Wim Wenders’ ‘Perfect Days’ finds beauty in small pleasures

Non-Japanese directors who film Japanese subjects don’t always get them right — or even try. A prime example is Rob Marshall’s 2005 period drama, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” whose exoticized version of geisha culture was roundly bashed in Japan.

And then there is Wim Wenders’ Zen-like “Perfect Days,” which was selected as Japan’s best international feature nominee for this year’s Academy Awards, a first for a non-native, non-resident filmmaker. Also, star Koji Yakusho was awarded the best actor prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Wenders has long been a passionate fan of Japanese cinema, as evidenced in his 1985 documentary, “Tokyo-Ga,” about master director Yasujiro Ozu. But for all its Ozu-esque touches, such as shots of two characters moving in tandem, “Perfect Days” expresses its maker’s artistic identity and outsider’s perspective to — pardon the wordplay — perfection.

Also a co-writer of the film’s original script, Wenders gives us a hero in Hirayama (Yakusho), who lives in a rundown apartment near Tokyo Skytree but exists in a world of his own, neither typically Japanese nor jarringly foreign. Meanwhile, his occupation as a toilet cleaner may make him sound down and out, but his workplaces are 17 public toilets in Shibuya Ward that, created by leading architects and designers, look nothing like the usual utilitarian washroom.

Hirayama signals his apartness from the average and ordinary in other ways, from his meticulous attention to detail, such as using a hand mirror to inspect the toilets’ hidden spots, to his avocation of photographing light filtering through trees using a film camera. And yet his daily routine unfolds with a monkish, analog sameness: He downs a can of coffee for breakfast, plays classic rock cassettes in his van as he drives to work and reads paperbacks by well-known authors (William Faulkner, Patricia Highsmith) in the futon before he goes to sleep.

In Yakusho’s multilayered performance, Hirayama becomes more than a famous German director’s fantasy Japanese: diligent in his habits, conservative in his tastes, sensitive to natural beauty. We sense early on that for all his joy in the everyday — expressed with Yakusho’s signature glowing smile — Hirayama has troubled corners in his psyche, as suggested in his phantasmagoric black-and-white dreams.

The film’s first half unfolds with Hirayama living and working in almost wordless solitude, interrupted by comic interactions with an excitable co-worker (Tokio Emoto) and his vampish girlfriend (Aoi Yamada). The latter tries to draw Hirayama out of his silence — and rattles him with a peck on the cheek.

But the story doesn’t truly get underway until the second half when his teenage niece (Arisa Nakano) casually arrives out of the blue. Intuiting that the girl has fought with her mother — his long-lost sister — Hirayama accepts her into his life, taking her on his rounds and to his neighborhood public bath, surprising the elderly regulars. Also, Hirayama gets a jolt when he discovers the proprietor (Sayuri Ishikawa) of his favorite bar in the embrace of an unfamiliar male visitor (Tomokazu Miura) — and we realize that his feelings for her may be more than platonic.

These developments threaten to take the film in all-too-familiar directions, but Wenders opts for mood over plot, the poetically suggestive and evocatively playful over the prosaically explanatory. In the silent, revelatory climax, Yakusho movingly shows us why he won that acting award — and why “Perfect Days” ranks high in Wenders’ distinguished filmography, with or without a “Japanese movie” label.