Perfect Days Parent Guide

From the outside, Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) doesn’t look like he has a fulfilling life. The middle-aged man works for Tokyo Toilets, cleaning the city’s public bathrooms. He lives alone and spends his time tending to his plants, playing cassette tapes, and reading books. Nonetheless, he finds joy in the beauties of nature and satisfaction from a job well done. It’s the little things that matter to Hirayama – breathing in fresh morning air, taking the perfect photo of leaves against the sky, finding a sapling to nurture. His life might look narrow, but he finds surprising sources of happiness within its confines.

It’s easy to see why Koji Yakusho won the Cannes Best Actor Award with his almost wordless performance as the quiet, serene Hirayama. It’s unfortunate that the rest of the cast don’t measure up to his standard. Yakusho’s dignified portrayal makes Tokio Emoto’s cartoonishly bad turn as his young coworker Takashi all the more mystifying. How does director Wim Wenders nurture Yakusho’s understated Hirayama while allowing Emoto to yell and stumble about like a character in a bad Bugs Bunny film? Takashi’s a stereotype of “kids these days” – lazy, lacking pride in his work, entitled, selfish, and irresponsible. Having characters interact with caricatures is sometimes successful in comedy, but it has no place in a drama, particularly one as nuanced as this.

Uneven character portrayals are a serious weakness movie in a film that has little in the way of plot. A movie with minimal narrative tension requires characters to drive the story forward, and Hirayama is the only one capable of doing so. His performance will doubtless please cinema afficionados, but it’s unlikely to be enough for moviegoers who want a compelling story with some action, comedy, or variety.

As far as content is concerned, Perfect Days is mostly clean. It’s free from violence and features brief alcohol consumption and a handful of profanities. Even sexual content is limited to bathing-related nudity. The PG rating is appropriate, but this isn’t a family film because it will bore kids senseless within the first ten minutes. Perfect Days is a fine film for fans of serious cinema – and anyone else who wants to marvel at the wonders of Japan’s public toilet infrastructure. There might not be much of a story in this very, very long film, but it’s a touching portrait of a quiet life well lived.