tateuary ? 1 , ?nni J— — [37
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Western audiences tend to associate
H i recent Japanese cinema with endear-
f f , ing hut unchallenging comedies like
mf W Shall We Dance? or over-the-top
psycho-killer dramas like Takashi Miike’s Dead
or Alive. But some of the very best work from
that country fits neither of these styles.
Gay filmmaker Ryosuke Hashiguchi is not
exactly a household name, having made only
three features since he began directing in 1993.
The Slight Fever of a 20-Year-Old, shot on a
shoestring budget in 16 millimeter, and the
more ambitious Like Grains of Sand were enor
mously successful in Japan hut were mostly rel
egated to the gulag of the film festival circuit in
the United States. The latter film particularly
has been called one of the best of the 1990s for
its penetrating portrayal of adolescent gay
romance in a society that continues to view
homosexuality as an aberration.
Hush!, which opens Feb. 21 at Hollywood
Theatre, is unlikely to change the directors
standing in the West, which is a shame. This
masterful exploration of an unusual triangle—a
pair of gay lovers and the woman who wants to
use one of them to help her have a child—
deserves a wide audience.
Asako (Reiko Kataoka) is a chain-smoking
slacker girl making crowns in a dental office.
She has had two abortions, has tried to kill
herself and is besieged by a self-centered suitor
with whom she has unprotected sex.
She meets Katsushiro (Seiichi Tanabe), a
partnered hut closety engineer, and decides she
likes his eyes enough to ask him to father a
child with her—not to get married hut simply
to provide the sperm, along with a possible
friendship.
Katsushiro’s lover, Naoya (Kazuya Taka-
(
are plenty of other
targets, including an
arrogant medical
establishment.
Nor does the film
spare the queer com
munity. Gay bar
Ryosuke
scenes, shot in cinéma
Hashiguchi’s
vérité style, show a
particularly evil queen
latest
ridiculing Asako as
gives
only an evil queen can.
characters
Not everyone will
appreciate
the film’s
nowhere
pacing, but attentive
to hide
viewers will be drawn
by G ary M orris
into its powerful emo
tional spell. Hashi
guchi is a master of the
long take, and some of
hashi), is not pleased
the best sequences are
with this possibility. He
shot uninterrupted,
works at a pet shop and, A gay couple consider implantation and the inevitable outcome in Hush! at Hollywood Theatre such as an extended
being out, is appalled by
quietly brutal con
his boyfriend’s apparent interest in a heterosex critique, subtly lambasting the repressive soci
frontation between the three principals and
ual model of family and children.
ety that keeps these characters locked in their
Katsushiro’s family. Hashiguchi’s earlier films
Adding to the confusion are other memo
private anguish. They’re desperate for emotion
used amateur actors; here he uses experienced
rable characters who float in and out of these
hut disconnected from their own and what’s
ones, who bloom brilliantly under the camera’s
three lives. Asako’s creepy quasi-boyfriend pops happening around them. After a troubling
relentless gaze.
up at the least opportune times. Katsushiro is
encounter among the three main characters,
Ultimately, all the film’s spaces—the pet
plagued by an unhinged stalker girl himself—a
for instance, the two men have to ask them
shop, various apartments, Katsushiro’s brother’s
pretty lunatic who throws massive fits in public
selves—as does the audience—whether she is
house—offer no solace. In Hush!, there’s no
over this unrequited love.
suddenly, inexplicably out of their lives for
real refuge—only small clusters of people try
Katsushiro’s brother comes to Tokyo, family
gcxxJ. Unanswered pleas for love, or even
ing to find each other in a cold, uncaring
in tow, to try to figure out his life and strange
touch, filigree the film.
world. j n
relationships. And Naoya’s mother, a comical
Some of the social critique takes the form
fag-hag type, laments with her irritated son
of black comedy, with the pampered pooches
G a r y M o r r i s is a Portland free-lance writer who
that his luck with men is no better than hers.
and dizzy housewives of the pet shop—a par
spends his spare time at city hall agitating for mosh
Hush! is both bittersweet comedy and social
ticularly rich locale in this regard. But there
pits for the symphony and ballet.
Voices
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