Barcelona Dispatch. 6.

Film festivals are wildly hectic experiences and sometimes the most difficult thing to get done is actually seeing films. Yesterday I only was able to see one film, but what a film. It's Only Talk is the best film presented so far in Official Section, no contest. The man behind Vibrator, Ryuichi Hiroki, offers here an intimate, perceptive, delicately and ultimately moving portrayal of a woman under the influence of depression. The film was praised when it screened at Sundance and it's easy to see why - this is subtle, natural cinema, all truth and beauty, a gem.

Shinobu Terajima plays Yuko, a 35-year-old single woman who takes a variety of medications to battle her manic depression. She sees many men but seems to find no cure in the contact with them (only sexual, occasionally friendly), finding at the end of most of her encounters only the sensation of having no true relations at all with anyone. There's an old university classmate who suffers from impotence. And an old pervert (simply called "K") who suffers from lack of empathy. A third man is a young gangster, Yasuda, who's not really brave, but maybe the opposite - he breaks down at the slightest provocation.

The man to change her life is her cousin, Shoichi, who left his family to go with his mistress and found that she wasn't interested in him whatsoever. Yuko and Shoichi seem to complement each other well. He has some of the authority needed to bear, carry and reconcile all her impulses, the patience to keep going every day, and love enough to leave it all and start all over at point zero. In their relationship is the center of the story and the most absorbing moments of a film full of epiphanies. Everything seems fine at last, but things might take another turn.

If there's justice in this world, It's Only Talk should carry away the Durian de Oro (if not, please leave the prize for another little treasure, Reflections). Hiroki follows his female character with such delicacy and care that you can't help but be affected by every little turn of her luck. The camera is lightweight, but always focused where it has to be, and there are many intimate long shots where you can feel life blossoming in front of your eyes - e.g., that moment when Yuko and Shoichi choose names for their goldfishes. A beautiful discovery of a movie.

Posted by dwhudson at May 5, 2006 1:03 AM