"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me . . . And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown . . . ."
Now here's the way to tell a love story: Take attractive but flawed lovers, stir the pot with coming of age and depression, add some sub textual commentary on the absurdity and complexity of finding love, nurturing it, and letting it go. Yet, most importantly, begin with a renowned author like Haruki Murkami, and you will be guaranteed to produce brooding, aloof, postmodern heroes, the most romantic kind.
All the time during this sturm and drang is the specter of death, that reality and metaphor for the terminal nature of anything we attempt to build such as enduring and enriching love. Toru (Ken'ichi Matsuyama) has a Jules-and-Jim relationship with Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) and Kizuki (Kengo Kora), all just shy of 20 years old, until Kizuki inexplicably commits suicide. Thus death comes to loving teens, whose lives will forever be colored by Kizuki's violence.
As Toru tries to come to grips with Naoko' growing depression and the affections of at least two other lovely ladies, as must happen to handsome, mysterious young men, he witnesses the vagaries of love, some of it tied to the changing nature of youth and some to fate. Although he seems slow to realize that the mystery is also lethal, he grows in a healthy way to expressing and negotiating love as adults eventually learn to do.
Japanese director Anh Hung Tran gives an understated lyricism to his landscapes and seasonal changes, serving themes of loss and recovery as the seasons exact their emotional responses. In fact most of the film is like a tone poem, punctuated by impressionism tied to the reality that death so successfully brings to the most romantic setups.
". . . The melancholy unity between the living and the dead." James Joyce
Now here's the way to tell a love story: Take attractive but flawed lovers, stir the pot with coming of age and depression, add some sub textual commentary on the absurdity and complexity of finding love, nurturing it, and letting it go. Yet, most importantly, begin with a renowned author like Haruki Murkami, and you will be guaranteed to produce brooding, aloof, postmodern heroes, the most romantic kind.
All the time during this sturm and drang is the specter of death, that reality and metaphor for the terminal nature of anything we attempt to build such as enduring and enriching love. Toru (Ken'ichi Matsuyama) has a Jules-and-Jim relationship with Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi) and Kizuki (Kengo Kora), all just shy of 20 years old, until Kizuki inexplicably commits suicide. Thus death comes to loving teens, whose lives will forever be colored by Kizuki's violence.
As Toru tries to come to grips with Naoko' growing depression and the affections of at least two other lovely ladies, as must happen to handsome, mysterious young men, he witnesses the vagaries of love, some of it tied to the changing nature of youth and some to fate. Although he seems slow to realize that the mystery is also lethal, he grows in a healthy way to expressing and negotiating love as adults eventually learn to do.
Japanese director Anh Hung Tran gives an understated lyricism to his landscapes and seasonal changes, serving themes of loss and recovery as the seasons exact their emotional responses. In fact most of the film is like a tone poem, punctuated by impressionism tied to the reality that death so successfully brings to the most romantic setups.
". . . The melancholy unity between the living and the dead." James Joyce