Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days is a film about a Tokyo public toilet cleaner and if the gentle, meditative narrative doesn’t grab you, the toilets almost certainly will. (Trust me. They’re incredible.)

It stars Koji Yakusho and, as much as it is set in Tokyo, it is also set on Yakusho’s face, which is so expressive and open that it’s capable of conveying depths of emotion even when in repose. It could be boring, this film, except it’s impossible to get bored of that face. And Wenders knows what he has and rarely strays from it.

It stars Koji Yakusho and, as much as it is set in Tokyo, it is also set on Yakusho’s face

Yakusho plays Hirayama, a middle-aged man who says very little – barely a word for the first 40 minutes. He lets his face do the talking. His life is held together by habit and routine. He rents a small, basic apartment and every day is the same. He wakes in the morning, neatly folds his futon, waters his houseplants, grabs a coffee from the vending machine just outside, drives to work in his van while playing cassettes of rock and pop: Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison and, most pertinently, Lou Reed, hence the film’s title.

Tokyo, it seems, isn’t like London, where needing the bathroom necessitates an epic odyssey of despair to somewhere disgusting. Tokyo takes pride in its toilets. They’ve been designed by well-known architects. One looks like a space ship, another like a fort constructed from driftwood, a third like a giant, squat mushroom. And Hirayama takes pride in them. He sprays and mops and polishes with care, and while you and I would rather be dead than wipe out a urinal, he does not appear dissatisfied by his job in any way. He always breaks for lunch (a sandwich) in a little park where he photographs the sunlight breaking though the tree canopies with an actual camera using actual film. After work, it’s the public bathhouse, the same noodle bar, then reading in bed (Faulkner). He has many books. The next morning, he starts up all over again. These are his perfect days, presumably. As he wants nothing more. 

Happiness, a philosopher once said – although I can’t remember which one – is desiring what you already have. That is Hirayama. He does not desire more. When his useless, garrulous young assistant, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), urges him to sell his cassettes, which are worth good money now, he couldn’t be less interested. Not much happens. Days go by. But as we’re forced to watch him so closely, any break in routine has the dramatic force of a momentous event. When his runaway niece turns up, and then his sister to reclaim her, it carries more dramatic weight than several Marvel set-pieces and Tom Cruise motorbiking off a cliff put together.

But is Hirayama truly happy? I think Wenders believes he is but I did wonder. Is his ritualised behaviour actually all about keeping anxiety and chaos at bay? Witness his dreams, for example, shown in fuzzy black and white: do they indicate some kind of childhood trauma? He is served only ice water wherever he goes, so is he an alcoholic? Has he experienced a marriage breakdown? The shadows that constantly feature: do they represent his repressed emotion?

This is Wim Wenders, not Emmerdale, so nothing is spelled out yet I would have liked more specifics, to have had more of the gaps filled in and to have understood that this character wasn’t simply closed down. But it is compelling and while I felt I should have been bored, I never was. Plus I’m still marvelling at the toilets. There’s one that has transparent walls but when you lock it from the inside, they go opaque. I don’t quite get the point either, but I would travel to Tokyo just to see it.