MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Free and Easy’ Pokes Gentle Fun at the Japanese Business Ethic

From its first moments “Free and Easy” (Little Tokyo Cinema 1), a warm and bracing comedy, proves impossible to predict. In the pre-credit sequence we meet a truly happy man, the stocky, good-natured Densuke (Toshiyuki Nishida). He lives with his devoted wife, Michiko (Eri Ishida), in Southern Japan on an island with a Carmel-like coastline. He begins each day joyously fishing before taking a ferry to work as a salesman for a Tokyo-based construction company.

No sooner are the credits over than Densuke learns he’s to be transferred to the main office. We have every reason to expect an “Out-of-Towners,” Japanese style, in which the hell of living in a big city will be contrasted with Densuke’s lost paradise.

But that’s not what writers Yoji Yamada (Tora-san’s creator) and Akira Momoi have in mind, in adapting a popular comic book series. They are in fact preparing to tell us one of the oldest, most durable tales of them all: how a king--or in this case a business tycoon--incognito learns the simple pleasures of life from a commoner. The writers, director Tomio Kuriyama and his wonderful cast, however, make their story fresh and buoyant.

Suzuki (Rentaro Mikuni), the unpretentious president of the construction company, and Densuke meet over lunch when Densuke, who doesn’t recognize him, asks him for the fish he’s left all but untouched on his plate. In no time Suzuki, responding to Densuke’s warmth and obvious sincerity, gets a new lease on life by becoming his employee’s fishing companion.

The characterizations and the careful detailing, involving many wry comic touches, of this modest and endearing film are first-rate. Nishida’s Densuke is truly enviable, the kind of man who’s in touch with others because he’s in touch with himself and nature itself. He’s a breath of fresh air at the office, consciously refusing to be a competitive, sober workaholic, which makes him a virtual rebel in the Japanese business world. But for all his outgoing qualities, he’s often a surprisingly quiet man, never for a second one of those tiresome life force figures. Mikuni, a masterful silver-haired star of durable wit and an elegance reminiscent of Vittorio De Sica and Fernando Rey, is a pure joy as this intelligent, sophisticated man for whom life has gone stale.

Obviously, it is inevitable that Densuke and his wife will learn the true identity of Suzuki. It’s how this moment and its implications are handled that is the true test of the writers’ and the director’s sensibility. Happily for “Free and Easy” (Times-rated: Family) they pass with flying colors.

‘FREE AND EASY’

(TSURIBAKA NISSHI)

A Shochiku presentation. Executive producer Shizuo Yamanouchi. Director Tomio Kuriyama. Screenplay Yoji Yamada, Akira Momoi; from a comic book series by Juzo Yamazaki & Kenichi Kitami. Camera Kosuke Yasuda. Art director Shigemori Shigeta. With Toshiyuki Nishida, Eri Ishida, Rentaro Mikuni, Kei Tani. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Times-rated: Family.