Fantasia Diary 2015: Poison Berry in My Brain, Anima State, The Interior
By this point I’ve discussed all the movies I saw in theatres at the Fantasia film festival, but there remain a half-dozen more that I saw courtesy of the Fantasia screening room. I’m going to write about them over two posts, for ease of reading. And then I’ll have a coda wrapping up my Fantasia coverage with thoughts on what I saw, and the value of the festival. For now: reviews of the psychological romance comedy Poison Berry in My Brain, the metafictional satire Anima State, and the suspense movie The Interior. All of them, one way or another, directly to do with what happens inside the head.
Poison Berry in My Brain (Nounai Poison Berry) was directed by Yuichi Sato from a script by Tomoko Aizawa, based on a manga by Setona Mizushiro. The idea may sound a little familiar: Ichiko Sakurai (Yôko Maki) is a thirty-year-old woman novelist in Japan who has people living in her head. These five people are dressed in suits, and argue like a corporate board as they try to decide what Ichiko should do in any given situation. They are her emotions, her inner drives. And they get a workout as Ichiko meets and falls in love with a young artist (Yuki Furukawa), and then among the storms of that relationship sees the spark of something between her and her editor (Songha).
Comparisons with Pixar’s Inside Out are inevitable. Or almost inevitable; in fact I haven’t seen the Pixar film, so we can dodge that bullet. I will say firstly that so far as I can gather from Wikipedia, the manga appeared just after Pixar began working on their movie — this is independent invention. Secondly, from what I understand of Inside Out, there’s a bit of a difference here: the descriptions I’ve read say that in that movie the characters who live in the main character’s head all represent a specific emotion. The board members directing Ichiko are more general. They represent tendencies. Dithering but sympathetic Chairman Yoshida (Hidetoshi Nishijima) keeps order but can’t seem to make a decision on his own; Ikeda (Yo Yoshida) is convinced that everying Ichiko does is doomed to failure and she should quit before she stops; the energetic Ishibashi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) always looks on the bright side; young gothic lolita Hatoko (Hiyori Sakurada) is impulsive and childlike — unsurprisingly, being literally a child — while old Secretary Kishi maintains Ichiko’s memories but contributes little to the discussions as he’s so often caught up in the past.
Tuesday, August 4, was my last day at the Fantasia Festival. It was the official closing day of Fantasia; they’d added a few screenings on Wednesday, but nothing that looked compelling to me. I have some more films to write about after this, thanks to the festival’s screening room. But since I’ll be writing here about the last three movies I saw in a theatre at the 2015 Fantasia Festival, in this post I want to make a point of acknowledging the crowds.
