'Between the White and Black Keys': Offbeat biopic will have you seeing double

Films about jazz musicians tend to fall into two categories: ones that focus on personal drama at the expense of the music and ones that don’t get made. That’s why Yuzuru Tachikawa’s anime “Blue Giant,” released earlier this year, was such an anomaly. Though its story — based on a manga series by Shinichi Ishizuka — was laughably simplistic, it got deeper into the music than most films, documentaries included, ever manage.

It’s hard not to think of the movie while watching Masanori Tominaga’s “Between the White and Black Keys,” an unorthodox biopic freely adapted from the 2008 memoir of the same name by jazz pianist Hiroshi Minami. Set over the course of an eventful New Year’s Eve in Tokyo’s Ginza district in 1988, it’s a playful and peculiar film with a Mobius strip narrative that allows its protagonist to cross paths with his older self.

Sosuke Ikematsu stars as what initially appear to be two different pianists, both working the Ginza circuit. The younger Hiroshi is a classically trained musician with dreams of making it in the jazz world. Following the advice of his piano teacher — who tells him he needs to be more “nonchalant,” while dropping cigarette ash over the keyboard — he has been working a thankless gig at a cabaret club.

Bubble-era Ginza, it turns out, is no place for a self-respecting artist: Once the heartland of Tokyo’s jazz scene, it’s become a playground for big spenders with little interest in culture. As the older, wiser Minami (Ikematsu again) tells a new hire at the fancy club where he works, the musicians are purely decorative, like carpets or flower vases. That’s why he’s secretly planning to move to the United States and enroll at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The fates of both Hiroshi and Minami (which is to say, Hiroshi Minami) are brought together by a single piece: Nino Rota’s “Love Theme from ‘The Godfather.’” The former loses his cabaret job after playing the tune at the behest of a nameless, music-loving mobster who’s fresh out of jail (Go Morita). He doesn’t realize that there’s only one person in town who’s allowed to request it — local yakuza boss Kumano (Takashi Matsuo) — and one pianist who’s allowed to play it: Minami.

That’s about as far as the story goes in a film that’s more about vibe than specifics. It’s enlivened by colorful performances from Riisa Naka as a fellow pianist and Kazuya Takahashi as the club’s bandmaster. The latter is one of a few bona fide musicians in the cast: Crystal Kay also appears as a visiting American singer, while saxophonist Kei Matsumaru is used to good effect as a roving horn player.

The film’s recreation of late-1980s Tokyo is on the dowdy side, with Yokohama’s Kannai district substituting for the real-life (and since extensively redeveloped) Ginza. But Tominaga has fun showing the backstage — and back alley — workings of the scene, as musicians shuttle between clubs or congregate at a coffee shop, fittingly named Boston.

The formal inventiveness of his script, co-written with Tomoyuki Takahashi, ultimately promises more than it delivers — at least until the film goes full-blown fever dream during the final minutes. Like a canny bandleader, Tominaga saves the best for last.