Blue

When I watched this move, I felt that Japan is a beautiful country. Filmed in provincial cities of Niigata, and Takaoka (Toyama prefecture) Blue captures the lives of two high school girls from Spring to Autumn.

The movie is beautiful in many ways, but especially in the way each scenes are shot. Director Hiroshi Ando is a veteran of directing youth oriented movies, but also has an eye for sharp clean images.

Mikako Ichikawa who played Kayako Kirishima won the best actress award at the 24th International Movie Festival in Moscow with this movie.

The movie that's written, and acted by Gen-X writer and actors has all the subdued feelings of that generation.

Both Mikako Ichikawa and Manami Konishi are models, and are unusually tall for Japanese women, Ichikawa hitting 5'7", and Konishi at 5'6" tall.

Both Ichikawa, and Konishi has successful career as actors, and are familiar faces in Japanese TV now.

I liked this movie for the beautiful imagery. The small stories that's inserted as the scene changes were almost like moving poems. I wanted to see more of relation between Endo, and Kirishima but the movie just kept going without drastic change in the flow.

The movie is well crafted and is definitely worth seeing.

If you're interested in visiting the areas that this movie was shot, here are the locations:

Niigata City:

Mandaibashi bridge by route 7

Furumachi Mall

Niigata station (West side connector pass)

Keiwagakuen High School (The art room scene)

Takaoka City (Toyama prefecture):

Fushiki High school (Near JR Etchu-Kokubu station)

When Blue had its too-short art house theatrical run, it was subtitled in English. Naturally I missed it, and recently picked up the DVD having heard raves. The DVD has no subtitles at all, which is somewhat baffling given that the translation work had already been done. Does anyone know of a source for a script, or an otherwise easily translatable source for the dialog? Several small theaters I've attended actually distributed typed scripts in English for films with spotty subtitles. If anyone had the dialog for Blue, I'd sure like to read it.

The movie's deliberate pace, calm tone and long uninterrupted takes (5-10 minutes in some cases) really set it apart from more conventional Japanese (and American) fare. Mikako Ichikawa, who may be known to some from her supporting roles in Cutie Honey and Jam Films 2's "Armchair Theory", is impressive. Her character's restraint and painful shyness comes across almost completely through her eyes. She seems almost impenetrable, yet fragile.

This story would have genuine appeal to the U.S. art cinema crowd. Anyone who enjoyed Ghost World could do a lot worse: Blue captures the outsider feel of Clowes' characters without the forced quirkiness.

I watched the movie and my initial reaction is that I liked it. Though produced in a probably small budget the movie manages to capture beautiful portrait-like scenes, almost like the still life paintings central to the plot. The ambiance sound blends perfectly well with the film scenes, you become immersed in the film's world.

The spirit of the manga remains in the movie, some elements from the source material were changed but the movie's message is how destructive your decisions can be. We see Endo and Kirishima making decisions that will break the hearts of people they care about. They don't make those decisions with malice, they are just two young students.

The manga's minimalist art is translated into film successfully, not using a constant soundtrack, or quick edits. Instead the music is used subtly, only used in important milestones in the relationship of the main characters.

The acting and dialogue is minimal, the camera is detached and many times we're far from the actors' faces, so the actors make full use of body language, making scenes look like theater. The result is in my opinion delightful and adds tension toward the film's climax and other crucial revealing scenes.

Very good story, acting, photography, and soundtrack (both ambient and music). however some scenes could've been snipped that were not crucial to the plot.

After thousand of years, love is a deep and hard thing, even loving and staying in peace with your partner it's hard, you still feel some "pain" to think that you're not the right person or something.

This movie is not just about two girls in love and their problems, but love in general, you don't need a full reason to like someone, you just like and that's it, relationships don't have an instruction manual, when you love someone, you gotta do two things: love them and never hurt them, of course, not gonna be perfect, and that's love in his pure form.

I really like this film, not just the story but the cinematography, beautiful as well.

'Blue' is a beautiful movie, speaking of it's cinematography. The visual aspect is what I enjoyed the most, and despite common opinions that the scenes were too long and the movie could be much shorter I belive it's what makes the movie so unique and compelling.

'Blue' made me feel melancholic and nostalgic. I think it depicts teenage love in a very realistic way, as a slow, sometimes hard to understand or explain emotion, that may be disappointing and unforgiving at times, which is comforting to see on screen and makes up for a great movie.

It's definitely a movie for sad sapphic girls, who experienced unrequited love or for those who wished for a diffrent ending to their love story and I highly recomend it.