Sweating the Small Stuff

(Edaha no koto, Ryûtarô Ninomiya, Japan 2017, 117 min., DCP)

Blurring the line between fiction and reality, writer-director Ryûtarô Ninomiya casts himself as a character named Ryûtarô Ninomiya. This character, a listless worker at an auto junkyard, wanders through life as a creature of unwelcome habit. He talks about nothing with his co-workers, hangs out at bars after work, and engages in questionable sexual activity with one of the servers. His rare displays of emotion are usually outbursts of buried pain. When he learns that the mother of a friend is suffering from hepatitis C, it opens a window onto loss and a lack of control that Ryûtarô must find his way through.