The opening film for this year¡¯s Tokyo International Film Festival seems better suited for a weekday matinee screening at a second-run theater. Junji Sakamoto¡¯s ¡°Climbing for Life¡± is a perfectly watchable biopic that mostly avoids corniness, but it can¡¯t resist the gravitational pull of its star, Sayuri Yoshinaga.
The 80-year-old actor (making her 124th screen appearance) is a national institution in Japan ¡ª though she doesn¡¯t enjoy the same recognition overseas. ¡°Climbing for Life¡± is unlikely to change that: While it¡¯s more restrained than the tearjerkers that have defined Yoshinaga¡¯s career, it¡¯s just as old-fashioned in its sensibilities, redolent of Yoji Yamada¡¯s heartwarming dramas.
Yoshinaga plays Junko Tabei, who in 1975 became the first woman to summit Mount Everest as part of an all-women Japanese team. Riko Sakaguchi¡¯s screenplay weaves an account of that expedition into a story focusing on the final years of Junko¡¯s life, after she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Refusing to go out without a fight, she starts organizing trips to Mount Fuji for high school students affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.