"What is happiness for a chicken?" a recent recruit to a chicken farm wonders, though as she later points out they all meet a grim fate in the end. Yuko (Kokone Sasaki), a timid, quiet woman is much like the chickens she farms though apparently content with her captivity echoing only that it's enough for her that she feels needed by the family who otherwise mistreat her. Actor Ryo Ushimaru's directorial debut Qualia (クオリア) examines the place of women in the contemporary family along with its seething resentments and petty paybacks.
On spotting one hen that's being bullied by the others, Yuko places it in a protective cage and wonders if it will one day be able to return to the others while perhaps aware that it echoes her own circumstances. Having married into the family of her husband, Ryosuke (Kenta Kiguchi), she's become little more than a drudge bullied by her embittered sister-in-law Satomi (Maya Kudamatsu) who walks with a cane after an accident caused by her brother which gives her some additional leverage over him. Perhaps to escape the sense of constraint he feels in his familial relationships, Ryosuke has been having an affair with a woman from a roadstop that buys their eggs, Saiki (Ruka Ishikawa), who has spun a tale about a false pregnancy in an attempt to get him to take their relationship more seriously. When that doesn't quite work, she fetches up and the farm and is mistaken for a job applicant, overjoyed on realising the position comes with room and board. The unsuspecting Yuko is all too eager to accept her, almost browbeaten by Saiki into overriding her internalised compulsion to clear it with Satomi and Ryosuke first.
Yuko is such a people pleaser that even after finding out about Saiki's claims to be carrying her husband's child she welcomes her into their home as if tacitly admitting her inferiority to this other woman who has done what she couldn't do in conceiving a child. Much more direct by nature, Saiki cruelly retorts that becoming a mother is the key part of being a wife while making pointed and barbed remarks that express her desire to elbow Yuko out of the way and take her rightful place at Ryosuke's side. After moving in, she quickly takes over the domestic space by requesting that she be allowed to help with the cooking and cleaning while Yuko takes care of the chickens outside, playing the part of the perfect housewife in an attempt to undercut Yuko's place within the family.
Yet she also seems to feel sorry for Yuko and disapproves of the way Ryosuke treats her with his bullying manner and emotional coolness. Ryosuke had told her that he never loved Yuko and had married her only because his sister told him to, hinting at his feelings of emasculation amid this otherwise matriarchal environment where Satomi effectively rules the roost. The irony is that there are supposedly only female chickens on the farm which is how they ensure none of the eggs they send out are fertilised. If they find out any of the new chicks they take in are male, they get "removed" by conflicted farmhand Taichi (Chikara To) who is a bit of chicken obsessive and finds it hard to square his affection for the birds with this responsibilities as a farmer which mean they'll all be "removed" when they stop laying and therefore lose their purpose.
The same is true for Yuko. Unable to conceive she's now being replaced by a subsequent generation and has lost the will to fight back unable even to say that she objects to any of these new arrangements. Ryosuke, a rooster in the henhouse though one whose masculinity is scrutinised, seems to want a reaction from her but all she can tell him is that she treasures the memory of him proposing to her with all the chickens cheering them on and that she's satisfied just with that one romantic moment. The question remains whether she too will one day find the courage to fly the coop and escape her bullying at the hands of the other women or otherwise discover a way to reassert herself that doesn't leave her at their mercy. In any case, Ushimaru's quirky, surreal dramedy eventually discovers that chickens too can fly if only they're given the chance to do so.
Qualia screened as part of this year's Nippon Connection
Original trailer (English subtitles)
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