Perfect Days
Wim Wenders returns with a poignant character study and a deeply moving, poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.
Radiating charm and embracing all his best work, this unique mix of fiction and ordinary life finds an unusual, poetic angle to guide us: the architectural marvels of some of Tokyo’s public toilets.
Kôji Yakusho, in one of his best performances to date, plays Hirayama, a cleaner of these toilets. (He is named after the protagonist of Yasujiro Ozu’s last film, An Autumn Afternoon — a quiet tribute to the great master of Japanese cinema, an auteur beloved by Wenders.) Hirayama lives alone in a small house full of plants, his days going by according to quiet rhythms that never seem to change.
Through Yakusho/Hirayama, Wenders captures the poetry of the everyday with intimacy and stunning simplicity. — Toronto International Film Festival
