Cinema Without Borders: Of the continuities in the end - Love Life

The worst of horror often lurks in the banal daily rhythms of life, in its essential evanescence and unpredictability, interrupted by tragedies that come unannounced. But then can you ever be fully prepared for misfortunes and mishaps even when you can see them coming?

Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada’s Love Life, which premiered in Venice, gave me the scariest moment at the movies in recent times. Its memory still sends a chill down the spine more so because Fukada creates it on screen ever so quietly, gently, and stealthily. It breaks the heart of the audience just as it shatters the characters on screen. But Fukada doesn’t rest at that. The bolt out of the blue also marks a seismic shift (quite like the passing earthquake shown in the film) in certain relationships, marriages, and family dynamics.

Taeko (Fumino Kimura) is happily (seemingly so) married to Jiro (Kento Nagayama) who regards her son from the first marriage, Keita (Tetsuta Shimada), as his own. While her father-in-law dislikes Taeko, the mother-in-law (Misuzu Kanno) longs for the couple to have another child. Her own personal grandkid so to speak. A celebration in the family leads to an unforeseen loss and grief. It also makes the past come back to haunt the present as Taeko’s former husband—deaf, decrepit vagabond Park (Atom Sunada)—returns to her. It puts emotions in a tizzy and relationships in a spin.

At first, Park seems to add another layer of distress and awkwardness for the family in mourning but gradually becomes a device through which Fukada delves into the themes of guilt, responsibility, fidelity, abandonment, and betrayal. Taeko decides to take care of him, despite his trespasses, to atone for what she thinks are her own errors and lapses. So, what initially seems like the end of the road becomes, for her, the beginning of a new journey through penance to a possible redemption.

But, in doing so, isn’t she overlooking and shutting herself off from the many knots that are beleaguering her marriage with Jiro? There’s a lot that is complicated and unresolved in it, what with Jiro afflicted with his own demons from the past. Fukada brings the growing estrangement in a marriage under the scanner in a way that is acutely observational yet politely distant at the same time. He is masterful in pivoting the narrative on such contradictions—the immense turmoil inherent in the situation is evoked with a touch of placidity in the tone and tenor. The searing is encased in the soft, the morbid underlined with the mellow. It helps the film steer clear of sentimentality and gain poignancy and profundity.

A similar contrariety marks other aspects of his filmmaking as well—the feverish action in the background playing off against the stillness of the foreground or the hubbub amid friends, family and neighbours as opposed to the tranquillity of personal introspection. The filmmaker excels in portraying the distances creeping up between individuals despite their shared anguish. 

Long after having watched the film a dialogue—about how there can be no safeguards against mortality—continues to haunt me: “Saving people doesn’t mean they don’t die”. Love Life encompasses this gist of human existence. And, in the face of this reality, it’s about continuity, faith, hope, healing, and rediscovering the ability to communicate, the true mileposts in the circle of life.