Discovering this film was simple enough. I typed, “Best Japanese Noir” into my search engine and lo and behold, a curated list on mubi.com of the best noir films from Japan popped up. Number 1 caught my eye for a few reasons, primarily my never having heard of it. Second, its main character is a female, not something often seen in noir fiction. So how could I resist?
Teiko (Yoshiko Kuga), is a newly wed of one week. She must see her husband off on a trip to wrap up his business affairs in western Japan before returning to begin new work in Tokyo. Her husband does not return when he said he would. Teiko is committed to finding out what happened. Her only clues to go off of are two mysterious postcards. She must travel different parts of Japan in order to uncover the truth. She seeks help of police and an investigator from her husband’s company. They ultimately uncover a web of deceit, including revelations of corruption and prostitution during American occupation following World War II. She does her own detective work in tracking her husband’s whereabouts and who might be responsible for his demise.
The novel this film is based on comes from the mind of Seichō Matsumoto, a grandmaster, if not the grandmaster of Japanese crime fiction. Instead of relying on formulaic devices and tropes, he wove in human psychology and elements from everyday life. His machinations are not hidden when adapted to film. Zero Focus is a seamless blend of Matsumoto’s criminal machinations and the dark, ominous direction of Yoshitaro Nomura.
Nomura stages his actors to perfection. The framing, the position, the distance between characters; this is an essential element to the film. Nomura will compose a shot with the characters precisely positioned. If it weren’t for Nomura allowing the camera to sit and capture the tension between the characters, I would have paused these frames. The depth of each frame is imbued with how the characters feel towards one another at that moment. I had to read the subtitles quickly so I could study what Nomura was setting up for me. There’s a scene on a cliffside with 3 characters and no music, just the sound of the wind and the ocean. The camera work is a film class unto itself, the focus and filters capturing the complexity of the characters.
The plot is initially what grabbed me. And I love the way it unravels. We learn along with our determined protagonist. But many movies have good plots. What kept me interested were the performances, the shadows (both literal and figurative), and the necessity to learn what happened. Matsumoto and Nomura are a match made in noir heaven. Zero Focus definitely caught me off guard. I can’t believe that I had not heard of it before this. And in reading about the director, it looks like he adapted quite a few Matsumoto novels…which means I have my work cut out for me.
