Quill (2004)

Quill (Yoichi Sai, 2004)

Yoichi Sai's Quill is a screen adaptation of a novel about a real life "seeing-eye" Labrador. It was a hit when it opened in many Asian territories, even getting a Best Asian Film nomination in the Hong Kong Film Awards. In many ways, it is quite understandable why this Japanese film would gain so much popularity with its viewers. It's cute from first screen to the last, yet it doesn't put up antics to titillate the younger viewers ala Hollywood dog films. It is also very sentimental, yet it doesn't utilize unnecessary melodramatics to induce tears and sobs. Yoichi Sai has finally made a mature pet movie: one that paves events in a natural way without reducing itself to turning its animal actors into clowns or drama queens.

Quill is one of the five puppies of an ordinary Labrador mom. What makes Quill special from his siblings is that he has a black spot in his belly that is shaped like a bird, and that he is stubbornly intelligent. He is sent to training school, but is first kept by a couple until he turns one year old. In training school, he is paired with a grumpy old bling man, Mr. Watanabe (Kaoru Kobayashi), who at first dislikes the idea of being pulled around by a dog but later decides to get Quill as his "seeing-eye" dog

The humans in Quill merely serve as supporting cast for the dog, which is obviously incapable of communication except for cute stares and growls. Sai makes use of narrations by the female characters to impart the story of the dog, to great advantage. Although it might seem awfully like spoonfeeding especially when the narration is far too convenient when the visuals are already enough in dictating what is happening in the story. Also, the narrations seem to be a bit too emotional, which is really not a bad point since these narrations come from people who have been touched by the Labrador.

Quill is the type of film that is so easy to hate but you just couldn't. It dodges every opportunity to cheat tugging the heartstrings and instead utilizes the dog's story as the primary reason for sympathy. Moreover, Sai takes great lengths to accurately portray the process on how an ordinary dog is turned into a trained "seeing-eye" dog. It's truly an emotional journey for the dog and one can't help but feel for the animal, despite the fact that there is a sense of limitation to the emotional capacity the face of an animal can bring as compared to a human. Quill's partnership with the grumpy Watanabe might be a bit too predictable and Watanabe's sudden change from stubborn man to still stubborn yet more affectionate blind man is quite a feat for a mere "seeing-eye" dog, but then again, the film is really not about Watanabe but the dog, and the dog's journey is truly a heartwarming one.

All Under the Moon (1993)

All Under the Moon (Yoichi Sai, 1993)
Japanese Title: Tsuki wa dotchi ni dete iru

The fascinating thing about Yoichi Sai's All Under the Moon is that it focuses, not on the everyday life of Japanese citizens, but on the lives of those who seem to live anonymously in a society that seems unicultural, the foreign immigrants. The main character in All Under the Moon is Tadao (Goro Kishitani), a North Korean immigrant who works in a taxi cab corporation wholly owned by another Korean immigrant whose dream is to build a golf course (turning him into a probably victim for the yakuza's shady business proposals).

Tadao's mother owns a karaoke bar. Connie (Ruby Moreno), a Filipino immigrant, is the newly hired bartender who can fluently speak Japanese. Love-starved Tadao takes an interest on the homesick Connie to Tadao's mother's dismay. It's a realistically if not too comedically pumped romantic relationship. Tadao moves in suddenly into Connie's apartment and from then on, they share an almost normal relationship, except for the fact that their means of communication is not their native tongues, but a language they adopted due to the constraints of their financial incapability. Both foreigners in a land that sees them as second class citizens, and among their class, there are subclasses (Tadao's mom insists that Filipinos, Chinese, and other nationalities are too lazy to be successful; In a Korean wedding, the North and South Koreans wage a war using their folksongs). It's a whirlwind romance that is the heart and the soul of the movie: the homesick girl insisting that her Korean lover come home with her to the Philippines, the Korean driver whose directionless satisfaction keeps him comfortable enough to resist any change.

There are other characters of note here, mostly Tadao's wacky co-workers. There's Hoso (Yoshiki Arizono), a no-good Japanese cab driver who insists that he hates Koreans, but likes Tadao. He never seems to have any money, as he keeps on pestering everyone to loan him money, or to give him a free stick of cigarette. In one hilarious scene, Tadao and Connie were having sex only to have Hoso bother them by calling Tadao multiple times and insisting that he loan him money. What seems like a character primarily used as a comic relief blossoms into a character of poignant resolution. He is the only Japanese character in the film that is fully fleshed out. Sai, also a Korean-Japanese citizen seems to be making a point here: Hoso, the only fully characterized Japanese character ending up in a loony bin, and still trying to siphon affection and money from what he considers a hate-worthy foreign immigrant.

All Under the Moon is predominantly a comedy. Sai, with the help of Goro Kishitani's commendable comedic timing, cooks up scenes of varied hilarity. In a scene where Tadao is ripped off by a Japanese passenger, he chases the erring passenger through the city just to insist that he gets paid. In an effort to show his honesty as compared to the Japanese swindler, he even gives the change and politely delivers the customary "thank you" amidst the furious panting and sighing. Another continuing joke is about another Japanese co-worker of Tadao who consistently gets lost in Japan's major landmarks. Every time he gets lost, he would call the aging receptionist of the taxi company and ask for directions. There are several other delightful scenes that deserve a healthy chuckle, and when Japanese comedy is not your thing (comedy that ranges from crazy slapstick to far fetched scenarios), you can always treat the film as a semi-autobiographical work from a director who accurately sees the immigrant's plight in a society that somehow doesn't know that they exist.