"Side Job" is a hard movie to digest. It deals with very depressing subject matter and with characters whose motivations and emotions aren't really clear to the audience. The movie is overall very subtle and very big changes are made nearly unrecognizable. The story is about a woman called Yuki from Iwaki, a town in Fukushima near the atomic power plant where the recent catastrophe happened. The woman commutes between Iwaki and Tokyo to work as a hostess on weekends without anyone knowing. She as a character is quite interesting because we dont fully understand her and it is quite a unique experience to have characters that says things that are probably not in their mind in a movie. It gives it such a realistic touch that you don't get to really know someone. You can just imagine what this person might think and want.
I am still not quite sure how I should look back on this movie. It definitely made me think and I appreciate it for that. It has its problems, especially the mindset of the town was covered rather one sided in my opinion and it didn't really go deeper beyond people being sad about losing their lost ones. It's beyond its clouded surface very shallow in themes, at least in terms of the catastrophe and I think it does put a lot of emphasis around it. So all the side stories besides Yukis were in my opinion rather lackluster, but then again the main focus of the movie is clearly Yukis story.
