TRICK - THE MOVIE
Tsutsumi Yukihiko, 2002
TRICK started out life as a late night Japanese TV series, but quickly achieved cult status. The third series, which is currently airing in Japan, is being shown in the prime time slot between 9 and 11pm. In 2002 a theatrical film was produced featuring the same core actors (think the X-FILES or TWIN PEAKS and their accompanying films). All the episodes of the first two TV series are available on Japanese DVD, as is the movie, but alas all are presented without subtitles.
Naoko Yamada (Yukie Nakama) is a struggling amateur magician trying to make ends meet in modern Japan. She is practicing her disappearing act in her small flat when her landlady arrives to inform her that she intends to convert the flats to luxury apartments, so the rent will be higher, plus she still owes the rent from last month. After also being fired from her job as an act in a street show, she meets two people representing the Youth Federation of a small village called ‘Itofushi Mura’ (meaning ‘to hate death’). They want her to go with them to their village, where she is to pretend to be a goddess. This is because the village is under a curse that states that it will be subject to a catastrophe every 300 years, when “the turtle will move”. 300 years ago a goddess appeared and saved the village from a flood, and the Youth Federation workers want her to pretend to be the goddess in order to reassure the villagers. She is reluctant - until they hand over an envelope of money that is. Arriving back at her flat, she is confronted by a warning – “Don’t go to Itofushi Mura Village. You will be killed by the Turtle”.
That evening, her friend Ueda (Hiroshi Abe) calls her and asks her to come and perform some tricks for his friends, a group of society high-fliers. They’re less than impressed by her and she storms off in a rage. After she leaves, one of the group, Usui, announces that he has found the hidden treasure of Tokugawa. At that moment he goes to the toilet, and is soon discovered dead on the floor, a scrawled message beside him. The group think that this must have been a message referring to the treasure and decide to try to find it. This means that Ueda ends up traveling to the same village as Yamada, which will turn out to be very fortunate for her…
After arriving at the village, she is told to prepare for her appearance that evening. She dresses up and appears to the villagers, albeit after a less than graceful entrance. She does a trick with some salt and is surprised when the villagers clap politely and wander off. It turns out that three other ‘gods’ had already performed that evening, all with more impressive acts. The four gods are imprisoned, and will have to undergo tests to see which of them is the genuine article. First, Yamada (as God-004) faces God-001 (played by an almost unrecognizable Naoto Takenaka), then God-002 (played by ‘Bengal’). In both cases, she reveals how each of them performed their seemingly impossible tricks. Finally, she faces God-003 (the great Renji Ishibashi), who at first seems to have her beat. However, she eventually overcomes him, with the help of Ueda. The three false gods all wind up dead, and Yamada’s final test is to perform ‘Nensha photography’, which involves transposing a pattern onto a physical artifact using only one’s mind. She manages this (again with Ueda’s help), and convinces the villagers that she is the true goddess. Just as she is telling them that they must now find the village’s treasure, the two Youth Federation workers turn up and expose her as a fake.
The final part of the film involves the village being set on fire, a child who may or may not be the real goddess, Yamada’s mother turning up and lecturing the villagers on calligraphy (she is a teacher of omamori calligraphy, which is reputed to have magical properties), the village treasure, and a Scooby-Doo style explanation of what exactly has been going on in the village the whole time!
I’ve given a lengthy summation of the film’s plot so that anyone who owns (or is thinking of buying) the TRICK movie will hopefully now have a better idea of what the film is about. I wouldn’t have thought that a Western release with subtitles will be materializing any time soon (though I may be completely wrong), which is a shame really as this is a very enjoyable film. Admittedly, the plot is extremely convoluted and full of holes, and many of the details the narrative revolves around involve playing on Japanese written characters, which obviously doesn’t come across well for a Western audience. Yamada and Ueda communicate by a code in which they write messages so that they should be read vertically. However, when read horizontally they inevitably impart a completely different meaning. Another example is that the message left on the toilet floor appears to read ‘the toilet is blocked’. However, when reversed, the characters instead spell out ‘Itofushi Mura’, the village most of the film takes place in. There are some really weird explanations of tricks, my favourite being the way in which the Nensha photography is accomplished (involving the neck of a stone statue of a turtle, some cord, spoken code and ‘wrong-doing using the principle of FAX’ as the chief villager puts it!)
As with all films based on popular TV series, there is also a bit of a strain in that the story needs to incorporate characters from the TV series, even though they really have no purpose here. This is cheekily acknowledged at the end of the film when two of these characters are still left locked up in the village as the credits start to roll; “Hey! Get us out of here!” they shout, “Stop rolling the credits! I haven’t shown my abilities at all yet!” There are also what I assume to be running jokes, for example Yamada’s landlady is a completely bizarre character who seems out of place here. One other minor complaint is that the running time of nearly two hours is definitely pushing it, and I don’t see why it couldn’t have been edited a bit more tightly as there is definitely extraneous footage, particularly in the middle part of the film.
There is a slightly uncomfortable macho feel to the film – the rather unpleasant Ueda is consistently shown to be the clever one, whilst Yamada is clumsy and needs him to win the final challenge. This is also apparent in the fact that Yamada has ‘small breasts complex’ (as the opening credits state), whilst Ueda has ‘big penis complex’ and in the general way in which the film treats the two characters (it ends with Yamada begging Ueda for money to pay her outstanding rent). The relationship between the two characters could be described as love/hate, with the emphasis on the latter. If this were a Western film it would end with the two getting together, kissing passionately. TRICK firmly eschews this conclusion, and presumably the third TV series finds the two enjoying (if that’s the right word to use) exactly the same relationship depicted here.
All this aside, what really holds the film together (at least for a male viewer like me) is Yukie Nakama’s performance as Yamada. Nakama is quite possibly the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a Japanese film, and she is literally captivating in TRICK (she will be most familiar to Western viewers as Sadako from RING 0: BIRTHDAY). She’s also very good in the role, as are all the other main performers. The film is very well photographed, with some consistently strange framing (often having an actor at the extreme right or left of the frame) and not feeling at all hampered by what presumably was a fairly small budget. Overall, it’s a very odd hodgepodge of different genres and plot elements that will be enjoyed by anyone not expecting too much in the way of highbrow entertainment. I was certainly left intrigued by it and would like to see the TV series given the chance, if only to see some more of the delectable Ms Nakama…
Crew Cast
Director – Tsutsumi Yukihiko
Screenplay – Kôji Makita
Music – Tsuji Hiroshi
Yukie Nakama – Noako Yamada
Hiroshi Abe – Jiro Ueda
Katsuhisa Namase – Detective Yabe
Naoto Takenaka – God 001
Bengal – God 002
Renji Ishibashi – God 003
Youko Nogiwa – Yamada’s mother
Masato Ibu – Village Chief
Shinji Yamashita – Youth Federation Captain
Miyoko Yoshimoto – Youth Federation Vice-captain
(Originally posted at MHVF)