THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – MUST SEE
It was several films that the cinema of Naomi Kawase seemed to have lost the fiber of its beginnings, and to have confided in a form of anecdotal prettiness. From the director of admirable Suzaku (1997) and Shara (2003), whose animism magnificently nurtured the intimate sphere of the natural kingdom, we were entitled to expect better than the decorative pantheism of infusions as diluted as Trip to Yoshino (2018) or To the light (2017). True Mothers, his latest film, labeled “Festival de Cannes 2020”, reverses the trend by reviving a form of ambition and complexity. This success is probably not unrelated to the fact that the subject discussed here, namely adoption, closely concerns the filmmaker, raised by adoptive parents.
Satoko (Hiromi Nagasaku) and her husband Kiyokazu (Arata Iura), a mature couple, have made the choice, in the face of their failures to conceive, to adopt a child. Years later, when their 6-year-old son, Asato, struggles at school, they are contacted by his biological mother, Hikari (Aju Makita), who is in great psychological distress. From this very simple outline, Kawase relies on the powers of the story and explores the past of each of his characters by successive flashbacks. Starting with that of the sterile couple, whose steps to have a child are retraced, step by step: an obstacle course that leads them, in desperation, to “Baby Baton”, an association based in Hiroshima facilitating adoption procedures. Then comes the trajectory of Hiraki: mother daughter pregnant at the age of 14, rejected by her family for fear of what will be said. Picked up by “Baby Baton”, a refuge for poor young mothers, she meets other young women who have broken their ban, some of whom have turned into prostitution.
By tracing the thread of causes, True Mothers goes beyond too simple definitions and restores to the adoption process all its complexity, not only intimate and emotional, but also social. The film shows in particular how the procedure can be the place of an erasure with regard to the biological mother, administratively removed from the parental equation, which prolongs the situation of denial which had already surrounded her pregnancy.
Between fiction and documentary
The outfit of the whole is mainly due to the fine braiding which is made between fiction and documentary. Not only are the parental journeys detailed, supported by solid facts, which shed light on the Japanese situation (where the weight of traditions surrounds the question of teenage pregnancies in shame), but, at times, it is the raw writing. documentary that takes over. In the middle of the film, when Hiraki settles down in the house of unmarried mothers, the register changes: everything seems filmed at arm’s length, like archives taken from life where we hear the director speak directly to her characters. . Of great beauty, the passage breaks down the walls of fiction and recalls Kawase’s formidable beginnings in the field of first-person documentaries.
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