Going with the wind in Manchuria

Akai Tsuki

Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Director: Yasuo Furuhata
Running time: 111 minutes
Language: Japanese
Currently showing

Yasuo Furuhata is the most established of mainstream directors, consistently working with the Japanese film industry's biggest talents and budgets. He is also all but unknown abroad. His defenders might argue that he is "too Japanese" for foreigners to understand. His biggest recent hit, "Poppoya (Railroad Man)," glorified the workaholism of its station-master hero, played by rock-jawed icon Takakura Ken. Not the sort of subject to go over big in, say, France.

His detractors -- and I have been one -- would counter that his films are often glossy, old-fashioned wallows in sentimentality that find favor with the over-50 set, but are rightly scorned by anyone, foreign or no, who like films that earn their emotional payoffs, not extort them. That would include films by that other "too Japanese" director, Yasujiro Ozu.

There is also a nationalistic slant to Furuhata's films that may play locally, but doesn't travel well. Little wonder that he got his start as a director at Toei, that most rightward-leaning of studios. (It should be noted, though, that he was also a French-lit major at the University of Tokyo, so if he ever did get an invitation to Cannes, he could impress French journos with his knowledge of Moliere and Sartre.)