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New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Desert of Namibia' Review: Ups and Downs
It's rare that a movie portrays the kind of messy and absurd arguments that can unfold in relationships, so there's a special awe to seeing a movie that goes for it. Yoko Yamanaka's brilliantly observed 'Desert of Namibia' often boils over with the anger of its young protagonist, Kana (Yuumi Kawai), but it often also just simmers with her frustrations about her place in the world. Outright fights are just one facet of the film's unvarnished fidelity to Kana's state of mind. She upends parts of her life, sometimes for the better in the long run, but can't always reassemble the pieces into a satisfying future. Her boyfriend, Honda (Kanichiro), dotes on her at their shared apartment, but she lurches into another relationship with a writer, Hayashi (Daichi Kaneko), whom she's seeing on the side. Her mind-numbing job at a hair-removal salon doesn't help. What clinches the portrait is the sure-handed direction and Kana's organic performance of a daunting character. Dramatically, Yamanaka finds unpredictable ways into and out of scenes, and she has an eye for the poignant details amid the angst, like neatly packed baggies of food in a refrigerator, and for underplaying other moments, like the breeziness of a doctor who diagnoses Kana over a video call. Kana's spikiness (which recalls Kit Zauhar's similarly candid triumph 'Actual People') segues into an eventual need for stability. But Yamanaka is admirably in no hurry to simplify or explain what Kana is still sorting out for herself.
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Vogue
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Director Yôko Yamanaka on Her Freewheeling Sophomore Feature, ‘Desert of Namibia'
The first moments of Desert of Namibia, the second feature from Japanese writer-director Yôko Yamanaka, instantly declare a new entrant to the canon of indelible mercurial female protagonists. Twenty-one-year-old Kana (played by 24-year-old Yuumi Kawai) ambles loosely down a Tokyo sidewalk, mouth ajar, swinging her bag wide at her sides, surveying the bustle around her, seemingly content. It's intriguing because it's so unusual. 'In Japan women are expected to behave and move in a certain way, almost like wearing a uniform,' Yamanaka recently told Vogue through a translator, sporting long, ornate nails bedecked with hologram confetti. 'As children, we're free and don't care, but as we grow up, go to school, and start working, we start acting in expected ways. I didn't want Kana to conform to that, and that's most apparent in how she walks, with sloppy gestures and movements. She behaves outside in ways usually reserved for home. Instead of how Japanese women normally act, I wanted Kana to use her body like a child. Mothers have said she reminds them of their very young children.' By the time the title cards appear onscreen some 40 minutes later, we'll have seen her prove an inconsiderate friend, a careless partner, a messy drunk, a listless worker, impulsive, self-absorbed, and reckless—a bit of trouble, in other words, but fascinating and irresistible. She struggles to care for herself properly but surrounds herself with attentive, patient, caring men who do what they can to manage her antics. She's manic and pixie, perhaps, but far from a dream girl, hurtling toward an uncertain future in a rule-bound, patriarchal society (and bound to be subject to some level of psychological analysis by audiences).
