Our Little Sister (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2015) - Teproc's #73
|
It went somewhat against my better judgement deciding to watch this film. Where characters are concerned, I often feel that with Japanese dramas I will be doomed to follow some hopelessly forlorn individual. They won't talk, they won't express emotions, they'll just brood. It's not always the case that an unlikable character makes for an unlikable film, but if it's an intimate drama and their life and uneventful, then yea, it kind of does. At least for me. And I've got enough experiences of exactly that through the Far-East Bracket to mark it as a tendency. Koreeda's own film Maborosi falls into this category in my opinion.
But I decided to go ahead and watch Our Little Sister for a couple reasons. First, it was available on Netflix. Second, because looking at Teproc's top 100 I struggled to find anything I hadn't already seen that jumped out at me (I'm very hot and cold on your list Teproc... it has got films on it I have in my own top 100, but also films on my
Top 5 Movies You Hate But Haven't Actually Watched ). Our Little Sister at least was made this decade, and had people smiling on the poster, and had no reputation that I was aware of, so that put it well ahead of films like High and Low, Stalker or Fitzcarraldo (which, I'm sorry, but I will probably die without having seen, and I'm okay with that
). Also, in the spirit of club I figured it would be more sporting to go with a film I never would have chosen to see otherwise (unlike, say, Annihilation, which is one I'll get to on my own).
I must say, the opening shot made me groan. It wasn't bad in itself, but it was familiar... and not in a good way. A couple on a bed, asleep, naked but covered by a sheet. The camera pans over them, everything is silent, they're slightly sweaty, the room is dishevelled, a phone somewhere makes a noise and one of them fumbles around for it, looks at it, puts it back, and gets out of bed. That description won't communicate the feeling of the scene, but it was like catching a whiff of something I recognized. A flat, expressionless quality that's unmistakable. *shudders*
That was, quite literally, the one and only time I thought anything negative about the film. And it wasn't even a misstep by the film itself, but merely an inadvertent trigger for my own bad memories.
This film was wonderful. So so wonderful. What a pleasure to spend time with these characters, to be invited into their cozy old home, to share in their family traditions, to meet their friends. I very much admired them. The experience was a rare kind of wholesome... it's hard to think of something else to compare it to, so I guess that means it's special.