It’s summertime for Dissidenz too and you will therefore receive our newsletter on a monthly basis in July and August -the usual frequence will resume in September. In July, two films have drawn our attention: the first one was selected at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes this year and the second one was made back in 1963! Yet, they have in common two points: they will both open in France on July 15 and they both deal with escape. But they are not about foreign exotic lands, they’re all about escaping a social condition, a destiny experienced like a prison. On the one hand: The King of Escape, French director Alain Guiraudie’s latest feature, and the re-release of a 1963 Japanese rarity on the other hand: Each Day I Cry (Hiko Shojo) by Kiriro Urayama.
Midlife Crisis
Armand Lacourtade is an agricultural machines salesman. He is now 43 year old and as his homosexuality begins to feel like a burden, he questions himself about the heterosexual way of life: a woman, children, a lovely house “if the majority of people live this way for ages, it mustn’t be that bad”. He meets with a 16-year-old girl named Curly, with whom he will live a passionate story. Acclaimed for his short films, Sunshine For The Poor or That Old Dream That Moves, Alain Guiraudie directed No Time For The Brave and Time Has Come before The King Of Escape, which was presented at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this year. Far from all the clichés about gay people in French cinema (mostly young, bold and beautiful trendy Parisian people) Guiraudie depicts a rural homosexuality made of road rest areas and semi-clandestinity. From this start comes out a rejoicing tale about a forty-year-old man living an identity crisis. In a fantasized southwestern France, in which 90% of the population is gay and share the secret of an extraordinary plant combining the effects of Viagra and cocaine, the fabulous “dourougne”, Armand sees in Curly his chance to escape from what he thinks to be his destiny as a homosexual picking up single farmers. Though his friends try to stop him and against the will of the parents of the young girl who are mad at him, Armand will flee with Curly but when it will be time to build something with her he’ll flee again and will find peace in a reconciliation with himself. As funny as inventive and deep, The King of Escape is a rejoicing and peculiar film with a particularly sensual look upon upon bodies.
The Queen of Escape
Wakae is a fifteen-year old girl living in a small coast village in Japan. Her father, a poor alcoholic, doesn’t really take care of her since her mother died. A hostess in a bar, she meets with Saburo after she stole a pair of shoes. Saburo lives in the shadow of his older brother and starts to live a passionate relationship with Wakae. When he finds out about her thievery he rejects her and the course of things leads her to a reformatory. Directed by Kiriro Urayama in 1963, Each Day I Cry is the second film by this former assistant of Shoei Imamura and Yuzo Kawashima in the Nikkatsu and received the Grand Prize at Moscow Film Festival. Narrating the ordinary life of a rural poor girl, the film strikes by its beauty and its use of the ellipsis in an inventive narration.
Even if Wakae has to put up with events she has no control upon, she shares with the character Armand Lacourtade of Alain Guiraudie the will to escape the path others trace for her. Like Armand, she will find a kind of peace in the acceptance of the events she has to cope with. Playing Wakae, Masako Izumi, later to be seen in Seijun Suzuki’s films, does a great performance. As determined as fragile, she gives out all the necessary complexity to incarnate this crucial teen age. Fast-paced and well written, Each Day I Cry is a real rare gem, from which you can expect much more than from its English title (which has nothing to do with the original title!).
Francis Chérasse