Melancholic (2018) Darkly Hilarious Romantic Dramedy with added Yakuza violence

Before launching into Third Window Films latest release in Seiji Tanaka’s Melancholic – allow me the indulgence of explaining what made me fall in love with East Asian cinema. Japanese, Chinese and Korean cinema take scant regard for tone or even genre, its much more common in that part of the world to evolve as time passes, expand or evolving to become something else entirely; the idea of a consistent tone is a hard and fast rule like it is in the West. Outside of the few high profile names who have become global, more often than not a film from that part of the world will have gained some level of cult notoriety or fame due defying expectations. I hate to reduce it to these terms, but there’s a much greater punk spirit in the east than there is in the west, where everything has a lane that cannot be strayed from if you hope to get any success – Western Cinema has become very conservative.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Kazuhiko (Yoji Minagawa) is a graduate of Japan’s prestigious Tokyo University, only instead of being on a fast track to prosperity, he lives with his parents after a string of part-time jobs. Meeting an old high school classmate, Yuri (Mebuki Yoshida), at the local bathhouse, he exaggerates his status, saying that he is stepping away from the go-go-go pace of Tokyo business to do something more humble, implying that his current status was a matter of personal choice. Yuri suggests that Kazuhiko gets a job at that very bathhouse, an innocent plan that escalates into Kazuhiko becoming a cleanup man for the local yakuza who the bathhouse as “its the easiest place to clean up any evidence, afterwards”. Yet under all this is the promise of romance.

Third Window Films have a history on two footings, the first, as we saw last month with their reissue of Fish Story, sees them tackle high profile names in modern Asian cinema that may or may not have had their breakthrough in the West. The second sees them take chances on up and coming talent, of which Melancholic is undoubtedly one. It would be both churlish and an act of tone-deaf fanboyism to suggest that this always pays off for the indie distributor and sometimes production company, but here, today that risk paid off. This isn’t just taking a chance on new and upcoming talent, this is a micro-budget project in which most the major players are debuting actors and the director is pulling a triple shift as writer, director and editor.

We’ve all seen films in which it was clear as day that it was a small budgeted project featuring actors with no prior experience, and the one catch-all term that reviewers throw around on such occasions is “raw”. This just isn’t the case in the modern era as the standard of acting (in East Asia) is of a remarkably high calibre, you have to plum the depth of modern exploitation to happen upon a standard of acting that you may find disappointing.

The Yoji Minagawa who played Kazuhiko and the Yoji Minagawa in the Q&A on the extras, well, you’d be forgiven for not thinking they are the same person. His mannerisms, the way he expresses himself and even the voice, he disappears into the role. Without seeing the real man, it would appear that the role was filled by just another meek Japanese 20-something, talking about him through the context of his performance and you’ll find a man wholly committed to the role. If this was from any other part of the world, this would be described as a non-professional cast – however, for that turn alone, Melancholic exposes that term as the back-handed copy/paste criticism that it truly is. The rest of the cast might not be as invisible as Minagawa, but the other two central players in Mebuki Yoshida and the Kuzuhiko’s bleached blonde workmate, Matsumoto (Yoshitomo Isozaki), deserve similar plaudits, as without them, the film wouldn’t be anywhere near as heartwarming. There’s a version of this concept that could be quite grim and unforgiving, and the entire cast and crew has my respect for avoiding all the low-hanging fruit that may lead to that sort of fate.

Japanese comedy can be quite odd, the idea of wordplay or double acts is much more fundamental there, and it is a world away from the British, Irish or American ideas of comedy. Dark comedy is a much easier match for a British audience might relate to. Seiji Tanaka’s script takes advantage of the absurdity of matching the “typical Tokyo U” student with the Yakuza, turning gangland slayings into the most mundane of workplace grievances. At it’s worst, melancholic is consistently charming and funny, at its best it’s about as funny as anything gets in 2020.

A lot of people will find a lot to like about the newest addition to the Third Window family, however, that’s not to say that there aren’t issues – niggles but no less worth mentioning. Yakuza are families serving clans, here we only ever seen one singular Yakuza member (Tanaka (Masanobu Yata)) which hurts the film during the escalation of the climactic act – a issue related to the budget constraints, for sure, but an issue no less. The other is a matter of the ending, so I’ll try to talk around it as best I can. Essentially, there’s a scene with Kazuhiko talking to Yuri at the front desk of the bathhouse, and its a perfect final scene. And then that is followed by a sentimental narration track that is completely out of character of everything that has happened up until this point. If this was an American film, this is exactly the sort of byproduct that would’ve come from studio pressure after a lacklustre test screening. That a Japanese film has this sort of finale feels odd, especially when it results in the bang of the aforementioned scene being dulled to a whimper.

Third Window Films are at their best when they are championing the up and coming. Sure, that is a risk that fails as much as it succeeds, however, for me, you can file Melancholic next to the likes of Bleak Night, Eiji Uchida, Junta Yamaguchi and One Cut of the Dead and that is very lofty praise. This is the emergence of a genuine talent with an original voice, one that I am very interested to see where it goes next.

Thanks for reading our review of Melancholic

For more Movie talk, check out our podcast CINEMA ECLECTICA.