PERFECT DAYS

HIFF is honored to present two films from German auteur Wim Wenders (PARIS, TEXAS; WINGS OF DESIRE): ANSELM and PERFECT DAYS. In the latter, Wenders Tokyo-based story locates the magnificence in the everyday, casting the incomparable Koji Yakusho (HIFF 2012 Career Achievement Honoree) as the reserved yet good-natured Hirayama, who goes about his very routine hours cleaning public toilets across the city. Interacting on his rounds with a variety of Tokyo denizens whose eccentricities put his gentle nature into even more delightful relief, the middle-aged Hirayama becomes the quiet hero of his own story, doing his menial work without complaint, bemused yet often enchanted at the younger folk orbiting him, and delighted by the natural wonders poking out from the corners of the always changing cityscape. A solitary man living a monastic-like existence, is soon disrupted by someone from his past. PERFECT DAYS vibrates with the heartbeat of a working class enthusiast of music and literature, much like Jim Jarmusch''s bus driver poet in PATTERSON. Yakusho''s character is both taciturn and beguiling accentuated by Wenders''s documentarian eye. The collaboration worked, garnering the famed Japanese actor the Best Actor award at this year''s Cannes Film Festival.