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19 November
A rating and review for Cutie and The Boxer (2013)
96 = N : 15 / M : 16 / C1 : 17 / C2 : 16 / E : 16 / F : 16
N = narration / script
M = material / use of material
C1 = cinematography
C2 = cohesiveness
E = effects / music
F = feel
9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)
The best documentary-makers know that audiences can be trusted to wait for whatever information / explanation comes (or for things to be left uncertain), and that they do not need all things spelt out : the art must be to stand back from one’s film, see it with another’s eyes, and imagine what would be understood by saying this, mentioning this here…
Early on, it just comes out of what Ushio and Noriko Shinohara are doing domestically that it is his birthday and he is 80, with individual cakes and candles. They are clearly Japanese, largely not talking in English except for emphasis, a good word, wit (but the subtitling is simply maintained as a constant), but we may not be aware (or may have read) that they are in New York.
That never needs to be conveyed as a statement (nor whether they have ever tried or wanted to live elsewhere in the States), although some excerpts from a documentary talk about Noriko arriving from Japan with support from her parents, and the early part of Ushio’s career. From where we see them, we come to conclude that it is their home, and many a feature film would benefit from allowing provisional beliefs to be made by their viewers.
Cases of artists – in the widest sense – married to other artists give us Mahler not letting Alma compose, Schumann cramping Clara’s career, and, in a friend’s life, a husband (they are now divorced) who thought himself a genius (as Ushio does), and that certain things did not merit him spending his time on them.
Here, we see the lives together of Noriko and Ushio, and their traumatized son Alex, with whom she became pregnant six months after arriving in New York from Tokyo – it seemed that, unlike the cat whom we see compliantly being washed, he just visited (or, if not, he must have been hiding, or dead drunk, earlier on). When she met Ushio, she was 19, he 41.
Now, the nature of female ageing typically being what it is, the age difference initially seems less apparent – also because he boxes paint onto canvas, with pads attached to gloves, and so seems very fit and energetic. Nothing is made of it as an explanation, but there is a beautifully tranquil, intense and bubble-laden scene where we see him swimming, and elsewhere we see his physique.
The film shows us two recent shows of Ushio’s, the first solo (we never hear whether anything sells, though the opening of the documentary has Noriko estimating that they need $1,000 and the money for the rent to keep afloat), the second jointly with Noriko, which is near the end. In between, there is questioning about (from Ushio) whether he should have an assistant, and (from Noriko) any assumption that she is his assistant, and that she helps him other than because she wants to. Then, in Noriko’s painted-in drawings, we see the emergence of the characters Bullie and Cutie.
To begin with, they tell Cutie Noriko’s own story, soon pregnant and having an alcoholic to contend with, and financial support stopping from her parents when they learn of the drug- and alcohol-informed parties. She works out, in the drawings, her feelings, one of which is that of having been delayed being able to be creative again in her own right for so long, because of the cares and concerns of motherhood. However, in the mural for the joint show, she turns them into less identifiable polar characters with more general desires and impulses.
None of this sums up this neatly put-together film (which, one has to trust, does explain the poster) : the integration of the earlier documentary, the closeness to the subjects, the doubt about whether Ushio’s work is strong or just gimmick (which seems displaced for a while by a visitor from The Guggenheim, and the possibility of buying one of his boxing-paintings, but he then only tells Noriko when she asks that they had decided to buy a work from another artist this year).
What cannot be denied is that, despite the frictions, it is Noriko who knows better than Ushio where a suitable painting is to show to the Guggenheim visitor, and who can also intervene to say that a work that seems of interest had actually been given by Ushio to someone else with a promise not to sell it. Seeing her reasserting herself (for she complains, largely unheard, not only that she is a chef to Ushio, but that he then crudely gobbles something down on which she has laboured) may be a by-product of this film, but, at any rate, it is good to see her valuing her artistic creation – and having others value it.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
