The Big Picture Magazine
A kitchen is one of the three settings in Masahiro Kobayashi’s Japan’s Tragedy (Nihon no higeki, 2012), and the table is the most prominent piece of furniture in this small room. An open sliding door offering a view into a small hallway and the adjacent bedroom creates some depth in the film’s opening eleven-minute scene, […]
In Koji Fukada’s Harmonium (Fuchi ni tatsu, Japan, 2016), deception is a theme but also a narrative strategy involving both the characters and the viewers. This slow-paced film revolves around a family living in a suburb in Japan – the father Toshio (Kanji Furutachi), the mother Akie (Mariko Tsutsui) and their daughter Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa). […]
Ana Rocha’s Listen (2020) begins quietly, with shots of clotheslines and tree branches swaying in the breeze: a rare moment of solace in an otherwise breathless family drama. Clocking in at under 80 minutes, the writer-director’s feature debut doesn’t waste any time immersing viewers in what must be one of the most gut-wrenching experiences a […]
Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Still Walking (Aruitemi aruitemo, 2008) starts with two women preparing a meal, the older woman giving advice to the younger one. This first long sequence sets the tone of the film and signals the filmmaker’s emphasis on everyday life, which is supported by the narrative and by other aesthetic means. Depicting twenty-four hours […]
A beach at the seaside is the main location in Masahiro Kobayashi’s Lear on the Shore (Umibe no Ria, 2017) and the key setting for a number of dramatic encounters. The former actor Chokitsu Kuwabatake (Tatsuya Nakadai), dressed in pyjamas and a long woollen coat and pulling a suitcase behind him, walks along the beach […]
Joanna Hogg’s second feature film follows in the footsteps of her first. Like Unrelated (2007), Archipelago (2010) is a brutally realist study of affluent people on holiday. However, instead of Italy, Hogg’s new fictional British family travels to the Isles of Scilly, returning to a much-beloved cottage for the final time before Edward (Tom Hiddleston) […]
In Happiness (1998), the ever-smiling Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), in her neat kitchen, is strongly reminiscent of the female ideal as propagated in American films and commercials of the 1950s and 1960s. However, her affected demeanour und put-on optimism cannot hide the illusion behind the image of the idyllic home that is associated with the American […]
Odd Obsession is a film about ageing, manipulation and sexual games.
Adam Wingard uses close attention to sightlines and shot-reverse-shot editing to atomise and dislocate relations in a grief-stricken New Mexico family in their 2014 horror-thriller The Guest. The Petersons have lost their eldest son, Caleb, who has died in combat whilst fighting for the US army. The unexpected arrival of David (Dan Stevens), a charismatic […]