Perfect Days

61st New York Film Festival (September 29-October 15, 2023)

Sep 8, 2023

∙ Paid

Wim Wenders’ wispy drama reportedly began life as a short-form advertisement for Japan’s outdoor latrines. And there’s definitely something saleable about the resulting feature version, its smug benevolence peddled as profound. Wenders and his defenders would surely argue that Perfect Days’ outward gentleness masks a roiling undercurrent of pain, much as it does for Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), a rigorously ritualistic Tokyo toilet cleaner.

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