A Spoiling Rain

In exchange for his overdue rent, Kutani, an out-of-job director in Japan’s declining adult film industry, is recruited by his landlord to evict another tenant, Iseki. A struggling screenwriter, Iseki is surprised by the rain-drenched Kutani’s unconventional manner and invites him inside to dry off. Over several drinks, the men recount their failed relationships, unaware that they have more in common than they expect. Transplanting Matsuura Hisaki’s eponymous 2001 source novel to post-Fukushima Japan, veteran screenwriter Arai Haruhiko’s A Spoiling Rain presents a lush and melancholy ode to failure. Centred on deadbeats cast adrift in a waning world, the film oscillates between the present and the past, charting the parallel decay of two relationships which seem to mirror the waning fortunes of the pink film industry. With an offhand irony that comes with certain life experiences, A Spoiling Rain delivers an account of male self-deception, doomed to wreck lives and oblivious to the damage it causes. The romantic destinies of Kutani and Iseki who seem diametrically different in their nature and attitudes to life become enmeshed in odd ways – in their humorous self-absorption and in their cynicism, both casual and corrosive. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)