‘The Longing’ review: Toshizo Fujiwara directs and stars in sweet Panorama drama

Dir: Toshizo Fujiwara. Japan. 2025. 104mins

This endearingly heartfelt, low-budget Japanese drama offers with the oldest of tales: a younger man who went off the rails however, after a spell behind bars, is set to go straight – if solely he can preserve his demons and his previous hell-raising buddies at bay. It takes some time, at first, to get previous the quite murky handheld camerawork and on-the-nose dialogue (“I need an opportunity to begin over. I’ll do away with my tattoos!”). However steadily, The Longing’s story of human frailty and goodness actually will get below the pores and skin. Additional competition play seems probably following its Berlin Panorama premiere and, additional afield, it might be simply the sort of underdog launch to be boosted by social media and word-of-mouth suggestions.

A movie that could be very a lot about what’s unsaid

This was a seemingly a private mission for director Toshizo Fujiwara, an actor who has additionally served for a few years as a volunteer probation officer (there are nearly 50,000 of those ‘hogoshi’ in Japan, who work intently with skilled probation officers to rehabilitate the offenders assigned to them). Fujiwara performs Hiroyuki, the proprietor of an Osaka restaurant that specialises in okonomiyaki – a sort of savory pancake. He has supplied a job to younger offender Yuto (Daiki Ido), as soon as a part of a hell-raising bike gang, now apparently honest in his need to maintain out of hassle and be taught a commerce.

In a seemingly unconnected plot strand, Hiroyuki’s spouse Sonoko has simply suffered a miscarriage. Although it’s by no means acknowledged in a movie that could be very a lot about what’s left unsaid, she clearly attracts a parallel between her husband’s ‘adoption’ of this younger tearabout and his lack of enthusiasm for the couple’s continued fertility remedy. Nameless neighbours, in the meantime, preserve posting indignant messages on the restaurant’s shutters in a single day, accusing Hiroyuki of rewarding criminals and hooligans for his or her unhealthy behaviour by giving them jobs.

Hiroyuki encourages Yuto to go to his estranged mother and father however, when the trainee chef will get to the household condominium, he discovers they’ve moved with out telling him. Yuto lets himself go, has an evening in town with certainly one of his previous bike buddies, meets a woman and nearly loses his job, however is given one other likelihood by the affected person Hiroyuki. Slowly, we see causal connections forming into one thing extra. An previous man that Yuko delivers okoyonomaki to – as soon as wealthy, now fallen on onerous instances – out of the blue dies, however new life is on the best way, and it’s kindness, persistence and loyalty that retaining issues transferring ahead.

Enhancing is a key aspect right here: it’s nearly informal, with generally abrupt leaps between storylines, however the impact is to create parallels and convergences. When Sonoko recounts to a piece colleague the imagined lifetime of her misplaced child, and Yuto writes a letter to the woman he refuses to surrender on, a giant emotional arc breaks like a wave we by no means noticed coming. Not a lot else is required, aside from a reticent, classically infused soundtrack of minor-key piano melodies, which fits the temper completely.