Netflixable? “Call Me Chihiro” follows a former Sex Worker through an Existential Crisis
Posted on February 27, 2023 by Roger Moore
“Call Me Chihiro” is a soapy, static Japanese melodrama that drifts through the months after a sex worker has given up “the life.” It’s true to its source material as it captures the brooding, interior world quality of some of the more subtle manga, the Japanese comic books for adults. But as cinema, it plays as dull, seemingly random sketches that add up to a motion picture that’s more of a still life portrait.
Our title character (Kasumi Arimura) is a beaming bento shop clerk whom we quickly notice is popular with her customers. Very popular. They’re all male, local factory workers who flirt and make crude come-ons, and she smiles and gives as good as she gets.
They knew her in her previous profession, as a “massage parlor” sex worker.
Near as we can tell, this other profession didn’t scar her. As we never get an idea of what exactly drove her into that work via the film’s flashbacks, we accept her as she presents herself — solitary, friendly and kind. A teenage schoolgirl (Hana Toyoshima) takes secret snaps of her cuddling a feral cat, chatting up a bratty little boy (Tetta Shimada), sticking up for, feeding and all but taking in an old homeless man (composer turned actor (Keiichi Suzuki) she sees bullied on the docks of Hiroshima.
Eating with him, we see her fondness for the food of the cranky cook, Nagai (Toshie Negishi) at the bento shop and her taste for the extremely tart pickled plums that are Nagai’s specialty. Chihiro grimaces, and then smiles every time she takes a bite.
And there’s our big fat manga metaphor, film fans. Chihiro has a taste for the bitter, even as she maintains that sweet face.
She allows herself to bond with the teen Suniko and sassy little boy, Makoto, even as figures from her old life — from customers to her transgender sex-worker friend Basil (Van) and her ex-boss, the tropical fish dealer/pimp, played by Lily Franky — wander back into her current one.
She visits the now-blind owner of the bento shop (Jun Fubuki) who hired her in the hospital, chatting her up under another name, hiding their previous connection.
Through it all, we sense a damaged young woman making an effort to connect with people, but lonely and uncertain of her place or anyone’s ability to connect thanks to the scars of her life, most of them left unexplained.
Co-writer/director Rikiya Imaizumi’s (“Sad Tea,” “What is Love?”) adaptation might have had a dreamy quality as he leads us through this woman’s drfting life and implied struggle for happiness and connection. But the blocking and acting is laughably stiff. There’s almost no such thing as a walking and talking shot here, with virtually every encounter a series of stock-still one-shots — Chiriro arguing with Basil, Suniko lashing out at her chilly, remote “certified cook” mother, Matako’s single mom chewing out Chihiro for befriending him.
A movie this long and this still practically begs to be taken more seriously than what transpires on the screen actually merits. What I took from it was a renewed appreciation for Japanese cooking, that “Iron Chef” obsession with food as mere subtext, and a sense that I’d just seen the most PG (It’s rated TV-14, due to a single sex scene) rated film about a sex worker in the history of cinema.
Fans of the manga may get more out of it than the casual viewer just dipping her or his toes in this “Around the World with Netflix” entry. The rest of us are left to scroll through bento online menus to see how much of what we’ve sampled on the screen we can order as take out.
Rating: TV-14, sex, adult subject matter
Cast: Kasumi Arimura, Hana Toyoshima, Tetta Shimada, Van, Ryûya Wakaba. Jun Fubuki and Keiichi Suzuki
Credits: Directed by Rikiya Imaizumi, scripted by Kaori Sawai and Rikiya Imaizumi, based on the manga by Hiroyuki Yasuda. A Netflix release.
Running time: 2:12
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Call Me Chihiro Review – a very long and convoluted drama about nothing
February 24, 2023
Lori C.
0
Film Reviews, Netflix, Streaming Service
Directed by Rikiya Imaizumi, we review the 2023 Netflix film Call Me Chihiro, which does not contain spoilers.
Call Me Chihiro is a Japanese drama directed by Rikiya Imaizumi. The story is based on the manga Chihiro-san by Hiroyuki Yasuda, which ran between 2017 and 2018. This slice-of-life drama follows a former sex worker building a new life for herself as a bento shop worker and forging connections with the people she meets.
Call Me Chihiro Review and Plot Summary
The film’s first scene introduces Chihiro (Kasumi Arimura) on her hands and knees, chatting with a cat. We then watch her engage in flirty banter with a customer at the bento shop she works at. Chihiro used to be a sex worker and, in the present, seems to have gathered quite a few male fans who patronize the food stall to see her. Throughout the runtime, we see Chihiro meet and interact with various people in the small seaside community she inhabits while also getting brief snippets of her past.
Among the people Chihiro meets is an old homeless man she starts giving lunch to (Keiichi Suzuki), a high school student named Kuniko (Hana Toyoshima) whose authoritarian father rules the family with an iron fist, a young boy raised by a single mother who works nights and rarely has time to care for him, and Tae (Jun Fubuki) – the blind co-owner of the bento shop. She also reconnects with her trans friend from the massage parlor, Basil, and her former employer, Utsumi (Lily Franky), who has since quit the sex work business and now runs a fish store.
Call Me Chihiro Ending Explained – who was Chihiro?
Call Me Chihiro is a very slow slice-of-life film. It’s also a very long film, and, dare I say, it’s quite the snooze fest. We spend over 2 hours in Chihiro’s company and learn almost nothing about her. A plethora of long static shots show the protagonist staring at the ocean and walking, and there’s even a drawn-out scene of her inexplicably burying a dead body. She shows little to no emotion to anything around her, and that’s played out by the other characters as a quirky personality trait, but it comes across as robotic. Her past was as much of a mystery to me at the movie’s end as it was when I first hit the play button, despite several flashbacks trying to fill in the gaps.
Some of the other characters around Chihiro, especially the two kids, are more compelling, and this would have been a better film if it focused more on their story. We also get several touching moments of seeing community members forging friendships because they all know the protagonist. But these scenes are few and far between in a very long and convoluted movie about nothing.
Is the 2023 movie Call Me Chihiro good?
This film doesn’t tell, and it doesn’t show. It just is. And sometimes life is like that. We just are. Some people will enjoy this title, there’s a simple yet beautiful elegance to how the story (or lack of it) is presented. But if you want a film with a narrative to follow, you might want to skip this one.
What did you think of the 2023 Netflix movie Call Me Chihiro? Comment below.
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REVIEW: ‘Call Me Chihiro’ Takes Its Time for Better or Worse
Sarah Musnickyby Sarah Musnicky
02/24/2023
Call Me Chihiro - But Why Tho
Regardless of how much we deny it, we are all more alone than we think. This loneliness serves as the connective tissue between the characters in the latest Japanese drama film, Call Me Chihiro. Based on Hiroyuki Yasuda’s manga Chihiro-san, the film stars Kasumi Arimura, Miwako Ichikawa, Hana Toyoshima, Jun Fubuki, and Lily Franky. With thoughtful direction from Rikiya Imaizumi, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kaori Sawai, we take our time with this mostly plot-free look into Chihiro’s life.
The story is simple enough. We follow Chihiro, a former sex worker, working in a bento shop in a sleepy seaside town. Life moves slowly here. Perhaps it is the slow flow of this community that helps the loneliness build and bubble up within its people. We see this navigation of loneliness in Chihiro’s interactions. Whether helping a homeless man or linking young student, Kuniko Seo (Hana Toyoshima) up with a fellow manga-loving friend, Chihiro notices and coaxes the loneliness out of people, planting the seed of hope while also listening to their thoughts.
Likely through her own experiences and sex work (which deals heavily with intimacy), there is a need in Chihiro to find like-minded souls. Over the course of Call Me Chihiro, we see how all those that have found their way into her life grow attached to her and find comfort in her. What becomes slowly unveiled over time is how profoundly lonely Chihiro herself is and how much the death of her mother is truly impacting her.
The lack of a defined plot in Call Me Chihiro is both a blessing and a curse. A more character-driven piece, the film takes its time focusing on allowing us into the inner world of some of the characters. The performances of the actors, all equally talented in measure, instill empathy and understanding while also having else wonder what happens next. Kasumi Arimura’s Chihiro is magnetic. Openly unapologetic about her past, we imagine Chihiro as a free spirit. As the film progresses, Arimura deploys subtleties that allow us to see the woman beneath, giving the character depth.
With that said, clocking in at 2 hours and 14 minutes, the meditative slice-of-life nature of this story sometimes drags without the typical propulsion forward that a more defined plot would bring. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but it requires patience from the viewer. Whether or not the viewer has patience is an entirely different matter.
Call Me Chihiro is a meditative film that takes its time dissecting themes of loneliness and found family. Through the experiences of the titular Chihiro and the characters around her, we’re invited into this character-focused piece to observe and reflect. We don’t know what people carry within themselves and, while it takes too long to get to the emotionally resonant third act, Call Me Chihiro has a subtle power to its delivery that will linger after the credits roll.
Call Me Chihiro is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.
Call Me Chihiro
Rating - 7/10
7/10
TL;DR
Call Me Chihiro is a meditative film that takes its time dissecting themes of loneliness and found family. Through the experiences of the titular Chihiro and the characters around her, we’re invited into this character-focused piece to observe and reflect. We don’t know what people carry within themselves and, while it takes too long to get to the emotionally resonant third act, Call Me Chihiro has a subtle power to its delivery that will linger after the credits roll.
Sarah Musnicky
Sarah is a writer and editor for BWT. When she’s not busy writing about KDramas, she’s working as the EIC over at horror entertainment site, Nightmarish Conjurings, where she has yet to hug the ghoulies that haunt our waking nightmares. She’s also a Rotten Tomatoes Certified critic and a published author of both fiction and non-fiction.
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