Quick Review #145: "Yurigokoro" (movie)

Title: Yurigokoro / ユリゴコロ　　　　　　　　　　

Rating: 8 / 10

Recommended for: 

For those who want to see a well-crafted suspense story with intricate elements and great acting from the cast especially the three leads

* Potential spoilers ahead!

* I have not read the original novel.

Liked:

- Although the movie appeared to be just a mystery story right from the start, there was actually more than that. The two storylines which ran concurrently with each other were in fact very closely linked to each other. What I really liked was how the relationships between the characters were revealed in such a way that there were surprises and twists waiting to be uncovered by the viewer at various junctures. As such, the movie which may have been slightly longer than 2 hours, didn't feel boring as a whole. 

It was also commendable that while the story packed some surprises to "shock" the viewers, it also left a number of clues which we could pick up along the way to guess where the plot was likely heading towards. In this sense, when my hunches were proven correct, the gratification felt as a result also contributed to my positive assessment of this film. Layering and strike a balance between dangling clues and revelations was definitely not an easy feat. Often, many mystery or suspense stories fail to get this balance correct - either the outcome turned out to be totally unexpected because there were no clues at all or the outcome became so predictable because the clues were laid out in plain sight.

- The acting especially from Yoshitaka Yuriko and Matsuyama Kenichi was brilliant. Yoshitaka always has a knack for tackling such challenging roles especially those with warped mentalities or twisted characters and she delivered as usual in this movie. I really liked her chemistry with Matsuyama in this movie and their characters were such a joy to watch despite how dark and tragic the story was heading towards because of how their fates were intertwined with each other. Matsuyama may not have appeared until the later part of the story but his impact in the grand scheme of things and his character's "self-revelation" was done in such a compelling manner.

On the other hand, Matsuzaka Toori had a bit of a challenge in comparison because he didn't get the luxury of having a "fixed onscreen partner" like what Yoshitaka and Matsuyama did as his story involved interacting with a number of characters. In fact, he had to search for his "missing" fiancee played Seino Nana most of the time so he was pretty much "alone" in this sense. However, he still managed to show the transition of his character in a believable and engaging manner as he found out about the other storyline and how it fitted in his own life.

Among the supporting characters, I thought that Kimura Tae and Kiyohara Kaya probably stood out the most among them even though they didn't have that much screen time.

- Considering that the storylines were actually from two different periods in time (not explicitly mentioned in the movie at first but revealed later), there were different actors who had to play the same characters for the separate timelines. I thought that the casting was done pretty well in that sense because the actors from the different eras actually resembled one another in one way or another - maybe not so much in terms of looks but the overall vibe so it was not difficult to draw links between them and not feel as if they were totally unrelated. For example, I had never really seen a resemblance between Kiyohara Kaya, Yoshitaka Yuriko and Kimura Tae until this movie so kudos to the casting director for making such good choices. Often, many works fail to get this done properly so I always struggle to draw links between the actors doing the same characters especially if the looks of the actors differ in a big way.

Disliked: 

- While I did like this movie as a whole, I felt that there were some questions which were left unanswered. For example, the origin and background story of the heroine - was there a contributing factor that led to her unique psychological state or was she born like that? Or how about the fact that she was able to kill so easily despite her physical limitations against much bigger and stronger people? As such, the story didn't seem so complete with these minor omissions. Much as I understand that these probably wouldn't affect the movie in a major way, I thought that for the sake of getting a clearer and more complete picture, it might have been better to get some answers.

- The two storylines may have been brilliant in their own ways but I also cannot deny the fact that the current story arc was a tad lacking in terms of emotional tension and excitement compared to the past arc. It felt like the current arc was sort of like the vehicle to keep the past arc going so sorry to say, I was actually hoping to see more of the past arc where the action was taking place.