“Uchiyama delivers a great and finely composed narrative that explores the ephemeral character of relationships that find their sole strength in the imaginary, in the thirst for gaining pleasure.”
Category: Youth
Wonderful Paradise (2020) review [Nippon Connection 2021]
A great experiment of the absurd, but its full potential to satisfy the spectator is hindered by its somewhat lackluster composition.
The Promised Land (2019) review [Nippon Connection 2021]
A beautifully composed and highly relevant narrative about destructive kinds of social violence, a social violence against the Otherness present in the community and an ostracizing violence to turn the once-trusted other into an unwanted Otherness.
My Blood and Bones in a Flowing Galaxy (2021) review [Nippon Connection 2021]
“A great narrative, due to its emotionally gripping finale and the crystal-clear manner by which Sabu explores and uncovers the impact of a vicious environment on the way the subject inscribes itself into the social fabric.”
Sweet Bitter Candy (2021) review [OAFF 2021]
“An amazing exploration of the clash between a sweet youthful romantic desire and the bitter urge of a wounded subject to defend his subjective wounds.”
Mio On the Shore (2019) review
A great and visually pleasing narrative about the socially embedded nature of the process of coming-into-being-as-subject.
Hotel Iris (2021) review [Osaka Asian Film Festival]
“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.”
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.”
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.
The Gun (2018) review
A great narrative from a thematical perspective – exploring, with clarity, the impact of a phallic object on male subjective functioning, that is stylistically unable to turn Take’s thematical exploration into a truly powerful experience.
Farewell song (2019) review
A truly moving narrative that explores, in a very nuanced but detailed way, the difficulty for subjects to meet the Other, the beloved Other, as subject.
Last Letter (2020) review
A satisfying and touching drama that highlights the importance of acknowledging about one’s loss and confronts us with the fact that, for the subject, his/her loss is, first and foremost, a loss of an ideal image.
Cruel story of Youth (1960) review
Oshima succeeds in dissecting in a very precise way how the Other, an Other marked by patriarchy and capitalism, is able to empty the youthful subject of his ideals and dreams as well as how the rebellious protest of certain youthful subjects is, in many cases, an affirmation of the very dynamic that underpins the functioning of the Other.
