Floating Clouds.In the opening scene of Mikio Naruse’s Floating Clouds (1956), a group of repatriated Japanese civilians disembarks from a shabby boat. After two brief wide shots, Naruse cuts to a medium shot to introduce the film’s protagonist, Yukiko, singling her out from what is otherwise a crowd of anonymous faces. But the film’s screenplay elaborates on those who walk alongside Yukiko: Returnees from South Asia are getting off the ship. Among the crowd of women, which consists only of comfort women, geishas, nurses, typists, clerks and the like, there is also Kõda Yukiko, who is not outfitted with proper winter attire.“Comfort women” is a name given to women and girls forced into sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. According to Yoko Mizuki’s screenplay, some are present in the crowd, but it is impossible for the viewer to discern them. The...
- 4/25/2024
- MUBI
What a strange, unpredictable film Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has made to follow his rapturously received international breakthrough, Drive My Car. While Evil Does Not Exist (Aku Wa Sonzai Shinai) reins in the symphonic expansiveness of its predecessor, this more compact slow-burn drama builds its own hypnotic, changeable rhythms, along with a quiet sense of dread that sneaks up on you just as people on both sides of a conflict appear to be working toward common ground — whatever that’s worth. An ending that pushes its ambiguousness to confounding lengths will be a deal-breaker for some, but this haunting stealth thriller about violations of nature is a work of undeniable power.
If the shadow of Chekhov stretched elegantly over Drive My Car, the Japanese writer-director’s new film might almost be said to have a kinship with Ibsen, its tensions around the potential contamination of a water supply and the heated responses...
If the shadow of Chekhov stretched elegantly over Drive My Car, the Japanese writer-director’s new film might almost be said to have a kinship with Ibsen, its tensions around the potential contamination of a water supply and the heated responses...
- 9/4/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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