MEMORIES OF MATSUKO (Japan, 2006)
Directed by: Tetsuya Nakashima
Starring: Miki Nakatani, Eita, Yusuko Iseya, Mikako Ichikawa, Akira Emoto
“The splashy visuals and brassy musical numbers that initially seemed to channel Chicago, including its slick cynicism, take on new meaning and weight.... Nakashima's approach avoids -- or rather explodes -- genre clichés, but he also keep the focus firmly on his central message: Love gives life its value, despite appearances to the contrary.” – Mark Schilling, Japan Times

Everyone expected a visually ravishing follow-up movie from director Tetsuya Nakashima after his eye-blowing Kamikaze Girls, but no one expected him to make a movie like this. Moulin Rouge crossed with Citizen Kane, MEMORIES OF MATSUKO is the year’s most human, and humane, movie anchored by an award-winning performance from Miki Nakatani. It will undoubtedly be compared to the stylish French romance, Amelie, but the comparison is unfair: MEMORIES OF MATSUKO has a far bigger heart, a much bigger brain, and is the better film by far. By the time you finish watching MATSUKO that coy smile on Audrey Tatou’s face in Amelie will look more like a nasty smirk.

Everyone dreams, but the Technicolored arsenal of motion picture magic is usually reserved to celebrate the people who achieve their dreams, the winners in life, not the losers. In MEMORIES OF MATSUKO the big guns of the silver screen – musical numbers, stylish direction, animation - are brought to bear on the life of an ordinary woman, Matsuko, who followed her heart, not realizing it was leading her right down a dead end alley where life was waiting with a lead pipe to smack her in the back of the head and steal her wallet.

Matsuko (Miki Nakatani), is a bag lady who dies, leaving behind a room piled high with garbage. Her nephew (Eita) is enlisted to clean out her filthy hovel and as he does so he pieces together the story of her life out of the wreckage of her dreams. A young school teacher with a beautiful voice, Matsuko always dreamed big, just like movies tell you to do, but she never caught a break and never got lucky. She fell from grace and into squalor, and if it was any director but Nakashima she would have been deemed unworthy of cinematic attention. But he follows her all the way down, letting the musical numbers that normally are reserved for cinema’s winners tell the story of someone who dreamed big and fell hard. It’s Hollywood blasphemy, and you can hear all the outraged stars in  heaven crying out, “How did this loser get in our church?” But Matsuko isn’t a loser, she’s someone who chose love again and again and again no matter how many times it left her battered and broken. Check your cynicism at the door, and sit down for a movie that will jump start your heart. By the time you finish this flick, you’ll believe in the kind of full-throated scream for life that roars out of Matsuko’s throat in song.