2015-06-13
N/A
127 min
Three sisters live together in a large house in the city of Kamakura. When their father – absent from the family home for the last 15 years – dies, they travel to the countryside for his funeral, and meet their shy teenage half-sister. Bonding quickly with the orphaned Suzu, they invite her to live with them.
A tale of four sisters living under the same roof.
It was based on the manga series. This is from one of the best directors from Japan that I am familiar with his works. I have seen some of his previous films and I loved them all, but sadly not this time. To be honest, I'm not the fan of this kind of movies, but I have watched them a lot before and liked them a lot. This movie is totally made for the film critics and film festivals, but winning awards that I never understood how.
They call it an art film, but not everyone going to enjoy it. There's no entertainment in it, nor inspiring. It was like someone's real life portrayed on the screen yet not a documentary. I mean it covered everything, every bit of that person's life, even that was not so important, but only to kill the run time. If you want to try it, make sure got lots of time, especially watching it with patience is very essential.
So what I meant was this film is completely out of cinematic experience like what a film fanatic, families least expect from a movie. It was without the twists, turns, thrills, sad, happy, romance because of too much realism. In one word, it was a straightforward narrative. There will be no exciting developments, nor easy to predict.
If someone is going like it, that might be mostly out of courtesy, and maybe for the cast and their performances and the respect for the film making or maybe they're somewhat close to this story. But individuals have their own reasons why they liked it, likewise I'm writing this review to say why I did not like much. Other than that, I don't see anything special in it to praise this product.
"I'll be in your hands from now on."
Don't accuse me that I'm totally bashing it, actually to me it was an average movie, which mean I did not hate nor liked. The best thing I found in the movie was the characters. Four sisters living under the one roof with love and care for one another. But the movie failed to focus them all equally by leaning too much on only a couple of characters. Like the title say obviously it centres on the 14 year old Suzu who's the youngest among and the newest member to join the house. But that did not bring the best story out of that character, at least not as what I hoped for.
The photography was good, the locations were beautiful, especially in the opening that rural Japan. A brief view into the Japanese culture, especially the lifestyle of the young independent women. Frame by frame it gives the feel of you are watching an anime movie. I think I might have loved it if it was an anime, because usually a young girl or a boy theme is always a success.
In this kind of film making, it is always the combination of the characters and the story. The characters were fantastic in this, but the story was not, hence I was disappointed a bit. I never interested in the gossip about someone's life. Maybe that's why I did not like this because I felt like it was someone's life which is nothing to do with me.
You know normal life is too boring in reality as well as to see in a movie. But I still respect the movie, that's why I did not consider it a bad film. I won't suggest it, but you might like what I did not because of the different taste in the movies. So all I say is choose it carefully, don't let the ratings and the reviews deceive you, including mine.
6/10
