Soreiyu no komodotachi

For forty years, Mr. Takashima has lived on the Tamagawa estuary in Tokyo. The film embarks with him on boats that he once repaired for a modest sum, a meal or nothing at all when their owners lost interest in them. It sails alongside him unpretentiously on day and nighttime trips in the company of his dogs Jackie and Soleil. Never predatory, the filmmaker records Takashima’s freely chosen drifting, turning the notion of marginality on its head: in Children of Soleil, the noisy capital is relegated to the fringe, far from the kingdom of the clandestine mariner. One day, however, Takashima disappears and Yoichiro Okutani sets out to find him. When the film begins to rely on simple hearsay gleaned from beach vagrants, we start to miss Takashima’s pragmatic and generous intelligence. The deeply moving ending, which interrupts this drifting and comes a standstill in an inlet of stagnant water, clinches the respectful ties that had been forged during the boat trips.