Zero Focus

The old Japanese director Yoshitarô Nomaro in a freely book's adaptation on behalf of the enduring Shochiko Studio a small neo Noir Japanese piece delivers a shadowy mystery of the missing husband that out of the blue disappears without a trace after a short marriage time, his young wife Teiko (Yoshiko Kuga) looking for him aid for his brother-in-law, after an exhaustive seeking on nearby working area gathering few hints that would lead his husband whereabout.

Likewise the master of suspense the clever director allied a well-crafted screenplay in a snowy gloomy ambiance, narrow streets, trains and a dangerous seashore spot, then came up a previously love affair, betraying among murders as well, in a cold northern Japanese displaying a perfect backdrop for this kind of story, it hold you entirely on relentless pursuit of the truth by the broken heart woman, really a gripping mystery.

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First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

This is a taut mystery about a newlywed couple where the husband disappears on a last business trip. His wife Teiko tries to retrace his steps by traveling to northern Japan to find him. Along the way, she finds out things about him that surprise her, but also make her realize how little she knows him (they were only married one week before he disappeared). The plot thickens over time and you find out little revelations along the way. I found this movie to be very well put together, it doesn't bore you. The acting is uniformly good and the best thing is that it is in black and white. That actually enhances the film, especially as the little twists in the story unfold. If you're a fan of mystery/film noir, you'll like this.

The name of this film (and the book it's derived from) is an enigma to me, but perhaps it's something lost in translation. Regardless, it's a very enjoyable mystery drama with noir overtones, helped considerably by its beautiful on-location cinematography along the Noto Kongo Coast in the wintertime. As the sea rages underneath Yase Cliff, so too do the emotions of the three women connected by an ad agency manager who has gone missing while on a business trip (Koji Nambara).

The first of these women is his wife (Yoshiko Kuga) of only one week, who was swept away by passion when she married him. The scene with their intense kiss in which she says "his overwhelming passion suffocated me" followed by him complimenting her "youthful body" in the bathtub after sex is brief, but pretty steamy for the period. Not surprisingly, she doesn't really know him all that well, and as she travels to snow country with one of his colleagues to see where he might be, she starts unraveling secrets about him. I won't spoil it, but one thing she discovers is that he was in a common-law relationship with a humble woman (Ineko Arima) before he married her. There's a third woman, the affluent wife of a friend (Hizuru Takachiho) who is involved as well, a character who brings in an underlying theme of the work, which is the trauma Japanese women had to endure following the country's defeat in WWII and the American occupation. Impoverished, some turned to prostitution, and this woman has worked hard to try to escape her shameful past.

Much of the story is told in flashback, and the pace is brisk - a plus if you ask me, as I took it as respecting the viewer's intelligence, but regardless, you'll have to pay attention to keep up. The narration from the wife, the twists and turns, and the rugged scenery all hooked me. Director Yoshitaro Nomura did a wonderful job with this story, and I'll have to seek more of his films out. This one was heading for an even higher rating, but fumbled a bit towards the end when it had the actual story told as a revision to one just hypothesized. It wasn't all bad as the variations were interesting and all the dots got connected, but how it suddenly came out of the other person seemed implausible. Better was that moment of real menace on the cliffs that preceded it. Overall though, a fine film, and definitely one to check out.

Teiko Uhara is a dowdy young woman delighted at finally catching the man of her dreams, Kenichi, after a whirlwind romance her and her new man marry. As Kenichi has just received another big promotion in work, he is called away immediately before they can have a proper honeymoon, he promises to be back in a few days. The days pass and there is no sign of her husband returning, Teiko contacts her husbands employers, who say he has already left for home some time previously. Teiko begins to worry for her husbands safety and decides to travel north to Kanazawa to track him down.

Zero Focus is very taut thriller, that just screams of Hitchcock, the plot, the noirish visuals and even the score would all be very much at home in Hitch's repertoire. Nomura pieces together a convoluted script into a mesmerizing tale of hidden identities, murder and prostitution from which Teiko cannot escape. With only a couple of photos from her husbands belongings to go on, Teiko's investigation takes her into the snowy wastelands of the north, a slightly backward coastal area where ragged cliffs act like a magnet to those with suicidal tendencies and provide the viewer with memories of Rebecca. Its into this that quiet city girl Teiko is thrown, with these paltry clues she endeavours to unravel the tragedies of Kanazawa.

This was the first film I had seen by Nomura and constituted a major disappointment. Nomura appears to belong to the static variety of Japanese directors, preferring lingering and beautiful black and white shots over the bravura editing of contemporaries such as Seijun Suzuki or early Kurosawa. This approach really does not fit the material which is a stultifyingly dull and procedural mystery story that at no point rises above the generic, or generates any palpable tension or danger.

A point of comparison would be Rebecca by Hitchcock, mostly because of its focus on coastal scenery and echoes of the past affecting a hurried marriage. But this movie lacks any of the sexual or psychological aspects that make Rebecca so interesting. Some of the dialogue and minor performances are appalling. At one point a coastguard turns to a distraught bereaved wife and advises, straightfaced, "Why don't you walk to Noto cliff, It is very beautiful and a common spot to commit suicide." How did that ever get beyond the editing suite? Even the final exposition is ridiculously forced and overlong that I was tempted to fast forward to the end of the ending. One to miss