Matsuko just died. Her nephew is given the task to clean up her filthy house, even if he actually never met her. He didn’t even know he had an aunt, so out of curiosity he begins to reconstruct aunt Matsuko’s story by asking people she knew and trying to find out whether she had any value.
The movie unfolds as a big flashback, starting from young Matsuko as a daughter that loved musicals. Her sister was ill, so her father was always sad and always gave the most attention to the sister. While growing, she hit every possible disgrace. Working as a teacher of music, got fired after taking responsibility for a theft done by one of her students. Rejected by the family, she went throuh a sequence of bad boyfriends always leaving her deluded.
As the movie goes on, we see Matsuko descending in hell, jail included, but meanwhile she smiles so much and her eyes are so bright she radiates happiness all the time. She can’t give up being positive, giving true and absolute love to her boyfriends, helping people, trying hard to be good, looking for a prince.
After this introduction, you’re probably thinking this is the usual melodrama, but Director Nakashima Tetsuya’s experience in TV spots makes a huge difference. This movie is so colored (over saturated), so fast, so dense of rithm changes and surreal gags that you can hardly define it. Every rule of the genre was completely demolished and contaminated with comedy, musical and fairy tale fantasy. There’s even computer graphic to help the most surreal sequences. And oh believe me, the result is stunning and moving. I could barely hold back my tears.
In my opinion this is the best movie I watched at FEFF9 and surely deserves an international audience.
Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no isshô),
Japan 2006, by Tetsuya Nakashima, Drama/Comedy
IMDB 768120
