Naomi Kawase - impressions

[Pier Maria Bocchi]

I was in Alba, too (as a member of the festival staff).

Ok, fine everything Guillermo (whom I did have the pleasure to meet) and
Giacomo (whom I didn't have the pleasure to meet, too bad) said about Kawase
and her stuff.

But I feel to say something.

As Roberta knows (and Roberta knows me very well), I can't make myself like
Kawase Naomi that much as anybody around the world.

Sure, she did something good, also very good. Suzaku is a good thing, and
her last film, Tsuioku no dansu, has an incredible power to make you bow
your head, and then raise again and watch, and then bow again. This is
necessary cinema, 'obscene' in its need to be watched. This is the cinema
that we need, nowadays.

Ok for the sensitive approach to people, as Giacomo stated, but I think that
this approach doesn't go so deep as it seems.

Suzaku recalls to mind the cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien, using also some
stylistic 'tools' relating the passage of time, elliptical passages and cuts
that the tawainese director made a personal sign, but films like 'A Time to
Live A Time to Die', 'Dust in the Wind', 'Goodbye South, Goodbye' reach
peaks absolutely higher (and deeper) than those of Kawase. And the style is
more crystalline and precise in Hou.
I think also that a film like Moboroshi by Koreeda manages to tell the
disintegration of people, the loneliness of man on earth and the friability
of relationships in a more convincing way than Suzaku (and this from a guy
like me, who doesn't like Koreeda).

As for Hotaru, the other long feature by Kawase, I think that a not
indispensable pic like M/Other by Suwa Nobuhiro is harder and stronger in
its depiction of a falling. Sure, the two films see differences (as Roberta
said to me, properly) between themselves, but to me the cruelty of M/Other,
also in terms of style, is more successful than the unbalanced (and I hope
not to be misunderstood) severity of Hotaru.

Sure Kawase Naomi digs in human being, and sometimes she gets what she wants
perfectly and splendidly, but she still has some way to go, according to me,
especially -I repeat myself, sorry- in the style department, in its
confidence, in its maturity. She is too much of a filmmaker, and too much
involved in her 'plaisir' of using her DV camera, contemplating nature more
than really DIG in it. She is young, and then time will tell.

Ciao,
Pier Maria




----- Original Message -----
From: "=%iso-8859-1%q?Guillermo=20Gonzales?=" <mononoaware76 at yahoo.it>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: Naomi Kawase - impressions


> Hi Kinejapaners,
>
> as well as Giacomo I was in Alba and I attended Kawase
> Naomi's seminar.
> I guess a lot of people is still moved, beyond the two
> of us.
> Naomi's works and words have been really intense and
> have penetrated deep inside who was in Alba.
> I must confess I had a few prejudices about her and
> absolutely I didn't expect to come back home with a
> totally reversed opinion.
> ...still overflowing, as Giacomo wrote.
>
> ciao
> Guillermo
>
>
> --- Giacomo Calorio <karisuma at tiscalinet.it> ha
> scritto: > Hi kinejapaners,
> > I've just finished to see the extraordinary
> > retrospective exhibition
> > about Kawase Naomi's work, in Alba. I'm still
> > moved... I've never seen
> > such a sensitive approach to people in a movie. The
> > way she manages to
> > communicate her feelings towards an object, and the
> > way she manages to
> > dig in human being... it was a really new and
> > wonderful experience to me.
> >
> > I'm happy but my mind is still overflowing with
> > thoughts and moods... can
> > cinema do this?
> >
> > ciao
> >
> > giacomo
> >
>
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