“An artfully composed erotic narrative that plays with the well-known psychoanalytic fact that the relational past of subjects impacts the possibility and appearance of sexual attraction between a man and a woman.”
Category: Festivals
Ito (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
“A charming exploration about the way in which the other allows a drifting subject to moor his desire and find a direction for his subjectivity within the Other.”
B/B (2020) review [OAFF 2021]
“Nakahama succeeds in delivering his message concerning the human tendency to misrecognize the traumatic pain of others in a fresh and touching manner.”
The Asian Angel (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
“Ishii’s latest succeeds in showing, in a powerful and touching manner, the possibility of intercultural friendship and romance.”
Yes, Yes, Yes (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
“A raw and powerful drama narrative that confronts the spectator with the inherent difficulty of accepting the loss of a loved one.”
Short Movie Time: Among Four of Us (2020) review [OAFF 2021]
“A great short narrative that beautifully highlights the impact of the state of emergency on the subjective and social state of speaking beings.”
Over The Town (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
Imaizumi’s narrative littered with a multitude of beautifully nuanced moments of natural relation poetry.
A Rainbow-colored trip (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
A great narrative that does not only touches upon the beauty of one’s first love (…), but also on the selfishness that drives the wishes of human subjects.
True Mothers (2020) [TIFF 2020]
“A beautiful and emotionally rich meditation on the complex notion of motherhood, underlining, in a touching way, that the first essential step in becoming mother is the subjective assumption of the signifier mother.”
Along The Sea (2021) review
An amazing and highly relevant narrative that succeeds in exposing the dark exploitative and de-subjectifying tendencies of Japanese society.
Aristocrats (2021) review [IFFR 2021]
Beautifully evokes how women become victim of the traditional patriarchal elite and how subjective happiness is not found in the mere acceptance of one’s own exploitation
Sexual Drive (2021) [IFFR 2021]
An amazing and unconventional narrative that not only explores the eroticism of the oral drive in an enticing and visually pleasing way, but also succeeds to touch, in a lighthearted way, upon the complexity of sexual desire as such.
Cenote/ Ts’onot (2019) review [Japan Cuts 2020]
A beautiful experimental documentary exploring the position of life and death within the Mayan society of the past and the current society.
Romance doll (2020) review [Camera Japan Festival 2020]
What makes Tanada’s film enjoyable is not its overindulgence in drama, but its refusal to exploit the dramatic turns of the narrative for easy tears.
Tora-san Meets the Songstress Again (1975) review [Japan Cuts 2020]
Yamada still delivers that what makes Tora-san so enjoyable for audiences: his problematic truth; that the little freedom he has in relation to the Other condemns him to an existence of being, over and over again, duped by that very Other
