Wife of a Spy (2021)

Direction: Kiyoshi Kuroswa
Country: Japan

Yu Aoi and Issey Takahashi star in Kyioshi Kurosawa’s historical espionage drama, Wife of a Spy. They are wife and husband living in Kobe during WWII, an actress and an import/export businessman, respectively, whose marriage grows disgruntled after he takes a trip to Manchuria. She begins to suspect he has a lover there before considering he might be betraying the Japanese nation by spying for the Allies. Prior to these events, she reconnects with a childhood friend, Taiji (Masahiro Higashide), now a stern squad leader in the Japanese army. 

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata; To the Ends of the Earth), who got a hand from emergent filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car; Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) in the screenplay, offers us an exercise in subtlety built with a striking cinematography by debutant Tatsunosuke Sasaki - stressed by a very beautiful work on the light department - and qualified set decorations and costumes. In spite of the qualified performances, one is given the impression that the packaging is more alluring than the contents since the filmmaking elegancy often takes up the emotional part of the story.

There’s a film inside a film - with references to the eternal Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi -  that infuses a certain noir touch in the slow-burning intrigue. The characters’ ambiguous behavior plays a central role, and even if the film never materializes in a taut espionage thriller, it provides slick entertainment through baffling betrayals, conspiracy and some satisfying twists along the way. Actually, this period film works better if you think of it, not as a spy thriller, but as a story of love and sacrifice for a greater cause.

To the Ends of the Earth (2020)

Direction: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Country: Uzbekistan / Japan / other

Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure; Tokyo Sonata), To the Ends of The Earth follows Yoko (former J-pop idol Atsuko Maeda), the dissatisfied host of a Japanese travel TV show who dreams of being a singer. Arrived in Uzbekistan to shoot another installment of the series, Yoko only takes pleasure in exploring the capital, Tashkent, by herself. The small crew that flew with her from Japan is not particularly amusing, especially the inconsiderate director, Yoshioka (Shota Sometani); and only a hired local translator, Temur (Adiz Rajabov), sparks off some genuine empathy.

During her staying, Yoko gets involved in many episodes - she's blamed for the non-appearance of a mythical Uzbek fish, forced to eat uncooked rice in a local eatery and pretend it’s delicious, rides multiple times in a giddying pendulum ride, pities a goat in captivity and sets it free (an unconscious projection of her own situation), gets lost in the city at night, visits the beautiful Navoi Theater by chance, and ends up being chased by the police for a frivolous incident. 

This culture-clash drama is rooted in a painful realism but occasionally slips into cloud-land through fabricated musical moments. Although it may get you hooked in its loose narrative sphere and gentle pace, some episodes are peripheral, with Kurosawa showing some indecision about if he wants to explore the austerely dramatic side of a phony travelogue or extract a breezy jocularity from certain situations.

Expect a strong central performance by Maeda, whose character completely transfigures while working in front of a camera, and an interesting shift into the minor key from Kurosawa, who typically embraces a tension-filled style.