Kikujiro no natsu (1999)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


KIKUJIRO (KIKUJIRO NO NATSU)

Reviewed by Harvey Karten Sony Pictures Classics Director: Takeshi Kitano Writer: Takeshi Kitano Cast: Great Bidayu, Fumie Hosokawa, Rakkyo Ide, Makoto Inamiya, Kayoko Kishimoto, Takeshi Kitano, Akaji Maro, Hisahiko Murasawa, Yusuke Sekiguchi, Daigaku Sekine, Yoji Tanaka, Kazuko Yoshiyuki

One of the cruelest assignments a teacher can give is to ask the kids to write a composition, "What I did on my summer vacation." Many children, for lack of money or imagination may have a dull summer indeed only to envy and resent those who have been to camp or who have traveled. Many do not have parents who care enough to provide fun for their youngsters. This is the fate that seems to await 9- year-old Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi), a boy who is understandably gloomy when on the last day of school his best friend tells him that he will spend the summer with his dad at the seashore. With no one his own age to play with, little Masao seems fated to spend the summer mostly alone, his meals left out for him by his grandmother (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) who must spend the days working at her food stall in a Tokyo neighborhood.

The most unusual thing about "Kikujiro" is that the film is made by Takeshi Kitano, known for ultra-violent cinema such as his recent "Hani-Bi" ("Fireworks"). We can almost suspect that Kitano made this one on a bet that he couldn't produce a comic and sometimes poignant road-and-buddy film focussing on the friendship between two people as unlike as a breakfast of pickles and sushi is to a wake-up meal of bacon and eggs. Kitano is famed as not only a filmmaker but as a actor who got his start as a stand-up comic and novelist, using the acting name of "Beat" Takeshi. His sense of vaudevillian possibilities is ever present as he plays the role of the title character, Kikujiro Takeda, known simply as "Mister" to the boy he befriends and for whom he creates great joy.

The film, which was seen last year at the Cannes and Toronto festivals, is almost wholly fluff, whimsy of the most delicate kind, featuring some of Kitano's experimentation with imagery and color which comes at us at surprising times during the story's almost two-hour length. In this work, the nine-year-old Masao, who has no father and whose mother seems to have left him to "go to work" elsewhere, decides to spend part of his summer searching for her. He is given just a little money, so a friend of his grandmother asks her husband, Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano), to act as big brother and lead him in the search. Kikujiro is a loud, vulgar, classless person who tempts the fates more than once in the impolite ways he talks to people. He has the makings of the yakuza types made famous by Kitano's previous movies. But as the unlikely half of this couple (the boy is shy an frequently faces the ground without smiling), he introduces the lad to the best summer of his life while changing quite a bit in the process himself.

As a road movie, this one has the usual format: hit the road, meet weird people, run into dangerous and comic situations, and come back home wiser and happier people. During their travels, Kikujiro shows his nasty self by cheating the boy out of his money, losing most of it on the bike races, then trusting to his wiles to hitch rides to Masao's mother's place of residence. In one Felliniesque situation, Kikujiro pretends to be blind while the kid tries to con a ride. In yet another he flattens the tire of a passing car hoping to get a lift as the driver stops to make repairs, only to face the disastrous result of the car's careening off the highway into a ditch. Spending some time at a hotel, Kikujiro pretends to be able to swim and winds up near drowning. The most unusual adventure occurs when the two meet up with a pair of tough- looking bikers who turn out to be kind and gentle people, willing to go out of their way to entertain Masao by dressing up as various characters, including an alien from outer space, a skeleton, and even an octopus. We wonder how Kikujiro gets out of the story in one piece considering the offensive habit of addressing people as "baldy" and "fatso" and the like, but his gruff manner provides most of the chuckles of this entertaining film.

The boldest imagery occurs as Kitano films a brief nightmare, filmed with a deep red hue, featuring a dancing man who at one point had tried to sexually abuse the boy. Kitano's own paintings appear in the movie and in one cameo we see the other half of the filmmakers comic team at a bus stop at which the travelers were forced to take shelter for several hours during a rainstorm. Masao's ultimate meeting with his mother is an especially poignant one, but the movie never veers into excessive sentimentality, the musical soundtrack regularly upbeat. "Kikujiro" is the sort of movie that will have you leave the theater with the smile but is too whimsical and lacking in serious texture to garner awards or wildly enthusiastic responses.

Rated R. Running time: 116 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com


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