‘A Missing Part’ Review: Tender Drama Showcases a Nuanced Performance From Romain Duris
It’s possible that the issue at the heart of “A Missing Part” will resolve itself in a few years. Japan, currently the only country in the G7 which doesn’t recognize the legal concept of joint child custody, is finally set to modernize in 2026, ending a situation where any contested divorce can result in one party legally blocked from seeing their children until they turn 18. This is the situation in which Frenchman Jay (Roman Duris) finds himself in Guillaume Senez’s third feature. Jay’s Japanese ex has fled to Tokyo with their daughter, who was three years old at the time of the break-up, and is now 12 when the story commences. Jay is working for a private car service when, by coincidence, he’s hired to drive his daughter to school.
Senez and Jean Denizot’s subtle screenplay doesn’t presume familiarity with the legal issues at play here, or with Jay’s family history. Nor do they resort to an expository info-dump of facts with which the main characters are likely familiar. At its best, the storytelling here is highly skilled, gradually peeling back the layers to give a lived-in feel to the slow-motion car crash that has derailed Jay’s life. A secondary character, Jessica (Judith Chemla), a French expat in a similar situation, sometimes functions as a way for the international audience to discover the niceties of the Japanese custody system at the same time as she does, but at her most interesting, Jessica is a character in her own right, the furious counterpart to Jay’s closed-off resignation. She could be him nine years ago, before being worn down by the system.
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And what a system it is. Jessica is plausibly incredulous and despairing as she’s told that her ex is well within his rights to simply cut her out of her son’s life. The theory, according to Japanese law, is that it’s best for the children to have one home and one parent, and in cases where one of the parents is Japanese and the other isn’t, the foreigner has an uphill struggle on their hands. Duris does a tremendous job in scenes where Jay attempts to help Jessica come to terms with her new reality: Jay’s advice is all based on how he should have behaved and didn’t, and Duris conveys that sense of wisdom hard-earned with naturalism and grace.
The mechanism by which Jay ultimately comes to spend time with his daughter is not, perhaps, all that likely — but hey, that’s the point. In an outlandish coincidence, one of the passengers he picks up as part of his low-key job as a private driver turns out to be Lily, of whom he’s been desperate to get a glimpse for nearly a decade. Once more, these scenes are rich territory for Duris as an actor. Since the girl doesn’t seem to recognize him, he has to play a terrible heart-cracking joy which must remain concealed from his young passenger.
It’s exactly the kind of part actors take on with half an eye on their awards cabinet, but Duris does a decent job of focusing on inhabiting the role rather than showboating during the close-ups. Jay’s predicament is a tough one, but the meeting with Lily and subsequent events give plenty of scope for light and shade, and if the film does gain any awards traction, it’s likely to recognize the performances as the stand-out here. One obstacle may be that as a character, Jay is necessarily fairly passive, at least during the period of his life covered by the film, mostly boxed in by the need to obey the rules.
Still, there’s a painful sense of passion all-but spent, of love almost smothered by despair, in his portrayal of Jay. His performance inspires tremendous compassion for the character, though he also admits vaguely to having behaved very poorly back in France, acting out and allowing anger to drive him. The role of his wife is a minor one, but Yukon Narita plays her as fragile and visibly frightened, which hints at a version of the story where his tenacious pursuit has darker qualities. But this is not that film.
As on-screen barriers to happiness go, manifestly unfair legislation is a pretty good screenwriting choice, giving characters a seriously difficult opponent to wrangle with. The only problem is that unless you’re writing about a landmark case that changed the law, the legislation that obstructs the character is likely to remain defiantly unconquered by the time the credits roll, and that’s inevitably the case here. Still, the screenplay does what it can to find a lighter grace note in its closing minutes, though to any parents contemplating divorce in Japan, it’s the country’s forthcoming legal reforms that will offer the more substantive hope.
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