More akin to Le Carre than Bond and Bourne bombast, WIFE OF A SPY is an intriguing, enigmatic and inscrutable espionage story set in Japan at the beginning of World War II.
Yusaku is a sophisticated textiles trader in Kobe. Sartorially splendid with a besotted spouse and a satisfied staff and a slew of happy international customers, Yusaku is not happy with the rise of Nationalist Fascists in his native land.
On a business trip to Manchuria, he witnesses atrocities being carried out by his expansionist homeland and is utterly disgusted, determined to do something about bringing an end to the aggression.
Secrecy and subterfuge succour suspicion and Satoko, Yusaku’s wife suspects him of seeing another woman. A seemingly scorned spouse is just the thing security forces can use as a pawn in the deadly chess game of chasing down traitors.
Issey Takahashi is splendid as Yusaku, double O debonair, a pragmatist rather than a pugilist, a cool, shrewd dude, a suitable suited hero in harrowing times.
Yu Aoi has an incandescent fragility as Satoko, a woman living the dream of a glamorous wife with a doting husband who indulges her hobby of screen acting.
WIFE OF A SPY works brilliantly as a thriller and as an historical drama. Its depiction of Japanese jingoism draws on its pathetic parallels with similar and simultaneous atrocities concurrent with Nazi Nationalism.
Genocide and genetic experimentation went iron hand in gruesome glove.
On a cheerier level, WIFE OF A SPY boasts a beautiful production design and exquisite costumes. Haruki Koketsu’s superb costume design contrasts the central couple’s Hollywood glamour apparel with traditional Japanese clobber, adding conflict with the threatening threads of militarist menace.
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, WIFE OF A SPY is a solid piece of storytelling that examines the torturous duplicity of spying, of conscientious duty, the constitution and construction of trust, and reasons for treason.
Like a moth to a flame, serious cinephiles will be attracted to THE VILLAGE DETECTIVE, a seriously potty potted history of the life of Mikhail Zarov, a star of the screen in the Soviet Union for six decades.
Bill Morrison, the American documentary film maker enamoured of decomposing celluloid, flawed film, and seeping emulsion, starts his film with the discovery of four reels of Soviet film dredged from Icelandic waters by a fishing trawler. Are these reels really lost gems from the golden age of Soviet cinema?
Morrison spins out the archival significance of these precariously preserved motion pictures by cobbling together pristine footage with that found and presenting a picaresque pastiche of the performances of Zarov, hypothesising a narrative thread sewn into scenes from diverse projects and a hint of the found film being some sort of lost artefact.
The conceit of assembling existing film to construct a cinema-biography of the actor is deftly done but the total execution of the film is less adroit, with gauche gulfs of ruined film presented as art spectacle but resembling spakfilla.
You’re left by wanting more by wanting less.
The murky waters of international finance dealing with dodgy regimes is the focus of AZOR, an artful Argentinian film centred on the country’s not so distant disturbing past.
It is 1980 and Swiss banker Yvan sweeps into Buenos Aires with his cool as ice spouse, Ines, in the wake of the disappearance of a colleague called Keys.
Their mission is to unlock the mystery of Keys vanishing whilst reassuring wealthy clients that though his absence is unusual, it will be business as usual.
This is at a time that Argentina was going through a period of mass disappearances sanctioned by a merciless junta, a cabal that included criminals and the clergy.
Director Andreas Fontana takes his cue from Conrad, evoking Heart of Darkness, the pretence of civilisation and sophistication a thin veneer over the savagery of greed, power and corruption.
Intelligent, gripping and chilling, AZOR is named for a code word in international monetary circles. It is well worth the view to discover it.
Melbourne International Film Festival will begin and will be available online for locked down Sydney audiences to stream straight from their lounge rooms, on MIFF Play from now.
you can find the full program here