The sound of the crowd leads to an indie gem

Josee, The Tiger and The Fish

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)
Director: Isshin Inudo
Running time: 116 minutes
Language: Japanese
Currently showing

Why does one small indie film pack theaters week after week, while others with similar themes play to no one and vanish without a trace? There is no sure-fire formula for success, but there is a kind of alchemy. The philosophers' stone that transforms base metal into box-office gold is often not just talent, as important as that is, but a knack for knowing what the audience wants -- and giving it a bit more.

This week's example is "Josee to Tora to Sakanatachi (Josee, The Tiger and The Fish)," Isshin Inudo's romantic drama about an ordinary college boy who falls for an extraordinary girl with cerebral palsy. Since opening Dec. 13 at Cinema Quinto in Shibuya it has become a box-office sensation, scoring a whopping 9.4 million yen screen average in its third week on release. (By comparison the latest Godzilla film, which opened the same weekend, recorded 3 million yen.)

Heroes who triumph over physical disabilities and social prejudice have become a staple of Japanese films, TV dramas and best-selling memoirs -- most of which preach uplift and jerk tears as predictably as the waves lap at Kamakura.