CONVENIENCE STORY

A Struggling Screenwriter Opens a Magical Door

Venue(s): Theatre Shinjuku
August 19 (Fri), 2022, 18:30
Language: Japanese with English subtitles.
Official website: conveniencestory-movie.jp/
Theater website: www.ttcg.jp/theatre_shinjuku/
Theater website: www.ttcg.jp/theatre_shinjuku/movie/0861000.html
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3An4YPE
Tariff: General: ￥1,900, Students: ￥1,500, Members: ￥1,300, Seniors: ￥1,200
Advance tickets: https://ttcg.jp/theatre_shinjuku/event/
Talk event: Writer-director Satoshi Miki and original story writer Mark Schilling will talk in E-J after the screening.

Title: コンビニエンス・ストーリー (CONVENIENCE STORY)
Director: Satoshi Miki (三木聡)
Duration: 97 mins

If you’ve been paying any attention to local film news, you already know that veteran Japan Times film critic, author and international festival programmer Mark Schilling has now added “original story by” to his lengthy list of writing credits, with the phantasmagoric new dramedy Convenience Story.

If you’re within proximity of Theatre Shinjuku on Friday night — and even if you’re not — hit up the website immediately for tickets for a single English-subtitled screening of this phantasmagoric adventure, helmed by the inimitable Satoshi Miki (What to Do with the Dead Kaiju?, Adrift in Tokyo), who will be on hand with Schilling to discuss how this perfect creative collaboration came about.

In the brilliantly named Convenience Story, Kato (Ryo Narita of Talking the Pictures) is a struggling screenwriter on a losing streak. When his actress girlfriend goes off to an audition, she asks him to pick up Dog Man-brand food for her beloved pooch Cerberus, but instead, Kato takes the noisy canine out for a ride and drops him in an empty field.

He has second thoughts, but the karmic payback is nearly instant*: in the nearby Ideal Mart convenience store, he encounters a mysterious couple (the delightfully unlikely pair of Atsuko Maeda and Seiji Rokkaku) who seem to offer him a way out of his writer’s slump… but with weighty strings attached.

Although Miki is the film’s credited screenwriter, it’s clear that Schilling created this eccentric world with Miki in mind from the beginning, and indeed, he spent years developing the project in various film markets, with Miki attached from the beginning. The director is known for darkish whimsy, for conjuring the fantastical from the most mundane, unremarkable situations; the fabled critic brings added tension and mythological dimensions to the story, along with an emotional punch that may be felt most deeply by those who have experienced their own detours on the path to creative success.

Just two questions remain unanswered: How much of the story is autobiographical and how much longer do we have to wait before Schilling’s official screenwriting debut?

*Or is it all imagined? One of the beauties of the film is its consistently otherworldly state.

Theatre Shinjuku