Teki Cometh – first-look review | Little White Lies

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Teki Cometh – first-look review

31 Oct 2024

Words by Hannah Strong

Three people, an older man and two younger women, posing in a traditional-looking Japanese interior setting with shelves and artwork on the walls.
Three people, an older man and two younger women, posing in a traditional-looking Japanese interior setting with shelves and artwork on the walls.
An elder­ly man plans the final year of his life in Dai­hachi Yoshi­da’s impres­sive adap­ta­tion of Yasu­ta­ka Tsut­sui’s novel.

After a long career as a pro­fes­sor of French lit­er­a­ture, Gisuke Watan­abe (Nagat­su­ka Kyozo) is rea­son­ably con­tent to live out his retire­ment in rel­a­tive peace. He writes a few mag­a­zine arti­cles and occa­sion­al­ly gives guest lec­tures, but most of his time is ded­i­cat­ed to keep­ing an order­ly house and cook­ing sim­ple but hearty meals. Some of his old pupils stop by occa­sion­al­ly, help­ing with main­te­nance or keep­ing him com­pa­ny at din­ner, but Gisuke leads a fair­ly soli­tary life – it’s been that way ever since his wife died some 20 years pre­vi­ous. But at 77, he knows the end is near. Hav­ing done the maths on when exact­ly his retire­ment fund will run out, he plans to go out on his own terms. His plan is as metic­u­lous as the tra­di­tion­al house in which he lives. But then Gisuke receives a strange email.

The Teki’ of Teki Cometh refers to a mys­te­ri­ous ene­my Gisuke is anony­mous­ly warned of – it’s also the name of Yasu­ta­ka Tsutsui’s 1998 nov­el which pro­vid­ed film­mak­er Dai­hachi Yoshi­da with his source mate­r­i­al. Thought by the author to be a very dif­fi­cult title to adapt for the screen, Yoshi­da game­ly rose to the chal­lenge, shoot­ing in milky black and white to empha­sise the aus­ter­i­ty of Gisuke’s life as well as the lack of delin­eation with­in the film between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty. What begins as an obser­va­tion­al, aus­tere dra­ma about a lone­ly man in the twi­light of his life slow­ly unfolds as some­thing stranger and per­haps more sinister.

On the sur­face Teki Cometh may appear to be a sto­ry about the real­i­ty of grow­ing old, and per­haps specif­i­cal­ly about the fear of doing so alone – how our world is not set up suf­fi­cient­ly to pro­vide care for the elder­ly, and what hap­pens when that respon­si­bil­i­ty can­not be ful­filled by fam­i­ly. Yet both the direc­tor and author empha­sise that Teki Cometh is not so much about demen­tia, but rather the active choice to indulge in one’s desires, dreams and fan­tasies, and the rela­tion­ship we have with our own past as we age – a refresh­ing out­look for a film with a 77-year-old pro­tag­o­nist. This hinges on Nagat­su­ka Kyozo’s cen­tral per­for­mance, which is spell­bind­ing and sto­ic. He posi­tions Gisuke as charm­ing and upstand­ing, but as the sto­ry pro­gress­es and the ene­my’ advances, all is not quite what it seems.

Set over a year and most­ly with­in the con­fines of Gisuke’s tra­di­tion­al sub­ur­ban home, rep­e­ti­tion is key to empha­sis­ing the protagonist’s pride in his dai­ly rou­tine. Mouth­wa­ter­ing shots of food – com­pli­ment­ed by sharp sound design and spar­ing use of a cel­lo-heavy score – sug­gest a par­tic­u­lar fussi­ness about Gisuke, and are all the more impres­sive for their lack of colour. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from clas­sic Japan­ese cin­e­ma with an empha­sis on sta­t­ic wide shots, there’s a real rich­ness to Gisuke’s envi­ron­ment, and the more time we spend by his side, the more shock­ing Yoshida’s twists and turns become. With a sly sense of humour and arrest­ing visu­als, Teki Cometh is an impres­sive adap­ta­tion and a poignant char­ac­ter study that defies easy definition.

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