SOICHIRO TANAKA AND MINAMI OHBA IN THE HEIGHT OF THE COCONUT TREES

THE HEIGHT OF THE COCONUT TREES (Du Jie 2024) NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2025

Love and suicide and ghosts in Japan from a Chinese cinematographer turned director

Du Jie is a cinematographer from China. He has chosen to set his directorial debut in Japan, and its festival debut was at Busan, in Korea. It reminded me initially, with its use of voiceover and still photos, of Chris Marker's haunting classic French 1962 sci-fi time loop story short, La Jetée. This time the words and stills feature a discussion of suicide. But the body of the film is more a piece of overlapping storytelling, with two couples who slightly connect, a lost ring that is threaded through, and the ideas of the artist Kenji Chiga, all in service of the themes of suicide and ghosts. The effect is unconventional and enigmatic and can really be quite confusing. At this point there are only two reviews, neither of which summarizes the plot thoroughly. Even a 37- minute interview with Du Jie clarifies little.

People are interested in how Du Jie wound up directing (and filming and editing) his own feature in Japan and not China. Evidently he found more artistic freedom in his adopted country, but still goes back to China for work as a cinematographer to support himself. This film very much shows the lack of constraint he may have wanted: it's quite experimental.

Du Jie wants to draw a connected line between elements of his film that are disjointed. Partly this hinges on a lost ring. It seems a man with a bowler hat (whom we enounter at the end) loses his wedding wing, which falls off while he is playing with a child by the sea. The ring is swallowed by a fish. The main couple are a pet shop worker Aoki (Minami Ohba) and her fish factory worker boyfriend Sugamoto (Seita Shibuya). Shibuya, with his height and stylish hair, looks like a Japanese movie star, and Miami Ohba is very pretty and has beautiful long hair, making for an unlikely working class couple, if that's what they are meant to be. Anyway, cleaning a fish, Sugamoto finds a ring, which he gives to Aoki. They both get tattoos, she a tiny one of Mount Fuji on her neck. They plan to marry, and, apparently, arrange a honeymoon, ending at a resort spot, the southernmost part of Shikoku island.

But after a ride filmed on a roller coaster with unusual thoroughness, though showing the ride, not the couple, Sugamoto tells Aoki that maybe the tattoos were not a good idea. He has changed his mind and is not ready to marry, and they're over. She gets the tattoo removed, then decides to go on the honeymoon trip by herself, without her boyfrriend. A lot of the second half of the film is this trip. You sort of suspect she might intend to commit suicide, especially when, on preparing to leave, Aoki takes her big suitcase on wheels and leaves it with the building trash, taking only a backpack. Later we are shown that the trash collectors leave the suitcase. Of course, it's not packaged properly. BUt the truly Japanese touch is that the trash men leave a little neatly printed note explaining why the suitcase was not collected.

Aoki apparently isn't going to kill herself, and she is going to run into some ghosts, or thunder at the resort that is ghost voices she does not yet recognize. This town is known to be a suicide hotspot, a place where the spirits of those who took their own lives roam around without finding a way to the afterlife. The guy who checks Aoki in at the hotel is played by Soichiro Tanaka, who has appeared inn earlier scenes, only now he is without a mustache. He seems to be everywhere. But Du Jie has said his starting point was a woman who went on a trip that made people think she was going to commit suicide, as appears to be the case with Aoki.

There are scenes early in the film involving the other couple. A young man with chisled fatures and striking hair (Soichiro Tanaka) has lost his keen photographer girlfriend (Mado Karasumori) to suicide. But on the trip to Shikoku island, Minami Ohba's character also seems to be using a similar-looking camera. It is Sichiro Tanaka who checks her into the hotel.

Regrettably, I've so far found it impossible to pin down what happens in the film any better than this. (Amber Wilkinson of Screen Daily understands it better.) What Du Jie is trying to do is interesting, as the early segment's reminding one of Chris Marker shows. Certainly the images are very nice here, as everybody has noted. Perhaps another time the dp-turned-director will find ways make his basic narrative elements more readable without losing his thoughtful, suggestive approach.

The Height of the Coconut Trees 椰子の高さ, 100 mins., debuted at Busan Oct. 5, 2024, also showing at Tokyo FILMeX. Screened for this review as part of New Directors/New Films, MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center. Showtimes:

Tuesday, April 8
8:30pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater – Q&A with Du Jie

Thursday, April 10
6:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2 – Q&A with Du Jie

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.