Tag: netflix

37 Seconds

Daphne LeeLeave a comment

37Director: Hikari

Released in 2020

This film handled a difficult topic with grace and compassion. It was uncomfortable to watch, but the lead, Mei Yakama, was heartbreakingly adorable, making it easy to empathise with the character, and also anxious to stick it out with her.

Yuma is a manga artist with cerebral palsy, molly coddled by her mother (Kanno Yusuzu), and yearning for independence. She’s fortunate, in her exploration of identity and sexual experience, to meet with kindness, which gives her courage and helps her to make the leap to self-acceptance and, ultimately, freedom. It’s hard, but Yuma is not as helpless as her mother thinks she is and her courage is buoyed by friendship and hope.

The sex worker Mai (Makiko Watanabe) and her driver Toshiya (Shunsuke Daito) are just what Yuma needs in her life and I can’t help wonder if she will eventually find love with Toshi — his expression doesn’t just show sympathy, surely. But first, Yuma must come to terms with herself and her relationship with her mother. Yusuzu is superb as Yuma’s mother, making you cringe at her over-protective behaviour yet still understand the worry and fear she feels. As a mother I could totally relate.

Jaoon Kahan Bata Aedil

Daphne LeeLeave a comment

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Director: Aadish Keluskar

Released in 2018

This was unexpected. I loved it — the script, the acting, the portrayal of desperation and loneliness.
Be warned: It features lies, emotional, verbal and physical abuse, bullying, and all the other delightful things that so many relationships are about.

The English title is Lovefucked, which is appropriate when you watch the two actors react to one another. There is chemistry and it’s intense, but it’s a fucked up kind of love, more lust, really, not a shred of tenderness certainly. You get the feeling that they would have stumbled along together, each despising the other more and more with each passing day, if not for what does happen. No spoilers, but that ending (before the film’s actual ending) is melodramatic and ridiculous. Does she (Khushboo Upadhyay) really need to feel even worse than he (Rohit Kokate) has already made her? Or is the scene meant to ensure her release? Perhaps the actual final scene is then inserted to show us that, beyond the shock, there is no misplaced guilt, only relief and a wild delight at her deliverance. However, the audience knows that she does not have the capacity to continue to be good to herself for very long. Not deliverance then, only a short reprieve.