52-Hertz Whales: a tough yet immersive character drama

3/5 stars

The title of 52-Hertz Whales alludes to a theory upheld by oceanographers that a lone cetacean navigates the seas, conversing at a lower sonic frequency than all other aquatic mammals. Its song has been recorded numerous times, but the creature never spotted, earning it the distinction of “world’s loneliest whale”.

Adapted from Sonoko Machida’s award-winning 2021 novel, the film stars Hana Sugisaki as Kiko, who arrives in a beautiful seaside town near Oita, Japan, hoping to start a new life.

Rumours circulate about why she fled Tokyo, but Kiko is more concerned about a mute, long-haired boy known only as “Bug” (Tori Kuwana), who appears to be living destitute.

She tracks down the boy’s mother (Nanae Nishino), who is working as a waitress and wants nothing to do with the child she claims ruined her life. Kiko takes him in and, through a series of flashbacks, we learn of her own similarly traumatic upbringing.

As one has come to expect from Japanese melodramas of this ilk, Narushima directs with an unhurried, understated hand, positioning the audience as a captive witness, forced to endure relentless scenes of sustained suffering and torment without much levity or respite.

Sugisaki’s diminutive frame and fragile demeanour only accentuate her plight as a perennial victim, but her performance extends beyond mere histrionics and eventually taps into a determined resilience.

Around the halfway mark, the film’s plot becomes unnecessarily complicated by a curveball revelation that adds little to the already weighty drama and is never satisfactorily resolved.

Despite its hot-button nature, Narushima might have done well to exorcise it from his film entirely, as it only serves to detract from what is otherwise a tough yet genuinely immersive character drama.