The Furthest End Awaits (2014) User Reviews

Female power in a remote Japanese coastal town, strong and powerful like coffee

[Kicino · 7/10 · 1 December 2014]

Was very lucky to see it at the Asian Film Festival and heard the director talk about the production process. Initially I did not realize it was directed by Chiang Hsiu-chiung, a Taiwan female director who also directed the award-winning documentary Let the Wind Carry Me. This movie looks very low budgeted and quite feminist. All main characters were women and children. For the limited male characters, they do not seem to have nice characters.

I also did not realize it is inspired from a true story: a female coffee brewer Yuko decided to go back from Tokyo to her hometown in Ishigawa Noto Peninsula near Kanazawa and continue her small business. The director told us the actual coffee shop was not far away from the one in the movie.

Though the director and the original coffee brewer Yuko only communicated through simple English, they stayed at each other's homes in Japan and Taiwan to know more about each other. No wonder the director said the Japanese media said there are some similarities between the director, Yuko and the main actress Hiromi Nagasaku. In the movie, Hiromi Nagasaku plays the role of Misaki Yoshida, a Tokyo woman who has a strong love for coffee. After her father went missing for seven years, the notary told her that her father is legally dead and she has to inherit his debt and a small boathouse in his hometown.

Separated from her father since she was four, Misaki decided to move back to her home town while waiting for her father to come back since she believes he is still alive. While she is transforming the boathouse into a café, she befriends with two children, Arisa (Hiyori Sakurada) and her younger brother Shota (Kaisei Hotamori) who live nearby and whose single mother Eriko Yamasaki (Nozomi Sasaki) is not always home as she has to work in Kanazawa.

Misaki shows a strong and composed sense of confidence. The whole movie has a sense of comfort and hope though the tempo is a bit slow and the art direction a little pretentious. But the cinematography is beautiful. Perhaps in that rural coastal town whenever you put up your camera the scenery is pretty.

There are not a lot of dialogues but the actors, even children, seem to be conveying lots of emotions. The director does not speak a word of Japanese but the actors are very professional and perceptive, thus able to deliver what she wants. Amazing.

It is quite a feminist movie because it is the female who is stronger in the movie. All of them take the initiative to reorganize their lives, though they have spent/wasted a long time waiting for a man. That, to me, is comforting.

Japan does the chick-flick

[euroGary · 6/10 · 16 November 2014]

Most Japanese films that make it to the West seem to involve lots of tattoo-laden yakuza, buckets of blood and few female characters. But 'The Furthest End Awaits' is quite different - it's a Japanese chick-flick.

When her father, who disappeared in a fishing accident eight years before, is declared legally dead, Misaki inherits his dilapidated boathouse. A popular coffee merchant in Tokyo, she moves her business to the remote community where her father lived. In this she proves herself not much of a businesswoman, as apparently the only other inhabitants of the town are irresponsible single mother Eriko, her two children, her thuggish boyfriend, and the children's teacher. At first resenting her children's fascination with the kindly Misaki, Eriko saves her from a rape attempt (very restrainedly filmed by female Taiwanese director Chiang Hsiu Chiung) and the two become fast friends. For Eriko's children, having to cope with the consequences of their mother's erratic lifestyle, this is very good news.

With its soap operaish plot, two-dimensional characters, small castlist and saccharine storyline of easy redemption (Eriko's sudden blossoming into a responsible mother), this has very much the feel of an American TV movie. As Misaki and Eriko respectively, Hiromi Nagasaku and Nozomi Sasaki (who has a splendid pair of legs) carry the movie competently, with Nagasaku's tomboyish mode of dress, especially, a far cry from the kimono-wearing or schoolgirl-dressing women often featured in Japanese films seen in the West.

Enjoyable

[Gordon-11 · 3 December 2016]

This film tells the story of a young woman who is approached by a lawyer to say that his father has disappeared for eight years, and hence is legally dead. She agrees to pay off the debt that her father owed, and she also inherited a seaside shed, which she converts into a coffee house.

"The Furthest End Awaits" is an engaging film, because the two main characters have both got issues that they could hardly confide in anyone. As trust grows, they help each other heal and grow. There is even a line about post-traumatic growth, which is unusual. It is just a beautiful story. I enjoyed the acting, the story and the scenery. I hope this film will get to be seen by more people.