Photograph: Venice Movie Pageant
Those that are acquainted with Tatsuki Fujimoto’s standard Japanese manga Look Again or its award-winning 2024 anime model by Kiyotaka Oshiyama may need a distinct preliminary response to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new adaptation, which is premiering at this 12 months’s Venice Movie Pageant. I used to be not very acquainted with the unique comedian or the primary film, so for me, Look Again performed like a basic Kore-eda movie about disparate characters who discover and produce out totally different qualities in one another. (It really bears a passing resemblance to Monster, his haunting and underseen 2023 movie about two mismatched younger boys who turn into inseparable associates.) However so far as I can inform, Kore-eda has remained resolutely devoted to Fujimoto’s authentic, adopting its imagery and colour palette in addition to its narrative and construction. The fabric simply occurs to be good for his sensibilities.
Look Again follows two ladies by childhood and early maturity. Ayumu Fujino (performed by Furi Nanase as a baby) is a well-liked artist and athlete, popular with her elementary-school associates and in addition dedicated to the little comics she attracts for the college paper. Sooner or later, one other comedian seems alongside hers, drawn by Kyomoto (Rokka Okada), a reclusive scholar who received’t come to highschool attributable to social nervousness. Surprised at how significantly better this mysterious shut-in’s work is than hers, Fujino’s aggressive spirit kicks in, and he or she turns into obsessive about finding out tougher at her craft. She even briefly provides up drawing out of frustration. (Possibly that’s the athlete in her: In the event you can’t be the perfect, why trouble?) On commencement day, Fujino is tasked with taking Kyomoto’s diploma to the woman’s residence, and the 2 lastly meet. It seems that Kyomoto idolizes Fujino’s work, going as far as to name her “Sensei Fujino.” She even asks for the woman’s autograph.
They turn into shut associates and collaborators, coming into a manga competitors and successful honorable point out, regardless of nonetheless simply being center schoolers. (In later years, Fujino and Kyomoto are performed by, respectively, Natsuki Deguchi and Aju Makita.) Fujino takes images of the world exterior — of fields and roads and birds and trains — in order that Kyomoto is aware of what to attract. This course of, we suspect, additionally helps Fujino see the world anew; Kore-eda shoots these rural landscapes and still-life compositions together with his matter-of-fact mastery, by no means overtly aestheticizing them however nonetheless imbuing them with marvel. (I’m unsure there’s a filmmaker alive who makes use of the flattening impact of lengthy lenses higher than he does.) Fujino additionally exhibits her nonetheless painfully shy good friend the pleasures of the skin world by accompanying her to the town, going out to eat, and serving to her contend along with her concern of crowds, of noise, of the blinding brightness of daylight. The 2 ladies stroll in snowy fields, go to temples and aquariums, and research sharks and different sea creatures for a brand new manga. They go to the flicks and watch Nosferatu. Someplace alongside the best way, your coronary heart explodes.
Look Again is a film about collaboration and affect and friendship, however it’s additionally a film about silence and persistence. The movie begins with the mild scratch of a pen drawing, and all through, Kore-eda stays attuned to the sounds of the world round these ladies. The cocooned Kyomoto is extra attuned to what we hear within the quiet. Her drawings, nonetheless, have an uneven energy. (When Fujino first sees one among Kyomoto’s panels, I’m fairly positive I heard a snatch of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony play briefly on the soundtrack.) The busy Fujino has ambition and drive and expertise however generally must quiet down, step again, and see issues with a contemporary eye.
The movie isn’t all sweetness and light-weight; it will definitely goes to some grisly locations. If Kore-eda falters in any respect, it’s in a number of the structural and stylistic gambits of the movie’s finale, which additionally come straight from the manga and contain a journey by an alternate timeline the place these ladies didn’t fairly meet. Narratively, it’s intriguing and sometimes transferring, however Kore-eda’s unadorned fashion doesn’t all the time deal with abstraction nicely. A few of the symbolism of the movie’s ultimate scenes (and sure, I’m being purposefully imprecise) can really feel just like the director struggling to convey one thing that continues to be simply exterior his grasp. However that’s such a minor quibble. With Look Again, Kore-eda reminds us why he’s one among trendy cinema’s nice humanists.
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