Mujirushi: The Sign of Dreams

Synopsis

Young businessman Kamoda, who owns a small factory making rubber products, decides to cheat on his taxes in order to save money to take his wife on a luxury cruise. After a surprise audit, his business goes under, and soon afterwards his wife walks out on him after winning a luxury cruise ticket in a lottery. After overhearing a conversation between two businessmen, he takes on an order to produce a large number of novelty rubber masks in the likeness of controversial US presidential candidate, Beverly Duncan. When Beverly wins in a landslide following a political scandal, however, the public loses interest, and Kamoda finds himself unable to sell any of the masks, leaving him with substantial debts.

On the verge of suicide, Kamoda and his daughter Kasumi are led by a crow and a mysterious symbol to a building called the "France Research Institute", where they meet the flamboyant Director, a Francophile who claims he can change Kamoda's fate with a daring painting heist at the

Despite Kasumi's reluctance, the two agree to the plan and head to Paris to meet up with a firefighter named Michel and his grandmother, both of whom know the Director through a mutual friend named Kyoko, who raised Michel as a child. While at first distrusting the two due to them not knowing Kyoko, he agrees to help them after Kasumi tells him of their plight.

In Japan, Mizoguchi, an aging detective on the verge of retirement, investigates the Director, believing him to be linked to a number of art smuggling cases over the last 20 years. Having followed Kamoda and Kasumi to the France Research Institute, he notifies Parisian authorities to keep a lookout for them. Meanwhile, a pair of journalists, after seeing a picture of Kamoda's wife spilling wine on a businessman on the luxury cruise, stumble onto a major corruption scandal involving Beverly Duncan, but fear for their lives too much to break the news.

Soon, the plan goes underway, with Kasumi and Michel staging a mock fire drill as a distraction while Kamoda hides the painting. Kasumi is given a vuvuzela, which she will blow as the signal for the mock drill to begin. Michel, believing the plan to be too risky, has his colleagues lock Kasumi in a back room while he attempts to find Kamoda and talk him out of it. When he finds out that the police are searching for the two, however, he changes his mind and triggers the mock fire drill himself, imitating the sound of the vuvuzela. The patrons of the Louvre all open bags that have been provided to them by Kasumi and Michel, each containing one of Kamoda's Beverly Duncan masks, and all don them. Following Kasumi's example, they all begin booing in unison.

With the crowd creating a distraction, Kasumi finds Kamoda, who has lost his nerve and finds himself unable to take the painting. The two of them escape without hiding the painting, although the Director's stone is successfully returned to the Egyptian statue. The Japanese reporters observe footage of the mock drill, and believing it to be an anti-Duncan protest, break news of the scandal to the press. This triggers an international wave of further anti-Duncan protest, and Kamoda's family is saved from financial ruin after his masks become highly sought-after.

Six months later, Kasumi returns to France to meet Michel. Michel tells her a story of Kyoko's relationship with the Director, revealing that the stone was never actually part of the Egyptian statue to begin with, but was placed there at Kyoko's request as a symbol of their relationship.

After retiring, Mizoguchi discovers that the ringleader of the art smuggling cases he was looking for has been arrested by another department, and learns to his shock that it was not the Director. Stunned, he runs to the French Research Institute, only to discover the sign gone, the building abandoned, and the Director nowhere to be found. Defeated, he gives out a cry of "Sheeh!" - the Director's signature catchphrase.

Production