Les rêves de la luciole

This film alludes the life of a brat from Nagoya, problem teenager from a dysfunctional family, to the life of a former movie actress from the 1930s who is now suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Most of the scenes are cast in the city of Shinshiro, Aichi, and the town of Horai, Aichi (which will become part of Shinshiro in October 2005), both very small cities away from the visually overwhelming Japanese urban landscape. The unstaffed and deserted train platform of the JR Iida line, a small (and an actual) hospital, the unpolluted river, waterfalls, forests and the hot spring inns are remnants of old Japan, and so are the fireflies, fireworks and a summer festival at local shrine grounds.

Director John Williams captures the beauty of rural Japan and the wide cultural gap as well as geographical contrast between the urban teenager's Nagoya (fourth largest municipality in Japan) and Koide-san's farm house up on the hill in the Oku Mikawa Highland region, while on the interpersonal and spiritual levels connecting the common elements between these two women from two different generations.

This movie sets its story in two opposing contrasts one about urban life and country living, and another about young and old. Yumi, lives a shallow life like many teenage girls living in urban Japan until her father sends her to country side where their relatives live for the summer. She befriends Ms Koide, an old lady who used to be an actress.

Removed from the urban life, and seeing the contrast between her who has whole life ahead of herself, and an elderly Ms Koide who has nothing to look forward to in life, Yumi begins to put things into perspective about her own life.

This realization comes very gradually, so the movie seems slow, but the story is told in a very beautiful way. Almost all the people living around her in the city is very selfish, people living in the country aren't as privileged, but are more caring. Yumi gets a chance to reassess her life between the two opposing environment.

Kind of a coming of age story for an urban girl, but also has message for all of us about what life is all about.

Highly recommended.

'Firefly Dreams' is a nostalgic Japanese film directed by John Williams. A girl who is a high school student but doesn't go to a school every day is taken to an aunt's home in the countryside. At first, she seems to be fed up with life and people there. One day she is told to take care of an old lady who lives nearby. I feel this film successfully expresses the very Japanese summer life in a rural area. The actors act naturally as if they lived there. I like this film having no big incident throughout the film, just time going by slowly. There is sparse use of music in the film, and this gives the film a sense of reality. After watching it, I felt as if I had been in the film and spent time with the characters. I recommend it to the people who want to experience Japanese life in summer.

Firefly Dreams is basically a nice story about returning to traditional values in the face of the ugliness and shallowness of urban life. Packed off to relatives in the countryside by her parents, a young woman develops a variety of friendships - in particular one with an elderly woman who, it seems, has had an interesting past - and discovers herself in the process. What sets this film apart from others in the genre is the degree of understatement that pervades it. Events occur off camera and connections between events are made, but there is refreshingly little explication, leaving viewers to think for themselves. I would not call Firefly Dreams a masterpiece; the story is fairly predictable and simplistic, the characters are pretty generic, and the cinematography is unchallenging. But it is a nice film and leaves some tantalizing questions to mull over even as you return the DVD to the store.

This film is about the change of the high school girl in the summer vacation. She had got wild because of her family problems but by staying with her cousin's family and getting involved with an old lady, something changes in her personality. She is very straightforward and her attitude are quite easily affected by her feelings. Especially she frequently changes her attitudes towards her innocent cousin. This seems too childish for me, so I do not like her. And some bond between she and the old lady made changes in her but when and why did they come so intimate? In our daily lives it often occurs that people become friendly before we know, though. Probably I think I demand reasons too much in stories.

I raise the part I didn't like above, but I liked the music used in this film and the scenery of the countryside. That made me feel relaxed.