ケイコ 目を澄ませて
“逃げ出したい、でも諦めたくない”
あらすじ
嘘がつけず愛想笑いが苦手なケイコは、生まれつきの聴覚障害で、両耳とも聞こえない。再開発が進む下町の一角にあ る小さなボクシングジムで日々鍛錬を重ねる彼女は、プロボクサーとしてリングに立ち続ける。母からは「いつまで続けるつも りなの?」と心配され、言葉にできない想いが心の中に溜まっていく。「一度、お休みしたいです」と書き留めた会長宛ての 手紙を出せずにいたある日、ジムが閉鎖されることを知り、ケイコの心が動き出す――。
“逃げ出したい、でも諦めたくない”
嘘がつけず愛想笑いが苦手なケイコは、生まれつきの聴覚障害で、両耳とも聞こえない。再開発が進む下町の一角にあ る小さなボクシングジムで日々鍛錬を重ねる彼女は、プロボクサーとしてリングに立ち続ける。母からは「いつまで続けるつも りなの?」と心配され、言葉にできない想いが心の中に溜まっていく。「一度、お休みしたいです」と書き留めた会長宛ての 手紙を出せずにいたある日、ジムが閉鎖されることを知り、ケイコの心が動き出す――。
監督: 三宅唱
撮影監督: 月永雄太
制作会社: Comme des Cinémas / Happinet Phantom Studios / Nagoya Broadcasting Network / The Asahi Shimbun / THEFOOL
The deaf young “Keiko” (Yukino Kishii) has been taking comfort from her boxing since she was a child and already has two competitive bouts under her belt. With a constant stream of urban racket surrounding her, she lives in a world of silence where her only sounds are those imaginary ones created within her head. With her next competition looming, she learns that change is coming. Her fiercest critic; long-term supporter and ageing boss of her soon to close down gym (Tomokazu Miura) is suffering from failing health and as he loses his sight she must reconcile that she is to lose that oasis that has sustained and inspired her for so long. “Keiko” is not without her demons, and now facing some profound changes to her established routine, she must try to come to terms with her previous decisions and with how they should (or shouldn’t) shape her future. This is set at a time when COVID was rampant, so her abilities to lip-read are curtailed by the mask-wearing population rendering her even more isolated amidst a community who see no visible impairment and so leap to ill-informed judgements about a woman whose abilities to express herself in the more conventional methods are restricted - and Kishii delivers a really quite poignant performance here. Her characterisation of a woman confident, after a fashion, only in the ring but otherwise cutting a shy and almost reticent figure in the real world is touching - but not sentimentally. You can empathise with the difficulties of her efforts to thrive in a world where her disability sets her apart, but I never felt sorry for her. She has a decency to her that she is loathe to compromise despite her limiting options and her dead-end job as a cleaner is not going to be her future. As she seeks out a new place to train we discover that she is not a woman to be willingly constrained by any sense of “comfort zone” and with some intimate photography throughout, we get a slight sense of being under her skin just as she begins to engagingly get under ours. It’s a slow burn, and it’s an incomplete documentary-style look at this crossroads in her life - but I found that just added to the authenticity as her story continues unfolds before us revealing elements of her tenacity and showcasing societal attitudes that are complicated.
