Sawako Decides (2010)

Original title Kawa No Soko Kara Konnichi Wa

Director Yuya Ishii

Remaining stoic in the face of social, industrial and emotional humiliation, Hikari Mitsushima makes a splendidly unconventional heroine as she returns to the sticks from an unfulfilling sojourn in Tokyo to take over her father’s ailing business. Forced to deal with a sceptical workforce, treacherous boyfirend Masashi Endo and his daughter, Mitsushima begins her transformation by radically altering the lyrics of the factory song. Alongside such hilarious set-pieces, Yuya Ishii satirises the politics of class, gender and age in this Japanese variation on a deadpan Kaurismaki comedy of inconsequence that is slyly amusing and sobering in its assumption that folk are best off settling for what they have because, invariably they deserve nothing better. Empire Magazine