MQFF REVIEW: Yoshiko and Yuriko (2013, Dir. Sachi Hamano)

There's an engrossingly tragic true-life love story somewhere within the relationship between Russian scholar and translator, Yoshiko Yuasa, and famed Shōwa period novelist Yuriko Miyamoto; unfortunately, Yoshiko and Yuriko director, Sachi Hamano, isn't able to find it. Instead, she serves up 100 minutes of annoyingly capricious relationship flip-flopping.

There is some interest to be had in the film's more private moments. The status of gay women during the period is intriguingly fleshed out, as is the role of honour and obligation in the negotiations between husband and wife. Nahana and Hitomi Toi are serviceable as the two leads, but they share little chemistry so romantic tension is thin on the ground. And that is the upside. Elsewhere, the film is a non-committal, directorially confused jumble of melodrama, erotica and historical drama, and it doesn't take long before it starts to grate.

Hamano, is no hack. According to IMDb, she already has 162 feature films under her belt, though most of these are pulpy, soft-core "pink films". This may explain Yoshiko and Yuriko's turgid overacting and and its liberal portions of too-tastefully-shot scenes of man on woman love making (where nobody seems to be enjoying him or herself).

On the lesbian front, Hamano fails to give any sense of the enormity or the importance of the (slowly) blossoming relationship so the stakes are kept relatively low. It is not until the rapid-fire dream sequence epilogue and the end titles that things get interesting.

Like I said, there's a compelling film somewhere in this story. This just isn't it.

★☆


Yoshiko and Yuriko screened as part of the 2014 Melbourne Queer Film Festival.