Ruri. What begins with one woman’s soul travelling from body to body and leaving a fated mark on family and lovers turns creepy and inappropriate real fast: the fated lovers reunite as a 40-year-old man and an eight-year-old child. Tell me: How is this romantic? In most places it’s a felony.
Arimura: less spineless than usual
For all intents and purposes, the OG Ruri we need to focus on is contented architect Tsuyoshi Osanai (Yo Oizumi) and his lovely wife Kozue’s (Kou Shibasaki, still most recognised for Battle Royale and Go) teenaged daughter, Ruri #2 (Hinako Kikuchi). The Osanais are balanced and loving, even after young Ruri runs away to a record store in Harajuku one day. Long story. But tragedy strikes when Ruri and Kozue are killed in a car crash, and Tsuyoshi retires to his family home in the country. That’s no spoiler. That’s set-up. Cut to some other time and a woman called Ruri Masaki (Japan’s seemingly busiest, most one-note actor, Kasumi Arimura, Prior Convictions, the crime against humanity that is Narratage) is carrying on a fling with record shop staffer Akihiko Misumi (Ren Meguro) because her husband Ryunosuke Masaki (Kei Tanaka, Haw) is a huge dick. In another time, Akihiko and Ruri’s high school chum, Yui Midorisaka (Sairi Ito), seek out Tsuyoshi with some devastating news. Again, huge credit to Hiroki and Hashimoto for keeping these various threads straight.
Now the spoilers… What the hell are we supposed to make of Phases of the Moon’s closing frames, wherein one woman (among many) details watching the object of her desire from afar for months and years, like that’s cute or some shit, and the lovers separated by time and space are reunited as a child and a grown man? Is this “sweet”? On top of that, the ambiguity it’s all played with does nothing to defuse the image of an adult man putting a little girl in a van. It also takes the wind out of the engaging reincarnation story, which raises all kinds of interesting questions about inherited memory, destiny and the possibility of soul mates. The cast goes all in, each fully committed, playing it straight and injecting just enough gravitas to make the moments of tension feel, well, tense. But then Phases of the Moon goes all pedo and loses the plot. Maybe it reads better on the page; maybe it’s clear the romantic reunion is bittersweet (at the very least). But on the screen it’s just… eww, and Hiroki is starting to look like a one-hit wonder. Or a soft core pornographer. — DEK