The director Hirokazu Kore-Eda offers a story to learn two young girls, an irresistible elegance and poetry, which refers to the grammar of the manga.
By Thomas Sotinel
The Maiko are the future Geiko – The term “geisha” is also appropriate – which, in traditional Kyoto establishments, learn dance, dramatic art, music, conversation, according to rules and strictly rituals Established. In recent years, the profession of Geisha and his learning have experienced a revival of popularity with Japanese youth, to the point of inspiring a manga, from which Hirokazu Kore-Eda has drawn the series here, nine episodes that follow the first de Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi) and Kiyo (nana mori).
adolescent girls raised by her father, the other by his grandmother, they left the frosts of northern Japan to become Geiko in Kyoto. If the first, gray and voluntary, quickly finds its place, the second is quickly confronted with its left -in -law, and agrees to play the role of Makanai, a cook for her fellowships and her elders. She does it with joy and Makanai thus becomes the story – dear to Kore -Eda – of the construction of a chosen family, refuge far from the suffered family and springboard for the coming life.
The author of a family affair surrounded himself with a handful of young Japanese filmmakers, Takuma Sato, Megumi Tsuno and Hiroshi Okuyama, to give a simple story a style whose elegance is sometimes veiled by The deliberate sweetness that the author gives to the course of Sumire and Kiyo, at the risk, sometimes, of Mièrerie. The two young girls are welcomed in apprenticeship in a house in Geisha, both a school and agency, which manages the meetings of their elders, who exercise their talents – exclusively artistic – with a wealthy and traditionalist male clientele.
Double initiation
We could have gone from the foreground of the series that Sumire would quickly reach the heights of his art, while Kiyo would fail to fail in his learning, as their physique is contrasting. But the second will reveal culinary talents commensurate with the artistic donations of her friend. Dance course sequences alternate with animated educational culinary moments with an inextinguishable by the interpreter of the character.
We will often recognize the simplest version of manga grammar in this double initiation. And Hirokazu Kore-Eda is carefully out of all that the tradition of geishas can reveal relationships between men and women in Japan. For the cruelty of this condition, it is better to go and see on the side of Mizoguchi, or to the hostesses of naruse bar. Here, customers are well, are courteous and cultivated, and – anyway – there is never any question of money.
This does not prevent delicate touches of bitterness. Momoko (Ai Hashimoto), the tutor of Sumire, sometimes returns drunk by her meetings, and the version of traditional end-of-year celebration that this ambiguous character organizes can give the thrill. Above all, despite the enthusiasm of these very young girls, who discovered the tradition of the Geishas through social networks, Makanai perfectly stages the fragility of this anachronistic universe, which encloses its practitioners in a very soft cocoon, which cannot leave without tearing it away.