Oh Lucy! is an extension of the graduation short film by the young Japanese director A. Hirayagani. Without clichés, with a very good acting, the film deserves the four nominations of the "International Critics' Week" in Cannes. 1h 35 of laughter and gnashing of teeth that invites to follow the evolution of Hirayanagi.
Lucy's schizoid experience
Lucy is a Japanese woman, in her forties, with an alienating subway-work-sleep life with no social life to breathe. His niece, an unbridled Japanese girl, asks him to take English lessons for her. Lucy then meets John, this American teacher, whose customs are so far from those of Japan. She then sinks into a strange love that pushes her to senseless acts, such as joining him in Los Angeles with his sister, getting a tattoo, etc … Signs of the development of madness: a symptom of social pressure in a sanitized Japanese society.
The opening on a subway platform, sucks us into a film of violent sweetness. Lucy, played by Shinobu Terajima, also known in Babel, sinks into a decadent madness never leaden. The comic potential of the actress is exploited and does not fall into burlesque, it embraces the sweetness that emanates the actress and magnifies it. The meeting with John reinforces the situation comedy. Josh Hartnett, embodies the typical Californian, almost a little too Manichean with only one color: the "cool" American, young, not very responsible. The Japanese discovers American standards such as the "Hug". Physical contact, commonplace among Westerners, will take on a disproportionate dimension for Lucy. The attachment she feels for John then becomes like an escape to physical expression in all its excesses. The body materializes and she appropriates it by embracing the only American she knows, marking her skin (a tattoo), having a sudden sexual relationship and without real love desires. The absence of tenderness in Japan will develop a relationship to the other that is expressed in the binomial, S. Terajima and Kaho Minami playing Lucy's sister. They don't hug, they don't kiss, their only bodily interaction in the film is caused by a disagreement that leads to a fight. A touching schizophrenia between opposing social norms that Lucy goes through.
Between comedy and tension
The comic gesture induced by Shinobu Terajima's facial expressions is introduced in unusual, inappropriate places. The editing is very sharp and highlights the gap between the hotel, in which the English course takes place and Lucy's open space. The absurdity of the place is reinforced by the characters: a transvestite is at the reception of classes, or waitresses ressing like manga in an innocuous café.
Conversely, a tension can arise from a very usual place. In the subway, we witness a cold and sudden suicide scene. The clean underground, almost too clean, empty or crowded, with its abyssal silence, becomes a contraction of the prevailing pressure of Japan. This antithetical alternation contributes to the bipolarity of Oh Lucy!
A small downside is to be specified on the choice of the soundtrack that advocates American pop music of the 2000s that evokes a stupidity and does not prolong the dimensionality of the credible, comic and piquant film.
Let's hope that the international impact of Oh Lucy! follows other feature films by this aspiring director who begins with a very beautiful work around Japan, in an annihilating society, which she films with great tenderness.
Oh Lucy trailer!
