MOVIE REVIEW : Taking a Trip Down Osaka’s ‘Dream Street’

Imagine John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” transposed to Osaka, and you’ll have a rough idea of the lusty and poignant “Dream Street” (at the Little Tokyo Cinemas). The thoroughfare of the film’s title is one of those quaint and colorful narrow shopping lanes that you come upon unexpectedly in every major Japanese city. Yumemi Street, in fact, brings to mind the inviting and tranquil Shibamata area of Tokyo in which Tora-san supposedly resides, but this Osaka district is anything but benign.

The world in which director Azumi Morikawa takes us into is harsh and full of surprises. The merchants of “Dream Street” are hardy, feisty combatants in the daily struggle for survival and are far from reluctant to use whatever means necessary to get an edge on their neighbors. Someone--never identified--even goes so far as to hire some thugs to beat up an elderly widow (the veteran Nobuko Otowa in a richly detailed portrayal) and wreck her tiny cigar store because she’s supposedly standing in the way of a neighborhood development. Yumemi Street parents, soured by a lifetime of grueling, meagerly rewarded effort, find their disillusioned offspring drifting into delinquency and crime.

Yet “Dream Street,” which Masao Kajiura adapted from a book by Teru Miyamoto, is actually more comedy than tragedy, and it is of the hearty, thigh-slapping, knockabout variety, the response of individuals grateful for any comic relief in their hard lives.

For all its scrappy types, Yumemi Street is nevertheless tolerant of those who are different. The film’s central figure and narrator--its dreamer--is a young would-be poet, Haruta (Hisahiro Ogura), a short, boyish-looking fellow who lives in traditional-style quarters above a Chinese restaurant. Kindly and gentle, he concerns himself, sometimes at risk, in the boisterous lives of his neighbors and becomes emotionally involved when a teen-ager, the demure Mitsuko (Kaho Minami), catches the eye of the burly butcher Ryuichi (Yasuo Daichi), a thug who even has the mark of the yakuza : an elaborate tattoo on his back.

The block-headed Ryuichi runs away with the film. He comes on every bit as fierce as he’s expected to be, a loathsome, violent bully. In a deft about-face, he confesses to Haruta that he’s consumed with love for Mitsuko and ashamed of his image, at which point Haruta realizes that he is in love with Mitsuko himself.

Daichi, a veteran of Juzo Itami’s films, gives us a wonderful, full-bodied comic performance, and Ogura’s reflective Haruta is appropriately perplexed. The butcher is not the only larger-than-life character: Yoshio Harada’s comical Mori is a tall, rangy, rowdy man who is a gifted photographer. He also happens to be a thoroughly uninhibited homosexual.

“Dream Street” (Times-rated Mature) is treacherous material, veering from the sentimental to the rambunctious and touching upon casual cruelty and even tragedy, but Morisaki maneuvers shifts of tone with a steadfast control that allows him to conclude on a graceful, realistic note of self-awareness and acceptance of life on the part of Haruta. This bracing, modest little picture offers the pleasure of the unexpected.

‘DREAM STREET’

A Shochiku presentation. Director Azumi Morisaki. Screenplay Masao Kajiura; from a book by Teru Miyamoto. Camera Noritaka Sakamoto. Music Masaru Sato. With Hisahiro Ogura, Kaho Minami, Yasuo Daichi, Yoshio Harada, Nobuko Otowa. In Japanese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature.