InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 9

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FILM REVIEWS bringing to the foreground — a textured proximity to the land. However, even those images read as fraught: austere and enclosing, orchestrated to such rigid compositions that it’s difficult to know whether each act was sincere or only performed as to amplify a sensorium, as so much of the film is less interested in a people and their ways and more transfixed by the capacity one has to curate that. It all feels quite removed from the humanity the film ostensibly seeks to capture, and is instead more alike the very violence desired to be here subverted. And the structural integrity God of Mexico’s narrative hinges on is of such simplistic juxtaposition that the only real affects that land are sensory pleasures of kinetic compositions, aural texture, or the evocative qualities of a well-lit frame. Sadly, these few truly beautiful frames are burdened by their utter passivity. “[God of Mexico’s] wellmeaning survey of beauty and might quickly collapses into the ornamental. The end credits are overlaid with a track that can only be described as a blatant Philip Glass riff, concluding this 90-minute montage with that a sense of grandeur especially not appropriate for this subject matter. The Qatsi trilogy works so well with Glass’ music because it dehumanizes its subjects purposefully, creating charged spectacle as to extrapolate from each image an impression, then molding these elusive materials into a monolithic concept, enveloped by poetic montage. To bring this kind of gaze to these communities, reducing them to idealisms, feels like a betrayal: an orchestration that turns their willing participation into the very kind of aesthetic structure once actively used to objectify them. The specific Indigenous communities represented in the film are as follows: the Aztec (or Nahua), Chinantec, Cora, Cucapa, Guarijio, Huave, Ikoot, Maya (and Lacandon), Mazatec, Mexicanero, Mixe, Mixtec, Purepecha, Raramuri, Tepehuan, Tohono O’odhaim, Totonac, Yaqui, and Zapotec peoples. These distinct indigenous cultures have been swallowed up into the homogenizing vision of Gods of Mexico; it reflects a curious hypocrisy, as the director made this film as “a wake-up call about the importance of preserving such cultural diversity against a world that wants us more and more homogeneous.” Why then are these disparate indigenous communities observed through a lens that perceives them as all alike? In fairness, it would be in bad faith to suggest that the intention here is as corrosive as the final project comes across — the intent obviously was not to present these portraits as mere echoes of colonial gazes. But when working in this mode of baroque polish and Euro aestheticism, there’s little else to take away. — ZACHARY GOLDKIND DIRECTOR: Helmut Dosantos; CAST: —; DISTRIBUTOR: Oscilloscope Laboratories; IN THEATERS: March 3; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 37 min. CALL ME CHIHIRO Rikiya Imaizumi From its first frames, Rikiya Imaizumi's Call Me Chihiro is easily identifiable as a Netflix original. Adapted from Hiroyuki Yasuda's manga Chihiro-san, the film's flat, textureless cinematography and crisp digital sheen carry the signifiers associated with the kind of streaming dross that any discerning cinephile would avoid like the plague. Content-wise, the film doesn't appear to fare any better: main character Chihiro (Kasumi Arimura) is a former sex worker with a naturally sunny disposition. Widely beloved, she brightens people's day while working at a bento shop, pets a stray kitten, and even feeds, bathes, and clothes a homeless man (Keiichi Suzuki) — all within the first ten minutes no less. The sleepy seaside town she lives in is home to a number of kooky characters like Okaji (Hana Toyoshima), a teenager who spends her free time stalking Chihiro, taking pictures of the young woman, clearly enthralled. The sage Chihiro, meanwhile, turns out to be aware of this, playfully confronting Okaji when she finally works up the courage to speak to her. Moments like this reveal Call Me Chihiro's biggest problem: its protagonist is a bit of a goody two-shoes. Instead of being alarmed by Okaji's stalking, she recognizes the girl's social alienation and forms a maternal bond with the bespectacled teen. Even when a foul-mouthed young boy's mean-spirited prank culminates in him 13
FILM REVIEWS stabbing her in the arm with a pen, she takes it in stride, offering to buy the boy a hamburger bento and doling out a very pedagogically progressive punishment which consists of light teasing and asking him to apologize. Of course, the boy, Makoto (Tetta Shimada), warms up to her pretty much immediately. The largely plotless drama's relaxed pace feels appropriate given its setting, and the stakes are suitably low. Anything resembling conflict usually comes in the form of mundane misunderstandings or conflicting desires — a single mother reprimanding someone for making her look bad in front of her neighbors, a young girl not wanting to go on a family trip — and it takes a good while before Call Me Chihiro delves into its titular character's somewhat turbulent inner life. Although the script doesn't always do her a lot of favors, Arimuri imbues the superficially flawless Chihiro with some rough edges, especially once the film finally decides to foreground her loneliness and lingering grief from her mother's death, while never allowing her to be anything other than unfailingly kind and understanding. The reveal that her chipper energy obscures a more mournful side isn't exactly a surprise, as any attentive viewer will likely be able to piece together that her ability to bring joy and comfort to so many stems from her own rather isolated life, her habit of neglecting herself while constantly being concerned for others becoming clear relatively early on. When she comes across the dead body of the homeless man she had previously taken care of, she is alone in her grief, choosing not to share her tragic find with anyone. As there is no one to inform of his death, she ends up burying him herself, before returning to her lonely apartment to sullenly wash the dirt off her skin. Quietly melancholy sequences like these are what make Imaizumi's latest more memorable than most of what currently clogs the digital arteries of streaming platforms — this goes double for Netflix, whose library is overstuffed with beige, throwaway content fodder that seems to have been conceived by an AI — and its reflections on loneliness and the value of strong communities and found family do, to a generous viewer at least, carry shades of Hideaki Anno's 2000 arthouse romance Ritual and Satoshi Kon's 2003 animated comedy-drama Tokyo Godfathers. This isn't to say that Call Me Chihiro comes anywhere close in terms artistic value — or excitement for that matter — but as far as Netflix originals go, one could do a lot worse than this warm-hearted, empathetic, and yes, occasionally uneventful and saccharine slice-of-life drama. — FRED BARRETT DIRECTOR: Rikiya Imaizumi; CAST: Kasumi Arimura, Hana Toyoshima, Ryuya Wakaba; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING: February 23; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 11 min. 14
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Page 23 and 24: “The Tired Influencer” features

InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 9

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