Review - Mitsuko Delivers (2011)

This Japanese satirical comedy has been well received by audiences at international festivals during 2011. Making its World debut in October at Vancouver, the film was subsequently shown in London before narrowly losing out to French silent movie sensation The Artist at the 25th Leeds International Film Festival after being shortlisted for the Official Selection Audience Award.

Director/Writer Yuya Ishii has developed an idea from 17th Century Japanese poetry (Matsuo Basho) that life's journey can be written in the wind - certainly a belief held by Mitsuko (Riisa Nake), who follows a cloud during a moment of uncertainty and finds herself back at the tenement she inhabited as a child. Mitsuko is heavily pregnant, but has an unstoppable spirit and a can-do attitude, filtering out the actions and events around her as being 'cool' or 'not cool' and influencing the lives of her fellow characters in this enjoyable allegory about the plight, and the importance, of youth in modern day Japan.

 

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Mitsuko Delivers

Mitsuko has recently returned from California, and is almost broke. Her parents still believe she is in America, but they too are undergoing financial hardship. Mitsuko could look to them for help, but she uses the cloud to wend her way to a run-down Tokyo tenement - the only one to escape the WWII bombings - where she bursts in on tenement landlady (Miyoko Inagawa). We learn that the two know each other - Mitsuko has lived here before when the tenement was prosperous and full of life.

Mitsuko Delivers

The plot continues to develop, with tenement fish cafe owner Jiro (Ryo Ishibashi, also The Grudge and Audition) lacking the courage to propose to cafe owner (Keiko Saito), and we learn that son Yoichi (Aoi Nakamura), has held a candle for Mitsuko for the past 15 years. The arrival of Mitsuko re-invigorates the tenement and its residents, and it is fun to watch how these comic book characters interact, influenced by Mitsuko, who is rather winging it herself, but is keen to always try to do the right thing.

Yuya Ishii is not yet 30 yrs old, so if we take the movie on its face value, we can easily empathise with the messages it provides, which are valid too in 2011 austerity Britain. These are that the youth have the power to re-invigorate society and can be trusted to deliver a better future, if they are given the opportunity. The movie also works well as pure entertainment rather than satire. Nake is excellent as Mitsuko, and the ensemble of characters are good fun, which makes this a very enjoyable and uplifting experience.

8/10 Uplifting

Review written by John Franklin : November 2011

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