Let’s cut right to the chase. This is a very particular style of film and unless it hits your ‘spot’ you won’t like it. I unfortunately fall into the latter half of that line. It was a hard film to ever get behind. The comedy felt non-existent and the story seemed to shudder along like a car on its last legs before it finally breaks down.
Permanent Nobara introduces us to the dull life of Naoko (Miho Kanno) – a newly divorced young mother living back in her childhood fishing town, helping out her mother in her beauty salon, Permanent Nobara – the only beauty salon in a town where middle-aged women gather to talk about all things personal and private – okay, they pretty much spend all day talking about dick. While in the town we see what Naoko’s life is like. She’s a quiet, lonesome women who just meanders around town bumping into people like her father, her two oldest friends from childhood, Masako (Mari Natsuki) and Tomo (Chizuru Ikewaki), and her secret lover, a school science teacher named Kashima (Yosuke Eguchi). What the film doesn’t tell you (you only get this information from official film synopsis’) is that Kashima is Naoko’s old high school teacher and first love – so yeah, that’s all a bit weird.
The first real problem about Permanent Nobara is that it seems to focus more on the lives of everyone else around Naoko rather than Naoko herself. Within the first 45 minutes we have her just sort of wander up to everyone important to her in the town and see what they’re doing, then we get a huge flashback back-story on these characters and then that’s it, that’s all we pretty much get from any of them for the rest of the film. It’s empty and needless at times and we still have no idea about our actual protagonist and what ails her ever so. Add to this the fact there’s really not much in the way of comedy in the conventional sense, instead attempting to make light of consistent domestic violence towards Tomo (and also suggesting it’s her fault for being inherently irritating) and attempted murder – hilarious! Any fleeting moments of comedy such as Masako’s quirky father who has a thing about cutting down power lines with a chain saw and barking at anyone trying to eat food off a share-plate are overlooked in favour of the more ‘out there’ comedy attempts, as well as director Daihachi Yoshida’s obsession with cock-conversations.
The story is boring, Naoko as a character is plain and her motives and general direction are none-existent to the point that you find yourself wondering why you’re still watching the film. It’s just a complete none entity with a couple of out of the blue chuckles here and there and an insane and baffling plot twist in the last 10 minutes of the film – but by the time that important breakthrough happens you’ve already become completely detached from the character and the film itself that it’s all a bit too late to care or be really affected by it.
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