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maricchie
Reviews
Sennen joyû (2001)
Beautiful and creative animation with the poor story
Millennium Actress was visually creative and has a lot of beautiful scenes. It needed a little bit of time to find out what is going on in it but it actually was interesting and unique. Since it has a good pace with many different scenes I could enjoy it. Often times in the film the time periods would just melt into each other creating a new technique of storytelling. However, I wish it had a much better story. Chiyoko was cute like a doll but it was hard for me to understand the reason why she sticks to the missing artist that much. I could have enjoyed more if Chiyoko had a more reasonable reason to travel through these times to look for the her lover. Better development of the characters would have solved this problem.
It is better not to expect a much from the story. I would recommend that you enjoy the beautiful animation and exotic atmospheres at various periods of Japanese history. I think it should have been better if it had given up the story like gNekojiru-souh and allowed the viewer to go on an endless journey of animation. In the documentary about this film the director talks about how he started to make this film before the story was finished. This formula leads to almost certain doom in the movies. If the director can find a great story for his next feature then he could become a great feature anime director.
Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu (2001)
Silly, erotic, and funny
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge directed by the prolific Shohei Imamura follows the life of Yosuke Sasano played by Koji Yakusho. The film has many rich layers and mythic qualities. After losing his job, Yosuke seeks advice from a vagrant wise man name Taro, played by Kazuo Kitamura. Taro ultimately sends Yosuke on a quest to find a hidden golden budda statue. Itfs not so much the statue thatfs important we learn when Yosuke travels to a small fishing village to a house beside the red bridge where we meet Saeko Aizawa who befriends Yosuke to releases her body of water from her very strange condition.
The filling water in Saeko body symbolizes her loneliness and her heaviness of heart to find someone in her life. The gag where Yosuke relieves Seikofs water is fun the first time but soon becomes repetitive. The characters in the story are disjointed from each other but this is not nessearly a bad thing since Imamura has so much to show us. For instance there is a subplot involving an African marathon runner which is used clearly for comic relief but and has nothing to do with the rest of the story. But its characters like this that adds multiple dimensions to the story that really make it memorable.
One thing that confused me was that there was a scene of Saeko almost drowned in the river when she was small and it makes audience imagine that it was probably the cause of flood in her body. However, in the end of the movie we will know that her grandma also had the same sexual predisposition contradicting the river scene.
Overall the film is worth watching for the quirkiness of the characters. A man who just lost his job, homeless people, fishermen, a senile old lady, an African marathon runner, there are a lot of unique characters in this movie. They are people at the bottom of the Japanese social pyramid and something we usually do not see in the movie. The story is a kind of silly, erotic, and funny. Although not a perfect film the fountain spewing sex scenes will be remembered for a long time.