Out of Fantasia Film Festival, Makoto Ueda surprises with his directorial debut, You Are the Film. At a time when theatrical tentpole films push creative and thematic boundaries, seeing an independent film follow suit with its own unique spin on genre storytelling is quite refreshing. Ueda ambitiously ventures into a mind-melting space to explore themes of regret, betrayal, purpose, and time’s ephemerality. He then twists them as strands of liquorice with self-referential and universe-adjacent flavors swirled into the mix.
A playwright and a musician walk into a movie theater. But it’s not a normal mid-afternoon matinee. They sit down to enjoy a new film and soon realize that their lives are playing on the silver screen for one another. Madoka hopes to take her acting troupe to much larger stages in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo. Likewise, Kazuma, a musician from the neighboring town of Sangenjaya, urges his band to take their career seriously. Both need an escape from the daily hustle, but they’re quickly taken on a ride of confusing and hilarious proportions.
Madoka learns the difficult truth about her group of actors, two of whom recently exited an upcoming performance. Down on her luck, she can’t figure out a way to salvage the production. Meanwhile, Kazuma learns that a co-band member has stolen money from a local gang. In You Are the Film, Kazuma’s and Madoka’s lives collide epically with unexpected twists and turns that’ll give you whiplash. As they learn to rewrite their own lives, they also realize the deceitfulness of human nature. These two strangers will have to compromise if they really want things to change. While the script could have hit harder and mined the far darker corners of the subconscious, particularly through the characters’ many revelations, Ueda opts for a fluffier piece that takes cues from time-travel films, rom-coms, and light-hearted comedies.
You Are the Film seeks to provoke the viewer into asking larger questions about existence, time, relationships, and how we fit into the greater cosmos, but it doesn’t move the needle enough to make the experience truly unforgettable. The questions only elicit surface-level examinations without following up on the byproducts of those initial inquiries. As such, the film merely floats along when it could have absolutely flown right out of there.
There’s a dream-like quality to the visual storytelling that works well in punctuating the gooey emotional center. You Are the Film might be a bit too saccharine and candy-coated, but filmmaker Makoto Ueda supplies compelling performances from the cast and a specific style that works well for the story he wanted to share. It’s ultimately a rather safe film that’s not going to rattle the film industry or light up social media. Yet there’s proof Ueda possesses great promise to tell bigger, more fleshed-out stories in the future.
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