Kichitaro Negishi has a typical resume for a Japanese baby boomer director: Graduation from an elite university (Waseda), apprenticeship in the porno industry (Nikkatsu), awards for his first straight feature ("Enrai," 1981), followed by success as a maker of TV commercials and music videos. Meanwhile, he has continued to make the occasional feature, including "Yuki ni Negau Koto (What the Snow Brings)" (2006), a drama about fraternal strife, set in the world of banei horse racing, that won armfuls of awards, including the Grand Prix at the 2005 Tokyo International Film Festival.
I liked the film more for the gigantic horses, dragging weighted sledges around a track in an equine version of the tractor pull, than its rather heavy-handed melodrama. But Negishi drew strong, nuanced performances from Yusuke Iseya and Koichi Sato as the warring brothers that earned them accolades as well. (Sato was named Best Actor in the TIFF competition section.)
Negishi's new film "Sidecar ni Inu (Dog in a Sidecar)" — a drama about the odd summertime friendship between a timid girl and her father's free-spirited lover, would seem to be a complete change of pace. The tone is lighter and gentler, with the story verging at times on manga-esque fantasy (though it is based on an Akutagawa Prize-winning novel by Yu Nagashima). But the performances, especially those of newcomer Hana Matsumoto as the girl and Yuko Takeuchi as the lover, have a precision and naturalness that are above the genre norm.