The ghosts of the past haunt a young man until he talks with someone from back then…
On Raglan Road of an autumn day I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, and I passed along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
In the viewing of My Pretend Girlfriend, I am reminded of the song Raglan Road by Irish singer Luke Kelly. The song, based on a poem by Patrick Kavanagh, tells the singer’s entanglement with a girl of incredible beauty. He knows that this relationship will hurt him but he pursues it anyway, thinking that it would be worth it. After giving of himself and having her blossoming in part to his encouragement, she and he break up. He goes on and so does she, with the singer having learned from the experience. In the same way, this is how I feel the character at the centre of the film evolves at the end of his tale. Noboru Aihara (Osamu Mukai) is a first time author who comes back to his hometown to give a talk to the students of his old school. While there, he runs into an old school friend whom he had a secret crush on, Tetsuko Kambayashi, who is with one of her two children, Sakura. While chatting to her, they reminisce about the time when they met together in school. Aihara (Taro Takeuchi) is friends with Shun Miyazaki (Asuka Kudo) and learns he’s in a relationship with Kambayashi (Anna Ishibashi), one of the most pretty girls in school. Aihara is a bit in love with Kambayashi so he’s a bit shocked that Shun is also seeing Hikaru Momose (Akari Hayami) at the same time. Momose knows about Shun and Tetsuko but doesn’t care. Kambayashi, however, is in the dark. To keep her from getting suspicious, Shun concocts a plan to have Hikaru and Noboru pretend to date in front of the whole school. For Hikaru , this is just a task to do for her boyfriend but for Noboru who is loyal to Miyazaki since childhood, it’s a prospect he does not relish. Soon, they are parading out in front of the whole school and the strain on Momose starts to show as she realises she’s fighting a losing battle to keep Shun. As for Aihara, he begins to notice he’s falling slowly in love with Momose.
What’s brilliant about Saiji Yakumo’s film is that nobody’s a villain once you get past their initial presentation. Shun seems to be a monster, trying to have two girls at once while playing off his friend’s loyalty, and certainly he doesn’t do himself any favours by that perfected smirk actor Asuka Kudo uses whenever talking to Takeuchi’s Noboru. So what if people are being hurt, so long as it’s not out in the open? Later scenes in the film powerfully hammer home the shattering of this illusion. Shun’s playing cards with people’s lives and it won’t end well. One of his cards is that Hikaru is so in love with him that she can’t see daylight. When first she meets Noboru, she is utterly dismissive of him and can’t wait to “dump” him so she can get back to being with Shun. She’s a smart, bright girl who is incredibly loving and respectful to others, even to Noboru after a fashion. But the longer she’s away from Shun, the harder it becomes for her to live the lie that things will continue on as before. It’s almost as if being with Shun for this long has covered over the real Momose. Being with Noboru is chipping away at the new paint job. As for Tetsuko, she is a sweet innocent girl who loves her boyfriend and wants to be friends with Noboru and Momose. Ishibashi’s performance adds something to proceedings but her version of Tetsuko is not the one we should pay attention to. Finally, Noboru, who talks of leveling up like an RPG character and being a stronger person, is given life in a very delicate and nuanced performance by Takeuchi. He could have turned down Shun. At first painfully shy, he slowly develops into a more resilient person by the pain he receives and is forced to give out. Takeuchi has a series of arcs within the actual performance where his character organically learns what the truth is being given to him by either Hikaru or Shun. There are moments in the film where you see the pain in his eyes and in his voice when he feels powerless to help. It’s not only love but basic respect that he ends up fighting for. He just needs the right person to show him the way.
About midway through the film, when the older Noboru is talking with the older Kambayashi, it suddenly becomes clear that there was a moment when Noboru stopped being interested in his crush and started seeing the girl in front of him. When we learn this in the scenes from the past, it also happens in the present day as the director works to show that any ideas we had that Noboru was going to blurt out his unrequited love for Kambayashi is false and were a deliberate feint by director Yakumo and writer Kyoko Inukai. After seeing a lot of bland Japanese romantic films go through the motions, it’s great to see a film where the machinery keeps turning in the background working at building, destroying and rebuilding motivations and goals. The stress of keeping a lie going in his heart and the pressure of doing what his friend asked of him culminates in a scene where after leaving Shun and Tetsuko at a bus stop, the two pretend boyfriend and girlfriend see what the other has been hiding. I’m a big fan of the John Ford/Frank Capra school of funny coincidences where the main character has a chance conversation with someone unrelated to the story’s focus and inadvertently gives the main character the ability to spin off wildly in a direction they could not have foreseen. After seeing Momose in tears and being unable to chase after her, Noboru comes across Shinji Tanabe (Hiromi), his close classmate whose simple outlook on life is where the final, heartbreaking act of the film gets its impetus. By bringing Noboru into the equation originally, Shun and Momose thought they could extend or sustain their relationship. But he is the one thing they don’t count on: an honest broker. Momose only has eyes for Shun and Shun only has eyes for his own goals. Noboru is in love with Momose but knows she’ll never be his. The most loyal thing he can do now is help his old friend see the truth of why he’s this heartless and help the girl he loved be free to be the person she should be. By the end of his journey, Noboru has no time for regrets of what he could have said or done. Now, you might think I’m spoiling things but I swear to you, the revelation at the end of the older Noboru’s conversation with Kambayashi takes you by surprise.
The film itself takes time revealing the intentions of the story, never rushing through it. It’s a story set in the past but that the people in the present are only now getting to understand why they were doing what they were doing. As the film comes to its crescendo, I found myself laughing with Noboru is to the absurdity of carrying around all those teenage hangups. Sure, they help form who we are and who we’ll be become. That doesn’t mean they’ll always define us so we shouldn’t let them take over our present. Even if they were very important in the past.
I feel that Noboru was hurt by the ending of the relationship with Momose and not knowing if he ever would have had a chance with Kambayashi. By relating the tale to Tetsuko, he learns the truth about himself in a way that the viewer discovers it at the same time. He might have had a slight crush on Tetsuko but he loved Momose. Only by getting to know her did he fall in love with her. This truth illustrates the dangers within social structures that what we see is not always what we think to be the truth. The final scene where Noboru realises he’s been carrying around a guilt that he didn’t do more which he never needed to is where he loses Momose for the final time and finds himself. The final verse of Raglan Road serves me well in this. I hope it does for you when you see this amazingly tender and uplifting film.
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had loved not as I should a creature made of clay –
When the angel woos the play he’d lose his wings at the dawn of day.
