Whopping temerity abounds in Hideki Takeuchi’s THERMAE ROMAE, an adaptation of Mari Yamazaki’s massively popular eponymous manga series, which is parlayed into a gigantic box-office smash hit, Japan’s second highest-grossing domestic film in 2012.
In this time-travel cock and bull story, an Ancient Roman architect Lucius Modestus (Abe) multiply stumbles upon present world in Japan through magic watery portals which the movie gives no explication whatsoever. Lucius takes his cue from mod cons to improve his design of Roman baths, which is pertinently yoked to the historical process of the Roman Empire under the reign of the peripatetic Emperor Hadrian (Ichimura), not only does Lucius’ copied private bath console the emperor’s loss of Antinous in 130, but his discovery of therapeutic hot springs is able to miraculouslyheal the wounds and dissipate the fatigue of jaded Roman warriors as well, which in turn, secures Antoninus (Shishido)’s standing as Hadrian’s successor, to the chagrin of the obnoxious skirt-chaser Ceionius (Kitamura). It is all thanks to Japanese bathing culture, that human history doesn’t go astray in the wrong hands, temerity, yes, but also innately droll.
Its ostensibly palatial, substantially specious (in a closer look, its CGI work seems pointedly shoddy) Ancient Roman set is recreated and shot in Rome’s Cinecittà studio, and the acting method is in full cothurnus mode while Latin lazily abdicates its throne of the official language to Japanese in a defeating way. Piped up by a smorgasbord of western operas to indicate the intermittent spatio-temporal changeover, actually it is Lucius’ fish-out-of-the-water adventures in the modern world tickle viewer’s funny bones, but the addition of an aspiring manga artist Mami (Ueto) feels slipshod and banal, who basks in limerence over Lucius, for his Greek-statuesque physique mostly, and becomes a proxy of oodles of audience’s Freudian admiration over Hiroshi Abe’s beefcake allure and un-oriental good looks, which induces a wry perversion with the movie’s none-too-subtle innuendo of Lucius’ impotence.
A gleeful if frivolous potboiler mining into Japan’s prevalent kuso culture but freshness starting to run out of steam once the story stuck in a far-fetched groove, THERMAE ROMAE is not without its merits, for instance, the dismay when Lucius painfully realizes the technology of those disparaged “flat-faced clan” has far exceeded his proud empire, strikes home sardonically in its unuttered connotations.
referential entry: Shinobu Yaguchi’s SURVIVAL FAMILY (2016, 7.4/10).
