Standing On the Edge is a drama film directed by Koji Fukada and starring Tadanobu Asano, Mariko Tsutsui, and Hiroharu Furukan. The film tells the story of the seemingly peaceful family that undergoes subtle changes due to the addition of outsiders after a man dressed in white breaks into the life of Mr. and Mrs. Toshio.
The film was released in Japan in May 2016. The film won the Jury Prize in the "One Kind of Attention" section of the 69th Cannes International Film Festival, and after the screening at the festival, the audience applauded for more than five minutes.
01 Old friends stayed, the wife empathized
Toshio opens a hardware processing factory, his wife Shōhye Hyun-hye, and his daughter Hotaru is beautiful, but the seemingly perfect family always has a hint of depression. At dinner, the wife and daughter prayed sincerely and then ate; the husband at the same table looked indifferent and did not say a word. The story of the little spider feeding on her mother told by the daughter at the dinner table also makes the picture show a strange color. The mother said that if she was a female spider, she would never let the little spider eat herself. A seemingly calm but loveless family emerges.
Yasaka, Toshio's old friend suddenly visits, and it turns out that he is released and freed. He asks Toshio to take him in and live in his home. Toshio agreed. From the exchanges between the two, it is not difficult for us to find that there are secrets between them. Zhao Hui went home to find an uninvited guest, and blamed her husband for being sloppy and causing inconvenience to life, but her husband did everything perfunctory. At this point, Zhao Hui had no choice but to resign himself.
Toshio is untrimmed, has a beard, and looks very sloppy; but Yasaka is clean and neat, wearing a white shirt, and the appearance of the two men is very different, and the contrast is stark.
Yasaka, who was staying, took a comfortable bath and went to the living room naked; Akie was tutoring her daughter to practice, and when she saw this scene, she felt serious discomfort, so she blocked her daughter with her body and signaled Yasaka to get dressed. Yasaka played the piano well, and Hotaru soon fell in love with the music he played and suggested that her mother play it during the competition. Yasaka naturally tutors Hotaru, and Shōe is relieved of it. Shōe does housework and Yasaka tutors Hotaru, and this warm picture makes people feel that this is what a family should look like. Unconsciously, Yasaka made up for the vacant position where his father Toshio was supposed to be.
Yasaka accompanied ZhaoHui's mother and daughter to the church to collect donations, chatted with Zhaohui to confess his past, and the emotional explanation made Zhaohui can't help but shed tears. These warm companionships Shōe had never received from her husband, and her heart slowly approached Yasaka.
At night, Akie pushes open the door of Yasaka's room, And Yasaka writes a letter, and Akie sits down to sew a red costume of Hotaru, which is like a couple. Yasaka writes a confession letter to the person he hurt 11 years ago, and Akie asks for it curiously, and Yasaka shows it generously. Little by little, this man entered Zhao Hui's heart.
Shōe invites Yasaka on an outing, and Hotaru's hat falls into the water, and Yasaka is more proactive than to take care of it than toshio, who is the father. Toshio puts his arms around his daughter to rest, AndAkie lies on one side, and she beckons Yasaka to lie down on the other side and takes a group photo of the four of them.
Shōe and Yasaka strolled away from their sleeping father and daughter and walked downstream of the river, looking at the blooming red wildflower Akie was ecstatic, and Yasaka behind them took a step forward, and the two made intimate contact for the first time. Waking up, Toshio happens to see Yasaka and Shōe returning with them.
After returning from an outing, the relationship between Shōe and Yasaka was further developed. The second intimate encounter took place in Yasaka's room, where Yasaka dried his washed white shirt and socks, and the room was filled with a faint aroma.
One day sitting on the outskirts of the city, Yasaka accidentally heard a couple whispering, he was stimulated, quickly took off his white shirt, revealing a bright red T-shirt, and quickly returned home, hugging Akie who was working hard; the confused Akie still pushed him away at the last moment, and Yasaka left in disappointment.
Yasaka leaves angrily, Akie curls up on the couch, the plot takes a sharp turn, what happens next?
02 The daughter was suddenly accidentally killed, and the old friend disappeared
When Toshio returns home, Cho Hye wakes up, and she lies that she is uncomfortable. At this time, Zhao Hui found that her daughter Hotaru had not yet returned home. When Toshio finds Hotaru, she is lying in a pool of blood in a red dress, with Yasaka standing next to her. In the face of Toshio's questioning, Yasaka chose to flee and has been gone ever since. How did the firefly accident happen? What role does Yasaka play? Everything becomes a secret with Yasaka's disappearance.
Fast forward 8 years, and Hotaru has grown into a big girl, she is in a wheelchair, unable to move or speak. The girl did not die after being inexplicably hurt, but tormented the family in an even more embarrassing form. Zhao Hui is no longer a light young woman, she has become bloated and old, she constantly washes her hands, prohibits foreign objects from touching her daughter, and suffers from a serious "unclean phobia". She has completely lost herself, and the focus of her life is her daughter, who eats Zhao Hui in a special way.
Shōe who keeps washing her hands
The so-called "cleanliness" is actually a kind of "territorial consciousness", that is, in the private sphere to which the cleanliness person belongs, others are not allowed to enter, such as their own skin, such as personal belongings and rooms. A detail that often appears in the second half of the film is that the middle-aged Zhao Hui constantly cleans, and the funny thing is that as a young woman, Zhao Hui was once beautiful and well-dressed, but she did not have a cleanliness habit, and eight years later, she became a middle-aged woman without trimming, but she had a serious "cleanliness habit".
On the contrary, Toshio's appearance has not changed much, and he has become talkative, and a smile has appeared on his face. The only thing that changed was to keep paying detectives to track down Yasaka's whereabouts. What kind of secret is hidden by Toshio's abnormal calmness?
03 The husband revealed the secret, and the wife and daughter fell off a cliff
A new employee came to the store, and the young man was carrying a red backpack. Zhao Hui accidentally found out that the boy had a group photo of the four people who were outing that year! It turned out that he was Yasaka's son. During the conversation, Akie learns that her husband was present when Yasaka committed the crime 18 years ago.
New employees are expensive
Shōe asks Toshio about his relationship with Yasaka, and Toshio, while cutting his nails, casually says, "Eight years ago, we finally became husband and wife." It turned out that he regarded his wife's betrayal and his daughter's accident as his salvation. His friend lost his freedom, and at the same time, he married his wife and had children to live a carefree life, which made the guilty Toshio unable to integrate into the life of his wife and daughter. It is no wonder why he was silent and ignored his wife and daughter. His wife's betrayal allowed him to find balance, because the wife was no longer pure and had stains. He regarded his daughter's accident as punishment for the couple's transgressions, so he opened his heart and lived easily.
Self-slapped Zhao Hui
Zhao Hui, who learned the truth, collapsed, and she slapped herself fiercely. This man who spends his days and nights together is the abyss, the source of all disasters.
If Toshio had not participated in Yasaka's crime, Yasaka would not have moved in with a straight face; if Toshio had not been cold to his wife and daughter, Yasaka would not have had the opportunity to take advantage of the void. Toshio is selfish, in order to cover up the secret, take in Yasaka, acquiesce to his wife's outrageous behavior, and even treat his daughter's misfortune as a divine punishment, so as to obtain the salvation of the soul.
Go look for Yasaka
Zhao Hui proposes a divorce, at which point the detective comes to the door with a photo of a man dressed in white who resembles Yasaka. So the Shōe family and Yasaka's son decided to search for Yasaka together and find out the truth. Unfortunately not. Disheartened, Zhao Hui took her daughter to the abyss, and in a trance she saw Yasaka dressed in red, and Zhao Hui jumped down with her daughter in her arms. Toshio and Gui, who arrived later, jumped into the abyss one after another, and the falling fireflies unexpectedly extended their arms and swam. It was a relief that she might die if she couldn't take care of herself.
At the end of the film, four people lie side by side by the river, just like the four people on the original outing, except that Yasaka has changed to Gui. Takayoshi and Hotaru have run out of breath, innocent and pure children have gone to heaven, and Shōe has breathed under toshio's rescue, and they will live in the human world with guilt and pain.
Lyceum 123:
1. The secret of the hidden heart does not disappear because no one knows, it is like a shadow, it will invade your heart, and even distort your heart. Husbands and wives should be honest with each other, otherwise the secret will become a thick wall, making two people who should be intimate and in the same boat look like strangers.
2. There are many blanks in the film: How is the accident of the firefly caused? Was it caused by Yasaka? Your mother also suffers from the same cleanliness fetish as Zhao Hui, does she have the same experience as Zhao Hui? How did the confession letter written by Yasaka end up in the hands of Gui's mother, and if Takashi was really Yasaka's son?
3. The missing Yasaka is a sustenance for the Toshio couple to shirk their responsibilities and seek psychological comfort. Year after year, they search for Yasaka's whereabouts, and they long for evidence of Yasaka's guilt, but they are afraid to know the truth of the matter. If the accident had nothing to do with Yasaka, they would only be charged with poor supervision of their daughter. Their pursuit is precisely an escape from self-blame.
In fact, the occurrence of tragedy is not necessarily related to the fault of the husband and wife, it may be an accident. But the idea of karma is so deeply ingrained that whenever a tragedy strikes, we unconsciously trace back to the mistakes we have committed. And this kind of tracing back to the source makes us forever trapped on the edge of the abyss, unable to jump and liberate everything.
4. Be kind to people, follow the laws and moral rules, and do not do what cannot be exposed to the sun; only in this way can we live happily with an open mind!