‘A Missing Part’: Seville Review

Dir: Guillaume Senez. France/Belgium. 2024. 98 minutes

Belgian director Guillaume Senez’s third characteristic A Lacking Half is basically a narrative about baby custody, however way more apart from. That includes an intense efficiency by Romain Duris as a French taxi driver in Japan searching for a daughter estranged from him by the legislation, this low-key, rigorously crafted and involving story can also be a drama about immigration from a western perspective. Having premiered at Toronto and now in competitors in Seville, additional berths appear seemingly for a movie whose director comes with a robust file of competition success (Our Struggles, Keeper).

Duris delivers a potent, managed efficiency 

Separated from his Japanese spouse Keiko (Yumi Narita), Frenchman Jay (Duris) works the night time shift, driving spherical a Tokyo whose illuminated nightscapes are offered by DoP Elin Kirschfink as alien and unfriendly; very like Jay’s different experiences of the town. We first meet him providing a shoulder to cry on to the understandably frantic Jessica (Judith Chemla), who – beneath a hanging Japanese legislation that states that custody of a kid goes to only one of many dad and mom  – is about to fall out of contact together with her son. (The legislation is ready to alter and permit joint custody from 2026.)

For 9 years Jay has been a sufferer of the identical legislation: previously a prepare dinner, he has grow to be a taxi driver within the forlorn hope that someday he would possibly encounter his daughter Lily (Mei Cirne-Masuki). At some point, Jay is assigned a college run and Lily climbs into the again – or not less than we predict it’s Lily. The scenes through which Jay discreetly seeks to ascertain whether or not the 12 year-old sitting behind him is his daughter are effectively executed, and eventually, in a second of potent catharsis, he’s capable of verify her identification. As Lily, Mei Cirne-Masuki is terrific of their scenes collectively: although she’s initially shy and silent, the viewer finally ends up with little question in any way about how she feels in regards to the state of affairs through which she has all of the sudden discovered herself. 

Taciturn and cautious about his life to the purpose of dullness – his solely concession to eccentricity is that he retains a monkey known as Jean-Pierre – Jay is rejuvenated after assembly Lily. And there are even recommendations of a future relationship with Jessica. Nevertheless it’s not sufficient; Jay needs to spend time together with his daughter, and right here he runs into stiff opposition, not solely from Keiko and her mom, but additionally from his employer and the authorized system of a rustic the place he stays very a lot an outsider. 

Although the script is cautious to ascertain that Japanese custody legislation applies to Japanese residents in addition to foreigners, A Lacking Half can also be in regards to the alienation and vulnerability of a stranger in an odd land. Little scenes confirming Jay’s outsider standing mount up. What drives Jay ahead, and what drives the viewer’s curiosity in him, just isn’t merely the movie’s plot, however the truth that he’s in an authentically tragic quandary. 

One of many movie’s strengths is that particulars of Jay’s obsession which could in one other context really feel uncomfortable – the way in which he follows Lily to a swimming pool, or maintains her bed room, unchanged and unclean, for 9 years, risking his job to proceed seeing her – come over as comprehensible. His anxious try to win the marine-loving Lily over (a toy octopus he hangs from his rear-view mirror, a guide about eels) border on the heartbreaking. 

Duris, reprising with Senez after their equally intense household drama Our Struggles, delivers a potent, managed efficiency whose self-containment at all times feels threatened by the opportunity of explosion. To this extent, Jay displays the movie itself – its leanness, tautness, and effectivity will, we really feel, be unable to include the messiness of the feelings carrying it alongside, and the result’s tense and really rewarding.