The one-hundred-year-old Fujiya inn stands in the quiet region of Kyoto. Mikoto is standing in front of the Kibune river at the back of the building when she is called back to work. But two minutes later, she finds herself back at the river again. The whole inn seems to be stuck in a time loop!
02 Apr River (2023)
Gentle flows
There are films that use the cinematic vocabulary reluctantly. Most of those have visual exposition, alternated with action sequences as a common model.
Or we have ‘character studies’ that use the camera like a novelist would, to penetrate the skin, so we can follow a soul through some situation. These can be effective, and indeed some of my most highly valued films are of these types. But in those cases it is soul to soul and the art is supposed to fade away.
But sometimes, you run across a precious thing where the filmmaker starts with the special powers that cinema provides at the edge of the vocabulary. This is one, and it is amazingly effective, even through act three has a bumpy part with a steampunk Time Machine.
We start with a Shinto registration in two places, the magic of a shrine, and the similar generative magic of the associated river beside which is an inn. Our group is the staff and visitors of this inn, with a focus on one young woman who is photographed lovingly and repeatedly as we go along — so much so that we suspect an off-screen love affair.
Usually the craft of editing is used to set the rhythm, usually a bit faster than life. Here we are layered. The previous experiment with ‘Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ was a stage play with no cinematic qualities. Here we have cinema first, and place. What a place.
Highly recommended.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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