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The first moments of Desert of Namibia, the second feature from Japanese writer-director Yôko Yamanaka, instantly declare a new entrant to the canon of indelible mercurial female protagonists. Twenty-one-year-old Kana (played by 24-year-old Yuumi Kawai) ambles loosely down a Tokyo sidewalk, mouth ajar, swinging her bag wide at her sides, surveying the bustle around her, seemingly content. It’s intriguing because it’s so unusual.
“In Japan women are expected to behave and move in a certain way, almost like wearing a uniform,” Yamanaka recently told Vogue through a translator, sporting long, ornate nails bedecked with hologram confetti. “As children, we’re free and don’t care, but as we grow up, go to school, and start working, we start acting in expected ways. I didn’t want Kana to conform to that, and that’s most apparent in how she walks, with sloppy gestures and movements. She behaves outside in ways usually reserved for home. Instead of how Japanese women normally act, I wanted Kana to use her body like a child. Mothers have said she reminds them of their very young children.”
By the time the title cards appear onscreen some 40 minutes later, we’ll have seen her prove an inconsiderate friend, a careless partner, a messy drunk, a listless worker, impulsive, self-absorbed, and reckless—a bit of trouble, in other words, but fascinating and irresistible. She struggles to care for herself properly but surrounds herself with attentive, patient, caring men who do what they can to manage her antics. She’s manic and pixie, perhaps, but far from a dream girl, hurtling toward an uncertain future in a rule-bound, patriarchal society (and bound to be subject to some level of psychological analysis by audiences).
Desert of Namibia proclaims the 28-year-old, Nagano-born Yamanaka as a singular voice among the newest generation of filmmakers. The follow-up to her 2017 coming-of-age drama Amiko—which she dropped out of college to direct while still in her teens, making her the youngest director ever at the Berlinale—the film won the FIPRESCI award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight (where she was the youngest woman winner).
Yamanaka came up with the concept in 2022, galvanized by the #MeToo movement sweeping through Japan’s film industry and the experiences of close friends. “It made me not want to create films based on people’s sacrifices,” she says. “Celebrating those films is not something I want to take part in.”
She also sought to depict her generation’s sense of hopelessness—and the complacency among those even younger. “Those born in Japan after 1995 have had no hope in society since they were born,” Yamanaka asserts. “We’re a generation where the future is getting darker and darker and a sense of stagnation is the norm. But even worse, the younger generation accepts everything and has given up. There’s no despair, they don’t complain, and many don’t even think about fighting against it. I think they could express more confusion and chaos, more unwillingness.”
Thus, the erratic main character is a sort of Holden Caulfield in a bucket hat with a septum piercing. “It’s not like Kana’s trying to be that way, but that’s the only way she can be,” the filmmaker explains. “I felt like showing someone who expresses those negative emotions could have a positive impact.”
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Yamanaka first met her lead when Kawai passed the director a fan letter in 2018 after seeing Amiko in high school; it read, “I will become an actress. Please keep me in mind for your casting someday.” “There are a lot of people who say things like that, but she made a big impression on me,” Yamanaka recalls. A year or two later, she began to see Kawai in minor film roles: “She would even sometimes be a better performer than the main actor. I kept my eye on her.”
With Kawai in mind, she eventually wrote a role with intense ups and downs and often opaque motives. An affection for Maurice Pialat’s complex, enigmatic female protagonists in À Nos Amours (1983) and Loulou (1980) is evident, as are Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye’s kindred spirits. “I love that in Lou Ye’s films the women are very much like Kana,” Yamanaka says. “They’ll say what they want, and to men who piss them off, they’ll express their anger freely.”
In Kana’s case, her inability to communicate is expressed through violence: “It’s a kind of language between the characters.” Domestic physical altercations between Kana and her boyfriend, for instance, are startling before they become mundane—and later, even humorous. “When you first fight with someone, you’re truly upset,” Yamanaka observes. “But repeating the same fight over and over, it starts to feel like role-playing more than the initial anger.”
The first scuffle is filmed with a kinetic handheld camera. “You really feel the fight,” she notes. “But as the fights continue, the camera becomes objective and still. I also wanted to capture how, when you see other people fighting from a distance, it just seems odd, almost funny. And there’s a part of the characters themselves that sees how stupid it is.”
Still, one could argue that’s better than apathy: To Yamanaka, Tokyo is a place of 24/7 convenience that caters to a largely exhausted, zombie-like populace. “Everyone is addicted to their phones,” she notes of the city. “You can access anything on your phone, but it’s almost too much information. It feels toxic. Just giving your brain a break is challenging. No one really relaxes. Even though there are so many young people who should have energy, they always seem tired for some reason.”
Not to mention paralyzed by choice. “Because there’s really anything and everything, you almost can’t tell what you truly want or need or what you should be doing,” she continues. “Though it’s a luxury, it just seems like unhappiness to me.” She describes a common occurrence where workers heading home are so tired that they roam around convenience stores for a spell. “They’re just on autopilot. If they do manage to buy something, even if they don’t need it, that’s fine. But the worst case is if they come out having not bought anything. That’s kind of terrifying.”
It’s better to buy something, do something, feel something than not, according to Yamanaka. Thus reviewers who have judged Kana sternly leave Yamanaka puzzled. “I don’t know what’s so terrible about her,” she says, smiling. “I don’t think anyone lives without making wrong choices. I’m worried about people who repress their feelings, so I find people like Kana almost reassuring. Perhaps people who would call her terrible might have something building up inside them.”
Desert of Namibia opens May 16 at Metrograph in New York and May 21 at Laemmle in Los Angeles before expanding nationally in select markets.
