Cannes Private View

Italian director Daniele Luchetti, we are told, chose the title My Brother Is an Only Child in tribute to ’70s singer Rino Gaetano, who wrote and recorded a song by that title. The general texture of Gaetano’s song sounds influenced by John Lennon’s “Mother,” but the title was presumably filched (with the tense changed from past to present) from American writer Jack Douglas’s 1959 bestseller, large portions of which, at a certain point of my life, I could recite from memory. Young Yakuza is Jean-Pierre Limosin’s second film to be presented in the official Selection after Tokyo Eyes (Un Certain Regard, 1998).

Jean-Pierre Limosin concerning his meeting with the Yakuza boss, M. Kumagai:

“He asked me if I would be interested in filming from inside a Yakuza clan. I answered that I thought it was impossible. I mentioned the two Japanese documentary filmmakers who had been stabbed while carrying out an investigation, as well as the director Juzo Itami who had got slashed in the face by a gang after the release of his fictional film which presented a caustic view of the mafia. He insisted, all the same, for me to come see what a Yakuza clan was really like.”

A wayward Japanese youth’s apprenticeship with the Nipponese mafia provides an intriguing premise but little substance in French docu “Young Yakuza.” Like Japan’s other cultural touchstone, the geisha, the Yakuza have found expression in both Japanese and Western movies seeking to reveal arcane practices and strict hierarchy, but have remained veiled in secrecy. Pic observes rather than delves. Due to no fault of the filmmaker, docu loses direction due to an absconding protagonist. Fests may want to take a peek, but a lack of meat will disappoint.

At docu’s beginning, concerned mother Mrs. Watanabe considers a proposal from a friend that she hand over her unemployed, criminally disobedient son, Naoki, to the local yakuza gang boss in order to mold her boy into a more disciplined and useful member of society.

With nothing else to do, 20-year-old acne-faced Naoki agrees to begin a 12-month engagement with the Kumagai clan (or gumi) of Tokyo’s Shinagawa district. Boss of the clan is Mr. Kumagai. With a face like a battered Noh mask, the gang boss explains that circumstances are getting tougher for the yakuza now that, with police encouragement, shopkeepers and businesses are successfully banning gangsters from their premises. Kumagai further laments that recruitment is a problem because discipline is out of fashion with young Japanese and that unpaid servitude is a distinct disincentive.

After a casual job interview with Kumagai-san, Naoki is issued a tracksuit uniform and ordered to get a haircut. Initial indoctrination involves the right procedure on how to prepare and deliver the boss’s tea. Pic tentatively shows glimpses of the tattooed gang members (most spectacularly in the bathhouse scenes) and the full array of mundane duties Naoki is expected to perform — from housework to nightclub security. Months later, at docu’s three-quarter point, having gained the gang leader’s trust, Naoki is given a day off when his (unseen) uncle is ill even though his colleagues are busy offering crowd control backup to Tokyo police during a Shinto festival. In a manifestation of every documaker’s nightmare, Naoki goes missing. Kumagai speaks of his conflicted feelings of betrayal and parental inadequacy, but has no real interest in tracking his missing protege.

Likewise, the helmer turns his attentions to the legal problems of a fully fledged yakuza who has beaten up an ordinary citizen, but as this new protagonist remains off-camera due to his arraignment in jail, the pic never really recovers. Part of the dilemma is inherent in Kumagai-san’s perimeters for involvement in the doc. As he explains, Yakuza are involved in legitimate businesses but also exist in parallel to mainstream Japanese society. There’s a line that separates their “shadow world” from wider society and the gang boss emphatically states he will not allow the film to cross that line. Consequently, though intriguing, docu offers little more than a superficial glimpse of the yakuza realm. Instead, the film relies heavily on exoticism that allows the recording of intriguing images without revealing anything of depth or significance.

Helmer does himself no favors by letting the film run to 99 minutes, as the rudderless narrative brutally exposes the padding. Naoki appears once more at the film’s ending, but the reasons for and his activities during his absence remain unexplained. For a docu, lensing in 35mm is a luxury, but the film’s appearance could easily be mistaken for lower-quality stock. Music by Japanese rappers aims to string sequences together with gangsta street cred, but is ineffectual. Camera (color), Julien Hirsch, Celine Bozon; editor, Tina Baz; music, RGM, Xavier Jamaux; sound, Nobuyuki Kikushi, Masaki Hatsui, Takeshi Ogawa, Francois Musy.

Luchetti’s film may be far from the sort of broad yockfest Douglas specialized in, but, most of the time, it’s still infectiously funny. We first meet our hero, Accio (Vittorio Emanuele Propizio), as an adolescent misfit in seminary school, circa 1960. Giving up on being a priest, he returns to his working-class family in Latina, a small town 40 miles from Rome.

Since his family members are all socialists, the still rebellious Accio has little choice but to become a Fascist, under the tutelage of neighbor Mario (Luca Zingaretti), who still regards the majority of his countrymen as traitors for having turned against Mussolini in 1943. The political dynamic in the household becomes dominated by the friction between Accio and his older brother, Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio).

About 20 minutes in, we leap forward to Accio’s late teens — with the role being taken over by Elio Germano — when the ideological tension becomes inextricably bound up with romantic tension: Accio falls madly in love with Francesca (Diane Fleri), Manrico’s big-city girlfriend. And the conflict becomes further confused by the political upheavals seizing Italy (and most of the rest of the industrialized world) as the decade wears on.

In description, this may sound dreary, but Luchetti directs with a light touch that recalls the Italian comedies that were popular — in the U.S. as well as Europe — during the period it portrays. And, while no one in the cast is the next Mastroianni, Germano brings an edge to his work that allows him to overshadow the more conventionally handsome Scamarcio.

Young Yakuza is also about family dynamics but within a rather different sort of family. Like My Brother Is an Only Child, it’s partly a coming-of-age film, but — in its form, its milieu, and (sad to say) its quality — it couldn’t be more different.

First of all, it’s a documentary (at least allegedly): French director Jean-Pierre Limosin (Novo) somehow got permission to film within the traditionally closed chambers of a Japanese crime organization. He decided to center his film on Naoki Watanabe, an aimless young man whose mother — on the suggestion of a trusted friend — arranges for him to be apprenticed to a mob boss named Kumagai. She hopes that he will learn a few things about respect and responsibility and find his place in the world.

Naoki seems to be happy with his initial duties, cleaning and shopping. But he’s almost expressionless, so it’s not that big a surprise when we learn he’s unhappy enough to simply leave town halfway through the film, not to be seen again until the very end. The director is forced to weave an awkward narrative cloth involving various other members of the Kumagai family.

The notion that the gangsters were willing to be filmed seems so preposterous that I kept looking for signs that Young Yakuza was a scripted mockumentary. But eventually I came to believe Limosin’s claims, simply because, with all the options fiction provides, no one would deliberately construct so dull and meandering a story. That his subjects play their cards close to the vest is to be expected; but one might have hoped he could coax something a bit more revealing, or merely interesting, from them. My Brother Is an Only Child. Directed by Daniele Luchetti. Screenplay by Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, and Daniele Luchetti; based on the novel Il Fasciocomunista by Antonio Pennacchi. With Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio, Diane Fleri, Alba Rohrbacher, Luca Zingaretti, and Vittorio Emanuele Propizio. Opens Friday at Laemmle’s Royal.

Young Yakuza. Directed by Jean-Pierre Limosin. With Naoki Watanabe, Chiyozo Ishii, and Hideyuki Ishii. Opens Friday at the ImaginAsian Theatre, 251 S. Main St., (213) 617-1033, Theimaginasian.com/la.