There are certain words that come up a lot in reviews of the work of Koji Fukada: ambiguous, enigmatic, frustrating. As a filmmaker, he couldn’t be accused of taking the easy option; this is a guy who thinks nothing of casting an honest-to-God android in a lead role (see 2015’s “Sayonara”), or making a four-hour deconstructed rom-com (2020’s “The Real Thing”).
Even at their most straightforward, Fukada’s films are full of narrative detours and dead ends, with a tone that can veer suddenly from naturalistic drama into broad comedy or theatrical artifice. There’s been a point in most of them where I’ve sat back and thought, “OK, where are you going with all this?”
It happened more than once during “Love Life,” which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week. While not quite as confounding as 2019’s “A Girl Missing,” it’s a muted and elusive piece of work that takes a roundabout route to reach its (actually quite resonant) conclusion.