August in the Water

What the hell Ishii. Amazing weirdness.

A really absorbing mysterious and ethereal romance with lots of interesting ideas and images that doesn’t feel like it has the central thematic core to tie it together and make it great.

https://i.ibb.co/SXh8Y3G/nou.png | file this one next to kurosawa's CHARISMA.

Wonderfully subtle and absolutely suffused with low fantasy. The score is perfect.

Peculiar movie that at first appeared to be a rather dumb "young adult"-targeted fantasy drama but grew on me substantially by the end. The story's approach to supernatural elements seems like a transplant from the world of J-horror, but there are no scares to be found here, rather this seems to be an exercise in brooding, atmospheric world-building. The writing, and occasionally the cinematography, are conspicuously sophomoric but I admire the drive toward greater and greater abstraction.