Fantasia 2020 Review: Woman of the Photographs (Shashi no Ohna), A Flawed Picture
There is an old adage that says, “the camera never lies”, and, in the simplest of terms, this is true. However, people are fantastic at lying, and when it comes to photographs, we have become experts at manipulating pictures and tweaking what we present publicly into more aesthetically pleasing lies.
No one is more skilled at ‘fixing’ photographs than Kai (Hideki Nagai), who runs a small photo studio, where most of his work is retouching. He does his job, seemingly, without judging what his clients ask of him. One woman (Toki Koinuma) comes in to have her picture taken for a matchmaking service, and she asks him to retouch the picture to the point where it doesn’t really look like her anymore. She returns a few days later with more notes, and he does even more retouching, without question, while she eggs him on to do “more…more…more” until the photo doesn’t even look like a real human woman anymore.
When he is not at work, Kai is feeding his pet praying mantis, or out in the woods photographing insects. It is in the woods that he happens upon Kyoko (Itsuki Otaki), the beautiful ballet dancer turned influencer, who has just fallen from a ledge above into a tree. Kyoko is wounded and, in the process of helping her, Kai takes her to his photo studio where she poses for some pictures. She watches in awe as Kai effortlessly edits out her wound, making it suddenly Instagram worthy. Kyoko soon moves in, and a weird symbiotic relationship starts.
The official website for this film describes the character of Kai as misogynistic, but that doesn’t come across. In fact, it seems like Kai isn’t really interested in women, or anyone outside of himself and his praying mantis at all. Kyoko literally falls into his life and decides to stay there, and Kai has very little say in it. The way Kyoko is filmed, however, does occasionally have a tinge of misogyny. She is in just a bra and yoga leggings for far too long when we first meet her, and the only pair of shoes she seems to have are an uncomfortable looking pair of red high heels. In fact, the only reason I assume Otaki doesn’t look like she is in constant pain while she’s filming in them, is that she is a professional ballet dancer and therefore can no longer feel her feet anyway.
The only two female characters in Woman of The Photographs are women whose self-worth lies completely outside of themselves. The woman who comes in for repeated retouches will only be happy when she has caught a man, even if he has originally fallen for the false, ‘better’ image of her. Kyoko’s self esteem used to come from real life applause and now it comes from digital applause, in the form of likes and comments. It’s what motivates her. Even the wound on her chest, (which is truly disgusting, bravo to the makeup team), which clearly needs medical attention, becomes a prop for how many likes she can get on line.
The film doesn’t do so much to question misogyny or female self esteem in the digital age, it just presents examples of it. There is also the running theme of praying mantises and the inevitable bringing up of the female decapitation of the male after mating. Is Kyoko meant to be the mantis and Kai her willing prey? I think there is an answer to that question in the film, I just couldn’t decipher it.
Overall, it feels like the film could have been pared back in many ways. It often seems like it is reaching for depth and scenes go on for too long. The most touching moments come from Toshiaki Inomata who plays one of Kai’s regular customers, and he is barely in it. The sound of every voice, footstep, gulp, and chew is also far too loud. This may be by design (I suspect especially the chewing) but it is also quite distracting. There are some truly lovely scenes in this film, unfortunately, they are too few and far between. In the case of Woman of The Photographs, a little retouching and fine tuning would have gone a long way.
Woman of the Photographs was reviewed as part of our coverage of Fantasia 2020.
Isaura Barbé-Brown is a Hackney born and based actress. She studied at AADA in New York and BADA in Oxford. She has done talks at the BFI for their Squad Goals event and with the Bechdel Test Fest on race in romantic films. She has also been on panels for BFI Future Film, The Watersprite Film Festival and The Norwich Film Festival. Isaura’s acting work covers theatre, film, tv and voiceover. She has also written short film scripts and plays as well as short stories and poetry.
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