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Late on in “Kefi,” one of its central protagonists — the youngest of three sisters — justifies a spontaneous hook-up with a random stranger by claiming that “the flow” of their chance encounter “was really cinematic.”
The same, perhaps, can be said for Kisin Saito’s brazenly confident debut feature as a whole — a genre-fluid kaleidoscope of styles and storylines that frequently skirts the border of incoherence, only to right itself time and again thanks to the filmmaker’s assured command of cinematic aesthetics.
Aliens, dinosaurs, drugs, and cheeseburgers all gatecrash an otherwise grounded drama about shared grief and family reconciliation, in which a trio of siblings return to their childhood home following the death of their estranged father. Premiering in Tokyo’s now-competitive Nippon Cinema Now strand, what emerges is a chaotic, multi-stranded reunion story propelled by dream logic, identity-altering narcotics and an over-indulgence of junk food, that should catch the attention of adventurous genre festivals and ballsy boutique distributors alike, as “Kefi” announces the arrival of a new talent for whom visual bombast and technical bravado are in bountiful supply.
While the premise of three estranged sisters coming together in the wake of their father’s passing might sound unmistakably similar to the set-up of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Our Little Sister,” segments of the perpetually eclectic “Kefi” hew closer in tone and appearance to the auteur’s 1998 post-mortal drama “After Life.” At other times, the film gleefully derails itself with the same anarchic effervescence as Gen Sekiguchi’s dazzling cult favorite “Survive Style 5+.” All this unfolds in a secluded corner of the country renowned for its historic temples and prehistoric fossils, as though the secrets of the past are baked into the very ground beneath the feet of our returning heroines, just begging to be unearthed and reexamined.
Assembled in four chapters, titled Human, Triangle, Punishment and Reunion, “Kefi” opens with a prologue, narrated from beyond the grave. The father of three adult daughters introduces his brood one by one, fondly introducing us to Asumi (Riho Takada), who now lives alone in the family’s ancestral home in Fukui prefecture; her older sister, the free-spirited Kyo (Mari Iriki), who we first see masturbating furiously in her hotel room; and younger sister Kino (Konatsu Kato), who keeps her father up to date with all the family news. Moments after being introduced, Kino announces to her boyfriend that her father is dead.
From here, we follow the lives of these three women over the course of a single day, leading up to their inevitable climactic reunion at their childhood home. Kyo is in cahoots with a pair of extra-terrestrials — identical Caucasian humanoids sporting silver puffer jackets and bowl cut hairdos, played by Russian-born skateboarders and content creators Nikita and Danil — who speak in unison and crave tacky Americana. At their bidding, she uses an experimental drug called Kefi to switch bodies with her sexual partners, in order to observe the male experience first-hand.
Kino arrives in town with doting boyfriend Kai (Tone Kaiya) in tow. While hiking in the woods, Kai sees a poster advertising a service that helps you “Find your true self.” After tracing the same woodland route that Kino used to enjoy with her father, Kai books an appointment and heads to the remote clinic—housed right within the girls’ old family home. It transpires that Asumi is the in-house counselor, offering to help Kai find his purpose. No sooner has he arrived than Asimi’s assistant secretly drugs Kai, and both doctor and patient slip into a shared dream space.
An accomplished and celebrated cinematographer before embarking on his directorial debut, Saito has acknowledged that the inspiration for making “Kefi” stemmed from losing his own father back in 2024, with the film an opportunity for him to process his own feelings of grief. Onscreen, his protagonists go out of their way to avoid actively engaging with their emotions, while the tone flails wildly from the surreal to the romantic. In one particularly curious segment, Saito’s attentions abandon the sisters entirely to follow the exploits of a traditional washi paper-maker (So Takei), which includes documentary-like observations of his archaic profession, as well as a shocking, seemingly unprovoked sexual assault.
Tearing throughout the narrative with a similar lack of overt explanation is Rin (Koto Ishikawa), a crazed young woman we see also interacting with the aliens, before rampaging through the town, screaming at dinosaur models and breaking into houses. Her antics prove just another gleefully surreal anomaly at large in a cinematic exercise where style and substance co-exist, albeit not always in total harmony, accompanied by a diverse score of electro beats from the likes of Alberg, The Bawdies, bzn_trip and more. By the film’s close, Saito somehow manages to land on a moment of authentic sibling interaction that, while not tying up all his disparate narrative threads, still feels honest and satisfying.
Saito writes and directs this wholly singular debut offering, as vibrant and assured as it is baffling and perplexing, elevated by lush cinematography from Sigma Sudo that flits between vivid color schemes and stark monochrome. Sure to spark voracious debate, and no small degree of head-scratching, “Kefi” may well prove polarizing, but Saito has undeniably landed with a bang, and wherever he goes next, all eyes will surely follow.
