GOLDEN SLUMBER (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Starring: Masato Sakai, Yuko Takeuchi, Nao Omori, Teruyuki Kagawa

Last year, Yoshihiro Nakamura's FISH STORY saved the world from certain annihilation and still found time to take the New York Asian Film Festival by storm.  This year, he's back with GOLDEN SLUMBER, adapted from another novel by FISH STORY author Kotaro Isaka.  It's a brain-melting spy send-up with a sprinkling of Hitchcock-meets-John-Hughes that's two parts THE BIG CHILL, three parts BOURNE IDENTITY and a million parts awesome.

In sunny Sendai, perpetually befuddled Aoyagi reunites with his old university buddy, only to find that it's a setup - he's history's latest Lee Harvey Oswald, a patsy for a labyrinthine government conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister. 

Big Brother has everything it needs to put Aoyagi away forever, right down to showing him at a local book depository.  Taking it on the run, Aoyagi is desperate for someone to trust, but his old classmates are being ruthlessly hunted down by government hatchet man and NYAFF giant Teruyuki Kagawa (THE MAGIC HOUR, SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO).  All hope seems lost until Aoyagi meets  "Kill-O," the friendly neighborhood serial killer, and when old-flame-with-a-kid Haruko enters the fray, stubbornly unwilling to believe the worst of her ex, it looks like the titular Beatles song just might be right - there really is a way to "get back home."



Everything in GOLDEN SLUMBER is deliberate, from the serpentine plotting to the pitch-perfect performances.  Masato Sakai (CLIMBER'S HIGH) makes Aoyagi the ultimate everyman, and his jokey, laugh-so-I-don't-scream disbelief when his world begins to collapse is devastatingly realistic.  As Haruko, Yuko Takeuchi (DOG IN A SIDECAR, RINGU - she was the first girl to ever watch the cursed videotape) channels a young Diane Keaton, alternating between fussy and neurotic and effortlessly callous as we see the gradual evolution from a silly young girl to a married woman with responsibilities, and one toe still dipped in the past. 

The story's thriller pretensions are just a vehicle for Nakamura's personal cinematic earworms: The shattering immediacy of the commonplace, pop culture as a medium for communication and salvation, and a twisty, onionskin narrative that reminds us that friends are everywhere, in the unlikeliest of places.  The human connection ripples outward in layered circles that guide our way, and everyone, everything has a purpose.  In GOLDEN SLUMBER, Aoyagi doesn't just uncover a conspiracy, he unlocks the meaning of life, as a bottle rocket starburst signals the birth of the ultimate social network.

Presented in association with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film (July 1 - 16, 2010)