Chris Knipp
09-15-2025, 11:32 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20ngstr.jpg
HIDETOSHI NISHIJIMA IN DEAR STRANGER
TETSUYA MARIKO: DEAR STRANGER (2025)
In another country, things go awry
Tetsuya Mariko crafts his stories carefully, uniquely. Working far from home in a strange language here, however, he takes his kidnapping story in confusing directions that make for a frustrating film, despite a good, dedicated cast and potentially interesting story line.
Dear Stranger is a Japanese-Taiwanese coproduction written and directed by the Japanese director and set in New York City in the dead of winter and filmed largely in hues of brown and charcoal. When we come upon this mixed Asian couple, Japanese Kenji Saiga (Hidetoshi Nishijima, who was excellent in Drive My Car) and Taiwanese-American Jane Yang (Lun-Mei Gwei, Girlfriend, Boyfriend) their relationship is unraveling. Kenji is striving to make a go of his academic career in a unique branch of architecture: ruins. He's finishing a book on the subject. His ideas, perhaps the director's, are adumbrated melodramatically toward the end of the film. Kenji has put more of the burden of caring for little Kai (Everest Talde) on his wife. She now balks at that because she is the director of a puppet heater for deaf people which hasn't been able to mount a production since young Kai arrived. Sometimes Jane leaves Kai with her mother, who cares for for her infirm husband in an apartment nearby. This is the initial setting for what also becomes a story of crime and disruption.
Menace and discomfort dominate the early scenes. It looks like Kai has disappeared in a grocery store. That will come later; but their heap of a car, also failing, gets graffiti-ed, and Kenji has a gun. Every time Jane picks up a puppet by herself something spooky or scary happens. All communication between Kenji and Jane feels tense and strained. During a spat, she tellingly comments that they are communicating in a language not their own - English: hers of course is Chinese and his Japanese. Nishijima himself seems to have more difficulty with English, and his line readings are sometimes stilted or overwrought. These are all shortcomings of shooting in a strange country and a second language that the film itself doesn't quite surmount.
It's well established that things aren't safe for the couple. A shop Jane works in is attacked by youthful gang twice, terrorizing her. And then there is the graffiti. We get glimpses of someone furtively reappearing. It is Kenji who "loses" Kai, taken from him while he has the boy with him at school. It turns out he knows where to go. Shortly the boy is found. We, shifting to another POV, have already seen the kidnapper, a young man with a girlfriend who plays with Kai as if he were his own son. Soon the benevolent Detective Gibbs (Christopher Mann) appears, and he will wander in and out of nearly every scene with a police procedural vibe from here on. We learn about an earlier relationship of Jane's with a wild young American called Donny, whom Kanji knows about, and turns out to know more about him than Jane is aware of.
After the boy is returned, seemingly none the worse for wear - if anything more cheerful and lively than before, the couple strives to be closer together and maintain normalcy for Kai, but that proves difficult when the boy's school finds out what has happened and wants to take special protective measures. Detective Gibbs continues to be constantly hovering about. though he's a reminder of what has happened, Gibbs is the film's calmest, most reassuring presence.
We can't go into all that has happened and will follow from the kidnapping, which constitutes nearly half the film. The ghost of a hundred American police procedurals intermingles with the shadows of a Japanese psychological film with just a hint here and there of the supernatural and horror genres. It feels as if the writer-director almost isn't sure quite when and how the film should end. The whole thing seems a bit difficult to swallow from the start. But the director's dedicated fans may find this an interesting new direction. There is an underlying subject of perennial interest touched on here: that of rival paternities. The film's poster design by Aicon has been remarked upon.
Mariko is known for Destruction Babies (awarded Best Emerging Director at Locarno 2016) and Miyamoto (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4475) (2019; I reviewed the latter as part of the NYAFF).
Dear Stranger, 138 mins., will have its International Premiere at the 2025 Busan International Film Festival Sept. 17.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20drstr.jpg
THE FILM'S MEMORABLY MINIMAL POSTER THE DESIGNER AICON
HIDETOSHI NISHIJIMA IN DEAR STRANGER
TETSUYA MARIKO: DEAR STRANGER (2025)
In another country, things go awry
Tetsuya Mariko crafts his stories carefully, uniquely. Working far from home in a strange language here, however, he takes his kidnapping story in confusing directions that make for a frustrating film, despite a good, dedicated cast and potentially interesting story line.
Dear Stranger is a Japanese-Taiwanese coproduction written and directed by the Japanese director and set in New York City in the dead of winter and filmed largely in hues of brown and charcoal. When we come upon this mixed Asian couple, Japanese Kenji Saiga (Hidetoshi Nishijima, who was excellent in Drive My Car) and Taiwanese-American Jane Yang (Lun-Mei Gwei, Girlfriend, Boyfriend) their relationship is unraveling. Kenji is striving to make a go of his academic career in a unique branch of architecture: ruins. He's finishing a book on the subject. His ideas, perhaps the director's, are adumbrated melodramatically toward the end of the film. Kenji has put more of the burden of caring for little Kai (Everest Talde) on his wife. She now balks at that because she is the director of a puppet heater for deaf people which hasn't been able to mount a production since young Kai arrived. Sometimes Jane leaves Kai with her mother, who cares for for her infirm husband in an apartment nearby. This is the initial setting for what also becomes a story of crime and disruption.
Menace and discomfort dominate the early scenes. It looks like Kai has disappeared in a grocery store. That will come later; but their heap of a car, also failing, gets graffiti-ed, and Kenji has a gun. Every time Jane picks up a puppet by herself something spooky or scary happens. All communication between Kenji and Jane feels tense and strained. During a spat, she tellingly comments that they are communicating in a language not their own - English: hers of course is Chinese and his Japanese. Nishijima himself seems to have more difficulty with English, and his line readings are sometimes stilted or overwrought. These are all shortcomings of shooting in a strange country and a second language that the film itself doesn't quite surmount.
It's well established that things aren't safe for the couple. A shop Jane works in is attacked by youthful gang twice, terrorizing her. And then there is the graffiti. We get glimpses of someone furtively reappearing. It is Kenji who "loses" Kai, taken from him while he has the boy with him at school. It turns out he knows where to go. Shortly the boy is found. We, shifting to another POV, have already seen the kidnapper, a young man with a girlfriend who plays with Kai as if he were his own son. Soon the benevolent Detective Gibbs (Christopher Mann) appears, and he will wander in and out of nearly every scene with a police procedural vibe from here on. We learn about an earlier relationship of Jane's with a wild young American called Donny, whom Kanji knows about, and turns out to know more about him than Jane is aware of.
After the boy is returned, seemingly none the worse for wear - if anything more cheerful and lively than before, the couple strives to be closer together and maintain normalcy for Kai, but that proves difficult when the boy's school finds out what has happened and wants to take special protective measures. Detective Gibbs continues to be constantly hovering about. though he's a reminder of what has happened, Gibbs is the film's calmest, most reassuring presence.
We can't go into all that has happened and will follow from the kidnapping, which constitutes nearly half the film. The ghost of a hundred American police procedurals intermingles with the shadows of a Japanese psychological film with just a hint here and there of the supernatural and horror genres. It feels as if the writer-director almost isn't sure quite when and how the film should end. The whole thing seems a bit difficult to swallow from the start. But the director's dedicated fans may find this an interesting new direction. There is an underlying subject of perennial interest touched on here: that of rival paternities. The film's poster design by Aicon has been remarked upon.
Mariko is known for Destruction Babies (awarded Best Emerging Director at Locarno 2016) and Miyamoto (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4475) (2019; I reviewed the latter as part of the NYAFF).
Dear Stranger, 138 mins., will have its International Premiere at the 2025 Busan International Film Festival Sept. 17.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20drstr.jpg
THE FILM'S MEMORABLY MINIMAL POSTER THE DESIGNER AICON