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James Marsh

4/5 stars
Winner of the Fipresci prize at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight programme in 2024, Desert of Namibia serves up a potent cocktail of adolescent malaise and assertive femininity, and proves an eye-catching breakthrough for 28-year-old writer-director Yoko Yamanaka.
Her second feature film, after 2017’s Amiko, chronicles the trials and tribulations of 20-something Kana (Yuumi Kawai) as she searches for meaning in Tokyo’s chaotic urban sprawl.
By turns alluring and infuriating, Kana is a wildly unpredictable force of nature. When not sleepwalking through her job at a hair removal clinic, we observe her as she parties late into the night, drinks to excess and pinballs from one dissatisfying relationship to another.


Within moments of first appearing on screen, Kana receives the news that a former classmate has killed herself with little more than a shrug.
She later violently sees off the unwanted advances of a hostess club recruiter, hooks up with new beau Hayashi (Daichi Kaneko), before eventually making it home, only to throw up on her live-in boyfriend, Honda (Kanichiro Sato).
Somewhat refreshingly, it does not appear to be the young men who are at fault here.
Kana’s erratic behaviour and explosive disposition steer her into a self-destructive cycle of demanding attention, picking fights and ultimately abandoning those she has sucked into her orbit. Of course, the real victim of this pattern of behaviour is Kana herself.

Kawai, a 24-year-old model-turned-actress seen previously in Plan 75 and Just Remembering, is sensational in the emotionally complex yet defiantly impenetrable central role.
Recalling the perturbed heroines of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kotoko, Kana is diminutive and waiflike yet saunters through the city with an eccentric swagger that immediately telegraphs her as an individual defiantly disconnected from the city’s rhythmic thrum.
Over time, we learn that Kana is half-Chinese – a detail that further fractures her sense of self and belonging – and prone to violent outbursts when she feels uneasy.
Yamanaka introduces the notion that Kana’s insecurities and unpredictable behaviour might also be a symptom of an underlying mental health condition, but leaves those details vague.

The film is more concerned with examining a woman’s place in the modern world and the potentially conflicting goals of establishing independence and finding true love.
The result is a fiercely effective character study of a young woman whose determination to define herself is hobbled by a volatile emotional immaturity.
In doing so, Desert of Namibia elevates both Yamanaka and Kawai to an international stage that is all too eager to champion courageous female voices like theirs.
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Yuumi Kawai plays an explosive young woman in this film directed by Yoko Yamanaka that looks at independence and assertive femininity


Yuumi Kawai plays an explosive young woman in this film directed by Yoko Yamanaka that looks at independence and assertive femininity.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Yuumi Kawai plays an explosive young woman in this film directed by Yoko Yamanaka that looks at independence and assertive femininity

Yuumi Kawai plays an explosive young woman in this film directed by Yoko Yamanaka that looks at independence and assertive femininity