An understated and moving exploration of the impact the demand for the other’s love has on the subject’s ‘relational’ signifiers and acts and of the importance of one’s first love for one’s coming-into-being as subject.
Category: Romance
Wedding High (2022) [Female Gaze – Japan Society]
Akiku Ohku might not only have delivered her best narrative yet, but one of the best comedy narratives of this year.
Tamano Visual Poetry: Nagisa’s Bicycle (2022) review [Camera Japan Festival]
Despite delivering three engaging and visually beautiful narratives, the short nature of overall narrative undercuts the impact the movie could have had.
Noise (2022) review
A highly satisfying experience that delivers suspense as well as good dose of touching emotionality.
The Last Ten Years (2022) review
“A touching and satisfying tear-jerking experience.”
The Midnight Maiden War (2022) review
“A visually exciting experience that shows that the only revolutionary thing that can give life its worth is desire that remains desire.”
Love Nonetheless (2022) review
A modern classic about the beauty of being in a state of desiring and the impact a phallic injury can have on the ability of a subject to fall in love.
Grown-ups (2022) review
An intimate and touching account of the drama that romance and becoming a woman can be.
Lesson In Murder (2022) review
In Shiraishi’s talented hands the narrative transforms into a visual elegant and compelling examination of the desire that drives us all.
Lake of Dracula (1971) review
A splendid and highly atmospheric homage to the gothic icon called Dracula.
The Island Closest To Heaven (1984) review
“This might be the purest idol-film Obayashi made and the clearest example of how Kadokawa wanted to exploit the audio-visual medium.”
The Girl Who Leaped Through Time (1983) review
The film does not merely celebrate the beauty of the transiency of being-in-love, but also powerfully stages the tragedy of the missed encounter.
His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) review
Obayashi ensures that this narrative, after so many years, still succeeds in captivating and mesmerize the spectator.
Skeleton Flowers (2021) review
A serene narrative that touchingly explores the possibility of reaching each other as subject despite the misrecognition that structures speech.
Parallel (2022) review
A fabulous narrative that does not only delivers a thrilling slasher-like experience, but offers a touching romance between two people that are, in their own particular way, deeply marked by their traumatic past.
psycho-cinematography 