Film Review: CAUTION, HAZARDOUS WIFE: THE MOVIE: A Genre-Bending Series Follow-Up That Capably Stands On Its Own [Fantasia 2021]

Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie Review

Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie (2021) ) Film Review from the 25th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, a movie directed by Tôya Satô, starring Haruka Ayase, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Rei Dan, Fumiyo Kohinata, Atsuko Maeda, Minosuke, Naomasa Musaka, and Shirô Sano.

Memory loss, secret agents, corporate and governmental corruption, and a cosplaying subplot? Your move, Jason Bourne.

Tôya Satô’s Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie is an enigmatic genre gem of spycraft, romantic drama, and action-thriller aesthetics, wrapped up in a dense yet digestible package that’s as fun a film to watch as it is a puzzle to solve.

Serving as a follow-up to the 2017 Nippon TV mini-series of the same name (and apparently picking up right where the show left off), Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie sees Haruka Ayase reprising her lead from the series as Kumi, housewife to schoolteacher Yuji (Hidetoshi Nishijima) in the seaside Japanese town of Tamami, where she socializes with the locals on her morning errand runs, learns to cook French cuisine, and plays first-person shooters to pass the time. But underneath her tranquil exterior Kumi is suffering from a bad bout of amnesia, which sows doubt into every fabric of her being. She wants to be happy and satisfied in her married small-town life with Yuji, but she won’t be able to until she smashes through her memory block first.

However, that memory block is also shielding her from a traumatic past – not to mention a whole other identity that she’s unsure she wants any longer.

Kumi’s real name is Nami Isayama, and she’s a deadly field agent who works for the Tokyo Police’s Public Security Bureau. Yuji is actually Yuki, who is Nami’s partner and, coincidentally, her former lover, who was on assignment with her when a botched attack lost her her memory. Through (in)convenient timing Yuki took Nami with him to Tamami, giving them both pseudonyms and new identities while he investigated a money laundering scheme between a methane hydraulics developer (Minosuke) and the town’s mayor (Rei Dan) – a scheme with potentially destructive environmental consequences.

Yuki does his best to juggle his investigative work with unlocking Nami’s memory and trying to mend their relationship. Nami, on the other hand, grows weary of an unknown force from her past that’s slowly encroaching upon her, something which could throw her whole future – and her journey towards recovery – into jeopardy.

The greatest feat of Satô’s film is the sheer amount of story he packs in, and thus the incredible scope that he’s able to pull off. Along with writers Yukiko Manabe and Kazuki Kaneshiro (the latter of whom wrote the entirety of the original mini-series), Satô crafts a compact, complex world of small-town drama, marred romance, psychological turmoil, political intrigue, and international espionage – all of which directly follows the events of its original series but is not dependent on said predecessor for comprehension (much less enjoyment). It makes sense that this is a follow-up to a mini-series, though – and that Satô himself comes from a television background – as Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Move plays like a whole new season expertly packed into two hours.

All these individual pieces and moments come with their appropriate genre signifiers, as well, and yet they never feel at odds with one another. Rather, they convey how Nami, Yuki, and the other inhabitants of Tamami experience complicated emotions in overlap, and part of their mission is the successful compartmentalization of them. In a way, the film is less a ridiculous actioner than it is a tragic drama about conflicted characters at a crossroads.

Some might read the film’s structure as too episodic, especially given its fast pacing and the sort of jumpy progression it takes from scene to scene. But to write off that editing would also discredit its creative utilization when it comes to clever reveals and other duplicitous intentions, which keeps our viewing senses sharpened all the way through. Ayase and Nishijima’s tempered performances add a nice depth to the material, too, shifting back and forth between subdued internal conflicts and a funny sense of action-chic stoicism. Of course, Naomasa Musaka as Igarashi, the sexagenarian environmentalist activist running a grassroots campaign for Tamami mayor, steals his scenes with a fervent (if not outright comical) sense of passion.

In the end, Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie is an exciting genre-bender that both stands well on its own as well as in separate, fascinating pieces. It may not be a miracle, but it’s still a fabulously calculated shot.

Rating: 7/10

Leave your thoughts on this Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more Fantasia International Film Festival news can visit our Fantasia International Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Flipboard.