Some films, though not connected as series or sequels, reflect and comment on each other, making one look better than the other. Such is the case for Takeshi Murayama’s first feature “Spaghetti Code Love” and Lim Kah Wai’s “Come and Go.” Both are ensemble films that attempt a group portrait, with Maruyama focusing on disaffected young people in Tokyo and Lim looking at Japanese and non-Japanese visiting and living in Osaka.
Seeing the former shortly after the latter, I was struck by how Lim’s characters speak and act with documentary-like authenticity, while Murayama’s actors seem as if they were performing in one of his music videos, for which he is an in-demand director. Also, where many of Lim’s Asians are struggling to survive on the bottom rungs in a foreign country, Maruyama’s angst-filled youth are natives of their society by birth and education, however alienated they may be.
It’s tempting to dismiss them as spoiled sufferers of First World problems, but it’s not so simple. A glamorous ad agency creative (Rikako Yagi) brutally shuts down the ideas of a new photographer (Nino Furuhata) in a front of a roomful of staffers, but when her diva-like takedown is roundly bashed on social media she faces the abrupt ruination of her career — and her shock and anger are real.