‘A Man’: Venice Review

Dir: Kei Ishikawa. Japan. 2022. 121mins

After a divorce, and the death of her youngest child, Rie (Sakura Ando) is cautious about the possibility of another relationship. But Daisuke (Masataka Kubota), a newcomer to the quiet corner of rural Japan where Rie makes her life, is a gentle soul who courts her with gauche conversation and hand-drawn sketches. Rie’s second chance at happiness is abruptly interrupted, however, when Daisuke dies in an accident and Rie is stunned to learn that her second husband was not who he said he was. Kei Ishikawa’s domestic drama has a set up which seems to lean towards a thriller, but instead takes a more meditative path. With Rie’s empathetic attorney Kido (Satoshi Tsumabuki) leading the investigation – and taking centre stage as a character – the film interrogates the nature of identity itself, the burdens of the past and the question of whether love can extend beyond a lie of such magnitude.

An unassuming but rewarding picture, driven by fine performances

A Man screens in Venice’s Orizzonti section, a return for Ishikawa to the festival following the premiere of his feature debut, Gukoroku – Traces of Sin, at the 2016 Biennale. Subsequently, Ishikawa contributed a segment to Ten Years Japan, and achieved moderate success on the Asian festival circuit with Listen To The Universe. The genre conventions of the assumed identity movie suggest that the mystery individual must have nefarious motives for their secrecy, but A Man sidesteps those expectations with a thoughtful, if slow-burning, examination of the desperate weight of inherited shame. It’s an unassuming but rewarding picture, driven by fine performances. However it may not be assertive enough to make much of a mark beyond the festival circuit.

What makes the film interesting is also, perhaps, the element which may make it a slippery marketing prospect: it’s never quite the story that you expect it to be. Rie as a character is initially the wounded heart of the picture. But following the terrific, jarring scene which reveals the fact that her husband was an imposter, Rie seems to drift out of focus. Instead it is Kido, a Japanese-born Korean who must struggle with the hostility that his racial heritage incurs, who takes a leading role.

Likewise the music choices shift, from harmonic, melancholic piano chords at the film’s start, to aggressively plucked lute strings and discord as the story unfolds. As the film progresses, the capable, successful Kido is worn down, his certainties shaken. And his temper is frayed by the casual racism which meets him at every turn: a meeting with an imprisoned broker who dealt in identity swaps is an encounter of breath-taking toxicity, and a turning point for the mild-mannered lawyer.

Kido’s research is guided by plenty of lucky guesswork and a few wildly improbable coincidences – were the picture a simple investigative procedural, these fortuitous jumps might undermine the story’s credibility a little. But ultimately, it’s not the unravelling of the mystery man’s identity which is the point of the film as much as the broader philosophical questions with which it engages.