I went into Nana, a 2005 live-action film based on an ultra-popular manga by Ai Yazawa, with expectations of a lightweight, somewhat predictable dramedy, but with plenty of humor and interesting coming-of-age themes.  And I figured any toe-tapping J-pop would be a nice bonus.  What I got, though, was something entirely different…

Granted, I’m not exactly the target audience for Nana, which is about polar-opposite young women who share the same name, meet by accident, become roommates, and then “support” each other through various trials and tribulations.  The latter, of course, are mostly of the romantic variety although all the romance we see pretty much begs the question; it’s the kind of romance in which the couples usually stay in for a nice evening of angst.  The male characters are portrayed variously as no-good cheaters, opportunistic poseurs, or ineffectual wannabes.  One exception to this general rule is the lawyer/musician Yasu, played in mysterious-charismatic mode by Tomomi Maruyama.  Too bad his screen time is minimal at best.

But it’s not the fact that it’s an out-and-out chick-flick that bothers me about Nana.  I went in knowing that this was shojo territory all the way.  Moreover, I’d like to think that I’m capable of not only tolerating but also enjoying pretty much any genre if the filmmaking itself is solid and engaging.  So what’s the polar opposite of “solid and engaging”?  Because whatever it is, that’s what Nana is.  Both the film and the music from it did tremendously well in Japan, so I could see why it’s been selected for a U.S. run (it screened in L.A. in March).  And although I’d like to attribute the poor time I had watching the film to some kind of cultural gap that I’m not able to bridge, honestly my problems with it run far deeper.  Cameras, editing machines, and lighting equipment work the same way in Japan, don’t they?  So do the rules of dramatic tension and pacing.

Clearly there are a lot of good ingredients here, but director Kentaro Otani has put them all through some kind of creativity-shredder so that the whole is less than the sum of its parts.  Way less.  With two POV characters, there’s an opportunity to make the drama richer, flow the storytelling in interesting ways, and so on.  But here the alternating-protagonists approach just feeds the fragmented and uninvolving trickle of a narrative.  Similarly, the two leads show a lot of potential but their acting can’t quite carry the day by itself.  Real-life pop star Mika Nakashima should at least be expected to display some fire and screen presence—and as far as I can tell, she has the talent to do so.  But she’s directed into a moody stupor and the sleep-inducing shot selections, camera movement, cinematography and even production design put the audience into the same state.  In the end, the sorrow evoked by the maudlin professional and personal problems of the two Nanas was exceeded only by the exquisite suffering I endured while watching them unfold.

The one element that might be expected to juice things up, the rock music, is hugely inconsistent although it does generally get better as the movie progresses.  The opening number, its terribly clichéd lyrics sung awkwardly in English, marked a place from which we could only ascend.  The other songs, which mostly occur in the second half of the film, range from tunes that are decently energetic and catchy to horrendously syrupy anthems.