Cannes. Tokyo Sonata.

"Kiyoshi Kurosawa's previous film Retribution (Sakebi, 2006) carried a distinct air of farewell," writes Tom Mes in Midnight Eye. "Farewell to a genre that its director loved intensely but which seemed to become an increasingly restrictive straitjacket."

"A two-year break later, the arrival of Tokyo Sonata seems to confirm the impression. The story of a salaryman who keeps up appearances to his family after he has been laid off, it is entirely devoid of anything vaguely supernatural.... Yet it is without doubt the most terrifying film Kiyoshi Kurosawa has ever made."

Updated through 5/22.

"Though there's nothing here that hasn't been dealt with in other Japanese movies, pic benefits considerably from its pitch-perfect performances - especially [Teruyuki] Kagawa as the diminutive, wild-eyed paterfamilias, and the graceful [Kyoko] Koizumi as the wife in desparate need of companionship," writes Derek Elley in Variety. "Kurosawa's skill (seen in his best J-horrors) at suggesting so much more than appears onscreen is a further plus, without going into the mystical realms of his earlier non-horror, Bright Future."

Jason Gray posts his January feature for Screen International as a zipped image.

Un Certain Regard.

Updates, 5/19: "It may seem incongruous for a filmmaker best known for his horror efforts to give us a drama as humane - and funny - as Toyko Sonata; then again, horror and humor are both exercises in tension, and Kurosawa demonstrates his understanding of that with true skill here," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical. "Tokyo Sonata's been one of the most unexpected surprises of the Un Certain Regard selection at Cannes this year, and one of the most delightful."

"This may be Kurosawa's most accessible film yet," writes Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter. "Thanks to the script which invests the smallest scenes with dramatic significance, Tokyo Sonata enthrals audiences for the first hour with the pacing of a thriller. Though depicted reactions of families galvanized by financial hardship are as Japanese as tea ceremony or Pachinko, the film's comment on global economic issues is universal."

"Kurosawa has often hinted, in earlier pictures, that he smells something rotten in his homeland, and this time he tackles the issue front-on - by the time he has finished, there he is precious little hope left," writes Dan Fainaru in Screen Daily.

"[T]he real surprise is not the shift in genre from horror to drama, but from influence, from Tarkovsky to Tati," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "The result is one of the most eccentric and successful tragicomedies in recent memory."

Update, 5/22: "The film's surprising final narrative turn - with its outbreak of violence (however non-threatening) - vaguely recalls the genre work for which Kurosawa is most known (Cure, Pulse)," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE. "What's more illuminating about the film, however, is the straightforward family dynamics - a downsized salaryman who keeps his unemployment a secret and his young outspoken son, whose creative passions suggest an ultimately hopeful Japanese future, as long as it's not squashed by the insecurities of the older generation."

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 18, 2008 12:40 PM