Kuchu Teien (Normal Edition) (Japan Version- English Subtitles) DVD Region 2

Despite maintaining an image of complete openness and trust, the father Takashi (Itao Itsuji), we discover, is skipping work and indulging in wild, illicit sex in love hotels with a number of other women. He has not slept with his wife for five years. She, Eriko (Koizumi Kyoko), is depressed by her dead-end job at a restaurant, not always successfully keeping up a front of the happy smile she has to wear, trying to convince herself that everything is going well. Their children seem to follow in the footsteps of their parents, with the same pretence of honesty while hiding little deceits. The son Ko (Hirota Masahiro) is a reserved loner, wrapped up in his own world, but literally always just around the corner from where his father is conducting his little affairs. When he inadvertently stumbles across one of his father's girlfriends, Mina (Suzuki An), and brings her back home with him to be a private tutor, the only person who is shocked is the father. The daughter Mana also literally and metaphorically follows after her mother. Fascinated by the location of her conception, she brings her boyfriends to the Wild Monkeys love hotel, imagining getting herself pregnant there and allowing herself to be photographed for pornographic magazines.

To say that the situation of the Kyobashis is somewhat incestuous is not to imply that there is any sexual impropriety going on among them, but the fake closeness and hermetic existence that they exist in creates just as unhealthy a relationship. The whole honesty trip is clearly a front to cover a number of serious flaws and insecurities, and they all seem to stem from the upbringing of the mother Eriko. Having had a difficult relationship with her own mother, Eriko starts her own family. Striving for the ideal she never had, she intends to see that her children are brought up in a healthy home. It's as false an ideal as the garden she cultivates at the side of the apartment - a rootless hanging garden on the balcony of an outmoded housing project - and symbolic of her attempt to block out reality. The cracks begin to show, as Eriko suffers a number of bloody hallucinatory episodes that become increasingly disturbing and violent.

The subject of the breakdown of the Japanese family unit is hardly a new idea and Toyoda's depiction of the inevitable collapse of the facade, through a series of bloody and nightmarish cracks in reality, is hardly inspired. Nor are the impressions of unmoored lives depicted through swirling, spinning camera movements. It's inevitable that someone is going to crack - the safe bet is on the mother - and the whole sorry mess is going to be messily uncovered. What is surprising, however, is that the director reaches this point about halfway through the film. Rather than the shock of the various revelations rocking the family's foundations, we discover that they are all perfectly aware of the flaws and lies that they have been feeding each other, but more than happy to go along with the pretence. Getting this out of the way then allows the film to move beyond the example of one specific family and take on deeper resonance and wider application as a critical examination of Japanese society and collective and individual memory. This brings the film to a more ambiguous and intriguing finale.

DVD
Hanging Garden is released in Japan by Pony Canyon. There are two editions of the film available: a Special Edition that includes the film's soundtrack and a Normal Edition. The Normal Edition contains two postcards. The DVD is encoded for Region 2 and is in NTSC format.

A/V
As seems to be common with Japanese DVD releases, the contrast on this edition is quite low, the image grainy and soft, with colors looking rather unnatural and sepia-toned and with textures not being overly detailed or defined. I would suspect that the film was shot on digital video (though it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify, as the medium becomes more and more common), so the perceived flaws in definition, tone, and color could well be down to the manner in which the film was shot. Within those limitations, however, the image is remarkably good. There are no flaws, marks, or scratches and the image remains stable throughout, with no signs of compression artefacts.

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 mixes. Either would be sufficient for the film, which keeps the dialogue focused on the center channel with only discreet sounds filtering through to wider front and surround channels. Dialogue is clear and well placed in the mix, with no noise or distortion evident anywhere. English subtitles are provided in a clear, white font and are optional.

Extras
The only extra feature on the regular edition of Hanging Garden is a Trailer (1:50).

Overall
The subject of the destruction of the family unit under the pressures of modern social values may be a familiar one in modern Japanese Cinema, but there seems to be more to Hanging Garden than meets the eye. There are many other themes and motifs - motherhood, childbirth and pregnancy, shopping malls, love hotels and suburban lifestyles - all of which combine to form an intriguing picture of Japanese society as a hanging garden without any solid foundation. Toyoda's style seems to have evolved greatly - even from his much better known and much-admired 9 Souls - towards a less direct and not so easily definable technique. The results are just as potent and Toyoda remains a director to watch carefully for whatever direction he takes next.

by Noel Megahey - DVD Times