Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami, traditions about nature remain eternal. During the full-moon night of traditional dances in August, 16-year-old Kaito discovers a dead body floating in the sea. His girlfriend Kyoko will attempt to help him understand this mysterious discovery. Together, Kaito and Kyoko will learn to become adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

There's a Zen calm and a healing gentleness to Naomi Kawase's Cannes competition film Futatsume No Mado, or Still the Water, set on the Japanese island of Amami, south of the mainland.

Like Kawase's other films, it displays a mystic spirituality and, as in her The Mourning Forest (2007), a profound belief in the therapeutic and redemptive power of nature to soothe our worldly pain. As one character says: "You have to keep a humble attitude to nature; it's pointless to resist it." In the unending unity of nature, we can gain a perspective on the limited nature of our individual bodies. Kawase's film is sometimes beautiful and moving but I couldn't help occasionally finding it a little contrived and self-conscious.

It juxtaposes a sensational and painful event with everyday emotion and everyday heartbreak. Kyoko (Jun Yoshinaga) is a confident, intelligent 16-year-old girl who is falling in love with the diffident, moody boy next door: Kaito (Nijiro Murakami). Kaito's parents are divorced: his dad, a tattooist, lives in Tokyo and his mum works in a restaurant. Kyoko is dealing with something even more painful: her mother, a delicate and beautiful woman, is dying, perhaps of cancer, although the film is a little too otherworldly to acknowledge the exact illness, the exact medical care or the ugly, un-Zen physical toll it can take.

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

Close

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

Close

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Futatsume no mado / Still the water - by Naomi Kawase (2014)

Close