Film
Complicity
A quietly tense character study about a Chinese migrant living illegally in Japan, taking a job at a soba restaurant despite knowing nothing about the craft. It's a film about performance, shame, and the small daily deceptions we tell to survive. Slow-burn, observational, with a moral weight that accumulates rather than explodes.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you are drawn to quiet character studies where a stranger's precarious lie becomes a lesson in patience, and where the rhythm of kitchen work carries as much weight as the plot.
Skip it if you need brisk momentum or a clear plot engine, since this runs close to two hours and lets its tension simmer rather than boil over.
What it asks of you: Settle in for almost two hours of unhurried observation, where scenes linger on routine and silence more than on dialogue or big set pieces.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Shoplifters2018
A Japanese family survives through petty crime and fraud, held together by mutual complicity. Like Complicity, it explores how ordinary people rationalize small betrayals and what binds them to each other across those compromises.
But Deliberately paced and unglamorous. The emotional payoff is quiet and ambiguous rather than cathartic or clear-cut.
La Haine1995
Follows three men in the Paris banlieue navigating surveillance, prejudice, and the constant threat of discovery. Both films capture the exhausting hypervigilance of being unwanted in your own daily life.
But Shot in black-and-white and very much of its era. The dialogue is rapid and sometimes hard to follow, even with subtitles.
Minari2021
A Korean family chasing the American dream while grappling with illegality, language barriers, and the gap between survival and belonging. It shares Complicity's empathy for people caught between countries and identities.
But Some find the tonal shifts between comedy and heartbreak jarring. The ending is gentle rather than dramatically conclusive.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Complicity
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Arrival2016
Both examine language not as communication but as a tool for managing identity and bending reality around ourselves.
A linguist learns an alien language that fundamentally rewires how humans perceive time and choice. The connection: both are about what language lets us hide from others and from ourselves—how it enables survival through altered perception.
But Science-fiction framework might seem tonal whiplash after the kitchen-sink intimacy of Complicity. The third act becomes abstract in ways some find overly sentimental.
More like this (8)
The Eel1997
A man released from prison enters a small community with a secret past. Koreeda's film, like Complicity, treats shame and social performance with profound gentleness and observes how people quietly hide.
But Very long and methodical. It asks patience rather than offering immediate engagement or plot momentum.
Still Walking2008
A family gathers and old resentments surface beneath politeness. Both examine how people perform normalcy and maintain fictions to keep fragile relationships from cracking.
But Dialogue-heavy and contemplative. Nothing dramatic happens. It's about the weight of what remains unspoken.
Harakiri1962
A masterpiece about honor, desperation, and the violence hidden within social systems. Like Complicity, it examines how structures force people into impossible positions and complicity as survival.
But Extremely bleak and deliberately painful. The final thirty minutes are genuinely hard to watch. Requires emotional fortitude.
Monsoon2020
A British-Pakistani man returns to Ho Chi Minh City to scatter his lover's ashes, drifting through the city as an outsider. Both films use location and work as meditations on displacement and concealment.
But Very sparse and atmospheric. Some will find the pacing glacial. The film refuses to provide clear emotional resolution.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring2003
A Buddhist monk and his apprentice live on a floating temple, bound by routine and unspoken guilt. Shares Complicity's interest in how labor, habit, and silence structure moral compromise.
But Highly abstract and symbolic. If you want narrative clarity or character backstory, you'll leave frustrated.
The Salesman2016
After an assault, a couple navigates shame, performance, and the stories they tell themselves. Like Complicity, it tracks how moral compromises compound and how we justify what we've done.
But Deliberately uncomfortable. Some sequences are hard to sit with. The film offers no easy answers or catharsis.
Branded2012
Where Complicity is interior and quiet about performance and false identity, Branded is exterior and hallucinatory—the same moral sickness externalized into grotesque spectacle.
A Russian advertising executive suffers a psychological break and begins to see all of reality as marketing and performance. It's trash and ambitious and visually wild—a fever dream about the mechanics of deception.
But Aggressively style-over-substance. The visual effects are deliberately garish. Many will find it pretentious and unwatchable rather than interesting.
An Elephant Sitting Still2018
Both track how ordinary people become trapped by small compromises that congeal into moral catastrophe. Both refuse to let the camera look away from what we'd rather not see.
Four people circle each other in industrial northern China across 246 minutes of relentless, astonishing cinema. It's a slow accumulation of humiliation, complicity, and the way systems crush individuals. Extraordinary and punishing.
But Nearly four hours. Black-and-white. Miserable. No comedy or relief. A film that respects the viewer's intelligence to a degree that can feel sadistic. Requires real commitment.
People
Cast
Lü YulaiChen Liang
Tatsuya FujiFather
Directing
- Kei ChikauraDirector
Writing
- Kei ChikauraScreenplay
Production
- Hu WeiProducer
- Kei ChikauraProducer