Sekai no owari to Iu na no zakkaten
Japan,
2001, 94 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
-
Kiseki Hamada
- prod
-
Renji Tazawa, Takashi Yajima
- scr
-
Kiseki Hamada, Gouichi Sumi
- cam
-
Hitoshi Ohashi
- mus
-
Yoshiyuki Takizawa
- cast
-
Mariko Takahashi, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Kimie Shingyoji, Natsuki Kato, Megumi Hatachiya, Moeko Ezawa
- source
-
Shochiku Co. Ltd., International Business Division, 4-1-1 Tsukiji Togeki Bldg. 12F, Shuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8422, Japan. FAX: 81-3-5550-1654. EMAIL: ibd@shochiku.co.jp
- premiere
-
International Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Kiseki Hamada in person. Skyy Prize contender.
OTHER
Based on Nobara Takemoto’s story “A Store Called the End of the World,” director Kiseki Hamada’s first feature perfectly captures the delicate air of sweetly doomed romance that earned the original its youth cult sensation status in Japan. Yutaka, a reporter whose numbing assignments for an “info” magazine require him to measure the food he writes about, beats an existential retreat from his job and opens a shop in the condemned apartment building he inhabits. Candlelit and stocked with cast-off items, the shop is more refuge than business, with Yukata uninterested in the prospect of actual customers (“It’s not that kind of shop,” he protests). But it soon attracts Koma, a high school girl who is also in retreat from the world to one of her own creation. They form a quiet attachment, leaving by train together when the building is finally slated for demolition, and fate steps in once more to break—but, crucially, not erase—their heartfelt connection. With a careful eye for the poetry of his images and a precise sense of tone, Hamada ultimately crafts a film not of despair but of deep, hard-earned optimism, in which a smile or a touch offered against the underlying sadness becomes a brilliant and heartbreaking gesture of hope.
—Steve Mockus
FACTOID #336
Bing Crosby was invited several times for an onstage tribute at the Festival, reports then-director Claude Jarman, but declined the honor. “Nobody wants to see those little things that I used to do,” he modestly replied. He did attend though, with wife Kathy and their friend, Rita Hayworth.
