Self-Centred
Ryohei Suzuki headlines an adaptation of Makoto TAkayama’s ground-breaking novel and nudges Japan’s LGBTQ+ community into the light.
Egoist
Director: Daishi Matsunaga • Writer: Kyoko Inukai, based on the book by Makoto Takayama
Starring: Ryohei Suzuki, Hio Miyazawa, Sawako Agawa, Akira Emoto, Yuko Nakamura, Durian Lollobrigida
Japan • 2hrs
Opens Hong Kong September 14 • III
Grade: B+
In keeping with almost every drama to come from Japan in the last year – two? five? – Daishi Matsunaga’s Egoist | エゴイスト takes its slow, deliberate, emotionally repressed time getting to where it’s going. In the case of Egoist, though, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just slow, albeit with a blessedly fresh perspective of romantic entanglement, desire and familial connection. And, thankfully, there are no extraneous authorial ambitions, hopes for concert piano mastery or, best of all, inappropriate age or power dynamics. Based on Makoto Takayama’s semi-autobiographical novel, the film pulls a clever bait and switch, messing with audience expectations of what an LGBTQ+ romantic drama is, could be or should be.
Saito Kosuke (Ryohei Suzuki) is a fairly well-heeled Tokyo-based editor who’s gotten comfortable in his own, out gay skin after a great deal of introspection and personal sacrifice. Essentially growing up alone in a provincial Japanese town following the death of his mother at 14, he considers himself self-sufficient and entirely independent. So he’s perplexed to find himself becoming legit attached to his new personal trainer, Ryuta Nakamura (Hio Miyazawa), after a quick fling. Ryuta grew up with his single mother, Taeko (Sawako Agawa, suitably fragile and knowingly maternal), making them kind of the opposite side of the same coin, and before you can say surrogate, Saito is attached to both of them.
Her two sons
What’s curious about Egoist is how it begins as a rote, explicit gay romance, with Saito’s libido getting the better of him and hitting on Ryuta. Surprise, Ryuta has to work extra hard by turning tricks to take care of the ephemerally ill Taeko; he’s a hustler, but he’s devoted to his mama. Thing is these guys kind of dig each other, but Ryuta can’t handle the way his side hustle butts up against the normalcy that comes with his budding relationship with Saito. He stops seeing him. This is where Egoist takes a welcome hard left into family drama and the kind of impossible romance Japanese cinema is so fond of.
Baffled at the loss of his trainer and, for lack of a better word, fuckbuddy, Saito makes an offer: Ryuta can be a kept man and take a monthly allowance from the relatively wealthy Saito, so no more conflict. He cautiously agrees, and before you know it Saito is quite happily hanging out with Taeko – even when he doesn’t have to – and finding a mother and a family he’s been missing since he was a teenager. But this is a Japanese LGBTQ+ story. The happiness can’t last; there is tragedy.
That penchant for tragedy and tears makes Egoist look like it’s goint to trade in the traditional punishment of gay characters, like all cinema has until very recently, but it slowly reveals itself as more of an examination of one man’s grown-up coming-of-age. The psychology may be a little on the nose but Saito is arguably the most complex, complete gay character to hit mainstream Japanese cinema since… since… possibly ever. His arc is nicely drawn, and impeccably acted by Suzuki, perhaps best know for Sion Sono’s Tokyo Tribe or the popular 2021 TV series Tokyo MER: Mobile Emergency Room. He begins as something of a skin deep bon vivant; the life of the party and the centre of attention among his circle of ultra-cool friends. What makes him the egoist? But as he recaptures the sense of family he lost, and a semblance of faith in relationships beyond the physical, he transforms into someone more mature, with genuine humanity about him. It’s a respectful, dignified performance that one day, hopefully, will go to a gay actor. Miyazawa has a little less to do with the cautious Ryuta, but he’s lockstep with Suzuki on building a believable dynamic between the two that’s sad to see disappear, but comforting to think was worth the risk.
Here’s the thing though. It can feel like it takes ages to find that faith and forge that dynamic. Matsunaga lets Ikeda Naoya’s camera linger for longer than it should sometimes, as if the more time we spend watching someone in a hospital bed or shop for groceries infuses the scenes with greater meaning. It doesn’t. It makes us fidget. But Egoist is about the road from A to Z, not how fast you get there, and it’s the kind of warm, fuzzy drama the Japanese industry excels at, but one “brave” enough to recognise everyone deserves a warm and fuzzy. — DEK