The past decade has served up some superb LGBTQ cinema, from “Carol” to “Moonlight” to “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” but filmmakers in Japan are still generally struggling to get it right. Isao Yukisada makes an earnest attempt with “The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese,” a notable addition to the country’s still-small canon of mainstream depictions of gay romance.
The film’s poster entices viewers with an image of stars Tadayoshi Ohkura and Ryo Narita enjoying a moment of quiet intimacy, and the movie features scenes of unaffected domesticity that feel fresh, at least for Japanese cinema. So too does the sight of an actor from the notoriously prudish talent agency Johnny & Associates doing steamy love scenes with members of both sexes.
Yet it’s a frustrating film, and many of the problems seem to originate from its source text: a “boys’ love” manga by Setona Mizushiro that lumbers the movie with more hang-ups than it can handle.