Cloud is a 2024 film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Masaki Suda. Masaki Suda plays Yoshii, a reseller in Japan, essentially a professional scalper. He hates his day job, even though his boss is trying to promote him, and wishes to live a life of “freedom” with his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa). As the film progresses and Yoshii seemingly finds his freedom,. However, his past comes back to haunt him in a big, bad way.
Cloud is a film about the pursuit of a certain kind of happiness, a happiness that supposedly monetary gain can only achieve. It’s a hollow kind of life, and the characters within this film reflect that. From Yoshii to Muroaka (Masataka Kubota), no one seems happy with their lot in life. I believe this is because, ultimately, everyone is aimless; they have no true purpose. The closest thing to a goal that the majority of the characters want is to be from a conventional life. They romanticise the life of resellers, believing they’re some kind of rougish individuals, something that only they get. It’s a life that I can’t understand.
It doesn’t matter if they’re real or fake
The film pushes this as freedom for Yoshii. However, when he finally gets a house with Akiko and they’re living free of jobs, he is glued to his computer screen reselling items to his customers. It’s a disturbing obsession that is felt throughout the entire film. It can also be seen in the imagery, Yoshii doesn’t have friends; he can’t because he can’t have connections in case they become a problem. He’s rarely seen with more than one or two people around him and this is deliberate on the part of director Kurosawa, I believe. He wants to showcase this lifestyle is lonely, that it is ultimately empty. The choice Yoshii makes to move outside of Tokyo and into the sticks further compounds the element of isolation because of his lifestyle. This plays into the third act when some of the victims of Yoshii come for him.
As a 2-hour film, Cloud has a lot going on in it and in my opinion, it couldn’t hurt from being trimmed down. The film takes a lot of time to set up Yoshii’s situation, and it is late into the second act before the true story reveals itself. When it does, though, it is wild what occurs in that third act, and I loved it. The ending is ambiguous and leaves much to interpretation and that adds to the lessons one can take away from Cloud.
Cloud is just one of many films being shown at this year’s Japanese Film Festival. Follow the link to book your tickets and enjoy.
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