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.
Category: Romance
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.
Nagi’s Island (2022) review [Camera Japan Festival]
The power of Nagasawa’s narrative does not simply lie in the engaging emotional rhythm, as dictated by the musical decorations, but in the genuineness that oozes from every interaction.
It’s All My Fault (2022) review [Camera Japan Festival 2022]
A touching narrative that explores how difficult it is for subject to assume a place for himself, a place from where he/she can desire, without the structuring influence of motherly love.
Straying (2022) review [Camera Japan 2022]
A pleasant and charming exploration of the fact that, within the game of love and romance and beyond, subjects often rely on acting-out to reveal to the other what they cannot put into signifiers.
A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse (1975) review
It is via the splatter of blood, the concatenation of sexual acts, and the ghostly revenge that Yamaguchi presents the male spectator his truth: that he, beyond fantasy and desire, is a merely castrated being.
Dancing in Her Dreams (2019)
“A wonderful experience that does not only present a touching exploration of the pain of longing but also functions as an exquisite and elegant celebration of the art of stripping.”
In Another Language (2021) review
An enjoyable indie romance narrative that elegantly plays with the fact that lie and truth are fundamentality interwoven within a subject’s speech.
A Girl On The Shore (2021) review
“Ueda’s engaging film is all about two subjects trying to escape their phantasmatic identification with the notion of trash.”
Short movie time: Laundromat on the Corner (2020)
“A very pleasant horror-romance short narrative.”
The Women (2021) review
“A narrative with many beautiful touching moments but not a satisfying whole.”
Shaman’s Daughter (2022) review [JFFH 2022]
A genre mish-mash – a cocktail of light-hearted comedy, family drama, bloody thriller, and ghostly romance – that is not only pleasant but offers the spectator a rich emotional fabric to savour.
The Vampire Doll (1970) review
“Sounds, music, performances, and darkish visuals all blend beautifully together to deliver an unsettling but enchanting account of vampirism in Japan.”
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