Slightly off-tempo romance, beautiful cinematography
There's a lot of promising material in this film, but the heart of the story is a little off-target. The director has a real flair for depicting a city and its atmosphere, in a few aesthetically pleasing but not superficial shots, as well as the emotional weight these cities hold for the characters. It's with the latter that the problem arises: they're well acted (with subtle facial expressions in their interactions) and potentially plausible, but some of the dialogues should never have gone beyond the rough draft stage. As a result, the discussions between characters are sometimes very clumsy, without really having a naturalistic aspect, where key words are repeated over and over again without really moving forward. This aspect clashes all the more with the rather fast pace of this fairly short film, awkwardly slowing down what was hitherto moving at high speed.When we get away from this heavy-handedness, the characters take on much more meaning, as in the shorter exchanges via webcam, or when the two male leads meet for the first time and exchange introductions in each other's language. The final scene is equally beautiful, full of restrained tension.
The soundtrack is also well done. I can't wait to see her next film; despite the clumsiness of this first attempt, there's a lot to like here.
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Il y a beaucoup de matériau prometteur dans ce film, mais le cœur de l'ouvrage vise un peu à côté de la cible. La réalisatrice a une vraie belle patte pour ce qui est de dépeindre une ville et son atmosphère, en quelques plans esthétisants sans être superficiels, ainsi que le poids émotionnel que ces villes entretiennent avec les personnages. C'est avec ces derniers que le bât blesse un chouïa, ceux-ci sont bien interprétés (avec une mimique subtile dans leurs interactions) et potentiellement plausibles, mais certains des dialogues n'auraient jamais dû dépasser le stade de brouillon. Cela donne des discussions entre personnages parfois très pataudes sans vraiment avoir un aspect naturaliste où l'on répète à l'envie des mots clefs sans vraiment avancer. Cet aspect s'entrechoque d'autant plus avec le rythme plutôt rapide de ce film assez court en ralentissant assez maladroitement ce qui défilait jusque là à grande vitesse.
Quand on s'échappe de ces lourdeurs, les personnages prennent bien plus de sens, comme lors des échanges plus courts via webcam, ou bien quand les deux rôles masculins se rencontrent pour la première fois et échangent des présentations dans la langue de l'autre. La scène finale est également belle, toute en tension retenue.
La bande-son est de bonne facture également. J'ai hâte de voir son prochain film, malgré les maladresses de cette première tentative, il y a beaucoup de choses à aimer ici.
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The time of sand
A long and tense chamber drama, with sand and society as antagonists, masterfully cinematographed. There is both little and much to say; while the film takes its time, it also makes sense once that time has been taken.
We are torn between the tragic attempts to escape the hole and combat the sand, the complex and atmospheric relationship between the protagonist and the woman, and the inhumane subjugation undertaken by the societal microcosm of this desolate place.
What emerges is a brutal and profound poetry, between realistic nihilism and disillusioned optimism, streaked with a certain political denunciation in the background.
The female lead is very interesting, and what emerges from her discussions with the professor is quite dramatic in terms of life prospects. Her relationship with him is intriguing, and the more sensual scenes are particularly striking, to say the least. They are brilliantly filmed, but always imbued with the ambiguity and precariousness of their situation; this casts a veil over the truth, which thematically reinforces the professor's questioning of relationships between men and women at the beginning of the film. The truth is as impenetrable as it is ubiquitous, much like the sand that seeps into all things.
In general, she lights up the screen and her performance is masterful, balanced between the resignation of a woman hardened by her desperate "country" life and a faint glimmer of desire for the outside world (the radio and her questions about Tokyo). A tormented and tormenting character, not entirely in spite of herself, with an unknown name and an uncertain past.
The protagonist ends up alleviating his anxiety by finding "hobbies," and it's quite chilling to watch, especially since, as viewers, we are happy for him that he manages to escape his Sisyphean daily life and we ourselves forget the reality of his existence, caught up in the novelty of his activities.
The ending is superb, one of those that ties up and magnifies the overall story, a masterpiece.
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Very lightweight food drama
A somewhat more fleshed-out drama episode, very syrupy and without any depth whatsoever. Which doesn't bother me so much, as it's a style I can enjoy beyond the general lightweight nature of the whole thing. It's not high art, but it makes for a pleasant watch on a Sunday afternoon on TV. Seiko Matsuda is still very pretty.Was this review helpful to you?
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A special ancestor to many horror movies
A lovely forebear of Evil Dead 2, it's animated by the same love of cinema and shares it with the same immoderate joy.Another point in common is the use of arthouse-style editing effects with a half-horrific, half-humorous purpose and frenetic energy. And the latter creates some beautiful artistic moments amidst the chaos, such as the mirror scene and the piano assassination.
The then-young actresses have not enjoyed fantastic careers since, but I find them all convincing in what they were asked to do.
The older actress who plays the aunt is a pleasure to watch, having a ball as a very ham-handed villain.
The action scenes with Kung-Fu are surprisingly well done.
The film is dated, however, and whatever innovations it may have displayed on release, today some visual effects could look as if they'd been created with a bad free video editing app, and it's not always possible to overlook or sublimate them.
Fortunately, most of them are quite interesting, and add their share to an already rich and baroque editing style, set and props.
I don't have a strong opinion on the conclusion of the story, but it's a reasonable ending, yes.
The management of the music is perhaps one of the failures of this experimentation. On the one hand, I like the musical style's discrepancy with the film, but on the other, its constant use is both wearing and sometimes unsatisfactory. It's a flaw that could be applied to the film as a whole, which is highly lavish but just as messy.
A potential rewatchable winter classic as far as I'm concerned.
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Half-baked but the baked part is pretty good
The film is at its best when threading unusual vignettes through various Tokyo landscapes, such as when we follow an unstoppable multicolored guitarist, or when a slightly ridiculous cosplayer suddenly jumps from a rooftop, inexplicably surviving only to flee on his moped just as white as his costume.These scenes, though fun enough and appropriately tied in with the main plot, just don't mesh sufficiently well. Two films seem to be fighting for the right to exist here, a limp absurdist comedy and a hastily spliced family drama.
The patchwork approach is viable, but the absurd intensity should have been pushed far beyond what is presented, and the dialogue crafted with greater flair.
The interludes with the dead wife's colleagues are entirely dispensable.
That said, nothing is mediocre, the actors play well, Tokyo is beautiful, and the group scenes in the final act are touching.
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Interesting Korean folk horror, uneven pacing and tone
A film that's hard for me to gauge, there's some very good things and a lot of middling stuff. To begin with, the camerawork is pretty good, the countryside and village lovely, even if you can feel a slight lack of budget in the scarcity of different settings that take advantage of the natural surroundings.The little girl's performance is impressive and far superior to the rest of the actors, with the possible exception of the old Japanese man. The rest of the cast are far too over-the-top at times, especially during the "action" scenes, which are a tad amateurish and hardly believable (some of the supporting characters roll around on the floor for no reason at all).
There's a palpable desire to inject tension through excessive shouting and melodrama.
However, this doesn't go down well with the film's rather unpolished pace, which is crammed with one crime scene after another in the first hour, then much slower in the second, with no real justification for it. There's not much ( as far as I'm concerned ) atmosphere here, and I felt very little tension or anxiety. What does not quite work is that the detective aspect ultimately has very little importance for the characters themselves, even if as far as the audience is concerned, we are left in doubt right up to the last minute, but more by the limp mechanical storytelling than by any real thirst to discover the mystery.
The long, ecstatic shamanic exorcism scene is worth mentioning, though, as it's a real blast. The contrast between the shaman's showmanship and the Japanese old man's more primordial rite (beautiful white chickens and a team of musicians for the former, rather rustic black chickens and somewhat primitive drum beats for the latter) encourages us to see a duality at work, despite the fact that the ending leads us to understand that the two were in cahoots.
Unfortunately, there's far too much inconceivable idiocy (in their choices and reactions) on the part of the characters, and many of the events that unfold only happen because people don't talk to each other, and the role of the angel-ghost girl is literally a bad deus ex machina who only exists because she chooses not to interact with the scenario until she's called upon (and so she lets a lot of people die without any real justification).
That said, it's a twist I really like, but the execution is really messy.
There are several potential films in this feature, as evidenced by the total absence of the slightly black humorous tone of the beginning, which evaporates completely without having any weapons powerful enough to compensate for this absence, the action being limp and ham-fisted and the horrific side quite non-existent, as the misfortunes fall mainly on tertiary characters, apart from the protagonist's daughter. Despite all this, I don't consider it too long (even if the final scenes are far too artificial in their build-up to suspense), and I was gripped right up to the conclusion.
It just didn't stay in the oven long enough, and the main ingredients should have been rebalanced.
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