Memories of Matsuko
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Memories of Matsuko |
| Original title | Kiraware Matsuko no Isshō |
| Country of production | Japan |
| original language | Japanese |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | 130 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Tetsuya Nakashima |
| script | Tetsuya Nakashima |
| music | Gabriele Roberto |
| camera | Masakazu Ato |
| cut | Yoshiyuki Koike |
| occupation | |
| |
Memories of Matsuko ( Japanese 嫌 わ れ 松子 の 一生 , Kiraware Matsuko no isshō , dt. About: "The life of the despised Matsuko") is a Japanese tragicomedy with musical interludes by director and screenwriter Tetsuya Nakashima . The production is based on a book by Muneki Yamada . The German premiere took place on November 4, 2006 as part of the Asia Film Festival in Munich. The film was released in Germany on March 28, 2008 on DVD.
action
Tokyo in July 2001. The 20-year-old Shō Kawajiri is a musician with no perspective who has not achieved much since leaving home. One day he is unexpectedly visited by his father Norio, whom he had last seen when he moved out of his parents' house two years earlier. He asks him a favor: Shō is supposed to clear out the run-down apartment of his recently murdered and previously completely unknown aunt Matsuko, the black sheep of the family. While looking through the estate, Shō comes across a photo of his relatives on which she is making a face. Driven by curiosity and with the help of an obtrusive neighbor, a porn actress and a former yakuza , he reconstructs the tragic life story of the deceased bit by bit. The episodes of her life are presented to the viewer in the form of flashbacks.
Matsuko had an unhappy childhood shaped by her desire to gain her father's love and attention. This affection is best shown to her chronically ill, bedridden sister Kumi, who has absorbed all of her father's powers in such a way that he usually refuses Matsuko even small gestures of affection. As an adult, she taught as a teacher at a middle school in the early 1970s, until a thieving student named Ryū was her undoing. In order to save the boy from inconvenience, Matsuko accepts the theft - with fatal consequences for her further career. She is forced to quit her job, and at the same time there is a break with her parents' home. From then on, in search of love and a family home, she experiences constant ups and downs. She keeps targeting the wrong men and slips from one unhappy relationship into the other. In the course of time she is repeatedly mistreated, forced into prostitution and finally sentenced to eight years in prison after she emotionally kills her pimp. Still, she doesn't give up. Beyond the age of 30, she meets her former student Ryū, who once set the avalanche of her sad fate rolling. After a brief, strange love affair, the complex ryū decides to disappear from the life of his elderly lover in order to protect her from possible attacks by vengeful gang members. With this final rejection, Matsuko loses all courage to face life. She moves into an apartment near a river that reminds her of her home country and isolates herself completely from other people, although she could not be alone all her life. In the last years of her life, the mentally unstable Matsuko has become increasingly neglected. At the end of the film, she was found murdered at the age of 53 in a park on Arakawa . A gang of middle school students turns out to be the culprit. They hit her head with a baseball bat out of anger after Matsuko warned them that they were outside in the middle of the night.
Awards
- Asian Film Awards 2007
- Award for Miki Nakatani in the category Best Actress
- Nomination for Towako Kuwashima in the Best Set Designer category
- Nomination for Masahide Yanagawase in the Best Visual Effects category
- Award for Miki Nakatani in the category Best Actress
- Award for Yoshiyuki Koike in the Best Editing category
- Award for Gabriele Roberto and Takeshi Shibuya in the category Best Music
- Nomination for Tetsuya Nakashima in the category Best Director
- Nomination for Tetsuya Nakashima in the category Best Screenplay
- Nomination for Masakazu Ato in the category Best Cinematography
- Nomination for Towako Kuwashima in the category Best Production Design
- Nomination for Tarō Kimura in the category Best Lighting
- Nomination for Junichi Shima and Tadao Tasai in the Best Sound category
- Japanese Professional Movie Awards 2006
- Award for Miki Nakatani in the category Best Actress
- Hōchi Film Awards 2006
- Award for Miki Nakatani in the category Best Actress
- Kinema Jumpō Prize 2007
- Award for Miki Nakatani in the category Best Actress
- Award for Miki Nakatani in the category Best Actress
- Award for Yoshiyuki Koike in the Best Editing category
Reviews
The film magazine VideoWoche wrote that the film was an “unprecedented pop art spectacle with cult film qualities.” Blickpunkt: Film described the production as a “rousing tragicomedy and musical revue, Japan's answer to The Fabulous World of Amélie ” .
Web links
- Official website (Japanese)
- Memories of Matsuko in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b cf. Film review on amazon.de