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| Images courtesy of Cult Epics |
Years before becoming synonymous with V-cinema action ala
Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy, Riki Takeuchi made his screen
debut in distinguished iconoclastic hyperkinetic filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1986
Yokohama Film Festival Award winner His Motorbike, Her Island being
released in the United States by Cult Epics.
Initially released in the United Kingdom via Third Window Films in 2022 in
their four-film set Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 80s Kadokawa Years, the film makes
its stateside debut likely utilizing the same restored transfer as the Third
Window release albeit with a different subset of extras including two visual
essays, a standalone audio commentary and what appears to be a full reprinting
of the original Japanese press booklet.
Undeniably the work of the director of House, the film isn’t
quite a Bōsōzoku but definitely resides within the motorbiking world while
employing many of the director’s experimental if not avant-garde techniques to
tell a poignant nostalgic romance poised between urban city life and the Inland
Sea.
Based on the 1977 novel by Yoshio Kataoka, our story follows
Koh Hashimoto (Riki Takeuchi) a young student working as a motorbike courier
for a local newspaper on his prized Kawasaki W3 motorbike. After relations with a fellow biker’s sister
Fuyumi Sawada (Noriko Watanabe) sour, resulting in a jousting duel with her
brother Hidemasa (Tomokazu Miura), Koh rides into the mountains where he
crosses paths with a free-spirited perky young woman named Miyoko Shiraishi (Kiwako
Harada) who happily takes pictures of his bike before running into him again
naked at a mountain spa which only further enhances their mutual
attraction. Traveling with her to her
island home at the Inland Sea where she introduces Koh to the Obon Festival
honoring the spirit of one’s ancestors, he eventually teaches her how to ride
his motorbike by herself, sparking within her a go-getting daredevil addiction
to the thrill of riding that his ex-girlfriend’s brother Hidemasa warns could
lean to her pushing the limits of her safety.
Cutting freely between past and present, color and
monochrome, sometimes framing the point of color in the epicenter of the shot
so it only revolves around the two biking lovebirds, edited sharply like a whip
by Obayashi himself with frequently sumptuous cinematography by Yoshitaka
Sakamoto often fluctuating between being windowboxed, pillarboxed at 1.33:1
before finally opening up to 1.66:1 widescreen, His Motorbike, Her Island is
a thoroughly affecting bittersweet romantic fable. Written for the screen by Ikuo Sekimoto and
adorned with a frequently upbeat bright and cheery score coauthored by Naoshi Miyzaki
and Hikaru Ishikawa, the film has an almost elliptical rhythm to it fragmented
by memory sometimes presented in a series of rapid-fire edited flash cuts aided
by voiceover narration by Riki Takeuchi.
In his first screen role, years before crafting his unshakable screen
image as a ferocious action player, Takeuchi exudes strength and vulnerability
caught within the biking world and his newfound love for Miyoko who like him
inherits the almost fetishistic adoration for the motorbike. Take for instance a scene early on in which,
mid ride, Koh stops to caress if not grope the engine of his beautiful
motorbike, an action paralleled later by Miyoko whose previous sunny smile and
demeanor turns more desperate as her desire to match her boyfriend’s
motorcycling skills become overpowering.
Sentimental without becoming saccharine, fondly nostalgic
but also somewhat somber, the beautiful and picturesque His Motorbike, Her
Island is a tender, quietly moving romantic drama about two people from
vastly different walks of life who come together in an unlikely fashion told
through the prism of memory experienced and/or dreamt by Koh. As an Obayashi film, it could be taken as a
quasi-Bōsōzoku with his freeform kaleidoscopic patina but mostly it’s a heartstring
tugger that will make you feel everything from whimsy to sorrow, contentment to
desperation all told through a constantly shifting aesthete. Featuring far more color/monochrome
transitions than Lindsay Anderson’s If… while being considerably grounded
in reality when compared to his playfully funky and otherworldly 1977 horror-comedy
freakout House, the Cult Epics release of Obayashi’s understated
masterwork is a welcome one for fans who missed out on the Third Window release
as well as newcomers to the unique difficult-to-pin-down style of one of
Japanese cinema’s most gifted and truly inspiringly wild filmmakers.
--Andrew Kotwicki
