MIFF NOTES: Harmonium (2016, Dir. Kôji Fukada)

I’ve taken to booking in Japanese films for the sake of booking in Japanese films. I like that filmmakers there have, almost to a director, settled on a style of filmmaking that perfectly encapsulates the essentials of day to day Japan. Kind of flat. Kind of spare. Kind of backgrounded with the clutter of life.

The technique marries so well with the environment. Or maybe it the environment is so pervasive that it swallows up any attempt to escape it. I don’t know. I suppose I just enjoy the way it can take you back there within moments.

So it goes with Kôji Fukada’s Harmonium (Fuchi ni tatsu), which starts as a quiet family drama, with Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) welcoming an old acquaintance, Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano), back into his life, into his workshop and into is home. Toshio’s wife, Akie (Mariko Tsutsui), isn’t so impressed to begin with but she warms to the idea when Yasaka proves an avid teacher who soon has daughter Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa) back on the family harmonium. But pasts have a way of catching up with people and Yasaka is more than ready to throw everyone under the bus, yakuza-style.

Life codes come into sharp focus in the ensuing melodrama. What one own and what one owns up to marks all of the characters in Fukada’s interestingly calibrated narrative. It is an enigmatic journey with multiple u-turns but always underpinned by believable emotions from everyone onscreen. Late entry Taiga (who picks up key u-turn duties as a replacement employee in Toshio’s workshop) is especially good at grounding Harmonium’s inherent amazement with the perfect mix of wide eyes and pathos.

Things may get a little out of hand in the film’s dying moments but Harmonium remains involving. Impressive slow burn family drama with a few more spot fires than expected.

★★★☆

Harmonium screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.