Review: ‘Tokyo Sonata’

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for some of the more famous Japanese horror films of the past decade such as DOPPELGANGERM, PULSE and CURE. With TOKYO SONATA he has made an engrossing drama that captures the current attitude of the economically troubled world by focusing on a seemingly ordinary Japanese family and the shame and catastrophes that are visited on them when the father loses his job. Part parable, comedy, low-key thriller, and social commentary, TOKYO SONATA is a superb and timely domestic saga that is firmly grounded in today’s economically anxious times, but it’s also a strange, unnerving film and there were times when I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take it seriously or if I was being treated to farce.

TOKYO SONATA tells the story of 46 year old Japanese businessman Yuhei Sasaki who’s suddenly and unceremoniously dumped from administrative job for someone cheaper and younger . A father of two sons, Sasaki is unwilling to share the shame of unemployment with his devoted wife so he dresses up in his suit and tie every morning and pretends to go to the office, but instead wastes the days commiserating with an old jobless friend as they stand in soup lines and come up with humorous tricks to help maintain some of their dignity (programming their phone to ring five times an hour, so they can answer and pretend to be busy). They are not alone as Tokyo is plagued with kindred businessmen also in similar crisis and the lines of homeless people become more and more mixed with unemployed men in suits waiting to be fed free food. Although at first unaware of Sasaki’s charade, his family begins something of a mutiny nonetheless. His older son joins the Army to fight for the United States in Iraq, while his younger boy takes the piano lessons expressly forbidden by his father. Sasaki eventually finds work scrubbing toilets in a shopping mall but his deception continues. Back home, his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) attempts to maintain the facade of a healthy family life but that is disrupted by a desperate burglar, an unexpected twist that leads to kidnapping, suicide and a deceptive musical ending that can be taken as either optimistic or a sign of continued madness.

On the surface, TOKYO SONATA seems like 180-degree turn for a horror film specialist (think Wes Cravens MUSIC OF THE HEART), but Kurosawa’s direction here is masterful as much of the film unexpectedly plays like a thriller and I was on edge throughout. The main difference is that here the creepy atmosphere is not brought on by anything supernatural but by the father’s bizarre reactions to his situation and a family that he no longer relates to. Economic malaise is the villain here and the film’s tone steadily goes from melancholy to unease and dread as Sasaki becomes increasingly desperate and events spin out of his control. When his son is revealed as a piano prodigy, Sasaki is too enraged by his disobedience too feel any parental pride. It’s when his wife discovers him cleaning the mall that his breaking point is reached and he totally freaks out. The Sasaki family find their civility insulted with one increasingly bizarre crisis after another and, being mostly unfamiliar with Japanese culture, I was never quite sure where the realism ended and the satire began. TOKYO SONATA is beautifully acted, especially by Kyoko Koizumi as the mother. Akiko Ashizawa’s excellent cinematography and a haunting score by Koichi Takahashi contribute greatly to TOKYO SONATA, a film I highly recommend.

Opens Friday, July 10 at the Plaza Frontenac Theatres.