Koji Fukada's 2010 black comedy, "Kantai (Hospitalité)," about a smiling stranger who wanders into the lives of a middle-class family and wreaks havoc, has a lot of invention and charm, despite the slightly silly conga-line climax. Deserved winner of the Best Picture Award in the Japanese Eyes section of the 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival, it went on to win more accolades at festivals around the world and is now back in Tokyo for screenings at the Auditorium Shibuya theater.
Also showing there, with English subtitles starting July 30, is the even better "Tokyo Ningen Kigeki (Human Comedy in Tokyo)," Fukada's debut feature, which came and went in a blink in 2009.
It is a three-part anthology — a format that is often box-office poison here. And Fukada, who had made only a handful of award-winning shorts, and his cast, mostly members of the Seinendan theater troupe, were unknowns at the time of its release.