In this wicked twist on the Japanese “family drama,” acclaimed director Koji Fukada exposes the darker side of marriage and parenthood. Toshio’s family of three lives a fairly rote, suburban middle-class life above the family's small metalworking shop. One day a man named Yasaka turns up, asking for work after spending time in prison. Toshio not only offers the man a job, but also a room in their home, gradually revealing that Yasaka is not a complete stranger. Although his wife, Akie, takes an immediate dislike to Yasaka, she slowly comes around when he takes what seems to be friendly interest in teaching their daughter the harmonium. As the stranger warms to the family, and especially to Akie, hidden motives are slowly revealed in both Yasaka and Toshio, whose generosity may not be quite as generous as it first appears. Winner of the Prix du Jury at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.
Press
”A quietly combustible tale of punishment and crime set in motion when a family lets a mysterious man move in with them, ‘Harmonium’ makes the viewer question neat causal equations of sin, retribution, and atonement.” - Variety
Director’s Statement
“This film is linked to one of the previous films, Hospitalite´, which came out in 2010. They’re like two sides of the same coin.
Initially, Hospitalite´ was only supposed to be a pilot before shooting Harmonium. The tone of Hospitalite´ is that of a comedy, while Harmonium can be described as a tragedy. However, like a coin whose two sides complete each other, these two films present an identical, banal and extremely universal theme: family.
By nature, humans are living beings, all carrying a loneliness they are powerless to defeat. What I wish to describe here is a family in which each member becomes aware of this state but is obliged to live with other people, in spite of it all. This is inevitable.
I’m tired of all of these Japanese films idealizing family ties.
By continuing to relay this outdated and stereotypical image of an “ideal family”, we deny the various other “family types” that actually exist. I wish to describe an “already-collapsed family” because looking at the collapse of a family as a tragedy is a way of idealizing what it could have been.
Harmonium asks the question of the familial system. It must shake things up, show that original loneliness, and bring out the bonds that nevertheless endure. I think my 21st century “family portrait” will question the spectator – in this society where people are beginning to realize that our conception of the family, which had protected us, while smothering us at the same time, was nothing more than an illusory construction.”
Director’s Biography
Likened to French auteurs Eric Rohmer, Robert Bresson and acclaimed Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, Koji Fukada is a filmmaker known for his technical precision and study of human character. He was born in 1980 in Tokyo, Japan.
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