Directed by Kôji Fukada
Written by Kôji Fukada & Kazumasa Yonemitsu
Starring Mariko Tsutsui, Mikako Ichikawa, Miyu Ozawa and Sôsuke Ikematsu
Running time: 1 hour and 51 minutes

by Ian Hrabe

There are moments in A Girl Missing where you can see why director Kôji Fukada won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes in 2016 for his film Harmonium. There are two or three sequences that just take your breath away. These scenes show that Fukada knows how to deliver an emotional cinematic punch and yet, despite a few moments of clarity, A Girl Missing is a bit of a mess.

Perhaps the film’s biggest fault is that it is being sold as a thriller, but in reality is a crushingly depressive drama. While the bait and switch is a well worn trope for the thriller genre, A Girl Missing goes so far off the rails it made me wish it had just stuck to the synopsis. Ichiko (Mariko Tsutsui) is a home-care nurse for the dying grandmother of Motoko (Mikako Ichikawa) and Saki (Miyu Ozawa). When Saki is kidnapped by Ichiko’s nephew, an impossible weight is placed on Ichiko’s relationship with the family she has worked with for years. A week later, Saki is found alive, Ichiko’s nephew is arrested and Ichiko...doesn’t say a word about it to the family with the exception of Motoko (who knows about the connection and is angling for a psychosexual relationship with Ichiko that has a real Persona vibe to it). That’s the first act, and while it is a curious setup to solve what you expect to be the film’s core narrative thrust so early, that only works if the follow through is revelatory.

The remainder of the film is a slog through Ichoko’s life falling apart, and a cautionary tale for inexplicably withholding information about a major crime. This could work at a tight 80 minutes, but at nearly two hours A Girl Missing is indulgent, plodding and is more sedative than meditative. The narrative lacks focus, the character motivations are bizarre and the color palate is full of washed out greys, beiges and light blues. The thing about a slow burn is that eventually it needs to pay off. Burning, Midsommar, Audition, The VVitch. These are movies that perfectly execute the slow burn, and they work because they all end with an explosive payoff. A Girl Missing feels like it wants into that slow burn club, but there is just not enough here to make this a very compelling watch.

One of the most truly baffling plot elements is a scene where Ichiko tells Motoko that she saw her nephew asleep with an erection when he was 10 years old and, curious about it, pulled down his pants to look at it. As per Checkov’s Gun, if a character talks about insanely pulling down a child’s pants to examine his erection in Act 1, that information will be used against her to further the ruining of her life in Act 3. It’s a detail that comes out of nowhere and feels totally inexplicable when it comes out. That’s not saying you can’t have that life-ruining detail come out, it just needs to come out organically, otherwise it derails the plot. However, that is assuming the film has a plot and, with A Girl Missing, that is debatable. This isn’t a terrible film, as both Tsutsui and Ichikawa give compelling performances and there are a few flashes of greatness, but it is a depressing grind that keeps you wondering where it’s going until you realize it’s going nowhere.

See for yourself at your local virtual cinema.