Takashi Ishii 4 Tales of Nami Review 1 - Alone in the Night

The thing about moving home after nearly two decades in the same place is how the things that you take for granted suddenly disappear. Whether it’s working out how to cook in an unfamiliar kitchen or not wanting to watch films because though there’s a decent place to plonk the TV, there’s nowhere obvious to put the speakers. You need it to be right, to do justice to the film. You’re getting used to the space, not quite sure what’s permanent or transitory.  

And when things matter, like watching films (OK, some might think that’s not life or death but they are wrong, sort of, -ish), you want to get it right, especially when used to having things pretty much as you want them. So the first couple of weeks were taken up with some TV, with a boxset of British micro-budget films (still to be completed), not anything in my to-review list (damn the guilt in not doing so). Add to that almost all my films were boxed up from the move (though useful to finally catalogue the damn lot, finally finished). But having put the amp, the speakers, temporarily in place - making me realise they cannot stay in the living room and yes the back bedroom needs to become a full-on film room, having lived in the space for two and half weeks (no, not nine) - it was time to watch what I felt was the first proper film. (Yes, if wondering where this rambling and personal intro was going, this is it.) At 5.30 on a hot Sunday evening, with no idea what the neighbours might make of the film should they hear it through the walls that I am still not sure how well they soak up sound, I watched the first true film in the new home: Takashi Ishii’s Alone in the Night, the first in Third Window’s upcoming 4 Tales of Nami boxset. 

You have to do things right. Life, death, moving home (stressful), films. 

Nami’s (Yui Natsukawa) husband, an undercover policeman, is killed stealing drugs from the Ikejima yakuza clan. Her home then smashed, and her body raped by Ikejima yakuza looking for the drugs, she tries to take revenge but is stopped by an Ikejima lieutenant, Muraki (Jinpachi Nezu), whose fate become entwined with hers, as Nami does whatever necessary to claim vengeance.  

This was the first of Takashi Ishii’s films as director I think I have seen, Gonin and Black Angel are sitting in my (currently boxed) to-watch pile, though I’d seen Love Hotel, Evil Dead Trap, which he’d written and both of which are excellent, so it was something of a blank slate. I was dimly aware that he had created Nami as a manga before moving into cinema, so Alone in the Night was loaded with the possibility of joy and disappointment that rarely comes with a filmmaker that you know, know well, or at least just about enough to know what to expect.  

What struck me most immediately was how comfortable Ishii is with stillness. The first image of Nami and her husband has little action, the camera is static, eventually zooming in slowly. This is repeated throughout, and it belies a visual confidence. There is no Yorgos Lanthimos "Look At Me! Look At Me! I’m Directing a Film!" desperate over-direction (honestly, I like his ideas but his direction render his films purgatory), instead the film immediately portrays a thoughtful, direct ability to trust what is shown on screen to suck in his audience - and also that his actors can hold the image - no small feat, that.

Throughout, Ishii is willing to trust us, allowing what is unfolding to engage us, while also providing a visual film. It’s a very blue film, in hue that is, but also considering the subject of sexual abuse and rape, what’s again really key here is just how much the film refuses to linger on it. It doesn’t shy from the awfulness of it, but it never gets lost in relishing it, in pointless tits and licking (something you see a lot, the obsessive licking of bodies in Japanese cinematic rape scenes), it’s introduced then cut away from. The film, if anything, is more interested in the characters, their dynamics and mood. Sometimes there is an almost Seijun Suzuki refusal to follow narrative, such as early on when Nami is drifting in the sea, the water holding her up, buoyant, only for Muraki to drag her to safety. Why is he there? Who knows and really it does not matter too much. There is that calm gentleness of the image and also the understanding of what this means in terms of Nami. There’s also something Shinya Tsukamoto about it, that ability to move from the violent and disturbing into an image or scene that has an entrancing softness (see the swimming pool scene in Tetsuo 2 Body Hammer).  

At the same time the film takes on a very coherent narrative as Namis’s revenge takes form, falls apart, is rescued, and how this happens has a fascinating aspect to it. You can argue this is because of Nami’s potential namesake – yes, Nami, Meiko Kaji’s Sasori from her Female Prisoner 701 Scorpion films, where revenge is utmost. Though revenge is utmost here, too, Alone in the Night arguably puts character ahead of it, and that dynamic between Nami and Muraki. But it is also in the small things, the observations the film illustrates, sometimes quietly lays bare, the smallness of the yakuza life and how little honour can mean. A moment where Muraki cuts his finger off is pretty much ignored by everyone, as is his resultant pain, and he’s no small cog in the Ikejima wheel. This is the other side of the film, where you see the pain and awfulness of organised crime and those that have to service them, the fake smiles, the thin lines between making them happy and getting sucked into that which will chew you up and spit you out. This is in passing and that is why it matters, as is does in many of the best of yakuza films and those dealing with criminals.  

Does the film stutter? Not much, a little at the end perhaps, where an obvious ruse is accepted but it is short-lived and allows the ending to play out as we always know it will. There are some revelations that the film I think assumes we have already intuited, because the story only makes sense if this is the case. But like the best stories where we intuit the ending, it's not a problem if the film wants to lead us there. The ultimate "intuit what’s happening but also deny it" ending will always be Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy (the novel is great, and the Alec Guinness TV version is still the best piece of television ever filmed) but this captures that same sense of verisimilitude, our protagonists’ actions make sense only because of their past. This willingness to really engage us and investigate characters again elevates what could have been a generic story into something else. 

So as the first true film watched in the new house, was it a good one to start with? 

What do you think? 

Let’s be honest I live in (a slightly inflated and arguably ludicrous) dread of disappointment by films. There are fewer things worse than being bored by something that traps you, and reviewing a film to an extent traps you, you need to be there at the end. No matter how many times you pause it, you need to get through it. Earlier that same Sunday I’d watched Act of Violence, a film noir I’d watched 25-years prior and had wanted to see since but was unavailable, but there is it was, a restored version playing at the cinema, so I got myself down there and a little pit in the stomach warned me I might not remember the film as it was. I was wrong. (Excellent, really, especially Mary Astor’s whore with the heart of gold cameo.)

Alone in the Night was similar if the situation was different. It was similar in how the first still images were engaging but could easily have moved into 110-minutes of disappointment, but instead the resultant film has clarity, emotional and narrative depth accompanied by visuals that punch well above the weight of its potentially generic story.