Japan,
2001, 132 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
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Hirokazu Kore-eda
- prod
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Masayuki Akieda
- scr
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Hirokazu Kore-eda
- cam
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Yutaka Yamazaki
- editor
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Hirokazu Kore-eda
- cast
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Tadanobu Asado, Arata, Yusuke Iseya, Yui Natsukawa, Susumu Terajima, Ryo
- source
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TV MAN UNION, INC., 30-13 Motoyoyogi-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 151-0062, Japan. FAX: 81-3-5478-8141. EMAIL: tkhazrai@studiocanal.com.
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COMMENTS
Hirokazu Kore-eda in person.
OTHER
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film since After Life (SFIFF 1999) is a meditation on the emotional aftereffects of a terrorist attack. Three years before, an apocalyptic religious sect called the Ark of Truth contaminated the Tokyo water supply with a virus, killing over 100 people and poisoning thousands. Family members of the dead perpetrators, on an annual memorial pilgrimage to the remote lake where the cult used to live, find themselves stranded with a dissident cult member who has also returned to the cabin where the deadly plans were forged. During this long night of the soul, replete with flashbacks of encounters leading up to the attack, the survivors come to some kind of understanding of the path each took to arrive at such a destiny. As the largely improvised scenes move past the initial Blair Witch-style atmosphere, relationships deepen with every halting conversational step at the same time that each new bit of knowledge raises a new question. Tadanobu Asano and Susumu Terajima, both veterans of Kore-eda’s previous work, are brilliant in their respective subtlety and bluntness. Terajima shines in a particularly electrifying scene in which he demands to know why his wife is leaving him for the cult—and another man.
—Frako Loden
FACTOID #177
In 2000 animator Faith Hubley was the recipient of the Persistence of Vision Award. One year later, her daughter Emily appeared at the Festival with her bandmates, Yo La Tengo, to perform a score accompanying the silent underwater films of Jean Painlevé.
