Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2020 – Japan – 42m
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In the first episode of director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s TV series A Day-Off Of Kasumi Arimura, the actress Kazumi Arimura plays herself in a fictionalised version of her life – on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 from 13:00 Saturday, October 10th to 13:00 Tuesday, October 13th
This is a curiosity, one-off festival screening that admirers of contemporary Japanese cinema are going to want to see. Kore-eda (Shoplifters, 2018) is one of the highest profile, contemporary directors in Japan and like many other directors around the world in between his theatrical cinema films he also works in small screen television. This is the first of eight episodes of the TV series A Day-Off Of Kasumi Arimura in which actress Kazumi Arimura plays herself in a fictionalised version of her life. As the subtitle of the end title indicates, this drama is fictional. It has nothing to do with Kazumi Arimura’s real life.
There’s a little pre-amble in which Kazumi learns that tomorrow’s shoot is cancelled because someone has gone down with the ‘flu. Which you might think makes the episode rather close to or currently perilous pandemic times, but it doesn’t really. It’s an excuse for the actress to take the day off from her busy shooting schedule and visit her mum. Various family intrigues follow.
Kore-eda and his star actress have a lot of fun observing some of the mostly ludicrous aspects of an actor’s life. “So you’re playing a prosecutor?” asks her mum. “…and last week I was a zombie,” Kazumi replies. “You’re a teacher one minute and a schoolgirl the next,” her mum fires back. In this episode at least, we never see any of Kazumi’s working on these movies. Its just banter with her mum about the day job.
After meeting at the station, the pair walk up a steep hill to her mum’s house with grocery shopping because her mum’s bike chain has come off. Those familiar with the director’s feature Still Walking (2008) will be reminded of a similar walk up a hill in that film.
lt’s basically a soap, with Kazumi becoming concerned for her mum as various male visitors turn up. On the way home, mum chats with local, small supermarket manager Mr. Onishi, who is around her mum’s age, but she’s genuinely shocked when a young man named Makoto arrives and starts doing odd jobs such as fixing her bike.
One of the pleasures on offer here is watching the actor react to the appearance of members of the opposite sex around her mother. Kisumi Arimura beautifully underplays the takes while Kore-eda’s camera stays on her so we get the full, subtle impact of what she’s doing in her reaction takes.
How typical this opening Day-Off scenario is of the whole series it’s impossible to say, but as a glance into Kore-eda’s TV work it’s a fascinating insight, if a tad short for a festival screening.
A Day-Off Of Kasumi Arimura is on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 from 13:00 Saturday, October 10th to 13:00 Tuesday, October 13th.
Trailer (entire series):