Missing

poise & pain

I felt like I was being suffocated right alongside Saori because she is just a walking, open wound for two hours. Satomii just let herself be ugly and it felt so painfully real. She is frantic and aggressive and looks like she hasn't brushed her hair since Miu vanished. I didn't see a single shred of poise left in her. I saw a woman being eaten alive by the fact that she was at a concert when her kid went missing and the internet will not let her forget it for a second. Watching her scroll through comments from trolls who decided she deserves this pain was devastating. I could feel every ounce of her self loathing.

"If I don't read them, it is like she has already been forgotten. This is the only place people are still talking about her."

I think she feels so dangerously authentic because Satomii doesn't try to make her grief look cinematic or poetic. It is just heavy and exhausted and mean. I felt the weight of her emotions in the way she breathes and the way her voice cracks when she is screaming at people who are just trying to help. She made me feel that desperation as if it was my own life falling apart. The media in this was actually nauseating for me to watch because of how they egg her on when she is at her lowest point. I can't get that scene out of my head where she actually proposes holding a birthday party for Miu and the news crew just leans into it because they know it will make for a pathetic sensational shot. I could see Yutaka absolutely hating the idea but he is so drained that he just stands there while they light the candles.

"I feel like I'm already dead. I'm just moving because I have to find her."

It broke my heart to see her so desperate to keep her daughter's face on TV that she starts performing her own grief for the cameras just to keep the search from dying out. I felt like Yutaka trying to be the stoic anchor just felt like abandonment to her and I watched their house become a pressure cooker where they just end up lashing out at each other in the dark. The brother Keigo is obviously another part that really got to me. He was the last person seen with the girl and because he is socially awkward he becomes a target. Seeing Saori turn her rage on him because she needs someone to blame and I think it shows how a tragedy like this just fractures a family until there is nothing left.

I was completely captivated by the way Satomii inhabits this specific, haunting brand of misery. I saw her standing in that yellow crossing guard vest at the end and it just gutted me. There is no magic resolution. She is just there in the street protecting other people's kids while hers is still gone. It is a quiet and miserable kind of strength. I felt like she was forcing me to sit in the wreckage with her until the very last frame.

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This is a miserable movie, and it will make you miserable.

Superior acting from the leads Ishihara Satomi, and Aoki Munetaka. It is no exaggeration that Ishihara spends about half the screen time crying or breaking down in tears. I can't imagine what it took to be that emotionally exhausted for the filming period. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your child go missing, but I imagine it leaves you searching for your sanity in a way that closely resembles what Ishihara portrays in her role as the mother.

There is very little, if any, levity to be had in this movie. Despair grows and continues throughout the movie and I found myself being emotionally taxed by the end of it. It's just setback after setback for the couple who are trying desperately to cling to any shred of hope that might come their way. It just always ends in more despair.

There is no happy ending here and the movie wraps up with no conclusion, a reflection of reality when a child goes missing.

(I'd love to just be able to ignore the rewatch value metric here. I don't think this is a movie you would want to watch more than once because it's A LOT, but giving it a low score also feels unfair).

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