‘A Missing Part’: Seville Review

Dir: Guillaume Senez. France/Belgium. 2024. 98 minutes

Belgian director Guillaume Senez’s third characteristic A Lacking Half is basically a narrative about youngster custody, however rather more apart from. That includes an intense efficiency by Romain Duris as a French taxi driver in Japan looking for a daughter estranged from him by the regulation, this low-key, rigorously crafted and involving story can be a drama about immigration from a western perspective. Having premiered at Toronto and now in competitors in Seville, additional berths appear possible for a movie whose director comes with a robust file of competition success (Our Struggles, Keeper).

Duris delivers a potent, managed efficiency 

Separated from his Japanese spouse Keiko (Yumi Narita), Frenchman Jay (Duris) works the evening shift, driving spherical a Tokyo whose illuminated nightscapes are offered by DoP Elin Kirschfink as alien and unfriendly; very similar to Jay’s different experiences of town. We first meet him providing a shoulder to cry on to the understandably frantic Jessica (Judith Chemla), who – beneath a hanging Japanese regulation that states that custody of a kid goes to only one of many mother and father  – is about to fall out of contact along with her son. (The regulation is ready to vary and permit joint custody from 2026.)

For 9 years Jay has been a sufferer of the identical regulation: previously a cook dinner, he has turn out to be a taxi driver within the forlorn hope that someday he may encounter his daughter Lily (Mei Cirne-Masuki). At some point, Jay is assigned a faculty run and Lily climbs into the again – or not less than we expect it’s Lily. The scenes through which Jay discreetly seeks to ascertain whether or not the 12 year-old sitting behind him is his daughter are effectively executed, and at last, in a second of potent catharsis, he’s capable of verify her id. As Lily, Mei Cirne-Masuki is terrific of their scenes collectively: although she’s initially shy and silent, the viewer finally ends up with little question by any means about how she feels concerning the state of affairs through which she has abruptly discovered herself. 

Taciturn and cautious about his life to the purpose of dullness – his solely concession to eccentricity is that he retains a monkey known as Jean-Pierre – Jay is rejuvenated after assembly Lily. And there are even recommendations of a future relationship with Jessica. But it surely’s not sufficient; Jay needs to spend time along with his daughter, and right here he runs into stiff opposition, not solely from Keiko and her mom, but in addition from his employer and the authorized system of a rustic the place he stays very a lot an outsider. 

Although the script is cautious to ascertain that Japanese custody regulation applies to Japanese residents in addition to foreigners, A Lacking Half can be concerning the alienation and vulnerability of a stranger in an odd land. Little scenes confirming Jay’s outsider standing mount up. What drives Jay ahead, and what drives the viewer’s curiosity in him, will not be merely the movie’s plot, however the truth that he’s in an authentically tragic quandary. 

One of many movie’s strengths is that particulars of Jay’s obsession which could in one other context really feel uncomfortable – the way in which he follows Lily to a swimming pool, or maintains her bed room, unchanged and unclean, for 9 years, risking his job to proceed seeing her – come over as comprehensible. His anxious try and win the marine-loving Lily over (a toy octopus he hangs from his rear-view mirror, a e book about eels) border on the heartbreaking. 

Duris, reprising with Senez after their equally intense household drama Our Struggles, delivers a potent, managed efficiency whose self-containment at all times feels threatened by the potential of explosion. To this extent, Jay displays the movie itself – its leanness, tautness, and effectivity will, we really feel, be unable to include the messiness of the feelings carrying it alongside, and the result’s tense and really rewarding.