s Wim Wenders back? If he is, I’m not sure it’s such a good thing. the tenth film by the German director to compete at Cannes, is a working-class yarn about the pleasantly banal routines of a toilet cleaner named Hirayama (Yakusho Koji), a beguiling loner with a beautiful soul who is harbouring a trauma that is never fully articulated by the film. Sound familiar? Hirayama is a throwback Wenders Man, resembling, most flatteringly, the characters played by Rüdiger Vogler in the director’s breakout films (1974), (1975), and (1976), and Harry Dean Stanton’s Travis in (1984). The new film’s balance of natural splendour and urban congestion, as well as the long drives scored by a jukebox of American hits from the ’60s and ’70s, is classic Wenders
