Filament

Filament is a film about the hardships of a strange Japanese family. The father is a transvestite and finds pleasure in photographing his family and himself dressed in women’s clothes. And the son and daughter are adolescents with no future, living in a world as gray, heartless and formulaic as the world of their computer games. The cause of all of this is their mother, who abandoned them ten years prior and ran off with a “younger male”. This film is culturally distant, yet intimate in terms of its subject matter, beautifully enabling us to get to know all of the characters through their endearing weaknesses and long-hidden and ultimately expressed feelings. It’s a beautiful film about family cohesion, forgiveness, love and self-sacrifice. The sad and overly dramatic moments are lightened up with gentle, casual humor. The director doesn’t try to overdo it and wring tears out of us, instead preferring to stay on an easy-going poetic level. (10/07/2002)