Japan (2008): Drama

Crushed at the breakup of his Tokyo orchestra, for which he'd just spent a fortune on a new instrument, guilt-ridden Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) retreats to his picturesque northern Japan hometown with adoring wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) in tow. He responds to an ad for a job, and is shocked to discover "working with departures" refers not to a travel agency, but to "niche market" firms hired by morticians to perform "encoffinments." Having never seen a dead body, but offered a great deal of money as salary by his eccentric new boss (Tsutomu Yamazaki), Daigo takes the job but is too ashamed to tell Mika. Ick factor aside, Daigo's discovered his true calling.

Inspired by Japanese author Shinmon Aoki's mortician memoir, Coffinman, the pic's best parts reveal the meticulous and stylized casketing of bodies for cremation. Performed -- for that's precisely the word to describe it -- in front of family members in various stages of grief, the ritual involves washing, dressing and grooming the body; the trick is to do it while exposing a minimum of skin. Hirosue has a perky appeal, and wily Yamazaki steals most of his scenes with a minimum of effort. Joe Hisaishi's typically showy score never met a heartstring it couldn't pluck, and those responsible for the corpses, be they prosthetics or actual thesps, knock 'em dead. -- Eddie Cockrell, Variety.com

Written by Kundo Koyama; no producer credit listed; directed by Yojiro Takita. [Shochiku Company, ContentFilm International (worldwide theatrical distributor) - Official Japan site]

 Visit The Screening Room to view a theatrical trailer for this film from YouTube.com.

1 nomination, 1 Award