COMPLICITY is the debut feature of Japanese Director Kei Chikaura, and it creates a thought-provoking depiction of cross-cultural relationships which feels particularly poignant in the current political climate. In many ways COMPLICITY is reminiscent of Chikaura’s previous short film SIGNATURE (2017), which also stars Yulai Lu. Both films follow the fate of a young Chinese man who travels to Japan for the promise of a technical traineeship but becomes an exploited labourer and, eventually, an illegal immigrant. COMPLICITY draws on the themes of Chikaura’s previous work but becomes a much richer tale of hope, shared cultural and human connection.

Yulai Lu gives a fantastic performance as Chen Liang, a boy with the wait of his distant family on his shoulders. He speaks limited Japanese and has nobody to rely on until he takes a job at a rural Soba restaurant and meets an elderly chief, played by Tatsuya Fuji, with whom he strikes an understanding. The film includes touching elements of characterisation; Chen Liang is often clumsy and eager, riding a delivery bike with shaky purpose and blundering his way around the restaurant. The ancient practice of making Soba becomes the technical apprenticeship which he had never received. It gives him a hope of a brighter future back in China and lets him find a place and a family in Japan; he calls his teacher ‘Dad’ or ‘Father’.

The very precise, time-consuming activity of making fresh noodles from scratch sets the tone of the film itself. COMPLICITY is slow and careful; the colours are muted and there is practically no soundtrack. Only one song features in the entire film, and acts as a rousing love-ballad when Chen Liang falls for Hazuki, an artist who wants to travel to China. She literally brings colour into his life by taking him to restaurants, festivals and clubs, and – in a particularly beautiful scene – watching fireworks as they walk home together one night.

Rural culture, cooking and language are important themes in COMPLICITY; they represent connectedness and peace but also, at times, the protagonist’s own sense of isolation. Technology is a similar paradoxical theme, on the one hand demonstrating the distance between Chen Liang and his family and on the other providing a line of connection to those that he loves. Hazuki and Chen Liang send voice messages to each other. Chen Liang virtually attends his grandmother’s funeral over video-call. Having a telephone is how he is accidentally offered the job at the Soba restaurant. At the end of the film, he repeats his real name into his phone, because he is alone, but the implication is that anyone and everyone could be listening. Which is a very meta point on which to end.

COMPLICITY is showing at Glasgow Film Festival again on Friday 1st March (13.25).