Direction: Koji Fukada
Country: Japan
This prosaic Japanese rom-com directed by Koji Fukada and adapted from a comic book by Mochiru Hoshisato is a four-hour soap opera that, in the end, showed to have more limitations than qualities. Teaming up with Shintaro Mitani in the script, the Tokyo-born director somehow brings to mind Truffaut’s fictional character Antoine Doinel as his lens focuses on Tsuji (Win Morisaki), a flirtatious young employee of a toys-and-fireworks company. Bored with life, the latter maintains two simultaneous relationships with female co-workers, Ms. Hosokawa (Kei Ishibashi) and Minako (Akari Fukunaga), and even promises to marry them. However, after saving the life of Ukiyo (Kaho Tsuchimura), a secretive woman with an erratic behavior and suspicious connections, he starts to obsess with her and his life is turned into hell.
Fukada tries a new angle but doesn’t reinvent the formula, stretching the plot of a volatile tale that plays as a tiresome game of seduction, lies and fragility. The filmmaker, most known for his 2016 Cannes-awarded drama film Harmonium, arranges everything with plenty of betrayals and reconciliations, jealousy and retaliation, dreams and disappointment, while the chain of characters - fluctuating between allies and enemies that whether support or depend on each other - is uninteresting in its essence.
Even the final twist feels calculated and overcooked, making The Real Thing a frivolous, wishy-washy cinematic experience.
