My interview with Mipo Oh, the director of the turbulent new love drama "Soko Nomi Nite Hikari Kagayaku (The Light Shines Only There)," did not begin smoothly.
Through a chain of miscommunications and misunderstandings I was tacked onto the end of her long day of press meetings. Also, instead of making her entrance after I'd stowed my jacket and extracted a recorder — standard operating procedure for these sorts of interviews in Japan — Oh was already waiting for me when I arrived at our tiny meeting room, by the main administrative office of Kokugakuin University in Shibuya, where her film was being screened. I had flashbacks of less-than-pleasant meetings with stern-faced teachers and principals at various stages of my checkered academic career.
Oh's new film, "The Light Shines Only There" — based on an 1989 novel by Yasushi Sato — is not an easy watch, with its story of two lost souls who find each other in a decaying Hokkaido port, while battling past traumas and present feelings of worthlessness and despair. For Oh, this challenging, uncompromising film marks a departure from some of her earlier, more audience-friendly work. And yet its central couple, Tatsuo (Go Ayano) and Chinatsu (Chizuru Ikewaki), find moments of meaning and connection, however impossible permanent redemption may seem. The "Light" in the film's title, in other words, is not just a bitter illusion.