«Goodbye Grandpa!»

Fribourg International Film Festival - Loris S. Musumeci

«He might have lived longer, but he lived fully.»

The bed creaks. Yoshiko and her boyfriend engage in deep sexual exercises. They are sweating. Suddenly, the telephone rings. The girl stops to answer it. Sad news. From the window, she tells her father that «Grandpa has died. Back at her partner's house, she receives a kindly »Do you want to stop?.

The whole family is uneasy; no one knows what to say. At the hospital, Yoshiko's father and her brother argue, pointing out their failings and irresponsibilities. Yoshiko, for her part, is happy to see her cousin again, but the two exchange a «long time no see» that reveals the state of the family. With life, work, divorce and so on, the family of the late grandfather Isao has become decidedly fractured. As if the situation wasn't complicated enough, now the senile grandmother has to be accommodated.

A kitsch grandiose

Unlike the other feature films in the international competition at the Fribourg International Film Festival, Goodbye Grandpa! doesn't bank its success on cinematography. Apart from a few elegant shots in the service of tragi-comedy - notably the one in which the two cousins stand smoking against a grate - the film is a collection of scenes with images of a kind of kitsch grandiose. For some, it's a Japanese touch; for others, it's an opportunity to vomit in the face of meadows of green that are as overdone and digital as they are disgusting.

On the other hand, Yukihiro Morigaki's direction is much more in tune with the subject matter. He exposes the drama of Western, city-dwelling families, to which Yoshiko's family totally belongs. After all, the Japanese live in the West, even though they're in the far east of the globe. Brothers don't usually speak to each other, except to fight over inheritance. Cousins, for their part, lose all proximity: some live here, others there. As a result, «weddings and funerals are always the same family reunions.»

The individual and the family

The story, without any modesty, shows the modern individual in the face of that painful, suffocating group called the family. Yoshiko's brother studies in the city; his clothes are very fashionable and he looks effeminate. Unsurprisingly, the family laughs at him. Yoshiko's cousin, on the other hand, is an almost sickly introvert. Unsurprisingly, the family laughs at him. Yoshiko's uncle has been left by his wife because, according to his own brother, he's ’a poor nerd«. Unsurprisingly, the family laughs at him.

Anyone could relate to the model of the mocked loser in the family. Indeed, it's the family members' faults that are highlighted. But at the same time, the challenge for all the protagonists, starting with Yoshiko, is to find the qualities in their parents too, so as to love the brother, cousin, uncle or father as he is. Morigaki's script captures the quest well, with a rather cathartic effect.

The good old days

Finally, the figure of the grandmother says a lot about how we regard the elderly. Not only does Goodbye Grandpa! denounces their denigration, albeit in a rather facile manner, but supports the lucidity they often display despite their senility. Their mere presence, moreover, is elevated to the status of a treasure, insofar as it provokes a modicum of tenderness, reminding subsequent generations of the time of childhood. A time when family and solidarity were one.

The film is therefore worth seeing for these few good points. To add: its ability to deal with death in a feature film considered a black humor comedy. For the rest, nothing original, nothing powerful, nothing transcendent, nothing deadly.

«Our family is twisted, and so is this funeral.»

Write to the author : loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Goodbye Grandpa !