Shigatsu monogatari

This is not a movie for everybody. It is very slow-paced and takes a long time to establish its main characters, their behavior and their feelings to each other. The movie observes the first days of a young Japanese girl after she has moved from Hokkaido, the Japanese equivalent of Kansas, to Tokyo to attend University. At first the girl is very insecure and nervous about her new situation, but gradually she becomes more secure and falls in love with a fellow student. That's all the Plot there is, but this movie is not about a big story, it is about a person. Over the course of the movie we feel and share the girls insecurities, loneliness and finally opening up. Seldom has a movie so masterfully and with so much passion for its characters captured the problems of leaving home, being lonely in a unknown mega city and to be for the first time on one's own feet. I can fully recommend this movie for everybody who likes films about life and people, that move at life's speed.

April Story is all about how simple and sweet a movie can be. You will be at total calm, quite and emotional while watching this movie. As a university student Uzuki Mireno has done a great job. She brilliantly potrays the character in the movie.

the plot is quite simple:a Hokkaido's girl enters a Tokyo's university cause the man she unrequited love with is also in Tokyo. As an Asian,this movie make me reflect lots of my adolescence. there are 2 scenes are my favorites 1:girl with neighbor (the loneliness of the modern citizen) 2:the umbrella-borrow (Nireno is really pure)

PS the film's name which translate 'story about April' in Chinese make me think another film 'pieces of April'also is a great film

all in all if you want to relax for a easy plot movie it's a nice choice

*****/*******

This small (67 minutes) romantic story breaks no new ground but it is like a piece of candy. Sweet and thoroughly enjoyable while it lasts. I would have liked to see more develop but I think Shunji told the tale he wanted to tell, the loneliness of a girl starting college and how she finds a bit of happiness. The sort of thing high school girls fall in love with.

I was very recently exposed to this filmmaker and utterly captivated by another one of his films, so that alone ensures I'll want to see everything by him at some stage. He seems like one to follow and devote serious time to: a vibrant new voice that embraces damaged worlds with the gentle ardor of Zen. He makes the films Mizoguchi ought to have made but for drowning still reflections in overbearing dramatics.

This is even more sparsely arranged than that other film. Once more the point is that it's seemingly about nothing, purely episodic life from a teenage girl's journey into young adulthood and love. Once more the point is that there is no solid core to explain from, only glimpses from a floating world. Nothingness permeates, but a sweet, Buddhist nothingness that is pregnant with life.

The world is still new that she enters, the mind is clear, fresh. There is a lot of idle perambulation but no vexation. Solitude that is sweet enjoyment of the present moment. Being that is still magnificent in its simplicity.

Against this backdrop the smallest gesture rings far and wide with meaning, say a smile beneath a red umbrella for the joy of being able to freely smile or the feeling of being wet but safe. It is the best cinematic Zen I know of.

Spontaneous joy without pleasure. A world that makes sense because the senses are open, receptive. Astute viewers will pick up a connection to old landscape compendiums from the Shogunate era, the title of this post is a reference to one; those were intended for tourists passing through Edo, but were the training ground for cinematic perspective, more deeply intended for the travelling eye.

On a technical level, I believe this was solely conceived as an exercise where the filmmaker got to work out a few shots and atmospheres he had in mind: spring rains, clear evenings, bird's eye views, calligraphic sweeps, many worlds fleeting from the windows of a speeding train. A lot of that paid off in Lily Chou-Chou, there in a longer form.

This is small but full and ripe, a rare thing. I'm even more eager to follow his work.