Dir/scr: Daisuke Shigaya. Japan. 2025. 102 mins.
“Introverted, but with an intimate feel.” A Tokyo hipster gallery owner is talking about a forthcoming exhibition by photographer Maiko Minami (Ran Taniguchi). But he could just as well be describing this enigmatic and low-key drama, which weaves together small, seemingly insignificant fragments and malleable memories from the lives of Maiko, her husband Mori (Soma Fujii) and his former lover Asako (Yukino Murakami). This is subdued, introspective filmmaking which sidesteps moments of emphatic drama and finality to focus on the quiet storms of domestic life. It’s an assured, if deliberately understated debut feature from director Daisuke Shigaya.
A delicacy and sensitivity that might appeal to fans of Kelly Reichardt
Leave The Cat Alone (the title, like much in the film, is not overtly explained) marks a return to Busan for Shigaya, whose short film Windows screened in the Wide Angle section of the festival in 2021. His previous short, Spring Like Lovers, won a prize at the Pia Film Festival in 2017. With a delicacy and sensitivity that might appeal to fans of Kelly Reichardt at her most restrained, Leave The Cat Alone could connect with audiences at festivals following its world premiere in Busan Competition. Yet what makes it distinct – the focus on the micro rather than the macro emotional details of a relationship, and a tendency to tamp down drama whenever it threatens to ignite – may also mean that the film could struggle to assert itself beyond the festival circuit.
It’s Maiko that we see at the start of the film, staring straight at us with her camera poised to take a shot. And it’s Maiko’s work that is being discussed in the gallery scene that follows. But the central character of the story is Mori, played with a willowy melancholy by singer-songwriter Soma Fujii, who also contributes pensive Beck-style acoustic melodies to the soundtrack. It’s no accident that Maiko provides our entry point, and, through the off-kilter framing of her shots, a visual motif that recurs throughout the film. She’s successful and driven. Mori, however, exists in her shadow.
Numb and languishing in a creative hole, Mori has been signed off from work for unspecified health issues. He spends his days noodling listlessly with his drum machine and synth, and his nights sleeplessly staring into the void. The atmosphere between Maiko and Mori is coolly courteous, but there’s an obstacle between them. Shigaya doesn’t make it overtly clear what has knocked the marriage off course but Mori, in a rare moment of heightened emotion, claims that he can’t forgive Maiko.
Shigaya repeatedly makes use of reflections – both mirror images and ghostly, overlaid, superimposed figures. This framing ties into a pivotal moment: Mori’s accidental reunion with his former lover Asako in a cake shop. The meeting plays out twice, from the point of view of both characters, with their perspectives on the encounter slightly different.
Dual flashbacks to moments in the pair’s past also change shape, morphing depending on who is recalling them. It’s not so much a romance rekindled as it is a rediscovered link to half-forgotten former selves. Both Mori and Asako admit that their creative aspirations have been stifled by the grind of adult life. But following their afternoon of strolling and reminiscing, Asako picks up her paintbrush again and Mori writes a song.
He also, finally, visits his wife’s photo exhibition. Maiko titled it ’Collecting Something Alone’, but what Mori discovers is a celebration of their time together. There’s a melancholy aspect to this of course – Mori is a glass-half-empty kind of guy. The pictures, he says, make him realise that we can’t turn back time. But ultimately, the message of the film is that reconnecting and rediscovering the past can give us the energy to move forward.
Production company: HUT Pictures INC.
International sales: Nikkatsu Corporation umi_yamamoto@nikkatsu.co.jp
Producer: Hiro Itaya
Cinematography: Ryo Hirai, Fumiya Mishiro
Editing: Takahiro Sakata
Music: Soma Fujii
Main cast: Soma Fujii, Yukino Murakami, Ran Taniguchi, Meiry Mochizuki, Naoyuki Miyahara, Daikichi Sugawara, Shinsuke Kato, Kei Sato, Gai-Gai Dada, Konosuke Furuya
AloJapan.com