It's A Flickering Life (2021)

Grant me this wish God of cinema

As a lover of period pieces, I was looking forward to the setting of this movie. While the movie itself mostly takes place in the present, I found it hard to really get to grasp onto the characters struggles.

The main issue I had with was the lack of build between Yoshiko and Gou. I found that they lacked chemistry and that the story didn't actually touch too much on why they liked each other. Being the main core of this story, I couldn't help but feel disconnected from the story as their relationship was poorly put together. Gou and Terashin had much more impactful scenes together that made their relationship feel well thought out. Gou was probably the best realized as a character and his younger self had a good amount of the same characterizations. Yoshiko felt like two different characters, which makes sense in context of the story but was not really expanded. The film also does a little tongue and cheek nod about not explaining things and letting audiences figure things out themselves and I felt like this movie was that the whole way.

There was something also off about Yuta and Ayumi as well. Yuta, I'm not sure if his character was meant to be that awkward but he was really stiff in all of his line deliveries. His character kinda came off as someone with issues due to his disfunctional family. But he's just kinda there. Eventually his story plays an important part in getting things together but they don't really do much with that plot point. Ayumi also I felt didn't quite live up the daughter. I'm not sure if this was due to lack of chemistry but the cast to me didn't click as a family unit. She just didn't seem as upset in certain scenes or was really kind of phoning it in. Her most powerful scene was sitting the speech but even then it felt underwhelming. I understand that was one of the plot points but it seemed very haphazard.

The plot Itself was easy enough to follow, but there was a few odd swerves it took. I think the main issues were just the pacing and story didn't feel like it earned the emotional moments. The only scene that seemed to really get to me is when Yoshiko and Gou are reminiscing over a photo of her and when Sonoka does her final scene. The acceptance speech as well. That's when I think we truly get the movies' purpose of repentance. But I think it would of landed better off they spent a little more time on the Family dynamic.

Interestingly enough Covid came into play into this story. This movie came into theatres in 2021. So it seems it may have been unfortunately a casualty during the filming shutdowns and barriers due to social distancing. I wonder if this affected the movie's script?

I'm not sure I would recommend this movie overall.

Read More