Cloud (Japan, 2024)
Official synopsis from Japan Cuts: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s third film in a prolific year, following the creative spurt of Chime and Serpent’s Path, shapes up to be a slow-burn techno-thriller, one which takes its name from today’s ubiquitous virtual cloud. Moonlighting as a black market internet reseller for fake merchandise and products, factory worker Yoshii’s (Masaki Suda) get-rich-quick schemes and morally dubious actions seem to pay off when afforded the opportunity to move out to a remote, wooded lake house seemingly perfect for his business dealings. Rattled by strange incidents, however, Yoshii finds his errant ways catching up to him when unknown assailants target him. Kurosawa’s suspense-driven exercise in the action genre envisions the amplified ire of internet culture as a radicalized hydra of sprouting heads, amassing an anonymous network to quash its petty grievances. Kurosawa, as he so often does, masterfully finds terror in the mundane.
Renowned director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest offering Cloud — one of three features he made last year — deals more with “real world” matters and with less ambiguity than such classics of his as Cure and Pulse. This time he tackles immoral internet commerce by way of a revenge thriller, but it’s not shady reseller protagonist Yoshii who is the main person seeking to get even in a violent manner. He has ripped off one too many of the wrong people, and all it takes is one psychotic in a group to make things go horribly wrong.
Cloud has no characters for whom to truly root for, as everyone has selfish ambitions that range from the covetous to the deadly. The main ones — Yoshii, his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), and his new assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira) — are well written and impressively acted, and although the antagonists are mostly given short introductions or back stories, they are made interesting enough to keep interest in the outcome of the proceedings high.
Kurosawa paces his latest film well, transitioning from character study of a man trying to become wealthier without taking on responsibility and answering to no boss but himself, to a thriller involving that same person being pursued by those he has wronged in his pursuit of that wealth and all that it promises. Cloud is a scathing take on the negative impacts of dodgy, get-rich-quick online commerce and the pitfalls of social isolation in the form of a mystery/action hybrid. Strongly recommended for aficionados of those genres and, naturally, fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s work.
The Real You (Japan, 2024)
Official synopsis from Japan Cuts: Based on a novel by the Akutagawa-Prize winning Keiichiro Hirano, The Real You is a sci-fi mystery set in a disturbing future that feels far too real. Following the death of his mother, Sakuya Ishikawa (Sosuke Ikematsu) creates a “Virtual Figure” based on her memories to come to terms with his loss and unravel the mysteries of her passing. Yet, while he finds solace in this AI simulacrum, will he find answers . . . and will they be the answers he seeks? A bleak parable for our own world injected with the same sharp satire as Black Mirror, The Real You casts a cutting eye on artificial intelligence, automation, gig work, influencer culture and tech billionaires run amok.
Writer/director Yuya Ishii’s The Real You blends melodrama and near-future–set science fiction. The result is a slower-paced, meditative consideration of Japan’s aging society by way of a governmental “elective death” program, human workers being replaced by technological advances, and virtual reality allowing people to interact with deceased relatives and friends. It’s a lot to tackle in one film, but Ishii does a rather admirable job of juggling those elements with an Is-it-love-or-not angle and family drama.
Ikematsu does fine work as Ishikawa, who takes in Ayaka Miyoshi (Ayaka Miyoshi; yes, both actor and character share the same name), former sex worker who was a younger friend of his deceased mother Akiko (Yuko Tanaka), and who resembles a high school classmate in whom he was romantically interested. Though science fiction factors are indeed at play, the core of The Real You is the entanglements between these three main characters and the complexities of the heart.
Cloud and The Real You screen as part of the 2025 edition of Japan Society’s Japan Cuts, which runs July 10–20 in New York City. For more information, visit https://japansociety.org/film/japancuts/.
