TIFF 2024 Film Review: Cloud
KIYOSHI KUROSAWA’S BANNER YEAR CONTINUES
Meet the new Kiyoshi Kurosawa, same as the old Kiyoshi Kurosawa (complimentary). Cloud continues the director’s scalpel-focused scrutiny of our tech-abetted isolation, this time aiming at the grisly terminus of gig economy malaise. Minor spoilers ahead…
From the moment you meet online opportunist Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud, the parallel to Pulse - the director’s other Internet-era chiller - is apparent: the ubiquity of screens and the digital malaise of modern disconnect seemingly once again personifying technology as consumptive pathogen. But it’s all a ruse. Cloud is likely Kurosawa’s most straightforward film that makes a beeline for the other side of plugged-in terror - an escalation of anonymous petty crimes that bridges the gap between doing damage with a keyboard and the violence of bloody, in-person retribution. Those expecting Kurosawa’s signature contemplative, cursed imagery might be surprised by his humor and his Straw Dogs-esque action chops: Cloud’s final act is a symphony of shoot ‘em up carnage that took me, and the TIFF audience, for a loop in the best way possible.
The thread between Pulse (or really much of Kurosawa’s sinister filmography) and Cloud is drawn by its protagonist: a capable-but-disaffected manual laborer by day, and a ruthless and predatory online racketeer by night. Going by the handle “Ratel,” Ryosuke Yoshii runs a shady resale business that acts as his real bread and butter. As Cloud begins, Yoshii offers pennies on the dollar to a teary, desperate seller for several pallets of a therapy machine. With indignant protests in the rear-view, Yoshii drives off with his haul and posts his plunder online: dead-eyed pleasure flits across his eyes while he stares at his screen, as one-by-one the machines sell out and his numbers tick upward for a gamer-esque dopamine hit. It isn’t enough that he’s lined his pockets in a matter of minutes, Yoshii is always looking for his next score - whether its disused equipment, handbags, or gauche collectibles, there’s nothing out there that he can’t flip.
“Those expecting [Kiyoshi] Kurosawa’s signature contemplative, cursed imagery might be surprised by his humor and his Straw Dogs-esque action chops…”
A day job and a girlfriend (Kotone Furukawa) keep Yoshii tethered to some semblance of reality, but it’s all a means to an end. When his supervisor threatens him with the increased responsibility from a promotion, Yoshii quits. His materialistic girlfriend Akiko is giddy about a change-of-scenery getaway, but the remote locale is nothing more than the new HQ for Yoshii’s resale grift. The first half of Cloud populates its periphery with signature Kurosawa dread, piling up unsavory, faceless victims of Yoshii’s feckless opportunism. But in a pulse-quickening change of pace, petty grievances accumulate to a critical mass of comeuppance that even an unfeeling rogue like Yoshii can’t ignore. It’s here that Kurosawa trades in his signature, blanketing miasma and ineffable pathological violence for something surprisingly tangible: explicable consequence.
There’s really nothing within Kurosawa’s body of work that is convincing of his action chops, but that makes it all the more shocking when Cloud turns on a dime from contemplative, Internet crime drama to bullet-laden pursuit. Before its swerve, not even its funnier-than-usual gags could telegraph Cloud as anything other than a victory lap for Kurosawa’s sublime brand of postmodern, tech-abetted horror, but leave it to a modern master’s third film in a single year to surprise with a never-before-seen skillset. Astonishingly concise and brutal, Kurosawa orchestrates his giant action setpiece with deft kineticism and kill-em-all gunplay: a fitting metaphor for our no-holds-barred arena of detached, online communication. Cloud might be Kurosawa’s strangest and most paradoxical film with its coherent, tonal whiplash, but it’s just as biting as his other excavations of our worst online impulses. At the intersection of modern consumer culture and social isolation through our screens, it’s all too easy to peer into the abyss, and it’s most likely inevitable for us all to one day fall in, hand-in-hand with each other.