LIVING WITH OTHERS

Intertwined Lives, Intergenerational Divides

Venue: Cinema K2 Shimokitazawa
from February 2 (Fri), 2024 - February 8 (Thu), 2024, 18:30-
Official website: livingwithothers.com/
Theater website: k2-cinema.com/event
Theater website: k2-cinema.com/access
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3RrnT50

Advance tickets: https://k2-cinema.com/en/purchase.pdf
Talk event: Every day after the screening. Visit theater website for details.

Title: 他人と一緒に住むという事 (Tanin to Issho ni Sumu to iu Koto)
Director: Tsutomu Yagihashi (八木橋努)
Duration: 106 min

Many indie films in Japan focus on the nonexistent hopes and dreams of today’s youth. But Tsutomu Yagihashi’s Living with Others spans the malaise of the post-economic ice age generations, with lost characters in their 20s, 40s and 50s, focusing on a shifting group of coworkers and acquaintances whose lives cross in Shinjuku. The film is screening with English subtitles at Image Forum from December 2.

In what the first-time director is calling “a distorted ensemble drama of men and women where desires and pride intertwine,” we first meet a former shop owner who’s now unemployed, Iwabuchi (52 years old, the captions tell us). He makes the rounds of acquaintances, looking for work or perhaps a “loan.” Eventually, he’ll be employed by his old friend Otsuki, the successful manager of a solar panel company, who’s just remarried in midlife to a woman half his age. He’s purchased a condo for her, but she’s not exactly inclined to move in.

Iwabuchi finds lodging with struggling actor Tsuyoshi, 40, who’s just started dating Riko, a fledgling hairdresser and “wandering woman.” Riko, who’s 25, lives platonically with her childhood friend Shinji… or is the relationship something more?

As the characters play musical apartments and struggle to find their ways, these interconnections are crucial. Says Yagihashi, “The human desires that are brought to light by living with others are endlessly sad.”

Cinema K2: Shimokita Ekimae Cinema