The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky (2012)

A married woman has an affair with a high school student. A video of their exploits soon turns up on the internet affecting the lives of both couples.

Director:

Yuki Tanada

Writers:

Misumi Kubo (book), Kôsuke Mukai (screenplay)

Stars:

Kento Nagayama, Tomoko Tabata, Mieko Harada

2 wins.

Cast

Credited cast:
Kento Nagayama	...	Takumi
Tomoko Tabata	...	Anzu
Mieko Harada	...	Midwife / Takumi's mother
Masataka Kubota
Takashi Yamanaka	...	Keiichi / Satomi's husband
Ena Koshino	...	Nana
Takahiro Miura	...	Fukuda
Rie Minemura	...	Machiko / Satomi''s mother in-law
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Guin Poon Chaw	...	(as Ginpuncho)
Miharu Tanaka

Storyline

Middle-aged Satomi is married to infertile Keiichi and pressured by Machiko, her dominant mother-in-law to give her a grandchild. She seeks distraction in manga romance and meets the student Takumi at an event for anime fans. Soon they start a passionate relationship like "Anzu" and "Muramasa", her favorite cartoon characters. Takumi soon becomes her escape from her boring life while taking an infertility treatment forced by mother-in-law who provides them a financial support. Meanwhile, her husband and his mother begins to notice a video on the Internet -which was taped by herself secretly where she has sex with her teenage lover. Takumi's best friend Fukuda lives with his senile grandmother after his mother abandoned him and can just make ends meet with a number of side jobs. His situation becomes dire when a usurer demands that he pays his mother's debts.

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Plot Keywords:

sex tape | sex on tape | japanese woman | based on a novel | wanton | 

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Genres:

Drama

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User Reviews

human frailty

A handsome high school boy begins an affair with an older married woman. When their sex tape ends up on the internet, various lives are changed forever.

The themes of adolescent coming of age, socioeconomic class divisions in Japan, and family dysfunction, are all common concerns of modern-day Japanese cinema. Protagonist Takumi, too damn good-looking for his own good, seems surrounded by women - a doe-eyed classmate, his married sex friend, and a single-mother at a home which doubles as a Natural Birth clinic. Takumi gets to have the unusual experience for a teenage boy of experiencing the sweat, stench and tears of life coming into being first-hand.

The sexual politics are wryly observed and the sexual encounters framed in a manner that strips them of their eroticism and makes them touching and vulnerable. Tomoko Tabata as Anzu is perfect as the needy housewife trapped with a useless husband and a (slightly overdrawn) domineering mother-in-law. Another story intrudes late in the narrative, that of Takumi's friend Ryota (Masataka Kubota). Less blessed in the looks department than Takumi, and with a mother who cares little about her offspring, unlike Takumi's devoted and wise mother, Ryota's fickle mix of jealousy and loyalty towards Takumi proves destructive.

The characters are strong and engaging and the story would draw you in, were it not for the odd decision to structure this as a triptych, with an overlong final third devoted to Ryota's plight. This leaves Takumi and Anzu off-screen for a good half-hour right when we are most interested in seeing their reactions. Cut by at least 20 minutes, and telling all these characters tales chronologically, this would be a much more involving film. As it is the structure is a massive flaw in an otherwise mature and admirable film.

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

17 November 2012 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Gökyüzüne Bakan Korkaklar

Company Credits

Production Co:

Stairway

Technical Specs

Runtime:

141 min

Color:

Color