I had to watch 'I Am Keiko' at least three times before I even began to know what I was seeing. At first it seems like a tedious piece for art's sake. Its only character never comes right out and tells you what's really going on with her. There's a reason why they tell you to watch for signs of depression, most who suffer from it aren't going to announce it. I didn't. I didn't even know that's what it was.
The first five minutes f the film is a static shot of Keiko (played by Keiko Suzuki) staring directly at us, unspeaking, with a tear welling in one eye. In the background, walled away in another room, are ambient family noises. Keiko seems completely open, vulnerable, but the silence becomes uncomfortable. It is broken when she announces the film's title (and first credits).
I have posted this review under the film's given Anglicized name but I suspect from the credits translation that its more correct title is "It's Me, Keiko", and definitions of the individual Japanese words 'desu' and 'kedo' suggests even that isn't quite right either.
Keiko will be 22 in three weeks and wishes to document that passage of time. "I want to record my own time as precisely as possible." Time is more than a concern of hers, it's an obsession. Can one be awake, aware, and active every minute of one's life? What constitutes an acceptable use and what is a waste? The film will end in precisely one hour and one minute, she tells us, and keeps her word.
Meanwhile she spends entire blocks of minutes counting off each second while we stare at a clock. This is a hard movie to watch. My first time seeing it I wanted to hit FF. Much of I Am Keiko is made up of static shots of her surroundings, or of Keiko staring out windows. The movie is without score though the ambient noise hints at Sono's preference for classical music. Color schemes are stark and primary. Until breaking out in the final act most of the film is confined to Keiko's bedroom. She shows us some snapshots of her history. "Here we are" she says of one snapshot, speaking of her family, but the picture is of an unoccupied table.
She is hyper-aware of the passing of time, yet does nothing with it as if paralyzed with her own thoughts. She doesn't seem to get much sleep, as we see she is filming even in the middle of the night.
This is the behavior of a depressive. Keiko's father died recently, and while she doesn't speak much of it we see several times a small box she has kept with a few of his bones she stole from the crematorium.
Echoing Rupert Pupkin (or just about every child ever) Keiko shares with us some "news broadcasts" she anchors, reaching out to an audience that isn't there. For each pretend broadcast she wears a different wig.
I don't know if this is a clue to the movie if if the movie is a clue to writer-director Sion Sono, but I Am Keiko directly quotes an earlier movie Sono had made as a teenager with his own camera, "I Am Sion Sono". In that film Sono was the polar opposite of Keiko - manically extroverted.
I haven't figured out Sion Sono yet. His best-known works are those of a director of flamboyant material, sometimes excessive or grotesque and usually tongue-in-cheek. I Am Keiko wouldn't seem to fit that pattern. He can also be overstated in one sequence yet oblique in an overall scheme, and he can be nakedly sentimental. Here he has stripped down Keiko's predicament to it's most fundamental even beyond exposition. Keiko is using her camera as a lifeline, trying to connect with whoever will watch.
