A Review: Call Me Chihiru

 I saw a film on Netflix that I wanted to talk about.  It’s a Japanese film called, “Call Me Chihiru” (Japanese title: “Chihiru-san”).  

While watching it, it occurred to me that most would describe it as a “character study.”  A movie where we follow the main character from one moment to the next, where nothing dramatic happens.

A better perspective to take is that it’s a story where all of the dramatic action takes place inside the main character.  We derive her goal and inner struggles from the clues presented from her interactions with others.  This view fits in with the society this movie comes from, where the expression of strong emotions and personal desires are constrained by obligations toward group harmony.  

We start with the main character herself, Chihiru, in the opening scene where she comes upon the neighbor cat in the street.  She gets down on her hands and knees to stroke the cat, using what the Japanese call a “cat stroking voice,” the high toned, sing-song voice people use when trying to get on a cat’s good side.  We immediately see a kind, happy person, that responds sweetly to the cute little creature that everyone has a hand in caring for.  She has been given a stamp of approval by the film makers.  This is a good person.  

The movie starts by presenting us with the title character, Chihiru.  We see her greeting the neighborhood cat in the street.  She gets down on her hands and knees to stroke the cat, speaking to her in what the Japanese call a “cat stroking voice.”  We are presented with a seemingly happy person, that responds sweetly to those she meets.  It is a stamp of approval of her character.  

In the scene that follows we discover more about her.  While working at a take-out only bento shop, one of her co-workers tries to shush her when she mentions her past work as a sex worker in a massage parlor.  But it turns out that “almost everyone” in the town already knows this about her.  This is boisterously confirmed by the crowd of male customers waiting to order.  In a country that came up with the saying, “It’s the nail that stands out that gets hammered down,” Chihiru is remarkably open and unconcerned about who knows about this part of her past.   

We start the issue Chihiru is dealing with as she interacts with the people in the town.  It starts with an old homeless man that hangs around the town.  One day, Chihiru sees a group of school boys tormenting and bullying him.  She looks over the fence and calls out, “That looks fun.  Can I join?”  The boys scatter and run away.  Chihiru comes around to check on the old man.  She sits and talks with him.  She brings him a bento box from the shop to eat.  Then, she invites him to her apartment to take a bath, where she washes his back and hair.  Later, as he bows politely to her in the entrance way of her apartment, wearing a clean t-shirt she’s given him, she asks if he’s sure he really wants to leave now.  He does, leaving without having said a word.

Later, Chihiru goes looking for him, another bento box in hand.  She eventually finds him.  Dead.  Laying alone in an overgrown empty lot.  

Here, again, Chihiru’s behavior deviates from the norm.  Instead of telling the police about the body, or going out to find whatever family he may have had, actions in keeping with real life, either as actually lived or in a movie, she returns to the body late at night, with a shovel and lamp strapped to her head, to wrap the body in a sheet and bury it right where she found it.  We then see her in her apartment, showering off the dirt from the burial.  It is a sad and quiet scene.  

In the following scene, she finds another body.  A seagull.  Laying on the road by the ocean that she walks along at night.  She gives the dead bird the same treatment as the old man, a midnight burial in the same overgrown lot.  The next day, she tells a customer that she always seems to get hungry after burying a body.  The customer laughs and asks, “Who are you?  You sound like an assassin!”  Chihiru laughs with him, but doesn’t explain.  We’re left to wonder if this is really something she has done an unknown number of times before.

The movie goes through a series of interactions with other townspeople.  All of whom suffer from loneliness and isolation.  A friend from the massage parlor, who had the money she saved to start her own business swindled by people she thought she could trust.  An elementary school boy who hangs out in the playground until his single mother comes home from work.  A pair of high school girls, one that skips school to read manga when her parents kick her out of the house, an almost daily occurrence.  The other, who seems to have an ideal life, but has no one close to her.  The wife of the bento shop owner, hospitalized due to losing her sight, feeling useless as a result.  

Chihiru will offer these people help and support.  But with some degree of separation.  Her former boss at the massage parlor, who has come to the town to raise and sell tropical fish, describes her as a ghost that moves through people’s lives.  

From flashbacks, and little moments in the present, we see that the antagonist keeping Chihiru from overcoming her loneliness is her past.  Flashbacks of her as a little girl, wandering alone at night in the town she lived.  There she met a woman named “Chihiru” who looked like someone who made their living on the street who kept her company.  Later, grown up, wearing the uniform of an “OL” or Office Lady, black blazer, black skirt, white dress shirt, but with old, worn out shoes, she is applying for a job at the massage parlor.  When asked for a professional name to use, she gives “Chihiru” as what she wants to be called.  A call from her brother, which she ignored times before, telling her that their mother has died.  Chihiru tells him he’s too busy to go to the funeral.  She has sex with one of the bento shop customer she meets in town.  During the act, laying on his back with Chihiru on top of him, he covers his face with his forearm, as if realizing that he will get no closer to her than he was before through this act.  It’s Chihiru’s past, and her relationship to it, that’s keeping her from alleviating her own feelings of separation.

There is one character that Chihiru impacts the most.  And other that has the greatest impact on her.

Okija is the person Chihiru has the greatest influence on.  She is the high school student with the ideal life.  A “cool” father that “still takes the family on outings.”  A mother that makes meals, “beautiful and nutritionally balanced.”  A little brother that sits quietly with the family, not making trouble. 

Okija’s life is not so perfect, though.  Her father is like the director of a play depicting an ideal family.  Even to the point of freezing in place when someone makes a miscue.  He will stay silent and wait until it is corrected.  Okija admits that her mother’s meals are “strangely tasteless.”  Even her name, “Okija,” is a nickname.  A label given to her, whose origin has been forgotten.  

Okija has noticed Chihiru around the town.  She takes pictures of her with her phone, flipping through them during the day, looking at them intently as if trying to find something important.  A classmate sees her collection and tells Okija who she is and where she works.  She then goes to the bento shop as a customer to meet Chihiru face to face.  After taking her order, Chihiru strikes a classic Japanese photo pose, big smile, fingers in a “V” by her face.  When Okija stares back in confusion, Chihiru asks, “What?  No picture?”  

Mortified, Okija hurriedly apologizes and runs away.  Later, she will spot Chihiru again.  Standing in the waves by the road that runs close to it.  Okija will gather her courage, take off her shoes, and go ask if she can join her.  Chihiru assents, and they are soon playing in the waves, splashing and kicking them at each other.

Chihiru takes steps to lead Okija out of her isolation.  She introduces her to Mokoto, the school boy that wanders by himself, alone, while waiting for his single mother to get off work.  She becomes like an older sister to the boy.  Helping him with homework, keeping him company, squabbling like siblings.  Chihiru gives her a “treasure map,” which leads her to Betchan, the girl that skips school to read manga in her hideout when her parents kick her out of the house, an almost daily occurrence.  They become fast friends, with Betchan returning to school to be able to hang out with Okija.  

Okija begins to assert herself more with her parents.  Resisting her father’s plans to make pottery on the weekend so she can spend time with friends.  Fighting with her mother over “the mess” she’s making when she learns that Mokoto has locked himself out of his home on a rainy night, with nothing to eat.  Okija leaves the mess for her mother and goes to Mokoto to sit with him while he eats the rice balls she made for him.  When Mokoto’s mother arrives, she invites Okija in to eat, making friend noodles, which Mokoto declares is the most delicious thing she makes.  While Okija eats, the mother trying to clean up the dirty kitchen, she begins to cry.  The greasy, messy noodles apparently are far more delicious than her mother’s perfect meals. 

The character with the greatest impact on Chihiru is Tae.  The wife of the bento shop owner, hospitalized for an illness that has left her blind.  Chihiru comes to the hospital, calling herself “Aya,” after seeing Tae when she came to visit her own mother.  She gives Tae comfort just by listening to her talk about feeling useless, no longer able to help him in the bento shop where she loves to work.  At Chihiru’s last visit before her release, Tae reveals that she knows Aya is actually the woman that replaced her at the bento shop’s counter.  She tells Chihiru a story about outings she would go on with her daughter, gathering acorns.  At the last one, she realized that she had gathered all acorns they brought back.  Her daughter had grown too big for doing it.  In the following scene, we see Chihiru at her mother’s grave.  This is after we find out that Aya is Chihiru’s real name.  After praying and lighting incense, Chihiru piles something on the gravestone.  When she leaves we see a pile of acorns left behind.  An offering to a past she can no longer change or make up for. 

By the end of the movie, it is clear that Chihiru hasn’t reached the goal she’s been struggling toward.  On a rooftop patio, Chihiru is with her circle of friends at a barbecue.  The camera pans around them, showing them laughing, chatting, and enjoying each other’s company.  When it returns to Chihiru’s seat, it is empty.  No one seems to notice she’s left.  

The final scene shows Chihiru in another place.  Diligently working at something else.  There are clues that, while she might not have a solution to her own loneliness, her time in the seaside town has given her the means to reimagine her past.  In a way that may allow her to find what she wants in the future.

Which may be the best any of us can do to find our way forward.