Twenty-four years after his landmark Pulse (which spawned one of the worst American remakes in movie history), Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa once again plumbs technology’s dissociative effects.
He’s also exploring the calamity that follows—with Cloud, a swirl of horror, comedy, action, and social-commentary drama that amalgamates his prior works and yet is also like nothing else in recent memory. Kurosawa’s keen eye and mastery of atmosphere and pacing are key to this unique import, which hits theaters July 18.
Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is a reseller of merchandise that he buys at a mercenary discount and then peddles at a profitable marked-up price. He’s not the sole one in Tokyo practicing this trade, but as he demonstrates during an opening deal for medical devices with a retailer who’s none too pleased with his tactics, he’s a success thanks to his reliance on “impulse and instinct.”
It only takes a few glimpses of his unsympathetic, expressionless countenance to glean that Yoshii simply cares about himself, and in a prolonged close-up of the young man staring at his computer screen from an apartment-wide distance—his eyes glued to his sales page, even at a remove—it’s clear that the bottom line is all that matters to him.
The fact that Yoshii merely musters a relieved sigh when his products start selling indicates that he’s not easily satisfied, and his reserved if palpable hunger for more is echoed by his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), whose doting affection is offset by her admission that she wishes Yoshii would make enough money to allow her to quit her job so she could spend to her heart’s content.
For a respectable and reliable 9-to-5 gig, Yoshii toils at a factory, and his boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) believes he’s cut out to be a manager because he’s “resilient and dedicated.” The wheeler-dealer disagrees, promptly quits his gig, and convinces Akiko to relocate with him to a roomier, more remote house near the mountains where he can expand his reselling operation and, hopefully, provide them with the life they covet.
Before that move, Yoshii meets up with reselling colleague Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), who invites him to partner on an online auction platform that will allow them to transition to the legitimate side of the business. Muraoka is promptly rejected, but Kurosawa doesn’t unduly italicize Yoshii’s casual callousness and selfishness; instead, he matter-of-factly trails the character as he nonchalantly burns bridges and sets up shop in his new digs.
There, he’s aided in his enterprise by Sano (Daiken Okudaira), a local kid who’s done little since attending college in Tokyo and who’s eager to prove himself to his employer. Still, Yoshii is far from a benevolent mentor, brusquely explaining how his venture works—and claiming, unpersuasively, that all his goods are the real deal rather than counterfeits—and forbidding Sano from ever using his computer.
In its early going, Cloud suggests tension subtly, such as with a shot of Yoshii’s helmeted head vibrating as he rides his motorcycle. It’s not until he and Akika have settled in their house that things take a more overtly menacing turn, beginning with Yoshii suspecting—while awake at night checking his computer—that a prowler is outside his office, after which Kurosawa delivers a fantastic jolt courtesy of a mysterious mechanical object hurled through a bedroom window.
That superlative moment doesn’t just rattle the nerves; it alters the film’s mood. So too does Sano’s online discovery, in violation of his boss’ orders, that Yoshii, who goes by the Internet handle Ratel (a ferocious animal), is intensely unpopular with his customers.
Blissfully unaware that he’s rankling a horde of disgruntled strangers, Yoshii continues plying his trade, and when he learns that the police have been notified that he might be hawking knockoffs, he starts commuting back to Tokyo to swindle vendors and competitors out of their prized stock.
So hard-hearted is Yoshii that he barely notices Akika’s growing dissatisfaction (she even comes on to Sano, to no avail). Upon realizing that his assistant has been on his computer, he coldly hands him his severance pay. Such chilly ruthlessness soon drenches Yoshii in a decidedly unflattering light, and Kurosawa’s vacillation between master shots that frame him amidst shelves, desks, and cardboard boxes (conveying his detachment) and tight close-ups (which capture his blank indifference) cast him as a man corrupted and consumed by capitalistic ambition.
(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)
Cloud is a portrait of merciless 21st-century commerce and social cruelty that’s filtered through various genre lenses. Yoshii’s behavior is both modestly monstrous and comical, and Kurosawa laces the first half of his tale with enough thriller elements to keep things unnervingly unstable. The director’s off-kilter approach makes every small look, gesture, and encounter resonate as potentially explosive.
He continues to surprise with the revelation that some of Yoshii’s peeved clients have banded together to unearth Yoshii’s real identity, doxx him, and exact bloody revenge for his sales misdeeds. This ragtag group is comprised of familiar faces, led by none other than Takimoto, who’s eager to get payback for the multiple slights he’s suffered at Yoshii’s hands. What ensues is a prolonged shootout at an abandoned warehouse (resembling the one from the beginning of RoboCop) that compels the reseller to confront his major and minor sins as well as forces him to decide whether he’s as vicious in-person as he is behind a computer screen.
Kurosawa segues between modes with such little fanfare that the proceedings startle unassumingly; at multiple points, it takes a few seconds to recalibrate one’s bearings. Suda’s deadpan performance is part and parcel of the material’s understated cunning, and the director’s violence packs a punch largely because it’s presented with such no-nonsense bluntness.
The film is attached throughout to Yoshii and yet its empathy for him is muted at best (and non-existent at worst), augmenting the proceedings’ unsettling air of disconnection and, additionally, its stinging critique of a contemporary consumerist culture that ruins those on both sides of every transaction.
In its closing scene, Cloud takes one more drastic left-turn, this time into biblical allegory. If the effect is amusingly whiplash-inducing, it’s also further evidence of its maker’s unparalleled versatility.
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