Villain

November 30th, 2011

The latest work by director Lang Sang-il, Villain sounds overly ambitious. A 140-minute crime drama, populated with complex, morally ambiguous characters, which sensitively explores the nature of love, evil, and social apathy? But somehow, Villain succeeds in exactly what it sets out to do. This is a lyrical, gripping film for a mature audience.

Villain is based on Shuichi Yoshida’s  Japanese novel,  to be released in English in the UK by Random House on 18 August. As with many crime dramas, the film revolves around a murder. But before she is killed, we meet the victim and the relationships underpinning her life. Yoshino, an insurance rep, is dating construction worker Yuichi, who she is happy to sleep with for cash while trying to court the attentions of playboy and all-round shit Masuo. Unfortunately, one night, a chance encounter of the three begins a disastrous chain reaction, ultimately claiming Yoshino’s life.

As police hunt Masuo in the belief he murdered Yoshino, clothes shop worker Mitsuyo strikes up a friendship with Yuichi through a dating website. After a rocky start, their relationship begins to take off. But then police switch their suspicions to Yuichi and the love-struck couple decide to become fugitives. The film’s fantastic end will leave you contemplating the nature of the relationships in the film for some time to come.

Refreshingly for a crime drama, the film almost entirely dispenses with detectives, relegating them to cameos. Because Villian, like the JB Priestly play An Inspector Calls, is far more preoccupied with exploring the motivations of the anti-hero,  the characters surrounding the murder, and the social context of her death. The decision to portray the victim and her downfall in a long opening provides a slow start to the film, but is essential to Sang-il’s direction. Because in painting the moral ambiguities of Yoshino, and her suspected killers, Musuo and Yuichi, the murder and its solution is rooted in the emotional, not in the procedural.

As the cast are fleshed out, your appreciation of the world which led to Yoshino’s death deepens. None of this is clearer than the superb depictions of Yoshino’s father, Ishibashi, and Yuichi’s grandmother. In the fallout of the murder, and as  public suspicions are cast on Yuichi, these two hard-working characters, who have spent their lives devoted to bringing up the victim and the suspect respectively, are left visibly numb as they wander the streets, discovering a disaffected and largely uncaring world. Their powerlessness and rage represent the closest thing to the inspector of Priestly’s play; while also providing new viewpoints with which to see Yoshino and Yuichi.

None of this complexity would be possible without some remarkable acting. In Villain, not a weak performance is in sight. The two leads, Satoshi Tsumabuki as Yuichi, and Eri Fukatsu as Mitsuyo, clearly deserve their best actor and best actress awards in this year’s Japanese Academy Awards. Tsumabuki’s grimly hidden passions strangely recall Heath Ledger’s powder-keg  performance in Brokeback Mountain, while Fukatsu is completely convincing as the love-lorn shop assistant swept up in a potentially dangerous romance. Akira Emoto, as Yoshino’s father, and Kirin Kiki, as Yuichi’s grandmother, also deserved the Japanese Academy Awards they received for their supporting roles, whose emotional breakdowns are as compelling as the leads.

But Sang-il’s lyricism in the film is also captivating; juxtaposing a family’s emotional destruction as a construction vehicle demolishes a house, symbolising the fugitive couple’s loneliness using sweeping vistas of barren countryside, or using slightly soft focus to demonstrate a character’s isolation as she is mobbed by newshounds. All of this is superbly complemented by Joe Hisashi’s score, the Studio Ghibli and Takeshi Kitano regular, who uses intricate string compositions to mirror the plot’s twists and turns. There is so much beauty in the film, even when it is communicating the characters’ mundane lives.

It is hard to compare Villain to many other films; it feels strangely unique. A little like Jean-Luc Goddard’s Breathless (which also features a couple on the run), but with a deliberately slower pace, which allows time to ponder the questions it poses. Any film fan should watch Villain. Simply put, it’s my favourite film so far this year.

Words> Adam Gaudry

Tags: Eri Fukatsu, Japanese cinema, Joe Hisashi, Lee Sang-il, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Third Window Films, Villain