Review | Cannes 2023: Perfect Days film review – Wim Wenders is back in Japan for this beguiling character study, starring Koji Yakusho as a cultured toilet cleaner
- Wim Wenders returns to Japan with the story of an ageing toilet cleaner Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) who works for the Tokyo Toilet art project
- He roams Tokyo polishing the porcelain, listens to music on cassettes and takes photos with a film camera in this charming character study
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3.5/5 stars
German auteur Wim Wenders is no stranger to Japan. As far back as 1985, he made Tokyo-Ga, a documentary about filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, before going on to make Notebooks on Cities and Clothes (1989) about fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto.
Now, premiering in Cannes competition, he’s back in the country with Perfect Days. A story of a conscientious, contemplative and content fellow who works cleaning toilets around Tokyo, it’s a gentle, beguiling character study.
In his little blue van, the ageing Hirayama visits them all, diligently cleaning, even using a mirror to see under the rim to make sure he’s got all the grime off.
In his spare time, he reads William Faulkner and Patricia Highsmith and listens to the music of The Animals, Otis Redding and Van Morrison.
“Analogue is making a comeback,” he’s told, although Hirayama is no hipster. He was simply there the first time around.
He plays his tunes on cassette, much to the fascination of Takashi and his girlfriend Aya (Aoi Yamada). He also shoots pictures of trees on film, using a small pocket camera, taking them to get developed and stashing them in highly ordered boxes.
His life seems a happy one, wallowing in life’s mysteries. He finds a note tucked by a sink at one of the toilets; on it is a noughts-and-crosses grid. He starts to play, marking the grid before putting the note back, only to return later to find the game is ongoing.
Only gradually do we come to learn more about his past, after an unexpected arrival brings his family history into sharp focus. Even then, Wenders is restrained with how much he reveals.
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Sometimes, it’s a little too on the nose – notably playing Lou Reed’s Perfect Day – but it’s hard to begrudge a film that is so entranced with the basic pleasures in life.
Conceived as a series of short films, that may explain why the film meanders at times, but knitting it all together is a fine performance from Yakusho. Here, the veteran actor revels in a performance where gestures, not words, are key. It’s a sublime piece of acting in a film that charms you with its simplicity.
