My interview with Mipo Oh, the director of the turbulent new love drama ¡°Soko Nomi Nite Hikari Kagayaku (The Light Shines Only There),¡± did not begin smoothly.
Through a chain of miscommunications and misunderstandings I was tacked onto the end of her long day of press meetings. Also, instead of making her entrance after I¡¯d stowed my jacket and extracted a recorder ¡ª standard operating procedure for these sorts of interviews in Japan ¡ª Oh was already waiting for me when I arrived at our tiny meeting room, by the main administrative office of Kokugakuin University in Shibuya, where her film was being screened. I had flashbacks of less-than-pleasant meetings with stern-faced teachers and principals at various stages of my checkered academic career.
Oh¡¯s new film, ¡°The Light Shines Only There¡± ¡ª based on an 1989 novel by Yasushi Sato ¡ª is not an easy watch, with its story of two lost souls who find each other in a decaying Hokkaido port, while battling past traumas and present feelings of worthlessness and despair. For Oh, this challenging, uncompromising film marks a departure from some of her earlier, more audience-friendly work. And yet its central couple, Tatsuo (Go Ayano) and Chinatsu (Chizuru Ikewaki), find moments of meaning and connection, however impossible permanent redemption may seem. The ¡°Light¡± in the film¡¯s title, in other words, is not just a bitter illusion.
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