Film #4
Cloud (Japão, 2024) Ainda sem título em português
Original title: クラウド
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Writer/Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Main cast: Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Daiken Okudaira, Amane Okayama, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa e Masataka Kubota
Runtime: 123 minutes (2°3’)
The question of what an ordinary person would do in extreme situations is a common theme in the history of cinema, with various answers being found from each director or screenwriter's perspective. Here, we see the same question being raised again, with the answer being a violent and criminal journey.
The film introduces an unlikely character, Yoshi (Masaki Suda), on a journey to try to make money fast, taking a big risk. In the first scenes, we see him exploiting and intimidating an older couple who need to sell their products, doing the basics of any liberal capitalist: buying cheap to sell high. And as he starts to realize how much money this can make him, he quits his regular job, rejects the people from his past and starts living in an isolated house on a lake with his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa).
One of the film's greatest achievements is Masaki Suda's performance, which manages to convey a neutrality regarding his desires and actions in an empty way, allowing the character to be truly apathetic to everything and everyone around him. This even generates a reaction in the audience, who will often feel more identified with the antagonists than with the protagonist of the work. Even so, it falls into this dark space of complications of wanting to take justice into one's own hands. The character Sano (Daiken Okudaira) also deserves to be highlighted, being the absurd narrative element that allows the story to never stop.
By talking about something very contemporary, the resale of products, the director opens up space for a much broader discussion about a production system that allows for the mass production of objects and the internet as a channel that guarantees a certain anonymity for carrying out scams. Taking advantage of the theme, the work ends up creating a modern look, with action scenes that could have come from a video game, with the use of barriers and a variety of weapons that seem to have been taken directly from a shooting game. This matches the absolutely satirical script, which knows the norms of the police genre and uses them to create absurd and fun situations.
What’s most disappointing about the film is that its two main parts seem disconnected. The moment of change is important to take the characters from a highly crowded Tokyo to a quiet village. But this transition is made very abruptly, as is the message it’s conveying. If in the first half we question the capitalist system and the anxieties it causes in people who could have a peaceful life, the second half ends up becoming a parody of a thriller that fails to overcome the absurd barrier that would be necessary to create a greater visual and thematic impact. The violence itself is very sparing in terms of blood, conveying the feeling of apathy present in the main character, but generating a narrative reflection on the message the director wants to convey.
It’s also necessary to make a comment about Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), the girlfriend who is dragged into a mess that is unimaginable in size. From her appearance as a deluded and hard-working girl to the final scenes, of which I will not give any spoilers, every moment ends up bringing her into sexist stereotypes, and there is no moment of redemption. As the only female character present in the work, it’s difficult not to leave the screening without some irritation with her execution.
Even though it’s the debut of an acclaimed director and a work already nominated by Japan to compete for next year's Oscar, the film leaves much to be desired considering its ambitious proposal. There is, of course, a mastery in the way the film is made and the scenes are captured, but that does not mean that the end result is as good as this possible sum of its parts.
Translation: Renata Torres
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