天然☆生活
Being Natural
Tennen Seikatsu is a film by Tadashi Nagayama from 2019.
The story takes place in the present days in a tranquil rural village in Japan.
The main character is Taka, a good-natured, unemployed bachelor. He is allowed to live in his cousin's parents' house because he has cared for his cousin's father until death. A family from Tokyo, who moved to the countryside for bio-ecological reasons, is keen on this traditional Japanese house (Kayabuki).
Title: Being Natural
Original title: 天然☆生活 Tennen Seikatsu
Published: 2019
Länge: 96 (89) minutes
Staff
Director: Tadashi Nagayama
Skript: Tadashi Nagayama, Yuriko Suzuki
Music: Eriya Ishikawa
Cast
Yota Kawase: Taka
Kanji Tsuda: Keigo (father)
Natsuki Mieda: Saotomi (mother)
Tadahiro Tsuru: Sho (Taka's buddy)
Shoichiro Tanigawa: Mitsuaki (Taka's cousin)
Kazua Akieda: Itsumi (daughter)
The film begins nice and idyllic in a small Japanese village in the mountains. Taka cares for his quirky uncle until death. His cousin Mitsu runs a fish pond. There Taka and his buddy Sho, both a bit simple-minded, can work and have fun in life. Taka is even allowed to stay in Mitsu's parents' house. However, a family from Tokyo is keen on this house. They want to open a "Welcome Home" café there.
In this pleasant idyll with the small problems of everyday life a disaster develops. The film flips over completely and can only be enjoyed if 7 minutes are cut out.
The lighting effects at the end of the story are supposed to allude to the radioactive contamination by Fukushima.
The film's English title is "Being Natural". Tennen (天然) is also the abbreviation of tennen-boke (天然惚け), i.e. congenital boobiness. This can be related to the main character Taka. Tennen Seikatsu is then "The Life of a Booby", which would be an excellent title for this tragedy.