Kyoto Elegy was a film that I did not take to at all. It may well be that there was a cultural divide at work here and my lack of understanding of Japanese society was at fault. Maybe it just wasn't that good a film.
Kyoto Elegy visits a series of years in the life and relationships of an unlikable trainee lawyer, Watabe. Watabe is the person we spend most time with, but his character felt inconsistent and didn't ring that true, perhaps because of the gaps in time between each section. The female characters are worse, though. None of them make sense as human beings and their entire personalities seem to be based on how, and only how, they relate to men, without any agency of their own. It's a shame, because Kumahori in particular had the potential to be a different and interesting character, potential that is disappointingly mismanaged and thrown away.
I was surprised to read afterwards that Kyoto Elegy was written and directed by a woman, as sometimes I wasn't exactly convinced whoever created these characters had spent much time with women. Even more bizarrely, director Kiki Sugino is actually the actress playing Kumahori.
I think the film is trying to say something about gender relations and perhaps was even conceived as a piece of feminist film-making. However, by totally misjudging its female characterisation so badly, it ends up feeling weirdly misogynist and borderline offensive.
It's not a terribly made film, though I wasn't convinced the overly dramatic score, or the shooting style, really went with the tone of the film.
Like I said, I think, and I hope, that this was a film that just didn't bridge the cultural divide and is one who was actually trying to say something different to what came across. I kept waiting for some revelation that would pull everything together and make the characters make sense, but unforunately, I was kept waiting for something that never came.
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