Unreachable

A Charming Slice Of Life With Twists

THIS IS A FULL SPOILER REVIEW but spoilers will only begin after the Read More button.

Unreachable is a slice of life drama centered on the lives of three young women sharing a house on the outskirts of Tokyo. Written by one of the best current screenwriters in Japan, Yuji Sakamoto, it explores the day to day life of three childhood friends as they make their way through their daily lives as they go to work and school, and ultimately address their past and relationships within and outside the trio. Glancing at the cast consisting of Yokohama Ryusei and the three women played by Hirose Suzu (Misaki), Sugisaki Hana (Yuka), and Kiyohara Kaya (Sakura) one might guess that there might be a love story here and, indeed, love does play a part, there is no romantic love story in this film.

It is a film about three women dealing with a world that fails to see them, and how they are constantly trying to reach out to others to affirm their identities.

It is highly recommended that you do not read the rest of this review until after you have watched the film or unless you do not care about spoilers at all.

Unreachable is a slice of death drama centered on the daily activities of three ghosts haunting an abandoned house on the outskirts of Tokyo. It is a ghost story told entirely from the point of view of the ghosts. Horror and ghost stories are a miniscule part of my media diet, and so I do not know if that's a trope in the genre, but it would not surprise me if it were. In any case, that premise is revealed about a quarter of the way through the film.

The girls were nine when they were killed by a knife-wielding psychopath while they were preparing for a choir competition at school. (It occurred to me while watching that the set up would make much more sense in the context of the continual school shootings we subject ourselves to in the US.) But they have continued to grow up together in their own parallel world where they can grab copies of whatever material things they need, but cannot seem to be detected by any creatures in our world. Yuka has decided to go to college and study physics to see if there is any physical explanation of their state, while Misaki and Sakura have adopted working roles that at least allow them to pretend that they are part of some social groups.

As such, the film focused on the young women's attempts to reach out to others, and, in particular, their relationship to the people who still grieve their passing. One of the plot threads deals with a family member confronting the killer who was recently released from prison, and that's a theme that Sakamoto dealt with at length and much more deeply and effectively in my opinion in his 2011 series Still, Life Goes On.

The more interesting plot thread is that between Misaki and her childhood friend, Tenma played by Yokohama. The tragedy continues to haunt Tenma and Misaki truly wishes to help him find his way to healing and getting beyond his grief and survivor's guilt.

Prior to this year, Sakamoto has rarely ventured into genre fiction with the only notable exception being his version of the Chinese classic Journey To The West in his 2006 series Saiyuuki. This year he also wrote the time travel film 1st Kiss which was much more successful at the box office. But he is, as ever, the master of the telling detail, and in this film there are several instances where the revelations of those small details will likely pierce your heart.

Is our world Unreachable to the three young women? Sakamoto resolutely refuses in this film to answer that question unambiguously. But it is entirely clear that the short time that the three spent here continues to effect and shape the lives of others, and that that love is not Unrequited.

Read More