Many Japanese indie films never achieve the grail of a theatrical release, and some arrive on theater screens here only after a long journey on the festival circuit. Seeing the latter on a distributor's lineup years after shooting wrapped, I feel like saying otsukare-sama ("job well done") to the filmmaker — though the film itself may not be that good.
Fortunately, that's not the case with "Seesaw," a sensitive, haunting relationship drama that premiered at the 2010 Skip City International D-Cinema Festival, where actor-turned-director Keihiro Kanyama won the Skip City Award given to the most promising young Japanese filmmaker. "Seesaw" later screened at festivals in Hawaii, Vienna, Osaka and elsewhere and will finally open, with English subtitles, at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya in Tokyo on June 30.
The film seems to come directly from the experience of Kanyama, who also scripted, produced and stars as the heroine's failed-actor boyfriend. But for all its naturalistic surface, such as the overlapping dialogue that sounds less scripted than recorded, this 70-minute film is tightly constructed, with even its mundane moments containing a pointed revelation of character or a poignant foreshadowing of future events. When Kanyama leaves out important narrative information, which some indie filmmakers do to be fashionably obscure (while thumbing their nose at the audience), the elision has a clear purpose and leaves a lasting resonance.