SAD VACATION (Japan, 2007)

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

136 minutes, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by: Shinji Aoyama
Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Eri Ishida, Yuka Itaya, Aoi Miyazaki, Joe Odagiri

“A powerful tale of quasi-biblical cycles of sin, atonement and redemption, it's a work of pristine beauty in which every shot counts in the emotive and structural development of the Japanese auteur's humane vision.” (Hollywood Reporter)

We despise "Art Films," but every year we show a movie that doesn’t fit our bratty mandate because it blows us away. In 2004 it was Ryuichi Hiroki's VIBRATOR (voted “Best Undistributed Film” by the Village Voice), in 2006 it was Song Il-Gon’s one-take-wonder, THE MAGICIANS, last year it was Patrick Tam’s AFTER THIS OUR EXILE, and this year it’s Shinji Aoyama’s remarkable SAD VACATION. Scored to Johnny Thunders’ farewell song to Sid Vicious (and named after it, as well), it’s shot by the legendary cinematographer, Masaki Tamura (everything from LADY SNOWBLOOD to EVIL DEAD TRAP and nearly all of Aoyama's other films), and is the kind of movie that leaves you emotionally punch drunk, stumbling out of the theater like you’ve just gone ten rounds with life.

Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) lives in the rustbelt town of Kitakyushu, doing odd jobs to hold his barely-there life together. After a temporary gig driving the truck for some human traffickers, he winds up adopting a Chinese kid, Achun, who's been left behind after his dad dies en route. Kenji is trying to avoid all commitments, but he was ditched by his mom when he was Achun’s age and his dad killed himself soon after, and he can’t stand to see this kid abandoned, too. A few nights later while chauffeuring an inebriated trucking company owner to his home, Kenji’s headlights catch a glimpse of the man's wife: Mamiya (Eri Ishida), the mother who abandoned him decades ago. But when he confronts her, she just gives him a welcoming smile and suggests that he let bygones be bygones. It turns out that the trucking company also functions as a halfway house for screw-ups and losers, including Goro (Joe Odagiri, also in ADRIFT IN TOKYO), who’s terrified of the debt collectors on his tail, and Kozue (Aoi Miyazaki), who was brutalized by a bus hijacking years before and now walks around like a ghost. Kenji, who's also taking care of the mentally handicapped sister of a dead yakuza friend, fits right in with this human flotsam, and he moves into the trucking company compound, not so much to take refuge as to seek revenge on his mother. Although as he later finds out, blood is so much thicker than water that it sucks you in like quicksand and will drown you no matter how hard you struggle.

No previous experience with Aoyama movies is necessary, but this is the third part of his informal Kitakyushu trilogy, whose two previous entries provide much of the character backstory to this film. What you need to know is that Aoyama started in 1998 with his first film, HELPLESS, which introduced viewers to Kenji (also played then by Asano) as a young kid running wild after losing his parents, and his yakuza friend with the sister. Aoyama’s 2000 movie, EUREKA, featured Miyazaki in the story of the traumatic bus hijacking. As in Steven Soderbergh’s THE LIMEY, these actors are still playing the same characters in SAD VACATION, with flashbacks to their pasts taken from the previous films in the trilogy. Aoyama says he wasn’t ready to make SAD VACATION before he had ten years to work on it, and what he's finally delivered is a tour de force, an emotional firestorm, a movie that defies easy categorization and feels as complicated as dangerous and as unexpected as being alive.

Festivals/Awards
64th Venice Film Festival: Opening Film of the Horizons Section