MARIKA ITO IN CHA-CHA MAI SAKAI: CHA-CHA (2024)A free-spirited girl comes to the design shop In this sort-of-femninist rom-com, former Nogizaka46 idol pop star Marika Ito has the lead in the fourth installment of the
(not) HEROINE movie series, which also relates to Shinya Tamada's
I Am What I Am (JAPAN CUTS 2023). The (not) HEROINE project focuses on up-and-coming actresses and next-generation directors to create films from unique perspectives and non-traditional, female-focused stories. Individual editions may vary.
Cha-Cha is the sort-of-love-story of the titular Cha-Cha, a free-spirited artist who goes to work at a design studio, and Raku (actor and host Taishi Nakagawa), a young cook who is harder to figure out.
Cha-Cha is painted with the whimsical colors of a rom-com on the surface but goes on an oddball, deranged digression midway through.
Cha-Cha is silly, sweet, screwball, and completely unexpected. See if you think it all makes sense to you.
Raku is a sou-chef in a restaurant on another floor of the building where Cha-Cha comes to work as the new designer/illustrator and the darling of her colorful boss. Raku and Cha-Cha meet in the rooftop smoking area of the building, and eventually he flirts with her and she responds. The pivot point is the gift of a soda drink. On still another floor is the cheery, zoftig Peo (Filipina actress Stefanie Arianne), who teaches English. Her boyfriend (Akihisa Shiono), who never stays at any job, she tells us, also seems unfaithful, leading Raku, when he starts stalking Peo because he loves her eyes, to view him disapprovingly. Very,
very disapprovingly, given the action he takes.
Another woman in the office (Sawako Fujima), bespectacled and more conservative in her dress, who envies Cha-Cha's spark and free spirit, not to mention how much the boss favors her, and she starts to spy on her. Cha-Cha paints her work "analog," which others, including the boss, admire. She has an impulsive and frivolous manner and dresses in a unique, eclectic way, favoring a layered-skirt look. Raku is notable for the elegant simplicity of his attire, all-black when at the restaurant, all-white when off-duty. We're not sure that Cha-Cha is really his style, but both have plenty of attitude, and that seems to draw them to each other.
Cha-Cha moves into Raku's busy spread and appears content there. He doesn't seem to love her. He does cook for her, especially his special Mont Michel omelette, and a fantastic soft drink with a cream topping. A montage where they smoke and vape together may not seem very healthy to the US audience, but in a Japanese way it may be bonding of a very high level.
The point of view shifts from one character's voiceover to another as the story unfolds, avoiding any favoritism or feel of a major protagonist, though Cha-Cha sets the style somehow and she does, after all, give her name to the movie. Everything is light and bright for a while, till the two young men's temptation toward unfaithfulness, and some strange ideas about eye lenses and the taste of familiar blood - what is that all about? - start to pull events in a dangerous, potentially violent direction direction (illegal, too). Somehow things right themselves, though, because this remains a lighthearted, superficial, and playful film. At some point it was reminiscent of early Jean-Luc Godard, and it probably would hot exist if he had not made his brilliant and revolutionary films of the 1960's. But the style of revolutionary young people with nothing to be revolutionary about has become as thin and light as a Japanese paper flower by now, and the sprightly, playful tone doesn't fully compensate for the lack of narrative content.
Ito reportedly had a fashion designer mother and a graphic designer father, so she is well cast as an illustrator here. Props to the costume and interior design departments and the composer of the lighthearted score. Fans of manga will like this and sometimes the principals seem to have walked right out of the pages of one.
Cha-Cha チャチャ 108 min., was screened for this review as part of the New York 2024 Japan Cuts series (Jul. 10-21).
SHOWTIME:
Friday, July 19, 2024
9:30 pm
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