‘Intimate Stranger’: Asuka Kurosawa makes a triumphant return | The Japan Times

‘Intimate Stranger’: Asuka Kurosawa makes a triumphant return | The Japan Times

‘Intimate Stranger’: Asuka Kurosawa makes a triumphant return



BY MARK SCHILLING


CONTRIBUTING WRITER



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Mar 3, 2022



While watching “Intimate Stranger,” Mayu Nakamura’s psychological thriller about a woman whose obsessive search for her missing son takes a strange and disturbing turn, it was hard not to think of “A Snake of June,” a 2002 erotic thriller by international cult director Shinya Tsukamoto.

One obvious reason: Asuka Kurosawa stars in both, though her troubled mother in “Intimate Stranger” seems to be worlds apart from her telephone counselor in “A Snake of June,” who is forced to live out the sexual fantasies of a stalker.




Despite the differences between these starring roles, and the two decades separating them, Kurosawa brings to both a presence that suggests depths of not only repressed desire but also darker emotional currents, especially in the new film. Finally, Nakamura’s muted color palette, which reinforces the film’s air of separation and alienation from the outside world, recalls the chilly, silvery black-and-whites that underlined the unsettling isolation of Tsukamoto’s protagonist.

INTIMATE STRANGER(SHINMITSUNA TANIN)Rating





Run Time 96 mins.
Language Japanese
Opens March 5


Not that “Intimate Stranger” is any way a homage: Scripted by Nakamura, who has mainly made documentaries since her 2006 feature debut “The Summer of Stickleback,” the film focuses on a lonely middle-aged woman, giving her psychological complexity and an erotic inner life not bound by conventional social norms. The protagonist stands in contrast to the many Japanese films in which characters like her are reduced to sexless wives and moms.

The film begins with Megumi (Kurosawa) frantically searching online for any word of her teenage son, Shimpei (Yu Uemura), who has been missing for a year for unexplained reasons. Her offer of a reward draws a young drifter, Yuji (Fuju Kamio), who claims to be Shimpei’s acquaintance from an internet cafe. She gives him money and promises more if he can come up with additional information.

Not surprisingly, Yuji is a scammer working with gangsters, but instead of the easy mark she at first seems, Megumi is playing her own, hard-to-read game. Asking Yuji to tell her everything he knows and inviting him to stay in her apartment, she becomes not only his designated victim, but also his host, surrogate mother — and protector when detectives come calling.

But while she is away at her job in a store selling baby goods, he rifles through her drawers looking for valuables and finds a cache of baby booties. What is that about?

And why does she insist on shaving Yuji with a straight razor, sensually rubbing shaving foam on his face? Is she making a veiled attempt at seduction or lulling him before slicing his throat, having guessed his game?

The film is slow to reveal Megumi’s true intentions, and also slow to build tension. Instead, for much of its running time it plays like a character study of a woman who has been driven to desperation, despair and the edge of madness by the loss of her own baby, many years ago. But the climax delivers a reveal that may be well foreshadowed, but still shocks and chills.

More than a clever plot twist, however, Kurosawa’s layered (or rather veiled) performance as Megumi makes this deliberately paced film a riveting experience. Where, I wondered, has she been since her breakout long ago? Actually, working steadily in mostly supporting roles in TV dramas and the occasional film. But in “Intimate Stranger,” she comes triumphantly into her own, once again.
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