Hanging Garden (aka: Kuchu teien) — movie review
Everyone wants the perfect family. It doesn’t matter who they are, but they want to have some semblance of familial perfection within their lifetime. Most often this desire stems from viewed shortcomings in their own upbringings. Things their parents could have done better, opportunities they wish had been provided for them, lessons they wished would have been taught earlier. Everyone, no matter how bad a person, seeks to rectify this in their own familial iteration. But, somehow, no one ever manages to get the perfect family perfectly right.
Eriko Kyobashi has crafted the perfect family (Kyoko Koizumi, Survive Style 5+). The thirtysomething Martha Stewart-disciple has everything a woman could want: a winning husband, two bright kids, a lovely house, and a beautiful garden. Her wonder-unit operates on one simple caveat: no secrets. None, whatsoever. In an effort to maintain absolute trust and honesty, and create the harmonious family unit she so sorely missed with her own tumultuous upbringing, each family member’s business is to be the business of every other family member. First kisses, puberty, menstrual cycles, business secrets, all are fair game for discussion at Eriko’s dinner table. And, for the while it seems to be working. But such perfections are not meant to be. Humans are inherently flawed, and such flaws inevitably lead to the hoarding of secrets. And forced perfection is ever more ephemeral. Needless to say, each family member does have their own secrets, from small to large, the particulars of which I will leave the viewer to discover. Over the course of Hanging Garden, Eriko will be forced to come to grips with this fact; the realization of which could destroy everything she has worked so hard to build, or perhaps bring her family closer than it has ever been before.
Hanging Garden (aka: Kuchu teien) is written and directed by Toshiaki Toyoda, of 9 Souls and Blue Spring fame. With Hanging Garden he gets away from the world of thugs and heavies, and into the world of peer and societal pressures, and other such unattainable expectations. It is a film of profound beauty and imperfection, joy and disappointment, love and the threat of its loss. It is alternately funny, touching, and in some places quite frightening. In short, it concerns all facets of the human condition.
Toyoda, a very thoughtful, soft spoken director, employs heavy use of visual metaphor throughout the film. While complemented by some rather snazzy camera and visual tricks (barrel rolling camera and the like) these metaphoric elements are far from the American brand “don’t worry, we’ll beat you over the head until you understand” type metaphors. Everything from the presence of time to the health of Eriko’s garden is linked in some way to the particulars of the family. It’s a refreshing, intelligent, and welcome departure from the norm.
Furthermore, all family members are perfectly manifest by their respective actors. Kyoko Koizumi is brilliant in the lead as the lead Eriko. Her inner tension is evident behind her mask of perfection, ever smiling in the face of disappointment. Itsuji Itao (Ghost Train) is equally good as the sneaking, somewhat immature father, Takashi Kyobashi. His antics are quite shameful, but somehow his uncomfortable smile and similar disposition win over audience sympathy. Likewise the kids, played by Anne Suzuki (Initial D) and Masahiro Hirota (My Boss, My Hero) are quite real, never once coming across as some manufactured idea of tortured adolescence, but rather the product of actual experience.
Hanging Garden is a wonderful picture, but as with A Taste of Tea, I don’t imagine it will be released anytime soon in the states. It’s a heartfelt, poignant, hopeful, beautiful film, and quite possibly marks Toshiaki Toyoda’s best work to date. If you have a chance, do make sure to see it.
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