SXSW Film

Does Your Soul Have a Cold?

D: Mike Mills

Many Americans' fascinations with Japanese culture and Tokyo in particular stem from the categorical differences between our lives. Acclaimed music-video and Thumbsucker director Mike Mills accentuates those differences in his simple doc, Does Your Soul Have a Cold?, an exposition on the effects of depression in Tokyo and the trusting nature of its inhabitants. Culled from a series of translated interviews with four depressive Tokyoites –Êa young woman who works in a T-shirt factory, a middle-age semitransvestite, a medical-supplies saleswoman, and a computer-programming pack rat – Mills' film traces the recent appearance of Western pharmaceutical companies and new discussions on utsu, the Japanese word for depression, to company-owned "educational" Web sites. Not that the people profiled aren't truly depressed, but as Japanese society becomes increasingly globalized, elements of honor and privacy are slowly dissolving.