Grains de sable

Watching this movie, I can't help drawing the comparison between it and Wild Reeds, another thoughtful film about teenagers coming of age.

Like Wild Reeds, this movie is slow and the director would not be hurried. So if you want a quick resolution to things, don't watch it. This movie is like a slice of life, beginning imperfectly and ending imperfectly. There's no resolution to anything, no happily ever after for anybody, just like real life.

This movie is as real as it gets. The acting is surprisingly good. The director is fond of long, really long, shots and the actors and actresses excel at showing subtlety and inner thoughts.

I love this movie. I almost didn't watch it but now I'm very glad that I did. It's not a movie for everyone but if you're willing to let it grow on you, you will be rewarded.

10/10

I have seen a few movies by this director, this one is one of his best. This movie portrays a group of friends and classmates. There is Ito, unfortunate gay in love with his straight friend Yoshida. Kanbara is so called 'funny guy'. Shimizu is Yoshida's insecure girlfriend. Aihara is a rape victim, Yoshida somewhat falls for her. And there are the minor characters, like Ito's divorced parents, male and female bullies among the classmates. Bullying was showed really well, felt very real, especially among the girls. There are no saints among the characters, all main characters are doing stupid or even nasty things. They aren't evil, they are indeed awkward and confused, sometimes it makes you cringe. Movie is a little long and for a moment I was worried it doesn't go anywhere, but in the end all motives were tidyly closed. It felt like real Japan, it felt like real troubled youngsters.

I don't think the main idea was so bad, but the plot was completely implausible and awful. Moreover, this movie was merely a lengthy sequence of CM films, a kind of sports drink. The whole movie was too long and dull to continue seeing-should have been much shorter.

Writing about something so wonderful is completely hard. Actually, it's almost impossible to describe the peculiarities of this movie. This is a marvelous story about sex and gender, and it's almost unbelievable that we have not to deal with obscene scenes of sex. Feeling, this film was made for people that like to feel, and just to feel, life in all its complexity in a gorgeous simple way. We look at it, and something starts growing inside our minds, even our hearts: it a pure poem. I've watched some "gay" movies, and I almost always got really unsatisfied with unnecessary scenes of sex, not because I don't like scenes of sex, but generally they are so pornographic that I'm forced to think that the director or the producers or the writer of the script thinks that homosexuality means perversion. Nagisa no Shindobaddo is totally different from that ones. Three are the main characters. We have Ito, Yoshida and Aihara, two boys and a girl in a peculiar love triangle. Ito likes his best friend Yoshida, Yoshida likes Aihara and Aihara likes Ito. Imagine what this could turn in unprepared hands? But in the contrary, Hashiguchi makes a magnificent story which goes profoundly in the philosophy of life, adding a question in our mind that made me think, astonished, in the end of the movie: Why? And that why expanded in multiple questions inside of my brain and inside of my heart. The scenes, actually, sometimes tending to be boring, are moments of the most delightful poem which we are able to feel, but totally unable to write down in words. And maybe because of that, we are unable to understand the question in the end of the movie. I'm sure this movie was not made for us to discuss every piece of it… Some people want to understand a film almost dissecting it. Others are so used to common "American gay" movies that can't appreciate the real value of this master-piece. Watch it, close your eyes in the credits and feel, everything, feel yourself, feel the wonderful song. For all this and much, much more, I give a nine. And I just don't give ten, because ten of ten is perfection. But I confess I almost did it.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film, and the complexity of the main female character. her behaviour appears strange to others, and she does have some complexities. But overall she is deeply empathetic, and finds the shortcomings of others disappointing.

The scene where they hug and first kiss is very adorable, and I do wish the writer had given the gay one more of a story line where his very innocent affections were reciprocated, as I have been in a similar position of hopeless teenage heartache in the past, and probably many others have.

The aesthetic of the film is pretty 90s but still very tasteful I would say, overall - for example at the orange orchard, and after the counselling session next to the stairs with the light reflecting off the water. It can seem slow at times, but is ultimately quite a sweet look into high school life and it's confusions.