Writer and Director: Yû Irie
Unremittingly dark, this Japanese social realist drama plays out like the bleakest Ken Loach film. Based on a true story, Yû Irie’s film follows a young woman, Ann, as she tries to put her life back together after becoming addicted to drugs. A Girl Named Ann demonstrates how family and the state cannot be relied upon for help, resulting in a movie that is difficult to watch.
Ann, sensitively captured by Yumi Kawai, is arrested for drugs and prostitution at the very start of the film. Of course, the sex-work helps pay for the drugs, but she also has to hand the rest of the money to her mother who demands that her daughter goes out “hustling”. They live in a filthy apartment in which rubbish is piled up in plastic bags and empty alcohol cans cover every surface. Ann’s disabled grandmother lives there too and Ann is afraid of what her mother could do to the old woman if she were to leave. Despite her addiction, Ann is the breadwinner in the household. Perhaps this is why the useless mother, herself an alcoholic, refers to her daughter as “Mama.”
However, a glimpse of relief is offered at her arrest. The officer in charge of her case is a maverick with his own way of doing things. In a ploy for Ann to surrender her drugs, Tatara (Jirô Satô) performs yoga moves during the interrogation. Afterwards, he suggests to Ann that she join the drug rehabilitation group that he organises called Salvage. At these meetings there’s more yoga, but he encourages her to go back to school, to get a job in a care home and, most importantly, move to a women’s shelter where she is amazed to have her own small uncluttered studio flat.
At this point Irie’s film promises a happy ending as Ann discovers autonomy for the first time, best portrayed in a scene in a shop when she realises that instead of stealing the diary she covets, she can actually pay for it, pay using the money she has earned from working as a care assistant. When her mother finds out where Ann works and causes trouble, Ann is ready to pack up her belongings and leave her job. But her employers recognise that Ann isn’t at fault; it’s her mother who is the issue.
Unfortunately, when Covid hits the city, the care home reduces the number of staff it employs and the adult education school closes its doors. Without these anchors, the lifelines that give us self-worth and meaning, Ann is dangerously adrift once more. She’s also without her mentor, Tatara, who is being investigated for sexual misdemeanours with the women he’s meant to be helping. A baby – not hers – is the only thing that gives her purpose.
Irie uses a mixture of close-ups and shots filmed from a distance with blurred objects positioned in front of the frame, giving the sense that this is a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Only in the few shots where all sounds are silenced does Irie add whimsy to what otherwise is a solid piece of social realism. And like Mike Leigh’s latest offering, Hard Truths, a happy ending remains almost elusive. The sight of a toddler tottering into an uncertain future is the only redemptive image in the whole of Irie’s film. This is what happens when the state turns its back.
The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025 takes place in cinemas around the UK from 7 February – 31 March 2025
The Reviews Hub Score
Japanese social realism
