NobuhiroYamashita Tagged Articles at Cinematical

What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.

If you judged the film by its title, A Gentle Breeze in the Village sounds like a languishing feature full of long, drawling scenes and the passive impact of a gentle breeze. Because the film is set in the Japenese countryside, one might also imagine a certain amount of economic hardship or social commentary. In other words, a very slow and probably not-too-accessible film; this pleasant surprise of a film, though, is none of the above. Helmer Nobuhiro Yamashita's latest effort, which Aya Watanabe skillfully adapted from Fusako Kuramochi's comic, is a rich, well-paced, preciously sweet, and utterly lovable school tale -- one that never falls into overt drama or conflict, yet retains an overwhelming amount of charm in its storytelling.

A Gentle Breeze in the Village presents a simple and small world where six close-knit children of various ages -- from the immensely adorable youngest tot to the film's star, an 8th grader named Soyo (Kaho) -- attend school in the rural Japanese countryside -- outside of the hustle of Tokyo and big-city life. When the film starts, we see the kids preparing a classroom, running desks back and forth between the modest school's two rooms to get ready for a new student -- the Tokyo-born Hiromi Osawa (Masaki Okada), who happens to be the same age as Soyo.

Like any fun but exhausting activity, you're anxious for it to be over, but then you miss it when it is. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, TIFF 2007 has wrapped. Eastern Promises nabbed the People's Choice prize, and the wonderful My Winnipeg grabbed top Canadian honors. (Rejoice!) But there was still lots of fun, great films, and some fest craziness that came before the awards were handed out.

My favorite story from TIFF came from a friend who had gone to see Starting Out in the Evening. She loved the film, and said that the end had made her teary-eyed. Impressed with Frank Langella's performance, she walked up to him as she was leaving the theater and told him so. "Are you crying?" he asked, and then wiped her tears away. That Frank is a slick, slick man.

On Wednesday, The Last Lear Q&A with Rituparno Ghosh was cut short when someone pulled the fire alarm. As is usually the case when the bell starts ringing, everyone ignored it and we continued the discussion. (How often do people actually pay attention to those things from the get-go?) Then, mid-sentence, Ghosh was cut short and we were told to exit the theater immediately, because it wasn't a drill as they initially assumed. Whoops. At least it didn't happen during the film. Pisay, on the other hand, had a few technical problems -- thankfully, it was a digital screening, so we didn't end up missing anything.