Masahiro Shinoda’s early feature is known
in English both as Love New and Old and as Shamisen and Motorcycle
– as it happens, a mash-up of both those titles might encompass the film’s
meeting of romantic, generational and stylistic conflicts. The opening stretch holds
every promise of a brash youth movie, defined by bright colours and lively exchanges
and impulsive motorcycle adventures – an accident brings this to a halt,
landing its teenage protagonist Hatsuko in hospital. She develops an
affectionately spiky rapport with her genial doctor, Kuroyanagi; he in turn is
an old flame of her widowed mother Toyoeda, a teacher of traditional “kouta”
singing, with whom he soon starts a new relationship. An unusually
strong-willed and pesky protagonist, Hatsuko is at best passive-aggressive in
her reaction to this, and often downright hostile, ultimately forcing Kuroyanagi to
withdraw from seeing her mother, a capitulation that ultimately serves no one’s
interests. For all the movie’s evidence of a newly modernizing Japan, the
legacy of the war (a key factor in keeping her mother and Kuroyanagi apart back
then) remains prominent, and traditional class- and gender-based expectations
shape actions and attitudes as much as they ever did, even if in different ways
(for example, despite the culpability of Hatsuko’s boyfriend Fusao for her
injuries, his wealthy parents look down on her and her mother, shunning them
both in the hospital). It’s nicely summed up in the ending, in which Hatsuko
gains a greater awareness of the complexity of things, then rapidly pivots into
receiving a proposal from Fusao which is as much a directive as it is romantic,
with a final shot as heavy with peril and the memory of past errors as with
excited anticipation. The film certainly demonstrates, in somewhat embryonic
form, Shinoda’s appealing stylistic and thematic range and curiosity, which
would yield career peaks as diverse as Pale Flower and Silence.
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