We Made a Beautiful Bouquet at Japanese Film Festival
The Japanese Film Festival is happening across Australia, with plenty to see. Something You Said’s Addy Fong caught one of the films screening as part of the programme, We Made a Beautiful Bouquet. Here are her thoughts:
‘Separation is implicit to meeting someone. Sooner or later, the party has to end.’
It may seem strange to begin this review with a quote that causes one to doubt the existence of love in a film about romance, but the idea of chance encounters as seen in most romantic films often feels unrealistic and at times downright cruel.
Nobuhiro Doi’s We Made a Beautiful Bouquet contains as many love stories do, a chance encounter created as if by fate, two college students, both 22, a woman Kinu Hachiya (Kasumi Arimura) and a man Mugi Yamane (Masaki Suda) who meet following a missed train in Tokyo. Following the beat of most love stories the couple get chatting, find common interests, and their relationship blossoms to romance, one which spans the course of 5 years.
The film begins with a metaphor, a couple in a cafe are seen to be sharing headphones, one with the left ear bud, the other with the right. At first glance this situation looks adorable, a couple appear to be listening to the same song, a collective experience many of us would likely have participated in with those close to us. Enter the cynical audiophile who declares, ‘Music is stereo, not mono. Your left and right earphones play different sounds. They’re listening to two different songs.’ Although we laugh at the absurdity of it all, the fact that most people observing couples in public are often uncomfortable with public displays of affection and tend to call things out until they too fall in love and the so-called ‘curse of cynical singleness’ is broken. Of course for many of us, this statement is highlightly problematic. Audiences have been conditioned to believe in love and romance with stories alluding to characters being transformed or complete when they fall in love because ‘love softens the hardest hearts.’
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet is a romantic film which cleverly moves between romance and reality, cleverly scripted in nuances of cultural politeness, unspoken misunderstandings, and an inability to truly communicate one’s true thoughts and trust, ironically what all successful relationships should be built on. In the context of many cultures like Japan, the idea of saving face and avoiding conflict or confrontation appears socially more important than speaking up, which can only lead to the downfall of a seemingly good relationship.
Screenwriter Yuji Sakamoto is clever, presenting the film through the perspective of our two main characters, Kinu Hachiya and Mugi Yamane, as we hear their inmost thoughts through the film’s use of voiceover narration throughout to understand how they interpret certain situations. After all, although two people may share similarities and connect even in the most intimate ways, just like listening to two different sides of headphones, experience and perception of certain situations will vary from person to person and differences found even minor may lead to somewhat catastrophic conclusions.
Similarly, the idea of misunderstandings that lead to catastrophic conclusions is developed further in Sakamoto’s screenplay for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (2023) where varied perspectives on a certain situation lead to the film’s brilliantly catastrophic conclusion. We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021) could be seen therefore as an earlier working of Sakamoto’s idea, the varied perspective and misunderstandings of certain situations as seen in both Monster (2023) and We Made a Beautiful Bouquet (2021) highlight the breakdown of relationships between characters, never intentional and almost accidental, due to misunderstanding and personal bias.
There are aspects in We Made a Beautiful Bouquet, a story about love and loss between two lovers who drift apart due to unspoken misunderstandings, which are further explored in Monster. Building upon the writing trope of the unreliable narrator, both stories force audiences to question perspective and challenge bias. We Made a Beautiful Bouquet invites us to explore each character’s inner thoughts through concurrent narration, audiences are caught between the listening to the varied perspective of two narrators whose perspective shift from being in and out of sync throughout the film whilst Monster muddies this through the lack of voice over and leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions on the motivations behind each character’s actions.
Drawn to Kinu Hachiya’s statement, ‘I try not to expect too much’ she, like her male counterpart Mugi Yamane claim, ‘life is absurd’ ideas of romance are grounded by harsh truth of reality. I’m not writing this as someone cynical about the existence of love although my perspective often shifts between romantic and cynic, like many jaded by life experience, Sakamoto’s script feels true and relatable, it contains this self awareness and scepticism of love hidden amongst a facade of romantic tropes and cliches through the film’s presentation of varying perspectives. After all, the realistic writing of relationships isn’t always about happy endings like many are led to believe, often it’s about sacrifice and compromise as two people adjust their lifestyles to suit and complement one another.
Beginning with the promise of youth, the couple are in high spirits but time quickly highlights their individual differences with the film’s score helping to weave and shape the mood of things throughout the film. As we watch their relationship develop, aspects of romantic love are tested through the challenges life throws at them.
Nobuhiro Doi’s We made a beautiful bouquet alludes to the beauty and temporality of relationships, like bouquets which are a beautiful arrangement of assorted flowers varying in colour and appearance often gifted as romantic gestures between couples as a declaration of love during the many stages of courtship. Many know the flowers in a bouquet quickly end up withering and dying, and there is a sadness to this harsh truth but a beauty in their brief existence. Relationships are said to be the same, two people coming together for a brief moment in time with varied histories, personalities, and interests to share and create something beautiful. Despite the harsh realities of life, love is something to believe in ‘Though the survival rate of love is but a few percent, I will beat the odds’ and I, once a cynic, am too a believer in love.
For information about the festival, which has some free events, visit: https://japanesefilmfestival.net/.
We Made a Beautiful Bouquet is Screening here.
Review by Addy Fong.
