Kurosawa’s ‘Before We Vanish’ strikes a romantic chord
JAPANESE director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Before We Vanish may be a sci-fi thriller about an alien attack and brain- drain à la Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but its ultimate message is the salvation of love.
Playing frequently like an absurdist political satire with only flashes of violence, this lowtension, drawn- out work won’t gratify the chills or adrenaline rushes fanboys crave, but the ending strikes a romantic chord so pure that all but the most jaded cynics will be moved.
Distributed in Europe through Wild Bunch,the film will rely heavily on Kurosawa’s reputation and long-time supporters even for moderate success.
In the movie, Kurosawa takes a more ambivalent stance by suggesting that sometimes being rid of socially conditioned thoughts is not such a bad thing, as when the female protagonist’s boss regresses to prankish childishness after losing the concept of work. Repeatedly, the aliens remind the protagonists that humans are such scumbags they deserve eventual extinction anyway.
The emotional toll of marriage is at the heart of nearly all of the director’s film, from such horror movies as Cure and Creepy to his dramas, including Tokyo Sonata and Journey to the Shore.
In this case, the movie starts with and revolves around illustrator Narumi ( Masami Nagasawa) and her estranged husband Shinji ( Ryuhei Matsuda). One day, Shinji returns home after a long walk a changed person, with little recollection of the past and lacking basic social skills.
To Narumi, this is a godsend, as it presents a chance for them to do over, so she even shrugs off a weird incident, when he gives her sister Asumi (Atsuko Maeda) a mini-breakdown just by poking her with his finger.
Meanwhile, a gruesome murder in their quiet Tokyo neighbourhood catches the eye of journalist Sakurai ( Hiroki Hasegawa). When he arrives at the crime scene, he learns that Akira ( Yuri Tsunematsu), the teenage daughter of the victims, has gone missing. A young man called Amano ( Mahiro Takasugi) comes up to Sakurai asking him to be his “guide” so this visitor can acclimatise himself to Earth.
The story, adapted from a play by Tomohiro Maekawa, does not try to wring any suspense from the odd behaviour, disclosing early on that Shinji, Amano and Akira are aliens who have taken up residence inside their human hosts. As the first step to a full- scale invasion, they have to seize and absorb human “concepts and power of comprehension.”
For the most part, Amano and Sakurai engage in long-winded theoretic discussions that have little dramatic traction. Akira, who has a violent streak, pumps up the action with her vicious assault on humans who get in her way, but such scenes are few and far between.
All these plot strands pale in comparison to the engaging relationship between Shinji and Narumi, which has shades of The Return of Martin Guerre. Although the alien initially intended to use her as guide, the more he comes to understand human behavior, the more he grows attached to her.
Kurosawa turn to his trusted crew once again, getting clean camerawork from Akiko Ashizawa and a score by Yusuke Hayashi that shifts fluidly from racy to lyrical, although Kichi Takahashi’s editing is uneven and could do with a lot more tightening.