Oct 28, 2022
I was lucky enough to see this at Scotland Loves Anime along with a Q&A with director Naoko Yamada who was happy to talk about the themes, ideas and production that made this short film happen. I am using the spoiler tag for a reason because I recommend people experience it for themselves without seeing spoilers.
The film is ~17 minutes long with no dialogue and is set to Lovely Summer Chan's rock based score as we go through several repeating loops of the main character's morning routine and show the impact of her coping with her feelings of loss.
The remaining parts of the
...
film deal with her exploring the flat they lived in and reconnecting with her lost love and expressing herself through art, first by immitating her lost partner's guitar playing and then by her own painting while she draws comfort from the memories she has with her former partner.
The movie is more about showing you it's metaphors and letting you take the story from the imagery which I thought was a great way to handle the vague feelings of pain and loss. I think the choice to avoid having hard lines drawn on every edge is part of expressing this vagueness of her feelings (the tea pot or the painting of flowers for example).
The film also uses a lot of colour to symbolise characters and I think a second watch through might be needed to track every use of colour in the film, as it is hidden everywhere throughout.
Some things I didn't know or get during the screening that were explained during the Q&A:
The lyric about "Cucumber Horses and Aubergine Cows" this is a reference to the Obon fesitval tradition of making vessels for spirit animals who will bring back ancestors during the festival.
The emoji's (yes emoji's) are an attempt by the dead boyfriend to communicate with his still living girlfriend, but she cannot percieve them. It was a little jarring at first but you can see this as part of the vague communications/feelings theme that runs through the movie.
There's probably a significance about the use of Anemone flowers but as I don't know the "language of flowers" it's lost on me.
Generally speaking I would like to re-watch this film a few times, Naoko Yamada was asked about what would happen to the film after it's shown in cinemas and she doesn't know, it's up to the production staff to determine how the distribution will be carried out. I hope this film becomes widely available outside of Japan so that people can enjoy it as much as I did.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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