I want to have my funeral in Japan. That was my thought as I walked out of the intensely moving, lyrical Departures, the surprise winner of this year's foreign-film Oscar; it was a "surprise" because the little-known film took the prize over the highly touted The Class and Waltz with Bashir. Guess what? Academy voters got it right. Departures, from director Yojiro Takita, is a beautifully realized poem to life—and death. During Takita's movie, the characters deal with a lot of big themes that are all delicately layered into Kundo Koyama's dense but never heavy script. The film, 10 years in the making, is picturesque and graceful with touches of gentle comedy, awash in lovely images and a gorgeous music score by Joe Hisaishi, with one poetic sequence following another.
( Pictured: Departures, Easy Virtue's Jessica Biel and Kristin Scott Thomas )
At the outset of the film, Daigo ( Masahiro Motoki, who looks a bit like Lou Diamond Phillips and holds the viewer with a deeply felt performance ) is a professional cellist whose orchestra is unceremoniously dissolved. Without the job he won't be able to pay for the expensive cello he's bought but, luckily, his perky, supportive wife Mika ( Ryoko Hirouse ) suggests they move back to Yamagata, his hometown, into the small house his mother left him in her will to start a new life.
Daigo spots an ad in the paper that reads "working with departures—no experience necessary" and, thinking it's a travel agency, decides to apply for the job. But it's a misprint and should have read "working with the departed." The job is to help out with "encoffination," the Japanese ritual in which the body is prepared in full view of the mourners before it is placed in the casket and then cremated. A great deal of social prejudice comes with this task, but the money the practical boss Sasaki ( Tstutomu Yamazaki ) offers him is too good to turn down.
Daigo's first duty is almost too much—he is to model as a dead body in a video about how to go about the ritual. ( When glimpsed in the traditional sumo outfit, the gay male portion of the audience will quickly discern something else about Daigo—he's hot stuff. ) But slowly, as the seasons pass, he learns to appreciate the precision, importance and dignity inherent in the job. ( One of the ceremonies for a transgendered female—an apparent suicide—is particularly moving. ) At the same time, Daigo, who plays the child-sized cello that was a gift from the father who left him behind, is overwhelmed by memories of his past.
Filled with expressive, contemplative scenes and performances that are quietly powerful, Departures ( which is subtitled ) is a sensitive, bittersweet masterpiece that earns its tears honestly.
Stephan Elliott—the openly gay director noted for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert—returns to filmmaking after suffering a 2004 life-altering skiing accident with a frothy adaptation of the Noel Coward comedy-of-manners play Easy Virtue ( also the basis for an early Hitchcock film ) . Jessica Biel stars as Larita, a madcap race-car driver from the United States who smokes, drinks and makes no secret of her passion for her new husband, the sexy John ( Ben Barnes ) , the scion of a snobbish but stony broke English family that welcomes him home with open arms and his new wife with the cold shoulder.
The movie, set in the roaring '20s, combines the eccentric character elements of Gosford Park and the dizzy froth of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and is a sort of Jazz Age Mother-in-Law with Biel's hot little platinum-blonde pistol pitted against John's mother, the implacable, overbearing Veronica ( Kristin Scott Thomas ) . Veronica presides over her down-on-its-luck, tweedy family with an iron fist and rattles Larita with venomous comments like, "Hilda isn't as experienced as your wife." Beat. "No one is." Colin Firth plays her distracted, henpecked husband and there are also two gawky sisters, a pair of comedic servants and a runty, obnoxious lapdog that is the family pride and joy—and the bane of Larita's existence.
The action, which includes a climactic ball and a hunt scene directly out of Mame, is set in the deteriorating estate the family clings to as the mother hopes that Little Lord Spoiled Brat will take on the burden of running the place. But Larita has other plans, and wants her husband off to the next race as soon as her speeding roadster can carry them. The madcap pace of the film is helped along by new, jaunty renditions of a raft of Coward tunes, including "Mad About the Boy" and hot jazz-baby arrangements of some oddities like "Car Wash" ( which actually work quite well ) .
Elliott's got all the right elements and the film zips along, but his conception has one rather noticeable sore thumb in the cocktail shaker—Biel, who simply doesn't have much talent for brittle comedy and is hopelessly out of her element around the other actors, who make hay out of the sharp dialogue exchanges. Biel displays a light vocal touch with a few songs but she doesn't have much variety in the speaking department—certainly not enough to make her lines zing. Later, though, she gets better when the depth of the character enters in and we see what Larita's had to do to rise "above her station." And every time Firth enters the scene—my God—he's just effortlessly terrific, as is Thomas as the horrid mother.
Biel's rather lumpen line readings aside, Easy Virtue has enough stylish zest and laughs to make is an easy recommendation.
Film note:
—Local filmmaker Louis Lapat will be present for the Illinois premiere of his documentary Win or Lose: A Summer Camp Story on Sunday, May 31, at the Highland Park Movie Theater, 445 Central. The film follows a group of boys participating in an extremely competitive event called "Collegiate Week" at a summer camp attended primarily by boys from the northern suburbs. Lapat and members of the documentary cast will participate in Q&As following both the 11 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. screenings. The movie will be broadcast on PBS later this year. www.winorlosemovie.com
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site.
