A man walks up to five girls and asks one of them to come with him. Shortly after, the kids find their friend dead. The deceased girl’s mother tells them they are all responsible for her daughter’s death and that they have to pay penance, which she has to approve, in the near future. Fifteen years later, it’s time to see if they have earned forgiveness.
Penance is a Kiyoshi Kurosawa miniseries that consists of five episodes. Each episode follows one of the four girls, with the mother featured in the final episode.
The first episode is one of the best, featuring the charming Yu Aoi, who must pretend to be a doll when her husband goes to sleep. She believes she has married a normal man, but it doesn’t take long before he shows his twisted side. This episode feels like a horror episode. It’s creepy and unsettling.
In the second episode, a teacher saves the children from a crazy man who starts attacking them. Initially, she becomes a hero, but things turn around, and the hero becomes the villain. A teacher who protected her against the evil vice principal suddenly becomes the black sheep of the school after the attack, suggesting that something will happen between these two.
The third episode is the weakest, following a lazy woman who tries to protect her niece from her brother because she suspects he likes little girls. This story didn’t quite work due to how the character is written. I hated this boring and stupid character.
The fourth story is more solid, following the last woman still jealous of her older sister. The older sister got most of their mother’s attention because she was a sick little girl. The youngest sister decides to steal her sister’s husband, and it goes from there. This woman is evil and insane, providing a fresh breath of air.
The fifth episode follows the mother of the deceased girl as she tries to find the person who killed her daughter. However, if you’ve watched many Japanese movies, it’s easy to recognize the killer in the first episode, even from a side view. I knew who he was, but it doesn’t matter since the fifth and final episode reveals who killed the little girl and why. Why, is the most important question.
The fifth episode is also pretty good and intense, mainly because of the actor who is so creepy. Yes, he also played the serial killer in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s movie, Creepy. Teruyuki Kagawa has an interesting face, that’s for sure. He is indeed one of the creepiest men who have ever acted in movies. Just look at his face, for Christ’s sake! He has a face that even a mother can’t love.
However, following the mother is frustrating because she has a big mouth, and you think she will be the boss in this episode, but she ends up running around in high heels and being a coward. She’s tough against little girls and threatens them, but when she decides to try to dance with the devil, she starts trembling and runs away. She isn’t as tough and cold as she pretends to be.
For the most part, the episodes in Penance are pretty good, except for the third episode. The first episode is the best and weirdest, where the protagonist, with the loveliest smile in the world, Yu Aoi, must dress up as a doll because of her controlling husband. You feel sad for her because she seems so innocent, and her mother is an old hag. She doesn’t deserve to live a life like this. That’s also a problem because Penance is pretty evil and unfair regarding her arc.
The same goes for the second episode; the protagonist deserves a different ending than the one she got.
The third episode’s protagonist didn’t interest me since she was unlikable from the start.
In the fourth episode, the woman deserves a different ending, which is irritating. But that might be the point of the series: life is unfair, and even if you have a pure soul, it doesn’t help because God doesn’t exist.
If you like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and his style, you will find his atmosphere and essence in many episodes of Penance. We see how the young, innocent girls turn into women, and some of them could be members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Especially the jealous sister is one rotten seed. Their connection to the deceased girl’s mother doesn’t feel strong, and in the end, the penance storyline doesn’t matter at all since the women are preoccupied with their own lives instead of feeling guilt. They shouldn’t feel guilt since they couldn’t do anything; they were little girls at the time, and the deceased girl agreed to go with the creepy man. So the scene with the mother and the girls is ridiculous when she’s angry at them and blames them for her daughter’s death. What a stupid woman!
The acting is good, but the series has a cheap look. It doesn’t feel like an expensive production. In the last episodes, we are in a police station that looks like a joke. I thought the police detectives were borrowing a car repair shop when they interrogated a person, but it turns out it was the actual police station, undergoing renovation. That scene was embarrassing. The same goes for the other police detective, a bad actor who overreacts without saying any words when trying to steal some scenes, acting like a tough guy. The only thing he manages is to look like a man who wants to have some fun with the woman. He should act in an adult movie for perverts.