Cinema Talk

My feelings towards this are a lot like the feelings I have towards Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower. Fittingly enough, both films were my introduction into directors that I should have been familiar with already. I can’t say either film left a considerable impression on me, but they both felt sort of inconsequential and not a big deal when stacked up against the rest of their filmography. Of course, the appeal of those other films being the fact that I haven’t actually seen them yet. To reiterate my thoughts on Pale Flower: this is a wonderfully shot film, exceptionally framing but fairly conventional in every other aspect. There’s some refreshing slapstick humor that’s sort of nice to see in contrast to all the older “slice-of-life” minimalist films I’ve been watching lately. At the same time, there’s also the ever-dreaded over-arcing plot. In all honesty, this setup feels like something from the Twilight Zone (to be specific, “Four Characters in Search of an Exit” – no twist, thankfully) by trying to engage the audience with superficial character development. This really isn’t quite as bad as it sounds because for what it is, it is quite entertaining but I am expecting much more from my next Imamura experience. I wasn’t expecting much from this and I pretty much got what I bargained for. There’s far worse ways to spend 100 minutes.