BIFF 2013 #20: 170 Hz (Netherlands 2011)

Michael Muller as Nick and Gaite Jansen as Evy

The title of this feature refers to the only sound frequency that one of the two deaf mute characters who form the central couple in the narrative can hear. I’ve read several reviews which name the precise sound that Nick can hear but I must have missed that. I spotted the moment when Evy remembered a sound she heard once. Clearly sound design has to be dominant in the film and it is quite unsettling to watch and not hear what we expect to hear. And yet, director Joost van Ginkel also strives to offer us rich visuals as well – as if to compensate? The reviews I’ve seen have been mixed, so perhaps some audiences think that he tries too hard. Van Ginkel comes out of shorts and TV and this is his first feature. It may be that he is focused more on sound and image and ideas than on narrative. Evy and Nick are young lovers. Again I’m not sure how some reviewers know the exact ages of the characters, but importantly Evy lives with her parents and her father in particular doesn’t approve of Nick. Nick is much freer. He works in a garage and sleeps in an old bus. He clearly doesn’t have any time for his own father – and there are scenes in which his revulsion is possibly explained. Both families are wealthy and it is summer so life isn’t hard for the lovers. They decide to run away and stay away long enough for Evy to become pregnant. At this point I was reminded of the Bergman film Summer With Monika. But the ‘journey’ that Evy and Nick make is much shorter – their place of refuge turns out to be an old submarine moored in a local inlet (and with buildings overlooking it).

I think van Ginkel is caught between wanting to create a conventional genre piece (and the film certainly plays with genre conventions, especially with Nick as the long-haired biker boy ‘rebel’ in leathers) and wanting to stay within a kind of arthouse fantasy. In the credits he reveals that he has borrowed ideas from both Krzysztof  Kieslowski and Darren Aronofsky. I haven’t been able to work out what these might be but there is certainly a feel or ‘tone’ that the film strives for that might be related to the work of these auteurs. Genres like the youth picture are essentially realist in the sense that the young protagonists have to confront parents or the agents of authority and they must overcome obstacles, ‘learn’ from mistakes, achieve goals etc. In this film the protagonists run away but there is no sense that anyone is coming after them. A sub-plot sees Nick confronted by a trio of young bullies at a water polo game which promises something but is then easily ‘resolved’. Other confrontations appear to be fantasies and there is a danger the audience will lose patience with trying to read the final scenes.

The film certainly looks good. Gaite Jansen is an experienced young actor and she does a great deal with the part. Michael Muller has no other listed credits on IMDB and he plays his role in a deadpan manner most of the time. Nevertheless I thought they made an interesting couple. The main problem with the film is that there isn’t enough narrative meat to get your teeth into, there is no ‘peril’ and no idealism, they seem secure on their submarine and it is only their own adolescent tiffs that propel the last third of the film forward.

BIFF 2013 #19: Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (Canada 2012)

Jade Aspros as Esther and Igor as King Henry

I’ve watched quite a few of the shorts at BIFF this year, but most of them haven’t really caught my imagination. This one did. It has a genuine story – an incident with an outcome and recognisable characters. Esther Weary doesn’t enjoy her birthday, which falls on a schoolday that is also Halloween. She imagines herself being persecuted — and then she is. Her nose is too big according to a dreadful little princess. To her consternation her first period arrives on the same day . When she gets home her family are waiting for her. There’s King Henry the pug and her grandfather (played by the great Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent), who is kind and thoughtful but seemingly isn’t prepared for menstruation. All will be well because Esther isn’t ugly and her family love her. That’s it really, except that the story is told again through an animated pop-up picture book which forms the basis of the credits. It’s 14 mins long and director Stephen Dunn tells the story with real imagination and most of all through images. That’s what I want from a short – a whole story, told with imagination in as short a time as possible. I don’t mind a little sentimentalism thrown in as well if it’s tempered by the dark stuff.  Most of the other shorts I’ve seen in BIFF are either avant-garde formal experiments (fine in their own right but not always a good complement to a feature) or they are good ideas without a story or a story without good ideas.

Here’s the lovely trailer:

BIFF 2013 #5: Me and You (Io e te, Italy 2012)

Olivia (Tea Falco) and Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori)

Here’s a ‘good news’ story. The maker of wonderful films of the 1960s and 1970s returns after an absence of nearly a decade with a modest film that’s very good and one that you’ll want to recommend to people. In the 1980s and 1990s Bertolucci became known for epic films (most of which I confess didn’t go to see) made with Jeremy Thomas and smaller films that were sometimes controversial in their representations of teenage sexuality. Stealing Beauty (1996) comes to mind. At first Me and You looks like it is in line with many of the earlier films – a dysfunctional family and the possibility of ‘socially unacceptable’ sexual relationships. There was a moment when I thought that this was going to be a kind of re-run of La luna from 1979. But although there are shared plot elements, Me and You turns out to be something else.

Lorenzo is a 14 year-old boy living with his mother who has ‘escaped’ into his own company. Challenged by a psychiatrist he claims to be ‘normal’. When a school ski-ing trip is being planned, he decides to tell his mother that he wants to go, but secretly organises his own hideaway week in the basement of their apartment block. All goes well until his older half-sister arrives unexpectedly. I won’t spoil what then happens but you will create your own expectations of a drama played out in a confined space and mainly as a two-hander. Before the screening Festival Director Tom Vincent suggested that Jacopo Olmo Antinori who plays Lorenzo is a star of the future. He is certainly very good in this film, but an important element of his success – and that of the film overall – is that we as the audience contribute to the success of the performances by making our own evaluations and then see them challenged. Tea Falco as Olivia, the half-sister is also very good. This is a ‘slight’ film in some ways, as other festival critics have reported, but it works very well. It’s satisfying to see a great director back on form. The film has been acquired by Artificial Eye for UK distribution and it is scheduled to open next Friday, 19 April. Make a date, you’ll enjoy it.

Turn Me On, Dammit! (Få meg på, for faen, Norway 2011)

from the left: Alma (Helene Bergsholm) and Sara (Malin Bjorhovde) give the finger to the small town’s nameboard, watched rather disapprovingly by Ingrid (Beate Stofring). (Image courtesy New Yorker Fims)

I’m sure I’m not in the target audience for this intriguing little film (76 mins) but I enjoyed it and I’m very happy to support it. It topped the Norwegian chart on its cinema release which is no mean feat for a low-budget picture without much of a plot. But it succeeds because of its central performance and because of the approach of director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen towards what is strangely a rare topic for films – the sexuality (indeed the lust) of teenage girls.

The film is based on a novel by Olaug Nilssen which offers three linked stories about different women in a small Norwegian town. Director Jacobsen chose to focus on just one story – about Alma (Helene Bergsholm), tall blonde and beautiful and still only 15. She lives with her mother in a tiny town in Western Norway, set in beautiful countryside but with virtually nothing for teens to do except get drunk at parties or behind the youth centre. We first meet Alma furiously masturbating to the (rather jolly) chat of Stig the phone sex operator. Her mother is commendably unphased by her daughter’s horniness (but appalled by the phone bill). Alma’s fantasies extend to imagined lovemaking with a classmate, Artur – and potentially with other desirable males. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish what is fantasy and what is reality but Artur appears to do something to Alma that she reports to her friends, the sisters Sara and Ingrid. Before long her story is out and she is ostracised by all the teens in the area. This is the real social issue – growing up in small towns where everyone knows your business. The sub-plot involving Alma’s best friend Sara supports the central theme of representing ‘real’ young women. Her sister Ingrid represents the ‘opposition’ and her older sister now at university also plays an important role (hers was one of the other stories in the novel). Jannicke Systad Jacobsen was careful to create a fictitious small town made up of locations in Western Norway and to cast the roles in the Loachian manner, i.e. young people from the region itself. Both Helene Bergstrom and Malin Bjorhovde were high school students without any acting experience before they took on their roles.

Turn Me On, Dammit! reminds me of the Swedish film Fucking Åmål! (1998) (boringly re-titled Show Me Love in the UK and US). Åmål is a small town in Western Central Sweden and the film explores the romance between two teenage girls who despair at living in ‘fucking Åmål’. The ‘taboo’ in that film was the possibility of teenage lesbian sex, but the real problem was the language of the title. The film however became the biggest film of the year in Sweden. Turn Me On. Dammit! has been very well received in North America, but has only now been scheduled for release in the UK – and only on DVD.

I found the film enjoyable precisely because Helene Bergsholm as Alma seems so ‘normal’ and Jannicke Systad Jacobsen’s approach is very refreshing. The slide from reality into fantasy and the desire to communicate that is frustrated by lack of confidence and experience is something that most audiences are likely to recognise from their own adolescent fumblings. It’s really for young women to say whether the film ‘works’ and there are many reviews out there and some suggestions as to why this is an important film as well as an enjoyable one. Mainstream film and TV is obsessed with comedies about teenage boys losing their virginity but teenage girls are too often trapped in a version of the Madonna/Whore typing. They are either ‘dangerous nymphets’ or princesses waiting for Prince Charming. It would be fascinating to study this film alongside American teen sex comedies and the Twilight films.

I urge all film and media teachers to check out the film and decide for themselves whether this shortish feature would be a worthwhile teaching text. The DVD is released in the UK on 25th March by Element Pictures Distribution and can be ordered from Amazon UK.

New Yorker Films has created a very good ‘official website’ for the film’s North American release with stills, a press book and very good background texts.

Here’s an illuminating review from  The Globe and Mail, Toronto . . .

. . . and the North American trailer (with added Orson Welles soundtrack!):

¡Viva! 2013 #5: Els nens salvatges (The Wild Kids, Spain 2012)

The three central characters – after hours in a shopping mall, (l-r) Oki, Alex and Gabi

Patricia Ferreira was picked out by Rob Stone (Spanish Cinema, Longman, 2002: 11) as one of “a growing number of talented and committed female directors in Spain”. Since her début feature in 1999 she has completed five more and she came to ¡Viva! to introduce Els nens salvatges and then to answer questions after the film.

Els nens salvatges is in one sense a familiar genre – a form of youth picture focusing on three teenagers and their parents. It didn’t occur to me until later that structurally the narrative resembles Rebel Without a Cause – two boys and a girl who hang out together, get into scrapes and have to deal with various issues associated with their parents. Meanwhile, in school and on the streets they have run-ins with teachers and fellow students. However, in its origination and treatment the Spanish film is quite different. Ms Ferreira explained that the idea for the film came from an incident some 15 years ago that prompted a debate about youths and parents and the Spanish school system. She suggested that Spanish people would remember the story. Her re-working of the story, co-written by herself and Virginia Yagüe, offers us Alex (Àlex Monner) as a graffiti artist and Gabi (Albert Baró) as a kickboxer. Laura, aka ‘Oki’, (Marina Comas) is the girl from the better-off family who recognises something in the boys’ behaviour that she finds attractive.

Patricia Ferreira has a documentary background and she liked the idea of being an outsider in Barcelona and ‘observing’ the youth of the city. She also decided to try to offer a naturalistic view of relationships in which both Catalan (including Majorcan Catalan) and Castilian are spoken in certain situations. She took a long time in preparation and this was a problem in casting the three leads. Around 15 young people are growing and changing their appearance quite quickly and her early picks had outgrown their roles as shooting approached. She explained that she didn’t want to work with ‘non-professionals’ and she eventually found the young actors who do very well in their roles. The film is essentially realist but it is presented in CinemaScope and looks very good. As I’ve indicated, the characters and the situations are all familiar. Oki has a mother who dotes on her and a father who tries to ‘buy’ her off with expensive presents. Oki gives up on her flamenco classes as part of her ‘rebellion’. Alex has parents who seem to have little time for him, especially his father, and Gabi’s father is the typical macho man who wants his son to be a fighter. We are even offered a sympathetic young school counsellor (played by Aina Clotet who was the lead in Elisa K at ¡Viva! in 2011).

(from left) Cornerhouse Film Programme Manager Rachel Hayward, Patricia Ferreira and interpreter Elena Alonso from the Instituto Cervantes.

It’s the school scenes that seem to have created the most interest. We see the behaviour of students in the classes of a couple of teachers and we see a staffroom meeting discussing what to do about a particular incident. Frankly, I didn’t find any of these scenes to be particularly shocking. They seemed quite ‘real’ and experienced teachers will have seen all this before. The central issue in the film is what all the events lead up to in the final scenes. Before the screening Ferreira explained to us that the film was inspired by a real event. She told us this, I imagine, because she thought that we might find the final part of the narrative to be ‘unreal’ or ‘unlikely’. But the film is edited in such a way that the final act and its impact is discussed before we actually see what happened. I’m not sure this worked for me. This is a shame because everything else worked very well. This is certainly an interesting film and well worth watching. The crux of the issue seems to be that Patricia Ferreira’s approach means we ‘observe’ what the character in question does rather than, as in a mainstream film, being shown or told what he or she feels. I didn’t observe anything that helped explain why the act was committed. Perhaps that is the whole point. The moral seems to be that if teens are misunderstood or if parents and schools don’t treat them with respect, bad things might happen. I don’t mean that to sound trite. The film shows young characters who are occasionally thoughtless in their desire to have fun but not in any way threatening. When something does happen it’s a shock because it seems to come from nowhere. I can’t say much more without giving away the ending which I don’t want to do if the film is going to get a UK release. It has won awards at various festivals and it should work on distribution here.

Overall, a successful event, I feel. I enjoyed the film and the Q&A. This was the last ¡Viva! screening I was able to get to this year. My impression is that it has been another successful festival with two days still to go if you are in Manchester.

Here’s a trailer (no English subs):

You Are the Apple of My Eye (Na xie nian, wo men yi qi zhui de nu hai, Taiwan 2011)

Michelle Chen as Shen Chia-Yi and Ke Zhendong as Ko Ching-Teng, the central two characters.

Why don’t we see more Taiwanese popular cinema? Most cinephiles in the West at least know about Taiwanese New Cinema and its highest profile auteurs from the 1980s Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. The more adventurous know Tsai Ming-liang but after that we are stumped. Cornerhouse in Manchester has come to our rescue. They have previously shown one of the more recent Taiwanese blockbusters Cape No. 7 and last week, as part of the Chinese Film Forum programme, they showed You Are the Apple of My Eye. Felicia Chan, one of the organisers of the forum, gave a ’1 hour intro’ before the screening which provided some useful preparation for the screening.

Taiwanese cinema has seen an upsurge since the mid-2000s for a number of reasons. I suspect that part of the reason must be the relative decline in Hong Kong popular cinema and the emergence of mainland Chinese popular cinema – which now seems more open to other films from ‘Greater China’ – but with certain provisos. There is certainly a greater ‘exchange’ of films between all the East Asian film industries and You Are the Apple of My Eye has broken box office records across the region, with significant audiences in Hong Kong, the PRC and Singapore as well as at home. I’m not surprised by this, but my own inclination is to place the film in the context of the success of South Korean films in the region. The film I was most reminded of was My Sassy Girl, the smash hit romcom from 2001 that found eager audiences throughout East and South-East Asia, prompting at least five remakes, sequels or alternative versions in China, Japan, India and the US. I’m not sure the Taiwanese film is as wildly original but it is similarly appealing and with careful handling might succeed outside East Asia. The biggest problem might be that because the film approaches genre repertoires such as the high school film, teen romance etc. in rather different ways than standard Hollywood fare it will be misunderstood. I think it helps if you have a good grounding in East Asian teen horror/romance films or anime/manga.

The first resemblance to My Sassy Girl comes in the source material – an autobiographical novel. Giddens Ko, the director, has adapted his own novel and set the film in the high school he attended. He’s now in his thirties, I think and the film’s action spans 1995-2005. This already signifies an approach to the material very different to Western youth pictures which invariably focus on the final year, or even term/semester of a student career. The story is told in flashback beginning with preparations for a wedding and going back to high school at 16. We then meet five teenage boys, each delineated by a personal trait and two girls, the class ‘honours student’ and her best friend. Although only one boy, the author’s character, has any family seen onscreen, this is still a collective narrative – all the characters are still there ten years later. The other interesting feature is the inclusion of a real-life event, the earthquake of September 1999 (in which over 2,000 Taiwanese died). This reminded me of Aftershock (China 2010). Most of the East Asian films of this kind that I’ve seen focus on the young women, so it is interesting to see the five young men at the centre. There are a lot of masturbation jokes (or what in the Uk would be ‘knob jokes’) which all seem rather sweet instead of being offensive – partly because they aren’t used to denigrate women as sometimes happens in Hollywood’s ‘gross-out’ comedies. (These scenes reminded me of Y tu mamá también (Mexico/US 2001).)

But I guess the central interest of the film and the main reason for its popularity is the long up and down romance between the central character and the ‘honours student’, well-played by Michelle Chen. I won’t spoil the narrative – suffice to say it’s affecting and the film’s resolution is not predictable. This romance was much less weird than the South Korean model in My Sassy Girl, but it pursued the same kind of romanticism. It was believable and I can understand why whole families in Taiwan have enjoyed the film, as Felicia pointed out in her intro.

You Are the Apple of My Eye was screened on an immaculate CinemaScope print with decent subs and it looked very good. I enjoyed it and would happily watch more. I hope Cornerhouse have less difficulty next time prising a print out of 20th Century Fox – and can somebody bring these films to the UK on a full distribution deal please?

Fox trailer with English subs:

What Richard Did (Ireland 2012)

Richard (Jack Reynor) and Lara (Roísín Murphy). photo © Element Pictures

Obviously, I’m not going to tell you what Richard did, but actually the film is about what happened afterwards. Lenny Abrahamson’s film is set amongst the gilded youth of a South Dublin middle class community (or should that be upper-middle-class?). In the summer before he starts university, Richard seems to have it all. He’s been one of the stars of the rugby team at a prestigious school. His parents own a beach house in Co. Wicklow and he drives his own Golf. He’s the leader of his group and in some ways a ‘father figure’ at 18, looking out for younger guys (and girls) – he’s the kind of guy who can reassure other guys’ parents. If their son or daughter is with Richard, they’ll be fine. But when Richard meets Lara, he starts to change.

What Richard Did is a taut and suspenseful study of one young man’s summer and the effects of a moment of madness – which in itself is almost banal in its familiarity in a film involving 18 year-old boys. Far more sinister is what happens afterwards and the way in which privilege allows characters to erase certain kinds of social distress and to ‘move on’. On the other hand, human compassion probably means that we don’t want Richard to have to live with what he has done. We are more likely to be wishing for a way out, no matter how complicit that might make us feel. The film is very much about social class, but the early indications of the potential damage that class difference can create are presented in quite subtle ways. Later, when the boys of the rugby team ‘bond’ by singing the school song in a formal setting it is very disturbing. One review mentioned the omerta, the ‘code of silence’ in Southern Italy and that seems a good call, except that there is no ‘community’ as such to fall back on.

Lenny Abrahamson has already proved himself as adept in creating important fictions about different sectors of Irish society in Adam & Paul and Garage. What Richard Did is just as good as the earlier films. So far I’ve only come up with two slight problems. As in Garage, there is a narrative moment early in the film that you later realise has hinted at the narrative dénouement. This is a feature of Hitchcockian thrillers and the like and there is nothing wrong with it – in fact it can add immeasurably to the pleasure of unpicking the narrative to see how these ‘pre-markers’ fit in. But What Richard Did otherwise doesn’t seem that kind of film. Abrahamson’s skill seems to be in creating a narrative that is open to several different forms of interpretation rather than being some kind of puzzle game. My second complaint is purely practical. For the first twenty minutes or so I had great difficulty following the dialogue. Later in the narrative, the problem faded away. Perhaps my ear gradually tuned in? More likely, the language register changed. The screenwriter Malcolm Campbell attempted to go for the most authentic representation of the speech of these South Dublin teens after sitting in Starbucks with them and jotting down words and phrases during his research. As an Irish student blog puts it:

[The film's] only flaw on the international table is its huge dependency on south-sider and Dublin slang. It’s brilliant and fits the film, but it keeps it anchored to the island.

The film has been sold in Europe where it will be subtitled and I wish I’d had the benefit of subs. I understood the tone of the exchanges between characters in the early scenes but I missed the nuances and therefore I didn’t pick up on the development of Richard’s interest in Lara and its repercussions as quickly as I would have liked. But in a way, my struggle to hear the dialogue is in keeping with other aspects of Abrahamson’s approach. He gives very little background on Richard’s family and none on Lara’s or those of Richard’s other friends. We do get to meet Richard’s father played by Lars Mikkelsen, but the Danish side of the family isn’t explained as such (Richard’s family name is Karlsen). Mikkelsen’s father is a mysterious character and his performance adds to this in a pivotal scene in which he talks to his son in a way that we guess he hasn’t done before. I’ve seen one negative review of the Mikkelsen casting, but everyone else has praised it. His presence makes us think about Danish dramas and What Richard Did for me stands up to the best of that very strong tradition of Nordic film drama.

Lars Mikkelsen as Richard’s father photo © Element Pictures

The rest of the cast is excellent too. Three of the principals were themselves at school in Dublin when Abrahamson found them, with the boys coming from Belvedere College and Gonzaga College, Jesuit private schools that are two of the most highly-regarded in Ireland. But the film stands or falls on the casting and performance of Jack Reynor as Richard. He is astonishingly good in embodying the child-man who is forced to learn about himself so painfully. In certain close-ups the ‘fuzz’ of hair on puppy fat or the quizzical look makes him seem a younger teenager (see the image below). At other times his athletic body and broad shoulders make him a man. He performs his role to perfection – though the outstanding direction by Abrahamson and very effective cinematography (by David Grennan) must share some of the praise. Reynor has gone on to appear in other Irish films but he has also been snapped up by Michael Bay for Transformers 4. I desperately hope he survives that experience intact.

Richard’s occasional younger face. © photo Element Pictures

What Richard Did is a ‘must-see’ film. As I left the screening one of my colleagues suggested that it was almost like an Eric Rohmer film. I think I contested this but the more I think about it, the sense of a ‘moral tale’ becomes more palpable. Perhaps it is also (as the director hints) in some ways allegorical about Ireland after the crash of 2008 with a moneyed class who have so far avoided the pain suffered by the majority?

Official website (with screening dates in the UK and Ireland)

Watch online via Artificial Eye/Curzon Cinemas in UK

Download from Virgin, HMV etc. in UK

Get the Press Pack here.

Hannah McGill’s review of the film in Sight & Sound (February 2013) makes several assertions that I’m not sure about (her summary is incorrect in at least one respect). She says that both Lara and Conor are Catholic and from a lower social class than Richard who she asserts is Protestant. In fact she says that Lara is Catholic ‘by heavy implication’. I must have missed something here. I didn’t see too many overt religious references. I assume that most of the characters are Catholic (and Richard’s school). Richard’s Danish father is more likely to be Lutheran but I took the Karlsens to be a largely secular family. Can somebody help me out? (There is also a useful background piece on the film in the same issue of Sight & Sound.)

Himizu (Japan 2011)

Keiko trails her classmate Yuichi in one of the interesting compositions in Himizu (photo courtesy Third Window)

Before the tsunami hit the north-east coast of Honshu in March 2011, writer-director Sono Sion was working on an adaptation of a manga story about a 14 year-old boy. He was able to quickly change the setting of the film’s story to accommodate the aftermath of the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It’s been suggested that it was the topicality of Himizu that prompted the Venice Film Festival to include the film in competition in September 2011 and to give a higher profile to the work of Sono. However, this seems a trifle condescending. Sono is a director who has a controversial image in Japan but also a string of film productions, a genuine fanbase and previous success at film festivals in Asia and worldwide. He began as a poetry performer and avant-garde artist and his films have included Suicide Club (2001) and his most successful title, Love Exposure (2010).

‘Himizu‘ is the name of a Japanese shrew mole, a creature which lives quietly beneath the ground. It’s endemic throughout most of Japan. Sumida Yuichi is a 14 year-old boy whose parents have virtually abandoned him. His father is a drunk who is usually absent but returns occasionally looking for money and often beating up his son. Yuichi’s mother has a lover and has no interest in her son. The family own a house by a boating lake and earn a few yen from hiring out boats to anglers and courting couples. Yuichi responds to a lesson at school and decides that he wants to grow up to be a ‘respectable adult’ who lives a quiet life but does good things for people. However, Keiko, one of the girls in his class (with similarly bad parents), develops a crush on him and constantly irritates him with her enthusiasm for some form of relationship. This is the situation, I assume, in the original manga by Minoru Furuya –a series which ran in Young magazine in 2001-2. The story was unusual in focusing on Yuichi’s psychological state.

Sono’s film utilises the tsunami disaster in several ways. There is a central dream/nightmare sequence which seems to be experienced by at least one other character as well as Yuichi and involves a journey through a devastated landscape of smashed houses, cars etc. Meanwhile, in the real world a group of homeless people from the coast are camping in makeshift homes around the lake – forming a kind of Greek chorus in the narrative, but also a genuine alternative to Yuichi’s absent parents. Finally, of course, the aftermath of the disasters provides a constant topic of conversation and news broadcasts and a psychological environment of resignation, futility, breakdown and other usually negative moods punctuated by desperate attempts to look to the future. You’ll gather from this that Himizu is not a ‘fun’ film. There is a lot of violence in the film, both actual in the form of repeated beatings (including between Yuichi and Keiko) and verbal (parents who say that their children should be dead). The film is perhaps too long. But . . . although I felt I was struggling to watch the film, I still enjoyed it and felt that I got a lot from it. I enjoyed the cinematography and the almost Kurosawa-like obsession with extreme weather.

I’m not surprised that the Venice jury gave the acting prize for new talent to the two leads (Sometani Shota and Nikaido Fumi) who are always worth watching. I don’t want to give too much away about what happens, but I will say that one of the narrative strands includes a yakuza connection which could be just an indication of the way Sono draws on other genre repertoires but more importantly it allows a kind of commentary on parenting (and raises the interesting question of how criminals respond to the chaos created by the aftermath of the tsunami). However, the main genre focus of the film seems to be ‘troubled youth’ and I’d recommend Himizu as a good example of contemporary Japanese cinema in that respect.

Himizu is a Third Window release in the UK which opens in London at the ICA, Prince Charles and Renoir this Friday, June 1st. It will also have screenings in Brighton,  Scotland, Wales and Ireland. See all potential screenings on the Third Window website. The DVD/Blu-Ray release date is August 6th.

Here’s the official trailer (WARNING: it gives away a couple of major plot points)