There are films and series with asexual characters in them, but far fewer interested in the experiential questions about moving through society as asexual and aromantic, and considering that identity on a spectrum. Miki Tanaka‘s debut feature “Silver Express” is one such film: a gentle character study observing the everyday annoyances of an asexual person living amongst people who not only don’t understand her, but insist on her adaptation to a heteronormative lifestyle. “Silver Express” wonders what common language can be found to relay the breadth of that orientation to others — and get those people to relax about setting them up.
A lot of the time, the protagonist Chieri (newcomer Yui Okamoto, in a performance that delicately embodies the character’s uncertainty) is faced with people — no matter how well-meaning — presenting the idea to her that the right relationship will change her aromanticism and asexuality, that there’s just an experience she has missed. Chieri sometimes tunes out of these conversations, keenly listening for a sound that others can’t seem to hear: a train.
Later, she explains that she thinks of the train (the “Silver Express” of the title) as something traveling to a final stop where special “silver lions” reside — her euphemistic term for herself and perhaps other aromantics and asexuals. (“They don’t fit into a pride of ordinary lions,” she says). Euphemism is important in “Silver Express”: Chieri and others often talk around her orientation because there’s a linguistic gap; “asexuality” is itself a term which doesn’t exist in an exact sense in Japanese, having only made its way into common parlance as a loan word in the past 10 to 15 years. (There is a longer and more complex linguistic discussion to be had, by those more qualified, on evolving LGBTQ+ terminology in the country and how this matches up against older concepts.)
While it does consider a sort of struggling common language (or at least, a definitive shorthand) around asexuality, “Silver Express” is for the most part interested in how that hazy definition, or continuing adjustment to a definition, is experienced on a personal level, as the loneliness of moving against the current. Tanaka’s film doesn’t assume that platonic relationships between men and women are a pipe dream — it just so happens that Chieri keeps running into people with “ulterior motives.”
That is, until she meets fellow aromantic (but crucially, not asexual) Shoya, played by Hayato Kurihara. The two hit it off, he doesn’t balk at or laugh at her admission that she doesn’t understand romantic attraction, and casually mentions that he doesn’t get it either. And the film seems warmer again — finally, a relationship with no ulterior motive (perhaps). Either way, they’re close, sometimes even sleeping in each other’s arms. It’s part of the myriad ways the film is interested in different degrees of intimacy and love, such as with Chieri’s friend and one time roommate Yuki — a character who in part acts as a helpful marker of time via her career, marriage and pregnancy, while Chieri mostly seems content carrying on doing what she likes.
The film moves at a casual clip, as conversations and relationships flow quickly across days and locations. The elliptical passage of time across the film’s broader structure also manifests more directly in how Tanaka shapes a scene, sometimes cutting off before the final word spoken.
It’s part of how the film gently embodies, or at least falls in tune with, Chieri’s subjective worldview. To her, romance and courtship isn’t just ambient but invasive, robbing her of friends — both in the sense that men can’t seem to leave things platonic, while women either mock her or shun her in favor of a new date. Tanaka emphasizes this by taking any stylistic romanticism out of the score, which embraces discordance, and cinematography: when Chieri’s friends make her feel unwelcome, harsh, cold lighting underlines that sense. This makes Chieri’s moments of intimacy stand out all the more, as warmth returns in scenes with long-time friend Yuki and new friend Shoya.
That said, part of what makes Tanaka’s exploration work is recognizing that Chieri’s struggle to fit in isn’t entirely predicated on her asexuality and aromanticism: There’s some good old-fashioned social awkwardness at play too. She sometimes acts with outright hostility at the drop of a hat, though there is often good reason for this frustration. For all the subtleties of Okamoto’s performance and the film’s framing thereof, it occasionally resorts to clichés to communicate her closed-off nature — as when a teacher starts lecturing about the very thing on her mind.
But these are minor missteps, considering the language gap around asexuality and aromanticism in Japan. It feels less egregious when a scene features a group of friends sitting around a table, literally attempting to map out the respective sexual orientations of Chieri and Shoyo, trying to understand where they overlap and where they don’t. It’s a credit to the light touch of “Silver Express” that any potential instructiveness rarely feels that way.