Kyûka

Faceless bureaucrats shuffle paperwork posing innumerable hanko stamps that mark the moment a life will be terminated. The life is that of illustrator Shinichi Kaneda. We don't and we won't know what crime he committed, and it does not matter. The eye of the camera compares him to a little ant crawling on the tatami, whose life is casually snatched away by a well-meaning hotel maid.

From a novel by Akira Yoshimura, "Vacation" will surprise anyone familiar with American prison dramas (or perhaps with the prison system itself) to the point of looking almost alien. Toru Hirai, is one of the prison guards, imprisoned by his job, who volunteers unsavory duty of assisting in the death of a man in exchange a one week vacation for his honeymoon, and above all to connect to an adoptive son that rejects him as his new father.

We are with Kaneda even when he is not present. Time ticks towards his execution, and the film moves nervously back and forth in time leaving pauses and silences that make the confrontation with what is happening on the screen inevitable. Kaneda cries and drinks his last glass of water. Toru , the prison guard, looks on as powerless and resigned as the spectator. The result is a poetic, but tale of redemption, and an outstanding movie about the death penalty with surprisingly little melodrama.

Another day, another Australian Premier screening at the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, this time the film, Vacation, the latest work from Japanese director, Hajime Kadoi.

If you had to describe the way the Japanese live based on what is depicted in their films, one word would have to sum it up. Spartan.

Vacation is more spartan than most Japanese films. Much of the drama unfolds inside the confines of the tiny cell of a prison inmate. In deed, Kaneda, the prisoner, is on death row for a crime that is never mentioned or explained. We learn nothing about what the man is thinking beyond the fact that he spends every day drawing landscapes in a large sketch book.

As the drama unfolds, we are introduced to Hirai, a prison guard who is marrying a beautiful young woman with a six year old son. His only means of getting time off for a honeymoon is to act as a "supporter" at Kaneda's execution. Again, we learn little about the woman and her child apart from the fact that her husband has apparently died.

Or has he? Why does the little boy spend almost all of his time drawing in a large sketch book? And why does the Hirai, the guard say "Sorry" to the boy following the execution of Kaneda, the prisoner? Could it possibly be because the woman was Kaneda's wife, and the boy his son? We can only guess at the answers. This is a darkly sombre film – understandable given the subject matter – filled with long silences, and beautifully framed shots.

According to the program notes, Vacation was a "break-out success" when it was released in Japan in 2008. This is director Kadoi's second feature film and it bodes well for the future of his career in particular, and for Japanese film in general.