THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
It is on nocturnal images of Tokyo, a large cage of vitrified walls and illusory reflections, but dotted with cranes and open-air construction sites (a sign that it is changing), that the third feature opens. film by Japanese director Yukiko Sode, born in 1983, and the first to be distributed in France. The Japanese capital, of which it is recalled along the way how much it is “compartmentalised” and that’“You only ever meet people of your own class”, constitutes here much more than a backdrop: the infrastructure with invisible barriers which distributes existences, assigns them in space, makes some of them inaccessible to others. Just like Hanako, one of the heroines, heiress brought to realize the extent to which she evolves in a vacuum in her upscale neighborhood of Shoto, from which she has hardly ever left, as a prisoner of imaginary walls.
Around her, Aristocrats first paints a portrait of the Tokyo oligarchy, its traditions, its codes of belonging and recognition, the social homogeneity it watches over as the apple of its eye. Hanako (Mugi Kadowaki), 27 and still unmarried, arouses the concern of her parents who, taking matters into their own hands, offer her various suitors, not always convincing. Her choice stops on Koichiro (Kengo Kora), son of an elite house, whom she discovers very quickly that he has another woman in his life.
” Glass ceiling “
The story then makes a hook towards this one, a hostess named Miki (Kiko Mizuhara), from a modest background. A carnal passion connects her to Koichiro, a former preparatory classmate, who never had the possibility, or even the intention, to integrate her into his spheres. She remains for him the woman in the shadows, a ” stand-in “ as she bluntly admits. Between Hanako and Miki is renewed a distinction at the foundation of the metropolises: between the natives who occupy the places of power, and those who come from the provinces to supply the workforce.
Among these different life paths the same subject emerges: that of social reproduction, which here and there takes insidious forms – among the rich, that of tradition linked to marital protocol and alliances of family heritage; among the poor, that of the famous “glass ceiling” dedicated to curbing class migration. A building where women occupy, according to their degree, strictly assigned pivotal functions. By articulating two female perspectives, the film traces the contours of a cross-class solidarity bringing together the wife and the mistress, both neglected, both misunderstood.
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