Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Drawing on stories by Murakami, Pierre Földes’ animated fantasy sets a standard that may not be equalled this year.
A clear contender for the best animated release of 2023, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a film that surprises in many ways. One of them lies in the fact that it has been made with total confidence and assurance despite the fact that it is the first feature film of its director, Pierre Földes. Furthermore, while it has become standard practice for some animated features to take on serious subject matter and to be aimed at adult audiences (last year alone we saw Flee and Where Is Anne Frank), it is nevertheless unexpected that Földes as the writer here should choose to base his film on short stories by Murakami Haruki. Although the title is itself taken from a volume of his short stories, this feature film, which is divided into seven sections, incorporates adaptations of no less than six such tales some of which stem from other collections of Murakami's work. Surprising too is the complexity of the animation technique used, a blend of 2-D animation and a variant on rotoscoping which still involves filming actors first and then using that as a basis on which to build the fully animated look of the piece.
Such a project sounds foolhardy but from the outset Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman grips the attention and becomes a superb example of the appeal exercised by storytelling at its best. The setting is Japan and what unfolds revolves around two men, both of them employees at the Tokyo Security Trust Bank. We meet them at a time when half of their department is being outsourced and both are likely to be affected. The younger of the two, Komura, is due for a week’s leave during which time he ponders his situation. It has arisen at what is already a moment of crisis in Komura's life since his wife, Kyoko, has just walked out on him, quite possibly for good. As a diversion, he agrees to travel to Hokkaido to deliver a mysterious box on behalf of a colleague and on arrival there he finds himself seduced in a love motel, in addition to which on his return he has an uneasy encounter with a 16-year-old girl who is his neighbour. And all this time Kyoko is expecting him to search for her cat which has gone missing, although the real issue is whether or not his marriage can be saved and if that is really what he wants.
If this is a rather odd narrative, the one that concerns the other bank employee is even weirder. Katagiri is a loner in his forties who lacks ambition and accepts the routine of his post in which he deals with bank loans. Out of the blue he is confronted by a giant frog – Mr Frog as he calls him – who reveals that in seven days Tokyo will be destroyed through an eruption cause by a giant worm that lives underground unless this can be averted by the efforts of Mr Frog. The latter, invisible to others, has appeared to Katagiri because he is the one man who can successfully act as Mr Frog’s assistant, a role key to the worm being defeated.
In this adaptation Földes follows through the stories of Komura and Katagiri and makes them a linking thread that can readily incorporate other stories too. These occur in passing references or in fully-fledged sections of the film. A neat example of this can be found when one segment shows us what Kyoko is doing after leaving Komura. This allows her to tell an acquaintance about what happened to her when, acting as a waitress and then only 20 years old, she found herself taking up dinner to her elderly employer who lived over the restaurant. She tells of how he claimed to be able to grant her one wish but, if that sounds like a standard fairytale, this scene carries disturbing echoes, be they justified or not, of the threat that Harvey Weinstein offered to attractive young women.
I should say here that I am not somebody who takes readily to films that blend realism and fantasy and in theory I should have found Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman silly at worst and off-putting at best. But, instead, I found it unexpectedly beguiling and - yet another surprise – I was captivated by its voice cast who speak in English. It is central to the success of the film that unusually for an animated work the visuals and the dialogue carry equal weight. If the animation is superbly realised and guarantees visual delight, the words spoken are so striking that I thought of Harold Pinter. The writing style does not echo his, but there is a precision both in the choice of words and in the phrasing by the actors that prompted the comparison. The voice cast (Földes himself among them as Mr Frog) are perfectly chosen and that also means that for once one relishes Japanese characters voiced by actors speaking in English. Yet another reason to be lured in by this film is its admirable music score which fits perfectly – as it should since it too is provided by Peter Földes who is also a recognised composer.
Földes does find a way of giving what were originally quite distinct short stories a shape that leads to a resolution, but the price of that is to end up on a more conventional note compared to the strangeness that has gone before. Until then the entertainment to be found here includes some namedropping in the manner often used by Godard (here it is of authors ranging from Seneca to Hemingway, from Nietzsche to Joseph Conrad alongside film references including Fort Apache and Close Encounters of the Third Kind). It also extends to turning Mr Frog into a surprisingly engaging figure and inviting the audience to find in the material whatever underlying significance they wish. The action plays out as a view of life in 2011 just after Japan had suffered an earthquake and a tsunami so insecurities can be viewed in that context with both Komura and Katagiri representing everyday folk thus inviting us to identify with their situation. Indeed, Katagiri’s encounter with Mr Frog is so bizarre that it can be seen as the fantasy of a man who, downtrodden in the way he sees himself, is driven to imagine a role that will make him some kind of a hero and will in the process also lead to a friendship. That this happens only in his imagination is seen as a reflection of the fact that no man can get away from himself regardless of any wish or dream. Given that the original tales were short stories that could be read one at a time and either resonate with each other or not, perhaps bringing them together isn't 100% satisfying. But in the hands of Pierre Földes it comes very close to that and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman unquestionably deserved its win at 2022’s Annecy Film Festival.
Original title: Saules aveugles, femme endormie.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Voices of Ryan Bommarito, Shoshana Wilder, Marcelo Arroyo, Michael Czyz, Zag Dorison, Jesse Noah Gruman, Katharine King So, Peter Földes, Scott Humphrey, John Vamvas, Nadia Verrucci, Arthur Holden, Cora Kim.
Dir Pierre Földes, Pro Tom Dercourt, Pierre Baussaron, David Mouraire, Olivier Père, Pierre Urbain and Emmanuel-Alain Raynal Screenplay Pierre Földes based on stories by Murakami Haruki, Ph Étienne Boilard, Pro Des Pierre Földes, Ed Kara Blake, Music Pierre Földes, Animation Supervisor Julien Maret.
Miyu Productions/An Original Picture/Arte France Cinéma/Cinéma Defacto/Doghouse Films-Modern Films.
108 mins. Canada/France/Luxembourg/The Netherlands. 2022. Rel: UK Rel: 31 March 2023. US Rel: 14 April 2023. Cert. 15.
