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don't know what type of box office numbers
writer/director Masato Harada gets in his native Japan, but I am almost certain
it isn't astounding. As he did with "Kamikaze
Taxi", a social movie in the guise of a Yakuza revenge picture, Harada
once again takes aim at what he perceives as the true underbelly of Japanese
society. With 1997's "Leaving" (or "Bounce ko gals") the
target of Harada's criticism is male-female gender relations, or to be more
specific, young girls-older men relations.
Actually, calling what transpires between the old men and
young girls of Tokyo, Japan "relations" is giving it too much credit.
The three heroines that make up "Leaving" have come to understand what
society prizes most in them -- their youth -- and is using it to their advantage
by working as call girls after school. Jonko (Hitomi Sato) seems to have it all
figured out, although we suspect she doesn't know half as much as she thinks she
does. Raku (Yasue Sato) is the carefree one, setting up "dates" for
high school friends but never going on them herself. Of the three, Lisa (Yukiko
Okamoto) is new to the game, and has only succumbed because of a dire need for
quick money.
Over the course of a day and a half, "Leaving"
uses its three leads as vehicles to explore a year's worth of living. The
screenplay begins as two separate stories but merges about 40 minutes in when
Lisa takes some seedy jobs that caters to perverted older men. She sells her
panties, schoolgirl uniform, and gets involved in a "uniform video"
where she and Raku run around as a videocamera tapes them. While the other girls
prostitute themselves to make money to support their heavy consumerism, Lisa
needs the money to move to New York, where she plans to begin a fresh new life.
But after two hoods steal her traveling money, Lisa has to
rely on newfound friend Raku for help. Raku in turn sets Lisa up with Jonko.
Over the course of the night, the three girls become fast friends, joined more
by their shared experiences as teen girls in contemporary Japan than anything
else. In an effort to quickly help Lisa raise the necessary funds to survive in
New York, Jonko sets the two of them up on a series of quickie dates.
Unfortunately they also cross an established pimp name Oshima (Koji Yakusho),
who has warned Jonko before about her "amateur prostitution" getting
in the way of his "professional prostitution."
While Harada uses Yukiko Okamoto ("Another
Heaven") as his central figure, the real power behind
"Leaving" is Hitomi Sato (the "Ring"
films), who gives a fluid and flawless performance as the call girl with a plan.
Having figured out long ago that she was born to be used, Sato's Jonko doesn't
actually sell her body. Instead of sleeping with her johns, she knocks them out
with a stun gun and robs them. It isn't just her way to avoid sex, but also the
only way she can get back at the world. Unlike Okamoto's Lisa, who has a plan to
escape her hopeless existence, Jonko has no such ambition, although one gets the
feeling that she wishes she could be like Lisa and chuck it all for a new start.
It's no mystery why we hardly learn anything about the
girls' home life, or see their parents. As the old saying goes, "Parents
just don't understand." And in the case of "Leaving", what the
girls are going through and what youths in general are going through in modern
Japan would seem like another world to their parents. Also, the series of
perverted men the girls face in the course of the night and a half are more of a
gathering of the worst of the worst to help the movie makes its point.
What adult perspective we do get comes from Koji Yakusho
("Cure") and
Kaori Momoi, both playing veterans of the sex trade. While Yakusho's Oshima
grunts about the sad state of the prostitution business and teen girls in
general, he can't help but feel admiration for Jonko's resourcefulness. Kaori
Momoi's Saki starts out as another adult seeking to use up Lisa's youth, but
ends up respecting her for her steady resolve to escape it all. In a way, both
adults wish they could buck their own experiences and do more for the girls.
"Leaving" is an effective movie with terrific
performances by its three teenage leads. While Hitomi Sato owns the screen every
time she appears, Yasue Sato and Yukiko Okamoto earns their wings by holding
their own, especially since their characters are written as understated compared
to Sato's hard-driving Jonko. In a world where a call girl can get beaten to a
pulp and the perpetrator is called the "victim", there's very little
mercy or respite for our heroines. We feel for them, for their plight, and hope
they can manage to survive it somehow, although we get the feeling it may be
futile.
Despite the subject matter and the description above,
"Leaving" is not a pornographic movie. There are no depictions
of sex and no nudity at all. The film, although very pessimistic and gritty, is
not completely without sunshine. Like "Platonic
Sex", another good movie about being teen and Japanese,
"Leaving" does offer us a measure of hope, even if we're not sure what
it all amounts to, in the very end.
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