During the Cannes Film Festival, Konbini tells you about his favorites or looks back on the biggest events of the selection. Also to be seen on Konbini What is Perfect Days? This year in Cannes, the famous German filmmaker, notably known for the sumptuous Paris, Texas webbed in 1984 presented two projects: the documentary Anselm in Special Sessions and Perfect Days, his new feature film for which he returned to Tokyo after filming the Japanese capital in 1982 in Tokyo-Ga. This time, he has chosen to give us the daily life of Hirayama, a man in his fifties who works in the maintenance of public toilets in Tokyo and devotes himself to this task with care, meticulousness, application and, thus, dignity. He lives alone without avoiding contact with others, his life is simple and his daily routine very well oiled. But is it good? Perfect Days is not the new film by Ken Loach or the Dardenne brothers, like This short synopsis might lead you to think so, but a real feel-good movie in the form of a little praise of simplicity and against a backdrop of literature, rock and photography, extremely satisfying to contemplate. by Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels, inviting us into the meager and routine life of Hirayama. Small basic toilet, spraying plants, coffee at the local distributor, and off he goes criss-crossing the capital and its places of comfort at the wheel of his van, the tapes of the Velvet Underground, Otis Redding, Lou Reed or Patti Smith punctuating his journeys and giving him an obvious pleasure. But unlike Chantal Akerman’s film, nothing seems alienating in this daily routine, however repetitive. During his days off, Hirayama goes to the public baths, develops the black and white photos he takes with his little Olympus or goes to dinner at his favorite restaurant. Although his first words aren’t spoken until the thirtieth minute of the film, the rather simple-minded employee who works with him in the maintenance of the city or his niece who has come to visit regularly bring him back to the world of the living and the talking. The toilets he cleans bear no resemblance to our unspeakable French public toilets but are all sorts of little architectural or technological quirks – like those disconcerting transparent cabins which become opaque when you lock them –, extracting Perfect Days from a misery that could be watching him. Yet Hirayama remains invisible in these big anonymous cities and his failed attempts to connect with his peers – the young girl on the nearby bench with whom he shares his lunch break or the frightened mother to whom he gives back her lost little boy – bring us back to her social condition which was not always hers. Hirayama thinks Spotify is a store and lives in a small anachronistic bubble made of audio cassettes and film photos in the heart of the most technological city on the planet, without being disconnected from this modern world. By this character, Wim Wenders perhaps tells us about his discrepancy in the face of a certain cinema, but without being backward-looking, and picked us up unexpectedly, a few days before the closing of the festival. Discreetly, Perfect Days rose to the top of our Cannes favorites and made our very first tears flow, between fatigue and emotion. What do we remember? The actor who stands out: Koji Yakusho, whom the ‘we want to see the award for Best ActorThe main quality: its extremely satisfying simplicityThe main flaw: being programmed at the end of a festival at the end of your ropeA film that you will like if you liked: Paris, Texas, Paterson, In the Mood for Love and Prince of TexasIt could have been called: Simple comme HirayamaThe quote to sum up the film: “Poetic and infinitely modest”
