Director: Wim Wenders
Starring: Kōji Yahusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano, Aoi Yamada, Yumi Asō, Sayuri Ishikawa, Tomokazu Miura, Min Tanaka
Certificate: PG
Run Time: 124 mins

Perfect Days is the new film by Wim Wenders, a German-Japanese co-production that’s up for the Best International Feature Film Oscar this year. Set in Tokyo, the film follows Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) who cleans public toilets for a living. We see him following a structured routine each and every day. He listens to 1960/70’s rock and pop on cassettes in his car to work, including the Lou Reed song of the film’s title. He takes a bath at a local swimming pool and he takes a photo of the trees where he sits and eats the same sandwich for his lunch everyday. Even in an extended sequence where his niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano) comes to stay, he still sticks to the same routine.

Perfect Days is a pleasant slice of life film about seeing the beauty in the everyday. Kōji Yakusho is tremendous in the lead role, with his understated wisdom and presence and thoroughly deserving of his Best Actor win at the Cannes Film Festival, where this film premiered last year. 

Hirayama is clearly a very intelligent and cultured individual, who has seemingly chosen a monkish existence. We get hints throughout the film, for example his sister’s disgust at the job he’s doing, clearly thinking he is deserving of a more fruitful life. But Hirayama takes great pride in his work, almost obsessively cleaning the toilets until they are glistening, in contrast to his young co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto) who isn’t bothered, wanting to finish the job quickly and go off with his girlfriend. 

Wenders isn’t concerned with revealing too much and leaving the audience to piece everything together and the film only really comes alive in its second half, once we start to see his routine getting disrupted, allowing us to learn more about Hirayama’s character. 

The score is great too, a motif of the outdated cassettes Hirayama listens to and I appreciated Wenders’ comparison to the cherishing of physical media, in a touching scene where Takashi wants Hirayama to pawn his cassettes for cash. 

I didn’t love Perfect Days but it’s a very pleasant and engaging piece about seeing the beauty in the everyday with a terrific central performance.