![]() ![]() It’s fake, an illusion that we’ve all bought into – no more real than a paper moon (to go by the film’s original Japanese title), though we continue to set all of our hopes afloat on its surface. It makes the world go round and drives people crazy as they try to amass even more little bits of paper with numbers written on them. Money – it’s the life blood of capitalism. How did it ever come to this? Yet, it’s the strangest thing – Rika has never felt more alive. It’s a quick step from a gentle misappropriation of funds to a series of interestingly decorated hotel rooms with a boy half your age, embezzlement on a grand scale, blackmail, bank fraud – the list goes on. She takes the money straight out of an ATM and replaces it right away, of course, but a line has been crossed. ![]() Efficient, reserved, reliable – Rika is the perfect employee, that is until one day she spends some of a client’s money because there isn’t quite enough in her purse. A childless former housewife, she’s recently moved from a part time position at a bank to a full time job where she works as a kind of personal banking assistant visiting wealthy clients at home to discuss their financial needs and physically depositing their money in the bank for them. Rika (Rie Miyazawa) is a demure woman in her early forties. Set in 1994 just after the bubble burst, this gleefully cheeky (im)morality tale takes another sideways glance at the social norms of contemporary Japan. Pale Moon (紙の月, Kami no Tsuki) is no different in this regard although it focuses more tightly on one individual and shifts age groups from turbulent adolescence to middle aged desperation. In some senses painting on a large canvas by illuminating the inner lives of these teenagers acting as both individuals and as members of a group, The Kirishima Thing was equal parts ensemble character drama and probing social commentary. ![]() Daihachi Yoshida’s last venture into human dynamics, The Kirishima Thing, took the high school environment as a microcosm for society as a whole. ![]()
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