TIFF Awards

[Eija Margit Niskanen]

> From Mark Schilling's Japan Times review:


> One film I truly couldn't stick was Yosuke Nakagawa's "Starlit High 
> Noon"
> (Mahiru no Seiku), an empty exercise in piss-elegant noir starring Wang
> Leehom as a young Taiwanese hitman inexplicably hiding out in Okinawa, 
> where
> he encounters and falls for an older woman, played by Kyoka Suzuki, 
> who uses
> the same Laundromat. Though male model handsome, Wang is no actor -- 
> and
> Suzuki, the best Japanese actress of her generation, blows him off the
> screen.
> Other than its co-production deal, this film has little reason to 
> exist --
> save for Suzuki's
> one-woman, wasted-on-empty-space performance.
>
> I found this film truly boring, and I think it is just a poor copy of 
> Wong Karwaiesque a hooligan longing for love -type of story.

And I agree with you on Suzuki Kyoka. Actually she is the only 
contemporary actress, who has the same kind of screen presence than the 
actresses in, say, Naruse's or Ozu's films.

Eija