Oh Lucy!

Setsuko works in an office in Tokyo. She is in her forties, alone, and nobody at work likes her. Her niece passes an English course on to her. The course is strange; the teacher John hugs his students, asks them to wear wigs and gives everyone an American name. Setsuko puts on a blonde wig and becomes Lucy. Lucy is easier, bolder, and in love with John. Then John leaves the country without telling anyone. Setsuko flies after him to California with her sister in tow. Atsuko Hirayanagi directs and co-wrote the script. Shinobu Terajima, Josh Hartnett, Kaho Minami, Shioli Kutsuna and Koji Yakusho are in the cast. It is a Japanese and American co-production. The film screened in the Critics' Week section of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. The feature was grown out of the director's 2014 short; that short took second place in the Cinefondation section at Cannes the same year and won more than thirty awards around the world. The wig is at the centre of the narrative; taking another name gives Setsuko a permission she does not want to hand back. The matter it treats is loneliness, and the film gives it without asking pity and often as comedy. The narrative does not present America as a rescue; the California section grows steadily more difficult. Terajima does not play the character as likeable, and that choice makes the film harder. The ending promises no recovery. Its limit is tone; it moves between comedy and darkness and for some viewers neither quite settles. Who it is for: viewers who like character driven black comedy and independent Japanese films. Who it is not for: it is uncomfortable, uneven in tone, and the ending cold.