Shop till you drop

Loneliness seeps across generational lines, and a Japanese pinup doubles her displeasure, in

Tony Takitani.

WITH HIS COOLLY restrained new film, Tony Takitani, director Jun Ichikawa manages to visualize at least two unseen and less-than-celebrated aspects of modern Japanese life that are so ubiquitous they're practically hiding in plain sight: shopping addiction and an obsession with all things Audrey Hepburn.

All you have to do is descend into one of Tokyo's underground malls to not only witness the shopping bug in action but actually get bit by it yourself – there seems to be an infinite supply of goodies to tickle a never-satisfied, humming desire. Also everywhere – yet at once nowhere and long-deceased – is Hepburn, a perennial pinup icon and role model for the ages. When Rie Miyazawa, the actress and former nude pinup who plays a dual role in Tony Takitani, was on the rise in the early '90s grunge years, Hepburn was still the '50s-to-'60s-era mod equivalent of a ukiyoe geisha or starry-eyed manga heroine, reducible to her most prominent, easily caricatured features: big dark eyes, cupid's bow lips, bold brows, and bangs.

If Hepburn is the icon for the ages, then Miyazawa was the girl of her moment, everyone's favorite slice of perky cheesecake on the downside of the post-bubble economy recession. Known for a Cindy Crawford-like mole beside her nose, Miyazawa was the most popular, prettiest starlet – the first bishojo, or spokesmodel, of her kind – in a constellation of almost identical bright-eyed, black-haired cuties who dabbled in pop, movies, TV, and random product. Her early-'90s nude photo books, Erotic Liaisons and Santa Fe, were enormous, scandalous bestsellers in Japan, got her booted off a TV show and compared to Madonna, and landed her a marriage with a big sumo star. Her recent move back into the public eye has been a rocky one, with tabloids swarming over a suicide attempt and alleged eating disorders.

So there's a resonance in effect when Miyazawa enters the picture in Tony Takitani, looking like the mousy, tweedy bookstore beatnik Hepburn of Stanley Donen's iconic Funny Face (1957), the classic mother-and-daughter-bonding-ritual musical. If Gone with the Wind was how most post-WWII women first learned about Western notions of epic romance, then Funny Face was the movie that taught them the pleasures of fashion, beauty, and adornment. Miyazawa – playing Hisako, a waitress who's just been hired to be the title character's housekeeper and the double for his deceased wife, Eiko (also Miyazawa) – paws through rack upon rack of designer clothing in the dead woman's huge walk-in closet. In a scene that echoes Funny Face's makeover scenes and fashion-shoot montages, she tries on jackets and shoes, and then stares at an unseen mirror in wonder – all in an interminable long shot – until she breaks down in tears.

The emotionally illiterate Takitani knocks on the door with concern. "I'm sorry," she sobs. "I've never seen so many beautiful clothes at one time. It confused me." In a closet, one pinup confronts another, a double with a very unfunny face, reduced to and fetishized by all beautiful objects and dreams of affluence that post-WWII Japan can offer. The scene also reflects a Japanese animism-tinged superstition: A perished samurai might inhabit his sword after death as a woman might haunt her mirror. The mirror, here, as with Babs's, has two faces.

Takitani (actor and writer Issey Ogata) has his work cut out from him – sorting out his loneliness from loss – in Ichikawa's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story. His dislocation is a legacy passed down from his father, Shozaburo (also Ogata), a perpetually touring jazz musician whose blithe wanderings during WWII brought him to the brink of execution and a traumatizing stay in prison. Named for an American who comforts Shozaburo, a man who finds himself "utterly alone" after the passing of his wife post-child birth and the wartime firebombing deaths of his entire family, Tony Takitani is similarly left to drift solo for much of his childhood, sliding quietly into a career in illustration – rational, silent, and shrouded in pale, gray-blue light that most Japanese art directors would approve of.

He draws machines and engines, and every thing seems perfect, simple. Yet he's forever lonely, until Eiko enters his world and punctures his routine – she's first shadowy and objectified, her face masked by a pageboy curtain. But there's something about the way she wears her clothes – he's never seen anyone who enjoys them so, he tells her – that catches his attention. But of course, the act of possession – be it a wife or a designer boot – only triggers a fear of loss. Complicating matters, of course, is the fact that Eiko, the otherwise perfect housewife, is also compulsively acquisitive – a fact that's humorously illustrated by a series of shots detailing Eiko's beautifully shod feet entering stores, window shopping, and moving piles of shopping bags.

With its polite, almost mockingly spare piano score by Ryuichi Sakamoto and its washed-out hues, Tony Takitani humbly hoists a perfect cold, sad cocktail to a life, a lifestyle, that's almost shocking in its banality, its singular notes on class difference (from the way that Takitani hopes to purchase a new "wife" to the startling rudeness in this chilled-out film's last would-be clothing transaction), and the way it depicts the very subtle perversions that come with emotional isolation. The characters finish the narrator's sentences for him, as if we are all very familiar with Takitani's slight life, but Tony Takitani manages to say much more, simply and straightforwardly, about the Japanese everyday than other films have. Holding fast to a truth as he and Murakami see it, Ichikawa makes a case that there are no Cinderellas or Prince Charmings, sax men or sex symbols, that the agreements that bring them together are as fragile as the finest stemware, and that cashmere coats won't really keep you warm at night.

'Tony Takitani' opens Fri/2 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.