Maborosi

The camera rarely moves and yet there are images here as strikingly lovely as any you've seen and others as sweetly alive.

It is a sombre and painful drama, enacted with reserve.

Each character moves and speaks differently, shining with the complex inner life of a real person with real needs, real memories, real thoughts.

The tale is told in contemplative wide-angle shots; the absence of any spurious, unearned intimacy with the characters makes the climactic scenes profoundly moving.

The film uses natural lighting exclusively, eschewing staged settings as often as possible and keeping some nighttime scenes entirely in the dark, an eerie mirror to Yumiko's wounded heart.

The film, which was made with only natural light, draws the viewer into its spiritual mood with one breathtaking shot after another, as the camera draws back to contemplate Yumiko from afar.

It's a very Japanese understanding of suicide: as not bluntly tragic or a waste, but alluring, mysterious, not subject to total comprehension ... the state of grief itself.

A film of feelings and textures that establishes character without the need for traditional plot structures.

Generally, this film engages more intellectually with emotion than Kore-eda's later more heartfelt work.

Based on a prize-winning Japanese short story and much influenced by the styles of Yasujiro Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, this is a deeply felt film that eschews cheap sentiment and leaves one genuinely moved and unexpectedly uplifted.