Tadanobu Asano and Joe Odagiri star as two friends who work part-time in a laundry factory in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s highly original BRIGHT FUTURE. Odagiri is Yuji Nimura, a messy, lazy slacker who has odd dreams at night of a future of hope and peace. His best friend, Mamoru Arita (Asano), meanwhile, is obsessed with his pet red jellyfish, a poisonous creature he is training to be able to survive in fresh water. After mysteriously presenting the marine invertebrate to Yuji, he even more mysteriously viciously murders his boss and willingly accepts his fate. While Mamoru is in prison, Yuji grows attached to the jellyfish and to his friend’s estranged father, who repairs old televisions, radios, and lamps in his own cluttered shop. The very busy Asano (ICHI THE KILLER, THE BLIND SWORDSMAN: ZATOICHI, LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE) and Odagiri are excellent in the lead roles, filled with a quiet ennui and disassociation from the rest of the world. Longtime actor Tatsuya Fuji provides outstanding support as Mr. Arita, who becomes a kind of surrogate father to Yuji. Kurosawa, the director of such successful thrillers as DOPPELGANGER, PULSE, and CURE, here alternates between beautifully shot scenes and grainy set pieces, steady camerawork and handheld moments, keeping the audience perpetually off balance yet mesmerized. BRIGHT FUTURE, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is a slow-paced, introspective, intelligent film that has a dark underbelly lurking just beneath it, like the potential lethal bite of a jellyfish.
