Pequena Floresta: Verão/Outono

Beautiful girl eating beautifully in a beautiful environment, isn't that pleasant? Indeed. My first impression about this movie is that this one is really pleasing to the eye.

Its always been interesting to watch or read about rural Japan. To know how neat and peaceful it can be, sure is amazing for me. Furthermore, the movie provides more details about living in it. All the cooking and planting tips are neatly shown, but then the dramas get a bit sloppy. There are some wasteful scenes that bother.

The story is very interesting but we can easily lose our grip to it by the long shown details of the processes of the main character's daily life. The movie provides lots of details yet lacking the essential others, like heartwarming social life of rural area (its shown, but lacking and not well-drawn).

I don't usually bothered by the acting but I really was in this one. All the cooking are amazing, but they don't look that exciting. Food featured movies usually gives us the sensation of cooking excitement. But I think the actress failed by only giving the charm of her beauty and putting the beauty of cooking aside. Her expression also doesn't tell so much about how good her cooking is. I know that the main character having a rough and tough life, but since the movie focused on food making, I think it should detail the joy of it more.

Anyway, the movie is good or I'd rather say it is 'fresh' and I'll recommend people to watch it. Especially for those Hashimoto Ai's fans, this movie will certainly be a delight, haha. I really looking forward for the Winter/Spring and I hope it could answer all my questions for this one.

P.S. If you are looking for other movies featuring rural Japan, here are some that I remember: A Gentle Breeze in the Village(2006), Wood Job!(2014), and 700 Days of Battle: Us vs The Police(2008).

Beautiful, poetic, ethereal. I started watching this late one night, and called it quits in the middle (from fatigue, not boredom), and the main character appeared in my dream. Get this, when I awoke early the following morning, I immediately returned to complete the film, went back to sleep after, and dreamed about the main character again. This would usually happen if I had left the film on and dozed off, but that was not the case. It was off. The beauty of the experience of watching this film was soo great that it permeated my dreams. And that's all I have to say about this gem.

I've already mentioned several times for such films I've come across that they are true art, a motion art, with an audio commentary. The 110 minutes of pleasure, where man and nature connect. I did not move for a second, and at the end, I felt it was too short. But I'm not expecting the same result from anybody else who give it a try. Since from a person to person, the taste and anticipation vary.

Despite it came a couple of years ago, I was very impressed with the recent films like 'Midnight Diner' and 'Sweet Bean' which led me to this flick. This film is not just about the food, but also about farming and other related things. From the fresh perspective about our food. The food we make and its root.

The nature provided us food for the past 200 thousand plus years. Full of natural and nutritional. But the art of preparing our own food using those items was not that ancient. As the time passed by, we the humans discovered many new ingredients and methods to make very healthy food by removing unwanted parts. From untasty natural food to tasty cooked food. We developed such skill over thousands of years. There are unhealthy foods too, like perhaps sugary, oily and fried items.

Everybody has to eat, so everybody knows to make at least one dish. It could be just bread and jam for some. Why I'm saying all this! Because the people from the cities use most the ready to use ingredients. Even in the off the season they get what they want. Those were preserved using the chemicals, which's bad for health. That's one of the highlights of this film. How to make your own from using naturally available items around you. And to prepare the food according to the season.

❝Cooking is a mirror that reflects your mind.❞

Very inspiring. Makes us to see carefully what we're eating. Besides, there are experimental cookings, as well as myth buster. The difference between someone expert and ours cooking. The taste and methods. Most importantly the assumption that we think the dish is our family's or the local or the nation's, but the time will come you to learn the truth. Maybe because as a kid, we had believed everything what the elders had said to us, while making fun out of us.

The details were awesome. More like you are watching a documentary film. The majority of the film was a background narration like a documentary film. When the direct dialogues between the characters appeared occasionally, it was like the narration shifting its phase. Such change was good, particularly moving on to other topics.

It was based on the manga of the same name, and from the genre called slice of life. Truly a perfect, most realistic slice of a rural Japanese life. This is the first part of two films called 'Summer/Autumn'. The other one called 'Winter/Spring'. The story begins at the end of the spring during still the atmosphere was foggy and the lands are wet, when it is a good time to cultivate the rice. The next half are the summer, maintaining the crops and following the harvest takes place.

In between these periods, there are many sub topics, the topics about each dish that prepared according to the season and availability of the items, I mean the seasonal ingredients in a remote place of Japan called Little Forest. If you are a food lover, you will be mouthwatering for several times in your watch. But there's no detail on how they are prepared like that shown in any cooking programmes. If you are good at cooking, luckily you would get most of the procedures.

The actress was brilliant. The locations were amazing. For every few minutes the film picks a topic in the form of a new dish and makes progress on that. So the lead character, Ichiko, was like a mystery. But as the story goes on, reveals enough about her to us. I'm expecting more in the next part, as seeing how the film had ended. I meant the final scene that gave a fresh hint about some earlier life events of hers.

She was alone, and that's the best part of this story. Because everything she said were directly to us. Not that two people having a conversation. Besides, cooking for two or two plus are always hefty job. Sometimes the life will be very joyous when you live by yourself. I mean not for the entire life, but for some period, like when you are set to discover yourself. On that aspect, in many ways the film boosts our confidence to go for what we desire to do in our life.

There's no story in it. You should not expect one. As I said earlier, it was a semi-documentary and all you would witness are like the real life, real thing. The nature documentaries are always best, but while watching it, I thought this flick was much better than those. You know, most of the todays nature documentaries are not truthful. If they see a lion wondering, they run out of patience and put a zebra, so they can capture a most magnificent lion hunting a zebra.

This is not a BBC, Nation Geography or a History Channel programme, but you can compare it to that level. Except it was all pre-planned. Cooking, farming, culture and the nature, this film was a whole pack. All in one as what those TV channels produces. Not a history, but as I said in the very first paragraph, an art. This is not like a must see film, but ignoring it even after learning about it will be a mistake, especially if you are a film fanatic or a Japanophile.

9/10

Basically I made a mistake haha.

I wanted to see Little Forest (2018) but got this one instead, without much checking....oh well. Only after 40 minutes it felt off. Until then (and after) it felt like a treat. It felt like a movie about symbiosis, about our connection to the earth and nature, it felt obvious, comfortable, chill.

Then I would have compared it with how Romania does agriculture. It doesn't feel the same. In Japan it seems like a more philosophical approach, much more profound. For us, it feels more like survival...either that or something was lost along the way. There is still respect but it's more distant and on a grander scale. When we make jam we make it for 20 people, not one. I still found some common ground to the stuff made in-house that has the same name as some brands...like the Nutella stuff. Nostalgic stuff.

You just feel that she will live past 100. If you want to escape, watch this and escape together with our protagonist.

There is such harmony, sustainability, and mindfulness in this young woman who lives off of the crops she grows or food she finds, out in an absolutely gorgeous part of rural Japan. The moments of quiet introspection, recognizing that the things she's doing stretch back in time long before she was born, or when she's eating a walnut rice ball made with last year's crop while harvesting this year's, are nice touches, and the skills shown in preparing food were inspiring. There's also an undercurrent of a sad backstory involving her mom who's left her for some reason, but it's alluded to so subtly that it's hard to tell what's happened - though maybe it's expanded on in the second movie, Little Forest: Winter/Spring. One of my favorite moments was when the ducks are released into the rice paddies to eat up bugs, slow down weeds, and fertilize ... but that was followed by my least favorite moment, a duck being killed and eviscerated (even though it was done in the most natural way possible, she used all parts of the duck, etc). To be honest, it all reminded me quite a bit of Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi, and if you're aware of her that's certainly the tone to expect here. It's really quite lovely, but just a little too tranquil for me.