Wang Softens Tanizaki's 'Diary' Into 'Counterintuitively Dull' — SkimNews
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- Wayne Wang directs his first feature since 2019, an adaptation of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's 1961 novel 'Diary of a Mad Old Man,' with first-time screenwriter Kelvin Wyles rewriting the first-person narration to soften the protagonist's selfish lucidity
- Lily Franky plays Utsugi, a retired post-stroke man fixated on daughter-in-law Satsuko; at 62, the actor is meaningfully younger than the character but convincingly performs left-side paralysis without caricature
- Fan Bingbing stars as Satsuko in a casting the reviewer describes as 'something of a coup' that opens 'subtextual frissons in two Japanese-Chinese relationships' and 'allegorical political/national possibilities' the new screenplay never develops
- The film introduces late-stage dementia as an alternative explanation for Utsugi's behavior, placing it in conversation with Yoshida Daihachi's 'Teki Cometh,' Sarah Friedland's 'Familiar Touch,' and Lance Hammer's 'Queen at Sea' rather than Tanizaki's 'cold-blooded black comedy of malignant characters'
- Satsuko is rewritten from the novel's 'fashionably dressed and gleefully exploitative figure' into 'a more rounded character, complete with traumatic backstory conveyed via pensive monologue' — a change the reviewer says does not make her more interesting
- New additions include a subplot in which Utsugi examines paper scraps brought by a crow he nursed back to health, calling them 'precious proof of love' — a fabrication the reviewer finds 'less interesting' than Tanizaki's original egoist
- The reviewer concludes that 'what's been added to the previously lean narrative is turgid rather than transformative,' with Tanizaki's perverse comedy replaced by 'Ozu-lite contemplations of death and long-take crying'
Why it matters: The reviewer identifies Fan Bingbing's casting — a Chinese star in a Japanese-set production — as opening 'allegorical political/national possibilities' the screenplay never develops, a missed angle given the film's Japanese-Chinese relationship dynamics. The late-stage-dementia reframing positions this adaptation alongside a growing cluster of recent elder-care cinema, but the additions read as 'turgid rather than transformative,' leaving Tanizaki's perverse edge stripped away.
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