Chiisai ouchi / The Little House (2014)

A woman looks back on her family's life in Tokyo before and during WWII. A maid arrives from the countryside to work for an upper middle class family. She fits in well, but everyone's emotions are stirred up with the arrival of a student.

IMDB 7.6/10 from 383 users

Director: Yôji Yamada
Writer: Kyôko Nakajima (based on the novel by), Yôji Yamada (screenplay), Emiko Hiramatsu (screenplay)
Actors: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Chieko Baishô, Takako Matsu, Yui Natsukawa
Rated: N/A
Runtime: 136 min


Takeshi finds several notebooks by his late aunt Taki Nunomiya, who never married. Through the notebooks Takeshi learns of his aunt's life.
Prior to World War II, in a little house with a red triangular roof in Tokyo, Taki works as a housemaid. The family that lives in the little house consists of 3 members: the husband who works at a toy company, his beautiful wife Tokiko and their five year old son Kyoichi. Taki longs for her employer Tokiko. The husband then hires a young art school graduate named Shoji Itakura. Tokiko and Taki are both excited by the man's artistic talents. Meanwhile, the war situation deteriorates as well as the relationships in the little house.


Review:

A PERFECT WORLD CRUMBLING.
Those familiar with Yoji Yamada’s work will know what to expect from this, his latest work that won for Kuroki Haru the Best Actress Award in this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Rest assured that these expectation will be fully met. There is again a wealth of delicate emotions and overflowing warmth. And then there is more. Film lovers can easily call up in their mind a list of works that have a house as a motif, a theme, or even the main character (yes, but unfortunately I can’t remember this one’s name). This house here is in bright red, glimmering like an exquisite gem on a ridge overlooking an interesting landscape somewhere in Tokyo. The main body of the story takes place in this house in a period of about 7 to 8 years, from the prelude of WW II to dropping of the atomic bombs. Expectedly this is from Japan’s perspective. The perspective however is not from makers and shakers of events, but rather from that of everyday common folks the depiction of which Master Akira Kurosawa excelled in. Yoji Yamada has shown that he is equally deft in this.

While the main story took place more than half a century ago, the movie actually starts with the present, and effortlessly glides seamlessly between two time frames which are just a few months apart: before and after the death (from old age)of an independent woman living alone, Taki (Baishou Cheiko). From both of these time frames, the audience is transported back to the main story via VOs, from two people. From after Taki’s death, it is her grandnephew Takeshi (Satoshi Tsumabuki) looking over the things she left behind. From before her death, it is the two of them discussing her story in his effort to help her write her autobiography. The main story starts with young Taki (Kuroki Haru) leaving her home in desolate and poverty stricken northern Japan to seek a better life in Tokyo. In the titular house, as a servant girl, she is received with kindness by the young mother Tokiko (Takako Matsu) who treats her like a sister. Her main job is to look after 7-year-old (or thereabout) young master who soon get infected with polio. Through Taki’s dedicated service that includes carrying the kid in a long walk to the masseur-healer daily and eventually learning to apply the message herself, he gradually recovers. This cements her relationship with the family.

Let me turn to the macro scene for a moment. The head of the family (Tokiko’s husband) is a typical businessman, something like a second-in-charge in a toy manufacturing firm. Entertaining colleagues (including the boss) in his house is not unusual. Yoji Yamada utilizes these occasions to paint a broad brush picture of the perspective of everyday businessmen during the period of Japanese aggression in WW II: they look at it as business opportunities, first and foremost. It isn’t until towards the end of the movie that, through the words of the little boy who is now an old man on a wheelchair (the polio was healed, but never totally), that Yoji Yamada delivers the message of those who look back and finally see what atrocity they have been deceived by the militant government into condoning. Back to the intimate story, the real intrigue begins with a new colleague in the toy company appearing on the scene, a gentle soul of a young designer called Itakura (Hidetaka Yoshioka). As an affair develops between Itakura and Tokiko, it would seem at a quick glance that Taki makes up the third of a triangle. It is, and it isn’t. Taki is not in love with Itakura, but jealous of him. While I confess readily to the guilt of putting this so bluntly, Yoji Yamada’s handling of this is all gentle subtlety. We don’t even need to affix a label. Call this an affection and warmth one woman feel for another that dances tantalizingly between admiration, romance and desire. Here, there is also loyalty.

I cannot even begin to describe the layers and layers of subtle emotions that are bottled up in Taki. Maybe that is why young Kuroki Haru (born 1990) won the Berlin award while many thought it should have gone to Takako Matsu. And here is a Takako Matsu that you have never seen before, depicting such a wide range of emotions including amorous and bitchy (slightly so, I have to qualify). Not to be forgotten, however, is the third woman Baishou Cheiko who plays aged Taki so pitch-perfectly that she deserves to win the award just as much as the other two. Watch this movie. Take your pick.

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