‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Review: A Resonant Dreamscape Of Aftershocks
© Provided by The Hollywood ReporterRecent films Drive My Car and Burning , two magnificent adaptations of Haruki Murakami's fiction, delve into haunting mysteries and fears that revolve around breathtaking finesse. As an animated feature , The Sleeping Blind Willow Woman fails to explore depth and behavioral trickery. But animation is an appropriate medium to explore another facet of Murakami's work, the magical realist bent on existential angst. Pierre Feldes, composer and visual artist who directed his first feature film, created something that combines imagery and styling, the film is beautiful, mysterious and at times very strange.
The writer/director finds the connection between the different storylines in the idea of an earthquake as a psychological rupture, releasing the grievances and fears it usually hides, keeping people trapped and in limbo. Many of Feldes' roles here include composing music, dubbing a key role and last but not least character and environment design - his graphic style won over Murakami, who was otherwise not a fan of the animated film .
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The source material was six short stories from three collections ( The blind willow, The sleeping woman , After the earthquake and The disappearing elephant ). Feldes interwoven their storylines, focusing on three main characters: two men who occupy adjacent offices at a financial institution, and the wife of one of them. There are failures in their past, but they are united in the present, the aftermath of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011. On the one hand, it is a familiar world — news of the aftermath is constantly broadcast on TV and over the radio; Divorce; Enterprise scale and outsourcing. But it's also one where a giant talking frog is on a heroic mission, a hermit grants wishes like a ghost, and a ghostly blue cat comes and goes.
The service is divided into six sections, each based on elements from at least two selected stories. A gray cloud of foreboding hangs over the city as Komura (Ryan Bamarita) goes to work at Tokyo Security Trust Bank's credit department—the name alone causes trouble—while his wife, Kyoka (Shoshana Wilder), remains tied to the news. the death toll rises, dies as the search for life in the ruins unfolds before her. When he finally got up from the couch, he wanted to leave Komura.
"I'm happy" is the best Komura has to say about his job, and his boss (Arthur Holden) is less than thrilled when he calls him "a good, nice employee." Older colleague Katagiri (Marcelo Arroyo) is a despondent, overworked sack whose pent-up anger bubbles to the surface in the form of the frog (voiced from the top of his skull). A six-foot-tall, tea-drinking amphibian guy, quoting Nietzsche, seeks Katagiri's help in saving Tokyo from impending doom, pressing his webbed feet to the loan officer's aching wrist: "All these years you've been quietly tackling the smaller tasks. and she performed perfectly, the frog tells him, also noting that Katagiri "wasn't promoted, wasn't appreciated".
If all of this is true, it's no surprise that Katagiri is so insecure. But his self-loathing, barely watched by endless stacks, is overwhelming and heartbreaking. While he and Frog Jungs do some shadow work, Komura takes a break from the office. Grieving his marriage, he considers whether to accept a settlement or stay in what his undiplomatic boss calls a dead end. His half-hearted search for his missing cat, Kyoko, leads to a strange but heartwarming encounter with a young neighbor (Lori Babin).
At the beginning of the film, Komura takes a teenager (Jesse Noah Grumman) to the hospital. In the story that gave the film its title, the boy being treated for hearing problems is Komura's nephew. It's clear that Feldes may not have seen a natural way to bring that detail up for conversation, or a reason for it, but their relationship remains vaguely blurred throughout the film. However, this is a minor annoyance that does not detract from the impact of the sweetly sad episode. For Komura, this trip brings back warm and tender memories of Kyoko dating her best friend (Michael Cheese) long before they were married. Looking back, Kyoko drinks in a dark bar and tells a friend about the mysterious restaurant owner (Norman Carrier) she met at her 20th birthday party.
Much of the film's dialogue is taken verbatim from Murakami's stories and presented with a combination of accents (a co-production from France, Luxembourg, Canada and the Netherlands) that are obvious but somehow add to the overwhelming dreamlike logic that is happening. The language they speak has no brilliance of literary brilliance; are often realistically boring and awkward, sharp ideas are all the more effective when they explode in a fast-paced conversation. There is also a sinister undertone to the way some characters indicate that they know something they are not revealing. Sometimes it's just a clear sign of insanity, as in the case of Kamura's colleague Sasaki (Scott Humphrey). And sometimes the effect is provocative and intriguing, as in Komuri's relationship with Shimao (Catherine King So) at an airport lounge, restaurant and love hotel called the Astral. , but also the intimacy of a post-coital conversation.
The combination of visual literalness and abstraction favors the material. The moody palette ranges from gloomy to dull watercolor, and many of the background characters, including passers-by in the street, are translucent figures devoid of detail, perfectly expressing their place in the drama. As for the main characters, Feldes' character designs are "inspired" by live artists (no rotascoping), and while the people on screen are a bit exaggerated and awkward, they're also alive with awkward pauses and a sense of presence. otherwise worried and surprised at the moment, trying to make sense of it all.
Blind Willow's multi-layered narrative moves between flashbacks, the proximity of trouble and the promise, however small or desperate, of something better in the future. A beautiful soundtrack reinforces this pressure in the roar of the sea waves, the gentle patter of rain on the city window, the constant hum of the airport terminal. Feldes' eloquent score, peppered with expertly used doses of Mozart, perfectly matches the changing moods, from fantasy to tragedy, from comic to noir notes, just as the film itself is synchronized with a peculiar mix of the mundane and the obscure. surreal.
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