A quirky drama about an unlikely group of friends. Akari Kinoshita (Yoshino Kimura) is a hopelessly accident-prone woman, who is hired by Hisanobu Komori (Yoshinori Okada) to work at a hospital. She spends her free time down by the river watching a homeless woman collect detritus with which she makes garbage-sculptures, whom Akari decorates her own house with drawings of. Komori’s friend Teruo Toyama (YoshiYoshi Arakawa) works as a civic groundskeeper, helping out at his father’s second hand bookstore part time. He is a horror fanatic with dreams of one day creating the scariest horror house in existence. Teruo’s father, Eitaro (Keizo Kanie), seems to have fallen into a semi-comatose slump, sitting behind his desk all day at the bookstore barely communicative with a glazed expression. After seeing a travel show on television he sets off to find some kind of respite from the daily monotony. Akari quits her hospital job and Komori recommends working at Teruo’s bookshop. Teruo and Komori’s fondness for Akari soon turns to feelings of love, but Akari has already met another man, Yuhara (Naoki Tanaka), who shows an interest in her drawings.
Written and directed by Yosuke Fujita, “Fine, Totally Fine” is an unconventional film, in that there are no great revelations or moments of triumph or disaster for the characters. There is an easy vibe and relaxing air to the film; things happen, characters talk, but there is little in the way of plot. The drama is enlivened by moments of comedy, mostly involving Teruo’s obsession with horror, such as his experience at a haunted apartment, or his various pranks on his friends. YoshiYoshi is a skilled comic actor, perfectly capturing the hapless everyman Teruo with his casual delivery and expressive features. Yoshino Kimura is also charming and amusing as Akari in a slapstick role, constantly bumbling in her attempts to seal a box, or wrap a lewd magazine for a customer. The story meanders from one scenario to the next with little momentum; instead each scene serves to highlight some example of the character’s peculiar faults or interests.
The characters all have hopes and dreams, searching for fame, fortune, or love, with varying results. The film’s themes are delicately expressed, often requiring some concentration from the viewer to piece together exactly what it is trying to say. Moments that in any other film would be paid off in the final act are here casually passed over without further comment, such as Teruo’s attempts to start a business, or Akari’s fascination with the homeless woman that begins the film. There are moments that suggest a depth to the film, with the “film within a film” that Teruo’s friends are making imitating life in unusual ways; ideas of the relationship between art and reality prominent in Akari’s drawings also; Yuhara’s job of fixing broken objects perhaps suggesting a parallel with the characters who are all missing pieces of themselves. Many of the characters seem to be trapped in situations that are not what they want to be doing; but it would be hard to describe them as suffering. There are certainly things to enjoy here: excellent performances, and a couple of genuinely funny moments; but the languid pace, absent plot, and vague gesturing towards a central theme may put off viewers who are looking for something more conventional.
