Sato and Sato enjoyed its North American Premiere at the 19th edition of JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film.
I haven’t seen director Chihiro Amano’s Mrs. Noisy which took hold of the 13th edition of Japan Cuts in 2020, but I have seen her latest, Sato and Sato which officially marks my introduction to her work. She directed swells of short duration projects before making her commercial debut in 2014 in a pursuit that saw her working part-time to support her passion as well, which is one interesting aspect observed in Sato and Sato as it chronicles the piquant and increasingly bittersweet story.
Amano’s film sets off in the present time just as we meet Sachi (Yukino Kishii), a lawyer heading from work and on the way to get her bike. The following shot switches to a row of bikes falling like dominoes thanks to a mildly klutzy Tamotsu (Hio Miyazawa), in a time set fifteen years earlier, shortly in the aftermath of the 2011 Tsunami that devastated the region. Sachi and Tamotsu are college students who are friends and members of a coffee club, and they eventually fall in love and move in with each other.
The crux of the drama commences as Tamotsu tenaciously works to pass the bar exam to become a lawyer, eventually drawing interest for Sachi to the same. When Tamotsu’s repeated efforts result in failure, it starts to hold a little more weight, especially as Sachi manages to pass her exam and land a career, resulting in a swap of identity roles leaving Tamotsu as a house husband.
Personalities soon begin clashing where communication falls short of understanding, and words are either misinterpreted or cast where intrusive thoughts are implied. Of course, these scrimmages aren’t the entirety of their relationship as there are always ups and downs, and there’s still an air of sentiment and caring for each other. Even so, the burgeoning effects of the stresses of marriage, cumbersome societal expectations, and even parenthood contribute to an increasingly beleaguered atmosphere where personal interests and self-discovery ultimately clash, and it’s only a matter of time until they have to make the next biggest choice of their lives.
I typically don’t dive right into affirming details about how a film ends, but I kind of have to make an exception with Sato and Sato. It’s largely a harrowing romantic drama with spells of reprieve that prominently make progressions toward a more catastrophic outcome. Between Tamotsu’s insecurities and Sachi’s dismissals, each infraction between our characters paints a picture that completely removes the rose-colored lenses from the concepf of “Happily Ever After,” drawing together a heartbreaking, albeit palpable tale that speaks to the human condition.
Amano’s work here illustrates a love story where moments of happiness and joy are consistently outweighed by lateral and introspective challenges that force them to truly look into themselves and understand why they made the choices they made, said the words they said, and what they need to do next, if only to prepare them for the next and obvious phase in their trajectory together.
Sato and Sato bodes a tale of love and hardship with questions and crucial asterisks about what it takes to either stay together in love, or live peacefully apart. There’s a space in the film where both Tamotsu and Sachi are enveloped in tasks that keep them apart during their marriage. It occurs long after a bitter argument with each other, and at there’s one scene where Sachi sits alone with phone in hand, calling Tamotsu only to get his answering machine.
What follows after that feels like the kind of appropriate foreshadowing you can expect from a film like Sato and Sato, one rife with positives and hardships that serve to testify about what happens when the right person comes along, only for nearly everything to go so wrong. I’ve certainly had my share of loves and losses, which – for what it’s worth – makes Sato and Sato a film that I, and I think anyone who has ever been in love or at a place in their lives while still struggling to figure themselves out, can surely relate to, in some capacity.