A female, slightly less capable version of Koreeda. Kawase alternates drama film making with documentaries and occasionally hits the mark, but her work often feels a little too basic for me. Worth exploring if you like arthouse/drama.
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Fine drama by Kawase. It's a bit more stylized and toned down compared to her earlier work, combined with the strong performances of Misaki and Nagase it makes for a very captivating film. It looks great, features a beautiful soundtrack and the dramatic payoff is on point. Radiance is her best film so far.
There are quite a few parallels to be drawn between the careers of Kawase and Koreeda. True Mothers would form a perfect double bill with Koreeda's Like Father, like Son. Generally speaking I prefer the work of Koreeda, though lately Kawase has been making some very worthy films too. Satoko and Kiyokazu can't get children together. After several failed attempts, they decide to adopt. They get the child of Hikari, a young girl who got pregnant at 14 and can't take care of the baby. The transaction goes smooth, but 6 years later Hikari returns as she can't forget about her little boy. Performances are good, the drama is decent, cinematography is fine and the score is capable. There's nothing to complain about really, except that there's nothing truly exceptional about this film either. In the end the drama left me a little cold, which isn't what you want from a great drama.Read all
One of Kawase's earliest feature films (though she already had a slew of documentaries behind her name), that has remained elusive for quite a while. I'm not sure why, as this is effectively one of her better dramas I've seen so far. It's a bit long (obviously), but it never felt forced or contrived. After a rather tough period in her life, Ayako decides to go back to her hometown. She wants to see her grandma, but right before she gets there her grandma dies. Ayako's sister isn't doing too well either, she is suffering from cancer and has no real chance of survival. Ayako wants to stick around and give new meaning to her life. The performances are strong, the drama is a little heavy but the slow pacing gives the audience time to come to grips with the characters and everything that is happening to them. The town and its local folklore makes for a beautiful setting. The final hour could've been a bit tighter, but I liked this one a lot.Read all
Interesting drama with slight fantasy touches. Kawase loses herself in the spiritual angle though and Binoche's presence is a hindrance. Luckily Nagase is solid as a rock and the setting itself is almost magical. That said, it was hard to shake the feeling that Kawase waisted the film's full potential. Pretty good, but could've been a lot better.
A typical early Kawase that leans a little too much on its somewhat simplistic clash of cultures. Japan meets Thailand with some added French bits, it's not quite enough to keep things interesting, even though the running time is economic. Kawase's more doc-like style is a fine match, but it's all just a little too flimsy to make a real impact.
60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero
Another micro-shorts anthology. They were relatively popular for a while, but they rarely lived up to their potential. With just a single minute to make an impression, directors were given a tricky challenge. One that proved a bit too daunting for most involved, as too many of the entries failed to make an impact. This isn't so much a real film as it was an experience though. There doesn't remain a proper copy of this anthology since it was only screened once, then burned right after. I usually stray from watching low-quality recordings, but with nothing else available, it was either that or not watching it ever. There are some interesting names here, but few of them stand out. The goals of the project are lofty, but it's all very conceptual and the films themselves never really match or strengthen the project's ideals. It's a good thing that the score is pretty interesting, which at least kept me going. Not all that interesting.Read all
Doc about some women who prefer to give "natural" births. Kawase focuses on the characters and some occasional drama, but with a topic like this it's a bit odd to ignore the science. That's probably the point of this documentary, but what is shown hardly convinced me this was an overall better way of bringing babies into this world.
I quite like anthology projects, as they offer an opportunity to directors to try something different, do something unexpected, to surprise. But then there are films like this, where each director just turns in a shorter version of what they regularly produce, only shot on a smaller budget. In Kawase's short, Kang Jun-Il returns a sacred scroll to its ancestral home. In Hong's short we follow Mi-Sook as she drives off on a whim to visit an old classmate of hers. When she arrives, she finds out her friend is having an affair with a college professor. And in Diaz' short Carol returns home to the poor miner village where she grew up, only to become the target of a kidnapping ploy. None of the short are anything special. They're pretty much what you'd expect from the directors, only less developed and visibly made with less money. Kawase's short is the nicest of the bunch, while Diaz' was the weakest for me. A waste of potential though, these tree established directors should've done a lot more with this chance.Read all
Early Kawase documentary that feels empty and inconsequential. Kawase follows one photographer and two models on a photo shoot. As a director she also participates in the documentary, steering the conversations and critically questioning her subjects, but it never results in something meaningful. Afterwards, it's hard to distill any kind of tangible topics or themes. The photographer appears to be overthinking his job, the models on the other hand feel lost and uncertain of what is expected of them. But these are very pedestrian problems and observations, nothing I felt should warrant an 80-minute documentary. I'm sure this sounded way more interesting when Kawase thought up the idea, people who are interested in everyday slices of life might get something out of it, but it didn't do very little for me. The awkward and and stilted conversations held a smidgen of appeal, beyond that it's completely forgettable.Read all