New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Cast: Haruka Igawa, Inowaki Kai, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Koyanagi, Kyoko Koizumi
Description: Falling victim to company outsourcing, Ryuhei Sasaki loses his job but doesn't dare tell his wife Megumi or children, leaving each day at the usual time to seek a new position at the job centre while Megumi keeps the family home spick and span and struggles to connect with sons Takashi and Kenji. Ryuhei's lies begin to spiral out of control when he meets old friend Kurosu, who is also out of work and pretending to his wife that everything is well. The two men rely on one another to maintain the facade, unaware that Megumi at least has seen them queuing for free porridge, handed out by a charity.
Country: JAP. 2008. 120mins
On the run: Kyoko Koizumi as Megumi, with burglar Koji Yakusho
Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa won a Jury Prize at Cannes for this drama about Ryuhei Sasaki, a family man who is made redundant after a Chinese takeover of his firm and decides to keep it secret from his wife and two sons. He goes home in the evenings after eating rice porridge for lunch in his immaculate suit with all the other unemployed.
One of Ryuhei’s friends sets his mobile to ring five times every hour to pretend he’s still working. It’s clearly a shaming thing in Japan to be seen without employment. Even his wife, Megumi, diplomatically keeps quiet when she eventually spies him at the soup kitchen.
Life at home, however, gets increasingly complicated when one son, a rebellious teenager, joins the US Army to fight somewhere in the Middle East and the younger boy, having caught his teacher reading manga porn, deserts school and pays for piano lessons with his pocket money.
This is the realist part of Kurosawa’s fable which proceeds in its second half to become a stinging allegory about the state of credit-crunched Japan. The change of gear is unsettling at first, since things happen much more melodramatically — what with a desperate burglar tying up the wife before making off with her in a stolen car and the elder son writing home to say he’s decided to change sides and fight for the Arabs against the Americans.
The one hopeful thing that happens is that the younger son turns out to be a musical prodigy, astonishing his music academy exam board with his rendition of Debussy.
Tokyo Sonata could hardly be more relevant — even though it was made before the present worldwide recession struck — and it has touching performances from Teruyuki Kagawa and Kyoko Koizumi as Sasaki and his wife. It’s uneven, but memorable in its way.
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