A Missing Part (Une part manquante)
For nine years, as he drives his cab all around Tokyo, Jay has searched for the daughter he lost touch with when his wife divorced him. Hopeless, he’s about to move back to his French hometown, when his daughter Lily hops into his taxi.
Jay hasn’t seen his daughter Lily for 9 years since getting separated from his wife. Since then he travels the length and breadth of Tokyo in his taxi looking for her. When he is hopelessness about to move back to France Lily hops in his cab. But she doesn’t recognize him.
Reuniting with director Guillaume Senez after their very successful collaboration on 2018’s Our Struggles, Romain Duris gives a wonderfully lived-in performance as Jay, a French man now living in Tokyo and making a living as a driver for a private car service. Through Jay’s encounters with Jessica (Judith Chemla), another French expat, and his conversations with others sympathetic to his plight, Senez’s film gradually reveals the circumstances that have kept him in the country. Like others who share his plight, Jay is subject to a legal system that provides few rights to foreign parents in custody conflicts. As a result of Japan’s “clean break” approach to family law, a parent may be unable to even contact their child after a divorce. After nine painful years, Jay is on the verge of giving up on the possibility he might ever see his daughter Lily again. But then one morning, a new passenger in his car takes his story in another direction.
By grounding the narrative in small details and never resorting to easy sentimentality, even in its most charged moments, Senez imbues his film with great authenticity and humanity. Likewise, the director’s emphasis on the quotidian helps it avoid exoticizing Jay’s experience or perspective as an outsider in Japan. Through these quiet, careful methods, Senez has crafted an unusually thoughtful family story that contains a rare wealth of feeling.
JASON ANDERSON - TIFF