Yu Aoi and Yusei Takahashi are two of the more recognized actors of the acting school.
One is a teenager who has high hopes for his unworldly temperament, and the other is a late bloomer after the age of 30, and the common point of the two is that they dare to play different types of roles. At the beginning of last year, the two collaborated on the movie "Love Doll", in which they played a couple.
The film also involves a more taboo but suitable for the current society - human dolls.
After that, they collaborated on another movie, which is also a husband and wife, which is the "Wife of The Spy" that Buya Jun wants to talk about today.
The film is also a sensitive topic for Japan's position, as it exposes Japan's crimes in World War II.
Many Japanese anti-war films will be criticized by Chinese audiences as "not really anti-war films, but anti-war defeat", but this "Spy's Wife" can be seen with confidence, it is a real anti-war film like "Doraemon", and it was also shortlisted for China's Hainan Island International Film Festival.
Don't worry about this film involving history, it will be too boring, because it is not a documentary film, the plot is fabricated, but also with suspense and love plot.
The next ministry will talk about this film.
The wife of a spy
Spy Wife
The story is set on the eve of the outbreak of the Pacific War.
Yusaku Fukuhara (played by Isabi Takahashi) and Satoko Fukuhara (played by Yu Aoi) are a couple living in Kobe, the couple has a good life, and their hobbies are making movies.
Youzuo is the director, and his wife is the actor. (Aoi's face, even if it appears in retro black-and-white movies, is very good at hitting, and it is a face that can stand the test of the big screen.) ）
Their peaceful lives were disrupted by the war, and You, who ran a foreign trade business, traveled to Manchuria in China with his nephew Fumio (Played by Sakato Ryuji) as a wholesale of cheap goods.
In Manchuria, Yusaku stumbles upon a creepy state secret — Japan experimenting with germs in Humans in China.
The experiment in the movie is about the 731 experiment that actually happened in history.
Disguised as a water purification unit, Japan's Unit 731 established a base in the Pingfang district near Harbin to conduct inhumane bacterial experiments with living humans.
The film unabashedly shows this fact, which is also a serious history.
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa used a very popular film to apologize for the atrocities of the Japanese militarist period, reflecting the persistence and ambition of Japanese progressive directors. (This is not the first time that Kiyoshi Kurosawa has used the words of a character in a film to express his international pacifist left-wing political position.)
The film was broadcast throughout Japan through NHK television and recognized by the Venice Film Festival, and was released in many countries and regions around the world, allowing audiences in Japan and other parts of the world to see the atrocities committed in Japan that year.
Speaking of the movie, the male protagonist Yusaku is different from the ordinary Japanese people who were brainwashed by militarism at that time, his justice is not a national interest, and as a world humanitarian, he is more from the perspective of people.
Therefore, Yusaku plans to tell the world about this matter, in exchange for "taking you back home", and ask the nurse to provide him with photos and materials of Unit 731.
Growing up with the two and now becoming the captain of the gendarmerie, Taiji (Masadai Higashiide), tells Satoko that her husband has brought a woman back, and a crisis of trust begins between the couple.
Yusaku told his wife what he saw, and he said that he had seen a terrible hell on earth in that puppet Manchukuo, and how anti-human the Japanese army was, and thought that it was very inhumane and very demonic, so even if he was saddled with the name of "treason", he would have to make it public.
"I am not loyal to a specific country, I am loyal to the absolute justice that is recognized by all ages."
Yusaku also intends to travel to the United States with a notebook representing evidence and a film film to expose Japanese crimes internationally.
But in Satoko's view, this is a spy act of betraying her compatriots, and she will also become a much-stigmatized "spy wife".
In the special historical environment, even relatives, as long as the ideology is different, will expose and report to each other, and the family will be destroyed.
However, out of love and loyalty to her husband, Satoshi chooses to treat Yusaku only as a "husband", saying "If you are a spy, then I will be the wife of a spy", which is more representative of love than "I love you".
So the two began to escape from Japan and go to the United States...
At the heart of the story is the inseparable relationship between the protagonist and his wife, like a two-person tango relationship, full of lies, jealousy and love.
In the high pressure of the war state, suspicion between Yusaku and Satoko gradually arises, testing each other, fighting methods, betraying and being betrayed.
The unpredictable psychological changes between the husband and wife duo promote suspense, and the director's approach is subtle, leaving a lot of room worth playing and requiring the imagination and experience of the audience.
To exaggerate Aoi's acting skills, judging from the title, the Satoko she plays is the real protagonist.
In the movie, in addition to the tough girlishness that Aoi you are famous for, there is also a gorgeous and mournful stage atmosphere.
Satoko's search for the truth, her struggle between big right and wrong and small love, her transformation from an ordinary housewife to a female spy with intelligence.
In the interior light of the old building, the facial lines of Yu Aoi's stick figure are enough to show a fleeting psychological change.
In the last scene, her white-haired back crosses the corridor toward the glittering ruins outside, and the next close-up of her face, her eyes are all the crazy abbreviations of this country.
"The Spy's Wife" ranked first in the "Top Ten Movies of 2020" by Japan's veteran film magazine "Movie Shunbun" and won the best picture.
Internationally, the film was even more brilliant, being shortlisted for the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa for Best Director.
This is after Takeshi Kitano in 2003, and after 17 years, a Japanese director won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director.
▲ Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who presented the Silver Lion Trophy for Best Director in Venice