Welcome to the Quiet Room (Quiet Room ni Yokoso) review

Based on Suzuki Matsuo‘s own award-winning novel, Welcome to the Quiet Room stars former Jpop idol Yuki Uchida as a writer who suddenly finds herself in a psychiatric hospital for a suicide attempt she doesn’t remember. Matsuo directed this film adaptation himself, having previously directed the manic 2004 manga comedy Otakus in Love. Some people may get turned off by the quick shifts between absurd comedy and intense drama, but it’s something Matsuo is obviously adept at; having often worked with the likes of Satoshi Miki, Kankuro Kudo, and Sakichi Sato—all of whom enjoy dabbling in the absurd whenever possible.

The film begins in earnest when Asuka Sakura (Uchida) finds herself restrained in the “quiet room” of a mental health facility, with her last prevailing memory being her attempt to complete an article for a rapidly-approaching deadline and then taking some pills. The first person she meets is the stone-faced Nurse Eguchi (Ryo), who informs her that she was committed by her roommate for attempting suicide. Asuka denies that it was a suicide attempt at all, but in what would be a recurring theme throughout he film Nurse Eguchi doesn’t even bother entertaining her claims. When the easy-going Dr. Matsubara (Hideaki Anno) arrives for her first evaluation, he seems pretty satisfied that she’s healthy enough to be released from the facility early. However, when Asuka attempts to stand up she accidentally pulls him to the ground, knocking him out cold and fracturing a bone as blood begins to pool around his face. “You’re lucky,” the kind-hearted assistant nurse Yamagishi tells her afterward, “Your new doctor takes time to treat people, so don’t worry.” Thus begins Asuka’s extended stay at the women’s secure unit of Joseikai Psychiatric Hospital.

When Asuka’s comedy writer boyfriend Tetsu (Kankuro Kudo) drops in for a visit he attempts to fill her in on the details of how she got there. Apparently he found her passed out in bed surrounded by packets of pills and called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. There’s obviously more to it than that, but instead of being upfront with her he detours into a side-story about how the cops on the scene almost discovered the weed he’d been keeping in a matryoshka doll. Following the story she bluntly asks for him to drop his pants so she can cup his bare ass cheeks in her hands; something that has an odd calming effect on her, and of course Nurse Eguchi walks in at the worst possible moment.

Now released into general population, Asuka meets some of her fellow patients for the first time. While most are outwardly bonkers, she finds a few girls she can relate to. There’s Ms. Kurita (Yuko Nakamura), a recovering O.D. patient who offers the use of her hairbrush, and a thin goth girl named Miki (Yu Aoi) who fills her in on the general goings on in the unit. Both these girls consider themselves sane and are just biding their time until their eventual release from the hospital—making them kindred spirits to the like-minded Asuka. In the midst of a patient’s raging tantrum against Nurse Eguchi, Miki recounts the story of how she was once stabbed in the neck with a pen and almost died but still returned to nursing, thus cementing her reputation with the patients as an iron woman not to be trifled with.

When Asuka is later assigned a room with Kurita, she finds the ultra chatty Nishino (Shinobu Otake) waiting in there for her. Nishino is obviously a bit off, but ingratiates herself with Asuka by offering her some cigarettes—which she puts on a rapidly-increasing running tab, of course. Through their conversation we get a few more pieces to the puzzle of Asuka’s past. She was once a model but got married to a salaryman (Shinya Tsukamoto). During their marriage she would spend her days watching dumb comedy shows on TV and her nights hanging out with her group of idiot friends. She found her husband to be “dull” and never let him hear the end of it, a fact that would eventually lead to their divorce and possibly his subsequent suicide. After that she met Tetsu during a brief stint in the sex trade (she read pornographic novels out loud to paying customers) and quickly moved in with him. It would seem as though they’d be soulmates, considering Tetsu is exactly the type of idiot she gets along with best, but eventually an argument over the ridiculously over-sized shrine he buys for her recently-deceased father leads to her overdose.

Throughout the rest of the film, layers of Asuka’s past are further peeled away through conversations with Tetsu, his twitchy personal assistant Komono (Satoshi Tsumabuki), and an increasingly confrontational Nishino. These conversations clue the viewer in to what the iron woman Nurse Eguchi somehow knew all along—that Asuka, as well as all the other patients in the unit, are there because they belong there.

A brief plot summary probably can’t do justice to some of the funnier elements of the film, simply because most of the humor comes in Matsuo’s love of bizarre tangents such as the matryoshka doll incident or how Asuka’s husband tried desperately to impress her by performing a trick with a beer glass only to severely dislocate his jaw in the process. These brief interludes may seem confusing or out of place but actually serve to keep the film from meandering into the melodramatic pitfalls that are all too common in recent Japanese cinema. Besides, a mental hospital is not exactly the place to wallow in self-pity. This point is driven home in a conversation that leads to what should be a crushing revelation for Asuka—that maybe she’s a downer to the people around her instead of the other way around—but actually becomes a moment of strength. For the first time she’s able to take an honest look at herself and take some personal responsibility, and this allows her to believe that once she leaves the hospital she’ll also be leaving painful elements of her past behind instead of trying to bury them with prescription drugs or, god forbid, penalty game variety shows.

If comedic self-improvement alone doesn’t interest you the cast should. Yuki Uchida holds her own after a long hiatus from films but is further propped up by her supporting players. Yu Aoi is quickly becoming one of the most emotionally-available young actresses in Japan, something that would have been easily-predictable to those that witnessed her minor-but-impactful role in 2001’s Harmful Insect. And Shinobu Otake, a personal favorite of Matsuo, embodies Nishino in such a way that you can’t help but to grow to despise her even if your first inclination, like Asuka’s, is to be amused by her.

The film is certainly not without its flaws, both in its somewhat confusing method of divvying out plot details through various disjointed scenes and in its ending, which I know was meant to be inspirational but probably came off a little mean. Those points are pretty minor though considering how enjoyable and funny the rest of the film is. If you’re in the mood for a quirky comedy/drama that doesn’t get mired in the typical formulaic tripe you could do a lot worse than Welcome to the Quiet Room.

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Availability: Kadokawa Entertainment released Welcome to the Quiet Room on English-subtitled region 2 DVD on March 19, 2008. Check here for full specs.

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