Teki Cometh – first-look review

After a long career as a professor of French literature, Gisuke Watanabe (Nagatsuka Kyozo) is reasonably content to live out his retirement in relative peace. He writes a few magazine articles and occasionally gives guest lectures, but most of his time is dedicated to keeping an orderly house and cooking simple but hearty meals. Some of his old pupils stop by occasionally, helping with maintenance or keeping him company at dinner, but Gisuke leads a fairly solitary life – it’s been that way ever since his wife died some 20 years previous. But at 77, he knows the end is near. Having done the maths on when exactly his retirement fund will run out, he plans to go out on his own terms. His plan is as meticulous as the traditional house in which he lives. But then Gisuke receives a strange email.

The ‘Teki’ of Teki Cometh refers to a mysterious enemy Gisuke is anonymously warned of – it’s also the name of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1998 novel which provided filmmaker Daihachi Yoshida with his source material. Thought by the author to be a very difficult title to adapt for the screen, Yoshida gamely rose to the challenge, shooting in milky black and white to emphasise the austerity of Gisuke’s life as well as the lack of delineation within the film between fantasy and reality. What begins as an observational, austere drama about a lonely man in the twilight of his life slowly unfolds as something stranger and perhaps more sinister.

On the surface Teki Cometh may appear to be a story about the reality of growing old, and perhaps specifically about the fear of doing so alone – how our world is not set up sufficiently to provide care for the elderly, and what happens when that responsibility cannot be fulfilled by family. Yet both the director and author emphasise that Teki Cometh is not so much about dementia, but rather the active choice to indulge in one’s desires, dreams and fantasies, and the relationship we have with our own past as we age – a refreshing outlook for a film with a 77-year-old protagonist. This hinges on Nagatsuka Kyozo’s central performance, which is spellbinding and stoic. He positions Gisuke as charming and upstanding, but as the story progresses and the ‘enemy’ advances, all is not quite what it seems.

Set over a year and mostly within the confines of Gisuke’s traditional suburban home, repetition is key to emphasising the protagonist’s pride in his daily routine. Mouthwatering shots of food – complimented by sharp sound design and sparing use of a cello-heavy score – suggest a particular fussiness about Gisuke, and are all the more impressive for their lack of colour. Drawing inspiration from classic Japanese cinema with an emphasis on static wide shots, there’s a real richness to Gisuke’s environment, and the more time we spend by his side, the more shocking Yoshida’s twists and turns become. With a sly sense of humour and arresting visuals, Teki Cometh is an impressive adaptation and a poignant character study that defies easy definition.