BEFORE: Alicia Vikander carries over from "Beckett". I've got five films with her all lined up and ready to go, but at the last minute I decided to switch the order around. As long as I have the right film at the start and finish of this little mini-chain, it doesn't really matter, so then why not take the opportunity to think and link thematically, just a bit? I'll put the two films that have missing person plot points next to each other, and then two Asian-themed films next to each other. Nothing thematically matches "The Green Knight", really, but I can then put it next to the last film, and while they don't share another actor besides Vikander, then two actors who are brothers will be featured in films next to each other. I'm not sure why this makes me happy, but it's OK that it does, I guess.
THE PLOT: An enigmatic translator with a dark past is brought in for questioning after an ex-pat friend, who came between her and her photographer boyfriend, ends up missing and presumed dead.
AFTER: It's another missing person story tonight, that seems to be another repeating theme this year - also, similar to the style of "Come and Find Me", this one jumps around quite liberally in time. At the start of the film, Lucy gets news that they may have found a body part of the missing person in the bay (notably without saying what body part that might BE...) and then the story snaps back to the past to show how Lucy first met her Japanese photographer boyfriend, Teiji, and then once things between Lucy and Teiji moved to the next level (which took some TIME, man, Japanese men don't like to rush into things, I guess...) Lucy also meets Lily, who is from America but new to the country and needs someone to show her around and get her settled.
Yep, maybe you guessed it, this sets up the classic romantic love triangle, because eventually after the three people hang out, go dancing and then head off for a fun (?) weekend on Sado Island (jeezus, it's got "SAD" right there in the name...) for some cliff-walking and animatronic displays of Japanese mining techniques, Lucy notices that Teiji is taking a lot of pictures of Lily, and he's not taking so many pictures of HER any more. Sorry, girlfriend, it's clearly over, Teiji has moved on, but it seems you're having difficulty doing the same. To be fair, maybe it wasn't the best idea for a couple and their female friend to all share one room at the weird Japanese B&B where they sleep on the floor with no mattress. Just saying. There's a lesson here, even if you're on a budget, spring for two hotel rooms, or at least one with a double and a cot over THERE, instead of one king bed for all three people to sleep awkwardly in. Again, just saying.
OK, maybe, just maybe, nothing happened between Teiji and Lily, but Lucy has a very vivid dream that she's kissing Teiji with Lily in between them, and then you can imagine where the dream would logically go next, either Teiji would kiss Lily or Lucy would kiss Lily, or I don't know, maybe all three could just have some good times together, would that be so wrong? I thought people from Sweden were very liberal and free-thinking, but Lucy doesn't seem to enjoy the thought of an open relationship, or a three-way, or whatever this might turn into. Teiji, meanwhile, seems to be trying to pull off the impossible (according to "Seinfeld") girlfriend swap, where he just starts hooking up with his girlfriend's friend and hopes that his girlfriend is either OK with that, or gets the message and gets out of the way.
Perhaps the problem is that Lucy's a bit messed up - she revealed her secrets to Teiji, including the fact that her first sexual experience was with her school friend's father, after that she thought she was pregnant and told the guy, he either drowned himself or was in a boating accident shortly after that, and - funny story - turns out Lucy wasn't pregnant at all. So, yeah, umm, that happened. Also, when she was a child she knocked down one of her brothers after they teased her, and he hit his head and died. OK, Lucy might be more than a bit messed up from her past, and generally speaking, I don't recommend cheating on her, because she's just not going to react well.
So, honestly, it makes some kind of sense that the Japanese police would want to question her after Lily's disappearance, she was the other corner of that love triangle, after all, and she resented the fact that her boyfriend mentally checked out and moved on to the next girl, and the next girl was Lily, literally the next girl over on that big floor sleeping space. Meanwhile, Lucy's also dealing with the fact that she watched an older lady die after falling down a flight of stairs when she came for tea at Ms. Katoh's house.
Look, it can't really be much of a mystery when there are this few characters, and if the police are questioning Lucy, then in true "Law & Order" fashion there's probably a twist, so if she didn't do it, there aren't too many other possibilities here. A film like "Glass Onion" or "Death on the Nile" will at least keep you guessing just because there are so many people who COULD have done it. There's a free little tip for you budding screenwriters if you want to do the whole solving a murder thing, maybe leave a few more doors open and have a long list of potential suspects. Again, just saying.
I didn't realize they had so many earthquakes in Japan - is that a thing there? Everybody seems to know what to do, but this story of a bird that sings right after an earthquake ends is a bunch of bull, it's just based on an old Japanese myth or maybe an urban legend. Most likely there are birds singing all the time, but I'd imagine that right after an earthquake everything and everybody is very quiet, because they're waiting to find out if there will be an aftershock - and during that quiet period, it's possibly just a bit easier to hear a bird chirping, because everything else still is relatively quiet. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a NITPICK POINT, or just a popular myth that needs to be debunked.
Also starring Riley Keough (last heard in "The Guilty"), Naoki Kobayashi, Jack Huston (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Kiki Sukezane, Ken Yamamura (last seen in "Godzilla" (2014)), Akiko Iwase, Kenichi Masuda, Kazuhiro Muroyama (last seen in "Kate"), Yoshiko Sakuma, Naomi Urushibara, Chiaki Yamamoto, Chie Izumiyama, Riku Takahahsi, Misa Matsuoka, Crystal Kay, Adelaide Young, Nikita Savilov, Yaeko Kimura (last seen in "The Wolverine"), Niclas Ericsson, Dennis Falt with archive footage of Michael Douglas (last seen in "Something Borrowed").
RATING: 5 out of 10 pine cones
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