Ep. 85: The films of Naomi Kawase, featuring True Mothers

Alex Heeney

Welcome to the Seventh Row podcast, a weekly podcast in which we compare and contrast films to discover new insights and context for films both new and old. I'm your host Alex Heeney, editor-in-chief of Seventh Row. Seventh Row is a nonprofit online film criticism, publication and publishing house dedicated to helping you discover the best under the radar, female directed and foreign films. We want to help you think deeply about why and how great films make you feel the way they do. If you like this podcast, consider becoming a film adventure. Remember, as a film adventurer, You'll receive weekly streaming recommendations by email, discounts on our merchandise and books, access to our back catalogue of podcasts episodes, and a free ebook. As soon as you make your purchase visit seven-row.com/join to find out more that's seventh-row.com/join. Soon, all episodes more than six months old will only be available to our members. As a member, you'll receive a personalized premium feed of all of our episodes, and you can still listen to it from your favorite pod catcher.

Orla Smith

So just before we get on with the episode, we just wanted to let you know that we have a new book out, which is super exciting. Our latest ebook is called In their own words: fiction directors. It is unlike any ebook that we've ever sort of made before, I'd say usually our ebooks focus on one theme or one filmmaker. And this is a book about filmmaking in general. Basically, what we did is we went back through like the entire history of seven through all the interviews with directors that we've ever done. And we picked the 70 plus best ones, we arranged them into nine different sections, including like working in different genres, shooting, pre-production, post-production, film versus theater, a bunch of others. And within each section there are questions so like the section on devising and aesthetic questions include, how do you visualize memory on screen? Do you prefer to shoot on film or digital? How do you choose an aspect ratio? And within each question, you can find answers pulled from those 70 interviews for different directors so under Do you prefer to shoot on film or digital? You can read six different filmmakers talking about their opinion on that question, which often those opinions vary wildly, but they're always incredibly well reasoned. And it's fascinating to kind of read them side by side. So you've got established filmmakers like Mike Leigh, you have the looks like Terence Davies you have sort of like beloved contemporary artists like Céline Sciamma, Kelly Reichardt. So you have people who've just made that first feature like Quinn Armstrong, you have the recently Oscar nominated Chloé Zhao. And yeah, it's a really fascinating book. I think, if you're a film fan, I think reading it, it's going to help you understand the craft of cinema better, it will change the way you watch films. If you're a filmmaker, it's really vital resource. I make films myself and I think that when I work on a project, I'm going to refer back to this book. If I'm stuck on a particular part of the creative process, I'm going to flip to a section of the book that's relevant to it and you know, get advice from the best and for anyone, I think it's a vital way to discover like your next favorite filmmaker, if you'd like their insights. So we did a whole episode on this a couple episodes back on In their own words: fiction directors, where the editors of the book kind of chat about what it's all about and how we put it together. And if you want to go ahead and order it, you can just go to theirownwords.ca, plus this week only for listening to this episode the day or the day after it comes out, we are offering the book at its cheapest price. So on Friday at est April 2 Friday midnight, the price is going to go up to $26.99 Canadian dollars. So if you are interested, make sure you buy before then and that way you'll get it when it's cheapest.

Alex Heeney

On today's episode we are going to be talking about Naomi Kawase. Her new film, True Mothers is now on VOD in Canada and the US it was

Orla Smith

and it's not Oscar shortlisted

Alex Heeney

which is a big mistake, but anyway you can tune into our Oscar episode, Oscar Foreign Language Film episode, to hear us bitch even more about that

Orla Smith

it will it will be out in a month or so. But it was Japan submission for the Best International feature Oscar and it wasn't shortlisted.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, it got the Cannes label but of course Cannes didn't happen last year. So it technically premiered at TIFF. We loved it when we saw it there and so we knew we wanted to podcast on it and we thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about her career more generally. So we've watched basically all the films we could get ahold of, which is not... like we did pretty well considering how hard it is to find most of her films. But so we'll be talking about True Mothers and then we'll be there'll be a smattering of Shara, The Mourning Forest, Still the Water, Sweet Bean, Radiance, and whatever Brett and I can remember from Vision.

Orla Smith

trees

Alex Heeney

trees, yeah, pretty much. Um, so for this discussion, we have with us a special guest, who is also a first time guest on the Seventh Row podcast. So we're really excited to welcome Milly Gribben.

Milly Gribben

Hi. Yeah, thank you for having me

Alex Heeney

Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us. And maybe you can tell us a bit about yourself for new listeners.

Milly Gribben

So you might have seen me on Seventh Row, written a couple of little bits. And as you all know, I studied film at Uni of Leeds, and I wrote my dissertation on Kelly Reichardt, which was a labor of love. But yeah, it was on kind of like queerness and isolation in her films. And yeah, I haven't seen Certain Women in a very long time, but I, I love it. And I think that, yeah, she just just brilliant director. So

Orla Smith

and you were putting the finishing touches on to that as we were writing our Kelly Reichardt book, which was, yeah, and I got to read it as we were like, as you're finishing up a book, we'd already written everything. So I didn't plagiarize anything. But yeah, it's a great dissertation.

Milly Gribben

Thank you very much. I mean, I say I haven't seen Certain Women so long, because it's like, you write that in 1000 words on something and yeah, you never want to watch it again.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, I think it's gonna take a while for all of us to want to watch any of her films again. But yeah, give it a couple years, and then it would be nice to revisit them. So we also have with us our executive editor, Orla Smith.

Orla Smith

That's me

Alex Heeney

and associate editor Brett Pardy.

Brett Pardy

Hello.

Orla Smith

Hello, this is Orla dropping in from the future. Just to say we've got a podcast review this week, which is super exciting. We are also very happy when we get a review. It doesn't happen too often. But when it does happen, just to let you know, we will always read them out at the beginning of the episode like this. So if you want yours to be read out next week, go ahead and review us on Apple podcasts. This week, we have a review from ssingie_oi, I'll try to do my best there. And it says five stars, amazing podcast for indie film fans, a must listen podcast for independent cinema fans. The discussions are always so clever and offer a deep analysis of small gem films. On top of that, the hosts seem very sympathetic and are pleasing to listen to. That's super lovely. It's always nice to hear that I sound sympathetic and pleasing to listen to. That boosts my confidence a lot for this recording. And yeah, so next week, you can hear your own words repeated back to you by me or by Alex perhaps by just ratings five stars and typing a couple words out.

Alex Heeney

So yeah, I don't know. Brett, do you want to try and give us some background on Naomi Kawase?

Orla Smith

Does she fit in in any way with your doctor empathy studies?

Brett Pardy

I mean, I suppose she does. Like there's a TED talk where she describes her approach to filmmaking. And she talks about film as being important in terms of kind of capturing time, like she feels that time passes by but by putting it on film, it's a way to be able to share it with other people.

Orla Smith

I think she said also it almost gives you the ability to rewind time.

Brett Pardy

And I think you see that a lot of her films are very concerned with the inevitability of time passing. Relevant to True Mothers, it seems she was adopted. She's from a rural area of Japan, which is not usually seen in the kind of Japanese films that crossover to a Western audience.

Orla Smith

And I think where the place she's from, Nara, is where is it where Shara is set. I'm not sure about any of her other films, but she's set a lot of her films in in like rural Japan, if not specifically there.

Brett Pardy

And she's definitely one of the more prolific woman directors, like she's been making films in some form since 1988. A lot of... she started off making like short films and video art and then transitioned, and then moved into narrative film like in the late 90s. And it seems her background is she went to the Osaka School of photography. And it's like it seems like her background is very informed by photography as much as kind of filmmaking and so I think something we'll talk about this in a bit on the podcast, people complain about her camera choices, and I think it's partly because like it's a camera choice, her camera choices make sense in a photography setting but that maybe aren't the kind of the standard camera choices of Western filmmaking? And in Radiance one of the main characters is a photographer who is losing his sight.

Alex Heeney

I mean, I guess it's worth commenting that she's sort of a Cannes darling, her first feature Suzaku in 1997 won the Camera D'or and I guess she was the youngest person to have ever won that

Orla Smith

Really? Wow.

Milly Gribben

Oh, wow.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, she would have been 28?

Orla Smith

Has Xavier Dolan never won the Camera D'or, it feels like he would have enjoyed beating that record.

Brett Pardy

Uh, no, he has not.

Alex Heeney

And then she won the Grand Prix for The Mourning Forest. But her films get consistently programmed at Cannes. I think basically everything has premiered at Cannes, which is a pretty strong track record compared to other filmmakers because even Cannes darlings like Mike Leigh don't always get accepted. I'm trying to think what Ken Loach film wasn't accepted, but I don't think he's always.

Brett Pardy

It's close to that.

Orla Smith

Yeah, yeah. Although, like, I don't know how tied that is with Cannes', like consistent inability to program female directors in the competition? Have they just sort of been like, well, this is the one woman that we are always going to accept so that we meet, so that we have like, at least some women in the competition?

Milly Gribben

Yeah.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know. And I think most of her films playing have played in competition, Sweet Bean I think, is one of the rare films that was programmed in Un Certain Regard. And I think there was a degree of discussion at the time, because Still, The Water was in competition the year before. And it got panned by a lot of critics, or at least like middling reviews. And so then there was some discussion of like, was Sweet Bean like her putting it in a Un Certain Regard , like her punishment. I mean, it was the opening film of it, but that's usually like it's happened more sense. But generally like you at some point, you, you start out in Un Certain Regard , which is more for earlier career filmmakers, and at some point you graduate to competition, so that it's a big to do if like you had been in competition all the time. And suddenly you were in Un Certain Regard , like that happened with Kore-eda. What was the film?

Orla Smith

Was it there, was The Truth, was that in competition or not,

Alex Heeney

Now that that premiered, I think, at Toronto

Orla Smith

After this Storm?

Alex Heeney

that's the one I think that was in Un Certain Regard

Brett Pardy

And she was on the jury in 2013. A fun jury including, Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Nicole Kidman, Lynn Ramsay, and Christoph Waltz.

Orla Smith

Well that's a room I'd be interested to be in. I think it could be interesting to talk about how sort of like either like the circumstances under which we first watched her films or how we were introduced to her. And yeah, especially because she is kind of a contentious figure, sort of,

Alex Heeney

yeah, I mean, the thing that worth commenting, because I did say she's at Cannes all the time, but it's actually really hard to find her films or was until recently

Orla Smith

True Mothers is a rare case where it's a film that has actually kind of gained distribution in North America

Alex Heeney

Well I think Sweet Bean is the most widely accessible film, whereas like Still the Water completely disappeared.

Orla Smith

Yeah. But I think so I think the first time I heard I heard of her, who was one of the years she was in Cannes, one of the many years she was in Cannes, and I believe it was Radiance in 2017. And I wasn't super aware of her before but I was paying attention to the Cannes lineup that year. And sort of like perusing Twitter as you do. And a lot of like I she was one of I think the other two female directors in competition were Maren Ade for Toni Erdmann and Andrea Arnold for American Honey and going into the festivals, this is before the film even premiered. I just remember, like very kind of high profile male critic acts particularly like like in places like the Guardian, you know, the Telegraph, like name places just like making fun of her. And that was my introduction to Naomi Kawase, as like as a joke of like, I can't believe they keep programming this terrible filmmaker at Cannes and I didn't really have any contexts right at the time. But I guess in my brain... well, I think something about it always did seem off just because I was at the time sort of frustrated by how few female directors there were in competition. And something about it, despite the fact that I wasn't aware her work did put me off the fact that it was like one of them was being ridiculed so thoroughly, more than anyone else in competition, but I sort of did write her off of my head I guess is like, Oh, she's a director people don't like and the first film of hers I actually saw was True Mothers last year at TIFF because I mean, mainly because there wasn't really a way for me to see any of her other films that had premiered since. And I really love True Mothers. And then I was really glad to be able to do this. And I've watched basically all of our films and re watched True Mothers. Well not all of them, but the ones that we were watching for this podcast this week. And it's been super interesting week, I think we're gonna have a lot to talk about. Because even her films that are misses, or I mean, I wouldn't even call them misses, even her films that are less good than others are interesting. And the larger conversation of her body of work is really interesting to me. And some of them I think, are really great. So yeah, I mean, what's everyone else's introduction?

Milly Gribben

For me this, to be honest, was my introduction. I'd heard of her a little bit, I think it was like 2018. I'd said, like, I want to watch more films by female directors, and I did a thing on Twitter where I'd kind of said, like, can people give me recommendations and I got quite a lot. And I think maybe Still the Water was in there. So I kind of went okay, that's interesting. Never heard of her. And obviously, it took me this long to actually watch her film. But I think that's probably again, because they're, they're not that necessarily that easy to you know, access. Yeah. So it's been it's been an interesting couple of weeks of discovering how work yeah, and as you say, I don't, I don't, um the quality definitely varies, but viewing them like in this you know, as as a kind of collective of films has been really, really interesting. Yeah, I didn't know about you guys.

Brett Pardy

Yeah I remember one of the first conversations I had with Alex was about who is Noami Kawasaki, because I was interested. We're talking about Cannes programming and how there's no woman that can but I was interested in who's this one woman who they program at Cannes all the time and why are her films impossible to track down? This was probably like 2013, 2014?

Alex Heeney

No, would have been later than that. No. And I didn't even see her films. And it was 2014. Yeah, it was the first time I was a Cannes. Oh, wow. And we known each other that long?

Orla Smith

And then when did you first watch one of her films?

Brett Pardy

Uh, I think maybe like a year or two after that, Mourning Forest, I think. And I saw Radiance when it came out at TIFF that year, whichever year that was, I'm losing track of time. 2017. Yeah. So I probably saw one of the films like 2015, then saw one in 2017.

Alex Heeney

Well, and I remember you persuaded me to see Vision the next year.

Brett Pardy

Yes.

Alex Heeney

Your recommendation was I like the way she shoots trees?

Brett Pardy

Yeah, she's the best director of trees

Alex Heeney

Okay, I'm sold.

Orla Smith

Alex, what was your introduction?

Alex Heeney

Yes, I guess I would, my introduction was like at the eye of the storm. So the first time I went to Cannes was in 2014. And that was when Still the Water premiered. And that year, Jane Campion was the jury president. And she was the only or one of two women.

Orla Smith

The only. And she shared the Palme that year.

Alex Heeney

Right. So people were sort of there was a discussion, I think, I don't know if it was for the first time. But it was quite a prominent discussion about the lack of women at Cannes generally, but especially in competition, and I think, does anyone know what her statement was about that, because I think she made a statement in the like, the opening press conference with the jury.

Orla Smith

Yeah. So Jane Campion, just sort of, it was a big deal at the time, gave when she was a jury president, gave a impassioned speech about how she called the studio structure, an old boys system, and sort of said, she said, I don't think women grew up with the world of, the world of criticism that men grew up with. And just talking about how, like film schools have equal numbers of men and women. And then that doesn't seem to translate into the film industry. And I feel like more people like, I mean, it was, as you said, Alex, kind of a sort of novel thing that she was like commenting on this.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, it's funny, because it doesn't seem novel now, but it was,

Orla Smith

Like reading that back. It doesn't seem inflammatory in the same way that I think people were really threatened by that at the time. It felt like she was saying something new when now like reading it from the perspective of like, seven years later, it feels like Yeah, but we say this sort of people say this all the time. But not not in 2014. Apparently.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. I don't think there had been a lot of jury presidents that were women. I can't remember now.

Orla Smith

I guess it was sort of bold of her to sort of speak out against the festival that she was heading that year. Yeah. Especially as one of the only women that they'd actually let into the club.

Alex Heeney

Yes. Yeah. So I guess that was the context in which I saw the film and I had never heard of Naomi Kawase and I think I was like relatively new to film twitter, this was like the first time I was at a festival with the deluge of film Twitter responses and

Orla Smith

Was this the Louder than Bombs year?

Alex Heeney

No, that was the next year. Anyway, so I didn't know anything about Naomi Kawase. Lastly, I didn't know what to expect. And I was like, well, it's one of the two women in competition. So I'm going to see it. And now I'm trying to piece together what my response to it was because I remember not liking it, although I actually I remember liking a lot of things about it, but then finding it a bit overwrought and the characters of it then and I just like revisited the review that I wrote, that a baby me wrote a baby, I was like, 25, but whatever. And it's very bizarre, because it's like, the whole review sounds like I really like it until the last paragraph where I crap all over it. So I don't know what was going on with me, then my theory now is that like, I mean, obviously, as a site, as a publication, we really like character driven films, that's obviously something that I care a lot about. And that I mean, that's still primarily what I was, what I look forward to film, but I think especially because I had no context for her filmmaking, I was looking for that in her film and didn't find it. So I think that that kind of turned me off. I think when I rewatched it this time, I had a different experience, because I think I had a better sense of her preoccupations, her interests, her style, and so had a better sense of more generally what the film was doing. Like I didn't necessarily need to have really complex character development did it, like I could appreciate the other things, whereas I think I didn't really understand that. That's what I should be looking for when I thought back then.

Orla Smith

And then you slept through Sweet Bean

Alex Heeney

I didn't sleep through the whole... okay... but the context, it was the opening night film of Un Certain Regard. And there was this opening ceremony that lasted for like an hour. And I was really, really tired when I went into the screening at like, 8pm and thought maybe I should go to bed instead of going to the movie. I was like, no, I want to try out her next film. Maybe I'll like this one. But then by the time the movie finally started at like, 9pm I was ready for bed so and her films are so like relaxing and calming. That yeah, I slept through a big chunk of it. Yeah. And so then I kind of like, what was her next film was Radiance. So I guess I missed that because I thought well, I guess I don't really like her. But then Brett liked it. And then I thought oh, well maybe I should check it out. And then obviously I saw vVsion at Brett's recommendation and then I think True Mothers was the first one of her's that I really really loved because I feel like it combines both the more the sort of like imagery and all of those ideas that are in her other films, but it also has really really strong character development.

Brett Pardy

I was just about to say it, and maybe Sweet Bean, are the character films for you.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. Which is not to say that I don't like the other films, like I think basically what you said earlier, I think they're always interesting. Like I was really glad I saw Vision especially now that it's disappeared because I agree with Brett, I really like how she shot trees. Unfortunately that's most of what I remember honestly.

Brett Pardy

Most of I remember about there being something about mushrooms too

Alex Heeney

But I think Juliette Binoche has an affair with an older Japanese man

Brett Pardy

I mean, Juliette Binoche is good as she always is.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, but I remember nothing about her aside from that she went to a forest, she's really in tune with the trees.

Brett Pardy

There's like a scene with the leaves swirling around her.

Alex Heeney

I love this reviewing films like three years later, and we are all like there were trees.

Brett Pardy

The movie is explicitly about trees, unlike our other films. Yeah. Her films have a lot of trees in it. Vision is explicitly about a biologist looking for a rare herb that appears in the forest every 1000 years or something. I have a hard time remembering that it's called Vision and not Radiance because Radiance is about vision. Yes. Whereas like radiance would be a good way to describe Vision.

Alex Heeney

Yes.

Brett Pardy

My subconscious keeps wanting to like call them by their reverse titles.

Alex Heeney

So we're going to start with true mothers. So here's the trailer.

Orla Smith

This is interesting because it's sort of it's a bit different from a lot of her other films. So it was an interesting introduction to her films really because it is more, I guess, character based plot based and novelistic, I'd say, because it's literally based on a novel, and as a film is also one of our longest it's two hours and 20 minutes long, and the structure is quite complicated. So it's follows sort of two, two timelines in two perspectives. Within those timelines, we begin with a couple who have a young son who's about five or six, called Asato. The couple is Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu. And their family life is established with a couple scenes, and then we flashback to about 6, 7, or 8 years earlier, to the first conversation that they have about wanting a child. And we kind of periodically flash forward from there to the processes of them having a child so next, then in the next scene, we see them like having dinner the night before, they're gonna have sex to try to conceive the child. And then in the next scene, we see them at the doctor and finding out that Kiyokazu is infertile, or at least there is like a problem with his sperm. And being told that in order for them to get pregnant, biologically, they will have to go through like quite a painful process of like many very invasive surgical procedures on his testicles, which sound incredibly painful. And then we flash forward and they're continually flying every month to go get this procedure done. And then they decide to give up on the procedure. And then they discover through a TV commercial, the prospect of adoption, which they hadn't really considered before. And they go through this adoption agency called Baby Baton on to be paired with this child who they're then take home and who is Asato, their child in the present day. And then revert back to the beginning of that same timeline. But from the perspective of Hikari, who is a young girl who's 14, who lives in rural Japan, whereas the married couple lives in Tokyo. And Hikari has sort of like a a her first love with a boy, they have sex she gets pregnant. And her parents send her away to Baby Baton, to their sort of like island retreat, where a woman looks after her until the end of her pregnancy. And she gives birth and gives the baby up. In the present day we have a sort of mysteriously shot situation where a woman who is maybe Hikari and maybe not, comes to visit, Satoko and Kiyokazu and demands they hand the child back and we follow Hikari's present day life and Satoko and Kiyokazu's present day life and sort of how those plot threads eventually intertwine and come together again

Alex Heeney

something that I really liked about true mothers is the way it kind of tells the sort of untold story behind adoption. I think most stories that I've seen of adoption either it's the story of the birth mother and potentially the agonizing journey of giving up the baby or you know, the like an unexpected pregnancy and how that gets dealt with or the flip side of that is a story of the adoptive parents and it could be their journey towards adoption. Or it could just be like, what it's like to have an adopted child that I don't really think we talk about. I think there's a lot of, I guess, especially in Japanese culture is my sense based on like a q&a that I was watching with Naomi Kawase and the two leads, or not the two leads, the husband and wife leads. And I think that that's true too in like, Western culture, though, maybe for slightly different reasons. Like I saw this French film a couple years ago, called In Safe Hands is the English title and Pupille is the, I'm sure I just pronounced that wrong, actually, whoops, oh well, is the French title. And it's about like, the whole system of people that come in between when like a baby is born, and when it gets adopted. And it's about like everything that happens in between. And I'd never seen that depicted and all of the people that goes into that, and the complicated system and emotions and the trauma. And I think that True Mothers kind of does that for, does a similar thing for like, just like the pure motherhood aspect of it

Orla Smith

I think there's like not a lot of films where we're asked to have empathy for the people on both sides of the story.

Alex Heeney

And I think there's also a lot of like, we treat it as though if you want to give up a baby for adoption, I mean, even that word is, in English. Anyways, an interesting thing is that you assume that like, the story ends there that they then go and move on with their lives. And I mean, that might be true. And it might be not true. Like, maybe they didn't want to be a parent. And so they are able to move on with their lives. But that doesn't necessarily mean they never think about the like baby that they carried in them for nine months. You know, it thinks that, you know, it's I mean, it's called True Mothers. And there are two or three mothers, depending on how you look at it. You know, it's the story of the birth mother is not just up until giving birth, but what the ramifications of having given birth are for her. Because I think in the film, there's a lot of secrecy and shame and silence around motherhood, women's bodies, pregnancy, adoption, like if you get pregnant too young at the wrong time. There's a lot of shame around that. And Hiraki's parents, they send her away to an island near Hiroshima, in order to carry out the pregnancy and give birth. And then when she comes home, they all want to act like it didn't happen.

Orla Smith

And they sent her away kind of specifically so that no one has to know what happened. Yeah, they say just that you had pneumonia.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And then the flip side of that is Satoko, um, the fact that she can't get pregnant, when she's of childbearing age

is another source of shame.

Orla Smith

Although actually, interestingly, and we don't often see this, like stories about infertility. It is her husband, who is in fertile, who has a condition.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And he has a huge amount of shame

Brett Pardy

And I have to say, when he talks about what he goes through to try and be able to conceive a baby, it doesn't really sound worth it.

Alex Heeney

No, it sounds so traumatic. Oh, my God,

Brett Pardy

Scraping the inside of his testicles by cutting it hope. Like is it this important you have a biological child, really?

Alex Heeney

That does remind me of like in Ninja Baby when she thinks that like all men should have vasectomies. Because it's reversible, and think about what we do to women's bodies to prevent them from having children, that we should just have to give all men vasectomies, and how many problems with that solve. But yeah, I mean, I know that like within Japanese culture, there's also your sharing DNA is a really important part of

Brett Pardy

I get the sense from the movie that maybe maybe kind of the opinion towards adoption is changing. Like it's fairly recently, like kind of in like a more urban educated area that it's okay, because like the birth mother thinks she can blackmail them over the fact that their son's adopt and they're like, you know, those people know.

Alex Heeney

Yeah.

Orla Smith

But they're also like, significantly more privileged than she is.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, there's a real, there's a real class divide in the film too, because like, at one point, they're like, you must be rich. You live on this, you live on whatever floor? Yes, yeah, you're loaded. You can you can give me some money.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And I mean, it's a big difference from the Kore-eda film Like Father, Like son, which I had trouble with, because it's about this guy who like can't cope with the idea of not being biologically related to his son. And they do, I don't remember the film that well, but they do like traumatic things to the children because the parents are behaving to me like children. But that's very much like my Western point of view, because that's not as strong a part of our culture. Although I think there's still a huge amount of silence and secrecy around adoption. And I think there, it's hard to know exactly how much of that is part of this same sort of cycle of shame and how much of that is really, to actually protect the birth parents and the adoptive parents

Milly Gribben

I think like what I admired so much about this is it feels like a really good introduction to her because it sort of teaches you how to view her films in in how it's so I think it I think I described as like defiantly patient, like it just, it really wants you to sit with these people and, what you guys were saying earlier about it being fairly long, but it feels like it earns the length because the way that the structure you know, that turn halfway through and it kind of is like, I don't know, for me, it took me by surprise. But then when you're in it, you're kind of like, oh, this is of course, like this is natural, you know, we should be seeing this point of view, we should be seeing the kind of fullness of this. Yeah, and I, I just really admired how things like she just took the time to create these really human like, really empathetic images of all these characters.

Orla Smith

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think even like just rewatching it, I was struck by how like perfectly structured like, say the first half hour is because you skip through so many kind of so much time. And so many different choices that the characters make don't matter, like specifically the period between when we meet Satoko and her husband, and they've like just decided the first sort of the earliest scene we see with them, not others in the film, but earliest chronologically, is them kind of having a conversation about if they might want a child. And then between each scene, we skip over like a significant portion of time. And in between each scene, their kind of their stance on like how much they want a child how they want to have the child kind of changes, like we start with them having that conversation, then we skip to them sort of like having a meal. And then we skip to them, like talking to the doctor about how they can't conceive. And then we skip to them like going through this sort of like as he said, traumatic treatments. And then, like we skipped over significant portions of time. But each one each moment feels so well chosen. So it doesn't feel like we're kind of like being rushed through the plot. It feels like because both of the actors are so good. And we get a real sense of like their relationship, their intimacy through these really well chosen moments. It just kind of flies by and it's so efficient. It feels like an efficient movie without feeling like it's like trying too hard to be efficient, and it doesn't feel lived in and also are being a two hour and 20 minute film.

Milly Gribben

It was weird watching this, I kind of thought this and Private Life might make quite an interesting double feature, even though it's about such different cultures. But I watched it quite recently again, and I was thinking, oh, yeah, this this sort of the real struggle and the stigmas around it, and whether it's really worth it, you know, that question kind of hanging over it? Yeah, seems to run through both both realms.

Orla Smith

Yeah. Because I mean, both those those films kind of portray, like the physical trauma of going through fertility treatment. And I really love the scenes of them, like deciding whether they want to go for it or not. Because I mean, at their first conversation about wanting to have a child isn't like, yes, we really like we need a child to feel complete. It's like this sort of small idea that the further along the process, they get, they become more stuck on. And then I really love the moment when they decide that they're just gonna give up on the on the treatment. Yeah, and they, they have that conversation like they, and it only happens because their plane is delayed, and they have this extra time to think about it. And they both realize that they've both independently been toying with the idea of giving up on it. And they're both kind of so relieved when they realize especially the husband who's had this like horrible procedure being done to him. But like, they're both kind of relieved to find out that the other one is thinking the same thing. But you get this sense that they have been kind of afraid to speak up about that fact, which kind of speaks to the idea of like the shame, the secrecy that you were talking about Alex?

Alex Heeney

Yeah, like they and these two, I think are I mean, one of the things I like about the film is I think these two are good couple, like I think they do generally communicate and care about each other. But like, even, you know, they have so much difficulty with what happens when you can't have a baby like his initial responses, divorces an option is what he tells her because he feels so much shame around not being able to father a child, and she tells him well, it's not an option for me, I want to be with you. And then it sort of seems like they end up in these fertility treatments almost because like they nobody ever said to them adoption, you know, like they like this is the thing that you do is you get these like and it's pretty invasive. He's getting an incision in his testicle monthly.

Orla Smith

Yeah. And they have to fly somewhere to get it done. Yeah, but yeah, you get a sense that there's no like social protocol that they understand for what to do. Like they understand like the idea if we want a baby, we Have sex a baby happens. And then when that doesn't happen, they're kind of like lost for where to go next, like they do the fertility treatment, because like you said that it seemed to like have been presented with other options. And then they, they run, they try adoption because they like happened to see a TV commercial about it. And I love when they see the commercial. And they both kind of want to say something, but they're too afraid to say something. And she just says, oh, we watched the whole thing. And then it's only like when we cut again to like maybe a couple weeks later that she realizes that he's been googling, she looks at his search results and realizes that he's been googling just after she was googling the adoption agency. And then, which is another moment of them being relieved that the other one was thinking the same thing.

Brett Pardy

The most wholesome discovering your husband's search history scene ever

Orla Smith

Assuming there was nothing else unsavory in his search.

Alex Heeney

I mean, I guess we don't know, because we don't speak Japanese. or read it.

Brett Pardy

I feel the implication was that it was

Alex Heeney

No, I know.

Orla Smith

That said, they do seem like a really communicative well matched couple. And so you get the sense that this is like one of the few things that they're really not communicating on, which must mean, you know, it's something that is of like, elevated, shame attached to it and certainty,

Alex Heeney

Because eventually they do talk about it. They have a really hard time. But eventually they do communicate about it. And they like, it may take a while to get there. But they are eventually very open. Like, as you said, in that scene, when they decide to stop the treatment. He's so relieved. Like, I think he cries, does he cry, like it's very dramatic? And he's like, thank you. I'm so glad because I wanted to stop this earlier. And like he, like it all pours out of him, you know, like he was afraid to say anything.

Orla Smith

And before he's even like getting drunk with a colleague and like, admit it and like airing his grievances that way, because he didn't want to say it directly.

Alex Heeney

Right, exactly. So like they have trouble getting there. But then eventually, they they are very open. They just have a hard time getting there because of as you say that the stigmas around it. And I think it's a particularly interesting this story, because I think it could be a very different story if she was the one who was infertile, just because of patriarchy, and like the, you know, the expectations around women as like their role going back in history as being to bear children and like even in Private Life, like she goes, they they're doing her like IVF for like years, aren't they?

Milly Gribben

Yeah, it's like, yeah, they're both like late 40s. I remember.

Orla Smith

And she's, she's getting like injections every morning.

Alex Heeney

And I think he wants to stop before she does, like she's so and that's partly and that's like in a culture where adoption is a little bit more normalized. But like, even she has, like internalized this idea that she has to be able to give birth.

Orla Smith

Yeah. And it's like a failure. If

Alex Heeney

Yeah, yeah. I don't want to get too sidetracked on that. But that. That's interesting, because in that case...

Milly Gribben

Yeah, that's a whole other conversation. Yeah. I don't know about you guys. I kind of found the adoption scenes, initially, like, quite. I'm not sure if that says something about me in terms of like, I don't particularly want children. So I think there was parts of it that I definitely there's some self internalized things going on there. But yeah, there was there was just something profoundly unsettling to me about that. And I'm not sure if I'm not sure what that was

Brett Pardy

I guess it seemed a bit cult-like when they go to this island, have this video presentation. And but I suppose some of that also is a real cultural differences around adoption as kind of a not a, not a particularly well looked upon practice.

Orla Smith

I think one of the most kind of off putting things is, is in that adoption scene, when there's this very, there are strict rules around it, one of them being that one of the parents has to like, give up their job completely. Yeah. And then one of the one of the women is sort of like, you know, the grandparents, you know, are healthy and able to look after the kid, what if I just work part time? And then the woman's like, we ask you to accept it with no exceptions.

Milly Gribben

And I guess the assumption would be that the woman would have to give up her job, you know, or is it is it both of them would have to

Orla Smith

One of them would have to. And it's not said who would have to but obviously, like in a patriarchal society, it's, you know, a lot of the times it's going to be the woman.

Alex Heeney

Well this is interesting, because there was like a, what is it called, like Women in Motion Cannes talk that they did like in Japan with Naomi Kawase and the two actors who play the couple. And the one of the questions was about like, what were there any issues or things that were brought up because she has French, a French producer on the film, because it was edited in France. And she said that her editor had a real problem with the fact that the the woman just was gave up her job without a discussion. And she was saying that if the movie had been made in France, there would have had to have been a scene where they had a discussion about who was going to give up their job. Yeah. And then the actors were completely shocked to hear that, like, in Western countries, you don't have to give up your job to adopt. So like I interpreted, and when I saw the movie, I interpreted it as like, okay, this like, I mean, how are they going to check up on you anyway, whatever. That's the whole thing. But yeah, it like I thought it was just this weird thing about this particular organization. Okay, they can like that. It was like just this one organization that was that was part of this, you know, kinder adoption or something. But I get the impression that it's actually, I don't know if it's the law, or maybe not the law, but like, why more widespread because the actor seemed really shocked to hear that there are that it's very common to have two working parents with an adopted child in other parts of the world.

Brett Pardy

But we should mention that the woman who runs it turns out to be very nice.

Milly Gribben

I think, again, with the structure, it's like things that do seem quite intimidating. And especially, you know, the the young girl, whose name I forget, Hiraki. I think because of the structure. It's like things that turn it kind of gives you a sense of just the, the fullness of the of the story. And yeah, the fact that she does turn out to actually be like, incredibly supportive of these women, who are, you know, very vulnerable, and really in need of like, especially a female figure in their lives to support them. Yeah, I loved that

Orla Smith

But there's a talk in that initial session with the prospective parents where they they cart out like family who has been through the adoption process, and the mother talks about how she has told her child that they have three mothers on being his birth mother, one being her, and the other one being the woman who runs his agency. And I think, as you implied earlier, Alex, with the idea of having two to three mothers, depending on how you look at it, I think the film also positions, the woman who runs the agency as also one of the the mothers that the title refers to because she is just as instrumental in like making sure that pregnancy happens. And the birth happens in a way that's like safe and healthy. And making sure that the girls some of whom, sort of like in financially precarious situations have a space where they could go, at least for those nine months, that is of safe and stable, and where they can live.

Brett Pardy

Also the island they're on is beautiful

Alex Heeney

Yeah, so beautiful

Brett Pardy

I mean, we talked about Kawase is great at nature.

Orla Smith

yeah, I mean, you can see why Hikari wants to, when she runs away, she goes back there and asks to work there. And I mean, I wish to want to live there as long as possible.

Alex Heeney

Orla, you were talking about how the beginning is very well structured. And the thing that I really noticed this time that was interesting is like it opens on just you just hear sound, and it's a black screen, and it's the sound of someone giving birth.

Orla Smith

And then we don't actually see the birth within the film.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, that's true. And then like, we don't know who's giving birth, we don't know what we don't know what the context is, we just and at first, you're not even sure what you're hearing like it's a woman making, is she having sex? Is it pain? And eventually we figure out it's childbirth, because there's like a crying baby at the end of it.

Orla Smith

But I guess by not showing us the actual birth, it takes away the emphasis of the birth as being like the thing that makes a person a mother. And by hearing it ambiguously it kind of cast it as a presence in the film, but doesn't attribute it to a character necessarily.

Alex Heeney

And I think it has like a wider view of what motherhood can mean. The fact you know, that a carrier has this conversation with the woman who runs the adoption agency, where she's asking her about, like, why she started this and we find out that she couldn't have children herself and she was a nurse and she saw all these women who had unwanted pregnancies and the struggles that they went through and so she decided to start this and she feels like she had a lot of daughters because she took care of all these all these girls that came through her agency and then even when Hikari is then whatever like 19 or so and she has a roommate who needs help and she cares for the roommate I mean, she gets manipulated, but but the roommate comments on how she's like very caring like a mother

Milly Gribben

Not to jump ahead but I think one thing that I thought this and Still the Water both did quite like beautifully was the idea of motherhood and I suppose even family connections being almost like this haunting presence. Like in in Still the Water the way that when the protagonist's mother is like, is sort of dying and this seemingly like spirit of her mother comes to enters the room. And that idea of like family connections being so much like they last beyond death, and they don't... they're very malleable actually, like they kind of shift. And yeah, I think that's one aspect. I think why I liked viewing her films as this kind of whole was you can see the way that there's something really moving about her approach to like family connections. And I think knowing that she was adopted actually, like, is just completely changes the way I look at films and like, oh, yeah.

Orla Smith

Yeah, and the fact that her career kind of started making these personal documentaries, about her family about her adoption. And so the fact that even if the text of the films isn't about adoption, like it is with True Mothers, there's always a sense that she's actively thinking about and questioning, like what family means what family bonds mean, you know what it means to be like a parent or a mother in a way, that's not just like falling back to the default of what society thinks that means. It's a more of like an open view of it.

Alex Heeney

And I think those like her tendency towards dual protagonists, and also like absences, there's this idea of sort of alternative lives, like often the characters are diametrically opposed, like the man who's going blind, and the woman who creates the audio descriptions, like they're on completely opposite sides of that transaction in. In The Mourning Forest, you have two people who are grieving, one who's grieving his wife who died at an old age, and one who's grieving her her child who died as a baby. And so, you know, I mean, they're both dealing with grief, but one is about the loss of a full life, and one is about the life that wasn't lived.

Orla Smith

And then in Swet Bean you have a lady who can make good bean paste, and a man who can make good pancakes. A lady who loves to make bean paste and a man who does not have a sweet tooth, which are really the true opposites.

Alex Heeney

Well, but I mean, I think this came up especially in Still the Water that you have, like one family that's very close, and one family that's broken. And that's sort of I wonder to what degree that's kind of like, well, what would it have been like, had I lived with my birth mother? I mean, this is like me projecting a little bit. But I mean, it's interesting, because I mean, that's part of why True Mothers is interesting, because it tells its narrative is both before and after the birth for both characters. And the idea that the birth mother's life, like her story doesn't end just because the baby has changed hands and her life. It's not as though she can just forget that she gave up the child even if like ultimately, she had she, like, I'm not sure she would have decided to keep it if she had the time to choose. But like her parents kind of took that decision out of her hands, which is part of why it was traumatic is like she didn't even get the opportunity to think it through and go okay, yeah, you're right. That's probably the best thing for me. Yeah, I feel like a lot of the time when we talk about adoption, we talk, we think of it as like, well, they didn't want child and so they can give it up and then they can you know, live their lives or like somebody who like lives with regret. And I don't think she necessarily lives with regret for giving up well, I don't know. I mean, she does eventually say she wants it back. But I don't know if she lives with regret from it. But it's not as though it just is empty from her has like been removed from her life. It was still like a formative experience. And part of the trauma for her is not having lost the baby. But it sounds like it died. But it's an unresolved, yeah, and especially the fact that then everybody, her whole family wants to act like it didn't happen. So she can't talk about it to anybody. And the silence around it is traumatizing. And she's like depressed because of this. And like she's gone through this, you know, like a pretty big physical experience quite apart from like, the emotional part of it. And then she has to act like it never happened.

Orla Smith

It definitely is a bit like you brought brought this film up a bit earlier, Alex, a film that we talked about two episodes ago, that you saw at Berlin called Ninja Baby, which is a really good look at a woman who has a pregnancy of a child that she doesn't want. And it does do very well as this film does with like, the idea of like, even if you don't then become like the mother of a child that you carry, in the sense that you're parenting them every day, and they live with you, whether you wanted to keep the child or not is like, you know, an intimate experience with this thing that has lived inside you. And it's also possible to like, have a relationship with them. Like can be healthy to have a relationship with that child, even if you aren't like their parent, which I think I mean, I like the film ends on an ambiguous note. Like it kind of leaves you to think about like what might happen next. But there's a sense that there's an acceptance between the two mothers that they can both be in the child's life. Even though that might be a thing that like society considers taboo or at least doesn't have like, a rulebook for

Alex Heeney

I also think it's interesting that the, the circumstance of the child's creation is not traumatic. And you wonder how much like, how much of the fact that she got pregnant was also, like, when she had sex, like, did she know about contraception? Because they're talking about how, you know, she hasn't even had her period, how would you get pregnant and she's very young. So there was silence around that. That's kind of like, what would have allowed that to happen. But like, the boy is very sweet. And they really care for each other.

Orla Smith

And obviously, like, he can't handle like, what happened But he's also like a 14 year old.

Alex Heeney

She can't really handle it, either. She just doesn't have a choice.

Orla Smith

Yeah, exactly.

Milly Gribben

But it's, you know, it's still sort of consensual, I mean, relatively, for 14 years old. But it's, it's, you know, it's not a really dramatic pregnancy, but it still is, right. Like, I think that's what that shows really effectively as motherhood is hard. Like, even if it's a active decision.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, it's not like her parents throw her out. But their reaction is still traumatic. Like, I think they mean well, but they're also

Orla Smith

they don't know how to do it either.

Alex Heeney

And the way and out of sight out of mind, like for them, they can it's a lot easier for them to deal to act like you didn't have him because they sent her away, they didn't see her get super pregnant and give birth, which made me think a lot about like, whenever this this is like, what a month ago now, we had that discussion about motherhood and horror, and how motherhood is still very much a private experience that happens behind closed doors. I thought this is a film, it's really quite interesting because it goes behind those doors. And it talks about the secrecy behind that.

Orla Smith

Yeah, it was interesting because Naomi Kawase' film are all very beautiful. But they I mean, I think you've told me Alex that they don't all ahve the some cinematographer,

Alex Heeney

Some of them have, like, she might have worked with the same cinematographer for a couple of hers. But she's worked with a bunch.

Orla Smith

Yeah, it feels like it is like the Naomi Kawase look rather than like, whoever cinematographer she's working with, like benders to the Naomi Kawase look, which is like, incredibly sort of, I don't know how to describe it incredibly, like beautiful lighting, natural lighting. And basically...

Alex Heeney

it's almost like unnatrually natural light because you're very aware of the light, but it is

Orla Smith

The sun is a huge presence in her films. And it's I mean, in pretty much every single one of her films, nature is a huge presence. Her films kind of like seem to be almost like adoring of nature, which makes sense in the sense that she grew up in rural Japan in kind of like the countryside that like as Brett has said, she shoots shoots trees like no one else. And yet it is interesting, like, it's also handheld.

Alex Heeney

And sometimes the handheld like it's not necessarily handheld and close up. Like sometimes it's she gets really close to the characters and you feel like feel their hair and like you feel like you're close to their skin. And other times she's observing them from afar.

Orla Smith

Yeah. I mean, there was a quote in her TED Talk, which I wrote down actually, where she said, and a principle that guides her films is that she believes there is nothing more powerful than the emotions we share. And our films are about sharing emotions. And I think that that is very present in the visual style of like, everything is very beautiful. And with the handheld we get often quite close to characters, the camera feels very intimate. And the camera feels very in tune with, with the characters and their emotions rather than taking like a more kind of objective removed perspective feels like she has, like she has a lot of love characters.

Milly Gribben

I mean, every filmmaker does, but it feels like unique. It's a real fondness and a desire to sort of, I think she talks about in the TED Talk, there's something about time passing through everyone at the same speed and like trying to capture that and stay with that. Yeah, yeah, there's such like a sort of gentleness to how she she stays with these people. Even though you know, for a lot of it, there's very little incident and you know, I know some people maybe don't enjoy that, that style of storytelling, but I I really admire it.

Alex Heeney

They tend to be nice. Like her films are about like this just like they're always they're these they're really nasty people in her films. You know, like there there might be somebody who says something nasty people who mean well at one point, but then you understand that like they're they're just yeah, huh? And they feel badly about her. No. No, like everybody's just kind of trying their best and they're caring for other people.

Orla Smith

I mean I think that stands out most in the male characters really because it goes against what you usually see because I mean, it really stands out and to mothers like how sensitively she depicts the husband character. Yeah and In Still the Water the girl's father is just so lovely. And even the boy's father who's more like absent problematic figure is still like,

Brett Pardy

likeable in some ways.

Orla Smith

Yeah. Like he's, he's like, depicted was depicted empathetically, like we we do understand, like, why his son looks up to him, for example. And we understand him to be a person who is perhaps trying to do good,

Alex Heeney

Especially in his relationship with his father, there's a lot of physical intimacy. In that relationship, like we see them at a bathhouse together, watching each other, we see him on the back of his father's motorcycle, which is contrasted with the image of his girlfriend riding on the back of his bike. And there's like sort of an intimacy to that. And you see a very real physical closeness with his father, which is contracted with the fact that he has to take a plane to get there and that his father is physically distant and going into Tokyo means there's highways and loud sounds, which are very different from the call of where he where he lives, and contrasts with his relationship with his mother, which is like loving but kind of distant, like you see them in different rooms of the house. And he sort of, there's a lot of him overhearing her or watching her from afar, but not a lot of them talking to each other. Like she's always away working. And so he gets notes from her or, you know, he sees her in passing, and even the fact that when she picks him up from the airport, she's driving a car, so they're not as close as when he was on the back of his father's motorcycle.

Brett Pardy

In Sweet Bean, like, we learn that Sentaro who runs the dorayaki shop, like was in prison, this is why he, this is why he does this, this is like one of the only jobs he can get

Orla Smith

he's, he's banished to a life of making pancakes.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, when he has no sweet tooth, but like, like, it's very empathetic to introduce him to us for quite a bit before we learn that's why he's there, right?

Orla Smith

Yeah, we meet him on his own terms. And I think that's the thing like her films are very uncynical about the world and about their characters. Like, I mean, I could see a film with like a version of Two Mothers where, like, for example, Hikari having sex with the boy who gets her pregnant could be like, from a filmmaker who was more removed from their characters depicted as sort of like, oh, aren't they silly for doing this, but she wants us to be kind of with her characters and with like, and her depiction of young love in Still the Water as well as similar where she takes even though we as like, adult audiences understand that like, there's like a certain fickleness to young love. She takes their emotions in the moment very seriously. And very sincerely.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, definitely, like a very idealized depictions of it. Like, these are not kids who have clumsy sex. But it's like kind of fine because it's about as you said, Orla, like there that like to them, it's a really big emotional deal. And it treats that with respect, even if it also is like you're just had sex and and it's perfect. I knew it was such an emotional and beautiful experience.

Orla Smith

And it wasn't painful to have sex on the forest floor.

Alex Heeney

That's all I could think about. Like they didn't even know she must have sticks poking into her back.

Orla Smith

Does ruin that scene slightly.

Alex Heeney

Can they have like been on a beach? It does.

Orla Smith

It's beautiful. Until you think slightly about the logistics.

Alex Heeney

Oh my god. Yeah. Like, what kind of scars is she gonna have?

Milly Gribben

I wonder? I wonder if that kind of sincerity of it is maybe why? I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why some critics are sort of, you know, they are getting out their, you know, misogny, maybe and racism. But anyway, I'm not gonna say every critic. Hashtag not all critics.. But I think, I think when things are really sincere, it's easy to mock them and to kind of go well, you know, like, I think, especially when it is the subject when it's when the subject is young women as well. I think it's kind of easy to say well, this is so saccharine and this is so like overly sincere and I don't know I just watching these films, I just kind of was like, I admire that I wouldn't I don't normally the kind of thing that I would go for but you are almost self trained by the way that she depicts these lives, too. Kind of buy into it and to value that.

Brett Pardy

Yeah. And I think it's interesting that in Radiance, one of the main themes is that there's kind of emotions you can see that when you translate into words sound very saccharin. And I was like, that is very reflective on her career, because I do think a lot of times, maybe some of the dialogue in her films is quite saccharine. I mean, I don't know if that's a translation issue sometimes, too.

Alex Heeney

I think it's probably but yeah,

Brett Pardy

but I mean, I understand what you say, like in Radiance there is the line that in the scene they keep coming back to is nothing is more beautiful than that, which has just disappeared, which, like, I understand that visually, but then, like, it does sound kind of like greeting card -ish saccarine. And then could can be quite an affecting thing to see.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Pardy

I mean, her films deal with really kind of, like, really deep subjects of her films are about loss in some way. And coming to terms with loss. So it's not like she's really like this feel good director necessarily.

Orla Smith

But she does to take like, the the depth of those feelings seriously, and portray them sincerely, which is, I think, something that some people I guess, uncomfortable with accepting.

Alex Heeney

It's, it's partly that gentleness, it's sort of like if you think about Local Hero, like, it's kind of a sad film, but it's so sweet. You know, like, it just loves its characters. And it's so warm, that it's still a feel good movie, even if, like, it's not necessarily a happy ending for anyone.

Orla Smith

But I think another thing about her films regarding like, the possibly misogynistic critiques using very measured language, but the idea of like, Still the Water, and in particular, was, it's a film that I do find it quite successfully poetic, like poetic, and its imagery poetic in its sound in a way that I really, really love. And you see a lot of criticisms at the time of calling it like trying too hard to be poetic. And it is interesting that like, I mean, if the film that won the Palme d'Or, three years before that film was a Cannes was Tree of Life, for example

I think it's really interesting to compare the reception of like Terrence Malick's work, who has made some great films but also has made like a lot of duds recently that some people specifically still love.

Brett Pardy

I love his duds except for maybe Knight of Cups, but

Alex Heeney

oh my god.

Brett Pardy

But I really do like Tree of Life.

Orla Smith

Yeah, and I mean, that's totally valid. But I think like the, the idea of people like loving Malick and like hating Kawase.

Brett Pardy

It does seem very strange to me. They're like kind of on the same wavelength, just kind of different philosophies.

Orla Smith

Like they both kind of

Alex Heeney

And she exocitizes Japan apparently, but he just like gets Christianity,

Orla Smith

but they both like revere nature and their cinematography, they both have kind of very sort of poetic image making. And when he does it in, I mean, I feel like the Tree of Life is like, even less sort of like grounded and character oriented than like, Still the Water but it's considered like with this is an Oscar nominee, we're gonna give it the Palme d'Or. It's a masterpiece. And then when Kawase does it three years later, it's trying too hard to be poetic, rather than being poetic. And it's very interesting. What films are considered trying too hard to be a thing versus actually being the thing.

Brett Pardy

And complaints she doesn't understand the visual language of the medium.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, well, and also like the Tree of Life is very obviously like a Lubezki film. His friends call him Chivo but like, as we were saying before, I feel like when you watch a Kawase film, it's like, oh, it's it sort of doesn't it's kind of like what Agnieszka Holland said to me when I interviewed her, which is sort of like you're probably like, manipulate my cinematographer doing what I want. And all my films have sort of similar qualities of light but it like it matters to me who my editor is and who my camera operator is and I kind of feel like Naomi Kawase, shee probably like kind of manipulates or cinematographer similar way and this and that,

Orla Smith

or at least say like come on board knowing like I know how I'm gonna make this look because it's Noami Kawase.

Alex Heeney

yeah cuz all her films immediately look like Naomi Kawase films in a way that like Chivo's films look like Chivo's films, whether he's making them with like Alonfso Cuaron or Terrence Malick? I mean obviously they also have like, whatever like a Cuaronian character and a Malicky character but they are like they're like yeah, Chivo shot that

Brett Pardy

Although I'd say that The New World is maybe less so with that. That that's

Alex Heeney

Oh, did he shoot that too?

Brett Pardy

Yeah. That's kind of more like Terrence Malik's other three prior films to that, which I think all had different cinematographers.

Alex Heeney

Oh, interesting.

Brett Pardy

I think Malick does have a like he does have a strong look that he's trying to achieve Well, actually he's had his first film had three different cinematographers, his second film had two, and the Thin Red Line had one.

Alex Heeney

I mean, sort of like all of Soderbergh films look different. They all look so different. It's like you don't feel like oh, it's Soderbergh. Well, do you feel like I'm in a completely different world, but there is like a similarity in the way both in how he shoots his own films, which is like its own thing compared to when he was using other cinematographer

Orla Smith

versus when he was using alias names that are actually him.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, his pals Mary and Peter

Orla Smith

But we should also talk about the sound and the films. Yeah, which I think is just as important as to like her aesthetic, quote, unquote, then as the images are, I know like that just as much as like, she reveals nature and the images like, she reveres nature and the sounds. And I think the best example of this is Still the Water. And I was thinking about when I interviewed Francis Lee, about Ammonite and I was thinking about something he said to me all the way throughout Still the Water. But he said that he wanted the sound of way of slapping up against the shore should be basically audible and every single scene of that film. So for like key moments, because he was talking about how the sound of the sea is like a very powerful sound to him. And also like a frightening sound. Because even though it can be very calming and relaxing, it also kind of makes you think about time passing by. And like the inevitability like the fact that time is just constantly passing by with each wave. And you hear the waves who out most of Still the Water too. And it's a really a film like about kind of cycles of life and death. And there's literally a character who is sort of slowly moving towards the end of her life in the film, and sort of ever presence of that wave sound was very powerful in that sense, I think.

Alex Heeney

On the transition between time periods, and true mothers is usually signaled with the sound of water that when you see the the see and hear the sound of it. Yeah, I mean, also, like we're talking about wind and the trees, like she really does capture the sound of leaves rustling.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I think it means like her films or have like such a great sense of place. Because she makes sure that we're hearing all the sounds of the environment. And she makes sure that we see like, we really like see all of the environment like I haven't been as a shot and Still the Water where like, they have like a whole conversation about this like amazing tree in like the dying mother's back garden that she wants to be able to see from her bed. And we get to know like the specific pieces of nature around them. And then we cut away to another part of the film. And then when we cut back to the mother, the first shot is just a shout out to her window of that tree. And I instantly knew I was because she had taken like the time to establish like the importance of the nature around them, like the specific trees or specific views. And they're kind of ingrained into your mind so that you always know kind of where you are based on.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, it's kind of the opposite really of exoticizing a place because she has such like, she has so much care for the small details of the place. It's not I just I found the most beautiful place I can look at it.

Alex Heeney

But like, I also think about the sound in Shara is interesting, because there's almost no dialogue in it. But there is a lot of sound. And there's those there's like the sound of like chimes and like sometimes it seems diegetic and sometimes it seems like a score. And it's this sort of sense of like time passing. It's also like really relaxing and hard not to like just be like, Ah yes, I'm calm and meditating. And

Brett Pardy

yeah, like you see the entire dance performance at the parade.

Orla Smith

And you also like wind through the streets, you get to know the neighborhood through single shots.

Alex Heeney

And I mean, it's interesting that in Radiance, that it's sort of about the impossibility of translating a visual medium into sound. Because her films are so evocative with the sound like you I would imagine that you would get a lot of the film films ideas just from listening to it. And yeah,

Orla Smith

we need a film of someone trying to do audio description over Naomi because she has to make a documentary about it.

Alex Heeney

Like the writing the subtitles the captions for it. Yeah, I mean, the thing about radiants that made me think about this and about Kawase films more generally is something that mean assumes that to us which I think is on our tote bag is that the visual should be able to tell the story with no sound and the sound should be able to tell the story with no visuals. That's something I thought a lot about. During Radiance and the idea of like, what it is that she has to translate for this audience and also something about Kawase's films more generally, because I think she's very attentive to both. Let's talk about men and the horrible things that they write in.

Brett Pardy

Why are men so mad at Naomi Kawase?

Orla Smith

What did she do to them?

Milly Gribben

I want to know, we we were talking all about how she described Still the Water as her masterpiece and I was saying, I've never heard a female director describe their work as like a masterpiece. It feels like such a gendered thing to sort of to do that. You know, it's such a Quentin Tarantino thing of like putting it in the text of your film.

Orla Smith

Yeah,

Alex Heeney

yeah. And I think she said that before it premiered,

Orla Smith

she said, she is on the Wikipedia as Kawase has described the film as her masterpiece, and it was before it premiered deserving of the Palme d'Or and states. This is the first time that I have said this about a film. After the Camera D'or and the Grand Prix. There's nothing I want more than the Palme d'Or, I have my eyes and nothing else.

Brett Pardy

I'm not sure she's saying he thinks he deserves it. That seems a questionable interpretation of that.

Orla Smith

And that wasn't in quotation marks. They had just implied that which Yeah, I don't think is true. But like I I admire the balls saying that before your films premiere, and then leaving yourself open for people to make fun of it in their reviews, which they did. I love the film. Give it the, I mean, I would have been happy if they gave it the Palme.

Alex Heeney

A better pick than Winter Sleep

Orla Smith

aptly named.

Alex Heeney

Yeah.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I know. There's like,

Alex Heeney

I think also, it's, I mean, something that I learned because that was I mean, this happens to be the the year that I discovered what the Cannes Film Festival is like, because it was the year that I went there for the first time. And I guess the thing that I didn't understand before I was actually there is how people are in such a rush to classify everything as a masterpiece or trash.

Orla Smith

And she got ahead of the game for them.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And there's very little nuance like I remember Mr. Turner premiered and within, like I saw it premiered at 8:30am. I saw it at 3pm that day, and by the time I saw it, it had already been declared a masterpiece. And I remember seeing Atom Egoyan's the Captive at the press, like the first press screening at

Orla Smith

a film that has stood the test of time.

Alex Heeney

And I remember coming out of it being like like that wasn't very good, but like I enjoyed it. Like his films are always kind of entertaining, even if they're bad.

Brett Pardy

Speaking of someone who gets to go to Cannes a lot.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. Oh my god, anyway.

Brett Pardy

He used to be good

Alex Heeney

Yeah, there was a time

Brett Pardy

now he's just interesting.

Orla Smith

Now he gives David Thewlis good roles. And nothing else.

Alex Heeney

But I remember walking out of that screening, and people were like, it's the worst movie ever made. And I was like, did you see Grace of Monaco? Because that was a couple days ago. Yeah.

Orla Smith

I mean, your point that Still the Water was being called the worst movie at Cannes the same year that Grace of Monaco was the is very apt because that's a bad movie. Still the Water is not

Alex Heeney

and like part of the culture of Cannes is like critics want a punching bag. Like every year they look for a punching bag that they can write really nasty reviews about and like Still the Water just kind of seem to be the lightning rod for that.

Orla Smith

What you said something before we recorded about how it was interesting contacts that because we have brought up the context of Jane Campion statement, but we haven't really connected to why how that related to this like masterpiece, and then pans thing. And you talked about, like, I know, people's attempts to be to be faux woke by panning Noami Kawase's film, which seems like a very odd way to go about that. That I know how do you think those the lore of like the Jane Campion statement fits in with how people reacted to this film?

Alex Heeney

Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, that's something that like, like one of the worst pieces that's been written about, you know, make a lot of indie wire written by known abuser of women, Adam Cook, not known at the time, but known now. And one of the things that says is it's like, well, maybe they put her in competition so that like, she wouldn't take attention away from the boys club. And

Brett Pardy

It's a false flage! They are programming the worst woman that can find so that makes woman look bad, which is very unfair, like is Naomi Kawase, the best woman director? I mean, no, but why does there have to be the one best woman director? Like her films deserve to play Cannes?

Orla Smith

Why does any film have to be the best film ever? Can't it just be a good film?

Milly Gribben

What a concept

Alex Heeney

Well, and there was a lot of talk about how there are only two women in competition. There are only two women. And the idea that like the conversation then turns to be like why these two women as though there were only ever two spots that could be reserved for women in competition like it

Orla Smith

Do you remember what the other one was?

Alex Heeney

Yeah it was The Wonders, the Alice Rohrbacher film which won the won a prize I think it won Grand Prix that year. And there was a lot of like, well Jane Cameron's gonna give like one of the women an award to make a point kind of like sentiment. People really did love The Wonders. I did not I'll take that opinion with a grain of salt because I didn't like Still the Water either. And I was wrong.

Brett Pardy

Debrah Granik loved The Wonders, one of the interviews of her collaborator for for Leave No Trace mentioned that that was one of the films that inspired Leave No Trace.

Alex Heeney

Oh, right.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, imagine having to give one of the two women a thing.

Orla Smith

They can't possibly deserve it.

Alex Heeney

Both films that were very like about girlhood and about like being the girl. What could be worse?

Brett Pardy

They wonder why Kawase is at Cannes all the time. A lot of women have long breaks in between making films. Kawase makes a film every couple years like she yeah, she has actually managed to secure a career that she can consistently be at work compared to like Debra Granik.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, to be to accompany we say to this before, the title of the article is, why does the Cannes Film Festival keep programming Noami Kawase's movies? I think one of the worst things about this,

Alex Heeney

and that was the fact that you're one suite being played.

Orla Smith

Yeah. So it's a retrospective on like, why did they program the terrible awful movie saw the water? And then now why have they they haven't even put Sweet Bean in in in compensating competition. It was in a sidebar. But the worst thing about this is that after reading the whole piece, unfortunately, I realized because there's a letter grade at the end that it was a review of apparently, like this was like commissioned This wasn't like a separate article that was commissioned about how awful Naoko assay is. It was a review of sweet bean that doesn't imply that in the title, because, I mean, the implication being that like, it's not worth taking one of Naomi Kawase, films, like at face value, and like assessing its independent worth as a piece of art, because they're just that bad. She's such a crime against cinema that I have to use this space of a review to explain why she should not be allowed to make a film ever.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And like he has a lot of comments about how she made like she did things wrong, like how dare she shoot this theme and the way she shot it, she should have shot it a different way like Thank you. 22 year old white man.

Orla Smith

And he does say her latest efforts by all accounts a lesser offense but no greater a piece of cinema is a light and fluffy exercise in sheer sentimentality. The directors bid to make her version of a film in the style of fellow can regular Hirokazu Kore-eda, minus a rigorous formulism and plus a lot of schmaltz. So apparently, he's decided that she was trying to make a car read a film, and not that they were both like contemporaries, who have like plenty of differences in the film making.

Alex Heeney

And I mean, that piece is our friend of the podcast, Lindsay Pugh editor in chief of women in revolt, she wrote a review of sweet being in which there is like a hilarious takedown of this article where she very like aggressively uses sick because they use the wrong p s

Orla Smith

si, si si. Yeah,

Alex Heeney

as I see, there's like copy like egregious copy errors and this and just like as bad as Adam Cook looks, it makes like indie wire almost look worse, because as other friend of the podcast, Angelo Muredda would say somebody edited this and somebody published in

Orla Smith

Yeah, and I mean, it's, I guess slightly heartening. Do you think that I think that if this piece was published now people would like notice and be mad about it, like the blatant sexism within it. So I hope like, that's a good sign, maybe like, I don't think you could get away with the same kind of blatantly sexist criticisms of classism. Now, you can get away with more subtly sexist ones.

Alex Heeney

Well, and they were like, the other one that Brett was sharing with us was the CinemaScope review by Michael Sisson which was like I don't know what planet he's on because he's he accuses her of being not concerned with film as a visual medium for still the water for still the water like I don't know how you come up with that for any of her films, but especially like still the water I think somehow he ends up equating like she uses the handheld camera to she doesn't think about where the camera goes.

Orla Smith

And I think what's really interesting is that that's false on many levels. Yeah, because Not only does she create beautiful images, yeah, on like a grand scale like poetic images, you know, the underwater images, the images of nature, I think the way that she shoots dialogue scenes are also like, incredibly well thought out, like, in a way that actually sort of reduces the sentimentality, quote unquote, of them sometimes or mitigates it because, like, I mean, there's a scene where the sun and still the water, like, completely blows up at his mother. And a more kind of, like, brash filmmaker might shoot this intense, like screaming, not screaming match, because he's just screaming at her and she's sitting there silently, but like, and a close up of his face, but for the entire scene, she just keeps the camera at a distance fixed on the face, or like pointed towards the face of the mother who is silent, almost shooting this incredibly like emotional scene in a way that allows us to watch it from a bit of a remove. So it's not too in your face, which is something that people accuse her of being, I think you see those kind of like, very smart choices of how to cover scenes, how to not have to kind of shoot scenes in a single shot with like, very interesting blocking throughout, like all of her films. So she's a she's a good, like, visual filmmaker of like, dialogue scenes of more traditional scenes and of the big poetic images. So it just kind of baffles me where they get these comments from

Alex Heeney

Yeah, one, I think she's especially really good and attentive to spaces, both domestic and otherwise, like, I think what's really stunning in in Shara is the way it opens on this room, which I think it's like a printing room is that what it is? Well, anyway, the the opening scene of shower is basically just a camera moving all around, the camera's moving all around this room, and then this boy, his twin brother goes missing. And then you start seeing the way this family exists in their house. But they're all separate. Like they're never really in the same space, even though they're in the same space, you see them moving around each other without actually being next to each other. And one of the keys into that is when the police officer comes and tell to tell them that like they found like this is like years later on, they found the twin brother and we watch the scene play out on like his brother's face. And we realize we hear like the cop talking to somebody and we realize that he's talking to the Father. And eventually we realize that the Father is downstairs on the son is upstairs and they don't know that the Son is listening. And I think our films are filled with these moments like the way that we find out install the water that the boy has like glimpsed his mother having sex with the man with the tattoo. And it's sort of like through a curtain. And there's all these ways in which he and his mother's live in the same space. But they are like ships passing in the night compared to the girl's family where they I mean, there's a lovely scene where she lives on her mother's lap who lies on the father's lap within the father complains that he doesn't have anyone to lie on. And you see them really gathered in a way that is like a shared space. I just think she's so she's attentive to spaces in the way that like ozy was. And I mean, she does the same thing too I think outdoors in the like in the outdoor spaces as well. But I think she's just as gifted with like the production design and the way she shows her characters moving through their their homes and the way those homes are designed like in true mother's the apartment with a couple lives. There's something about that where there are hidden spaces, and there's nowhere to sort of like hide from each other. Like they just have this long hallway and there's a way so they're always together in the same in the main room, you don't see them passing each other. And that gives them a sort of togetherness that characters in other films don't have.

Orla Smith

Is there anything else we need to like point out about the way people have received her film? I'm very curious how True Mother's would have been received if it had premiered at Cannes because it is a bit different from her other films. It's less focused on kind of poetic imagery and more on story. And I imagine that it might have been a film about I think it got a good reception at TIFF and the can audiences are very different from typical audiences. But I like to think that possibly it would just like have been more favorably received and some of her earlier work bad you know, I guess it's the thing that we we won't ever be able to know especially because that film didn't really get kind of a splashy launch and it's kind of been in gone now without a huge amount of talk.

Alex Heeney

I think scan is also just like generally a very sexist place like the majority of critics there are men I mean, even the film that are about women, they tend to be directed like I'm not saying that there aren't thoughtful films, there are good films like there definitely are and like you know, some of our favorite directors have had films at Cannes who are women and about women but like there's a degree to which you know like portrait of a lady on fire play can and like people didn't immediately jump to it's a masterpiece like people liked it a lot you know, but it was

Orla Smith

one the screenplay prize.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, but you could imagine like if it was not if it was directed by like a man or if it like wasn't about to Yeah, falling in love that like You know, I

Orla Smith

mean, it probably would have won more than the screenplay prize.

Alex Heeney

The Kechice film won the Palme d'Or what was blue is the Warmest Color.

Orla Smith

Yeah, right.

Milly Gribben

Don't get me started on that. Yeah. Which, you know,

Alex Heeney

like, whatever. He abused the actors on that. So, yeah, so I don't know, like I feel and I feel like can all i mean can is a perfect storm of all kinds of horrible things too. Like you wait in line for two hours to see a movie you. So by the time you get in, you're hungry, dehydrated, sweating and sitting next to other people who are sweating in a cinema that is like 25 degrees Celsius when it's empty. And now it's full of like 1000 sweaty people who were just standing outside in the hot sun and are also like dehydrated and hungry. So then they're like, so they either want to pan a film or say it's like a masterpiece, because otherwise, was it worth the misery of going to this screen, right? And then there's a hurry to have like the first take. So then you get these really nuanced takes. And within a day, there's a consensus on a film and films get buried or elevated within 24 hours.

Orla Smith

Yeah, and I think I mean, that doesn't do favors to someone, like, as we've talked about, I think our films, I think programs are all interesting, even if they're not all great. Yeah. Which is not something that can environment necessarily, like not,

Milly Gribben

and I think they require patience and like time to sit with in a way that I imagine like that kind of environment just is not, you know, conducive to

Alex Heeney

know and like there's a press lounge office, I don't know what to call it. It's like a room with a bunch of tables and where like you see everybody goes there after the screening and you see the person sitting next to you like write and file their review within an hour of the screening. Sometimes somebody who left the screening 10 minutes early. Peter, how

Orla Smith

well should we talk about like one of the interesting notes here in our planning Google Doc is the fact that Sweet Bean despite being one of the only films that premiered it that didn't promote it printed it can but not in competition is one of the like the old news of her films that is like widely accessible in Yeah, in the US and Canada in the UK. Like, hey, you can watch it on movie, you can rent it, it's on like hoopla. It's on streaming services. It's available for rental, it's relatively easy to see it in morning for us,

Brett Pardy

I think are the only two that have blu ray releases in America or Europe.

Alex Heeney

I think the Morning Forest one is British.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, they're both British through Masters of Cinema.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, I guess it is sort of her most Is it her most conventional film her most accessible film, it's like an one of her more, whereas Still the Water is more like quote unquote, poetic and I guess you could say I mean, Radiance is a mixed bag. And also a bit of that to in bears. I feel like Sweet Bean and now True Mothers, which is also going to be like relatively easy to like rent and hopefully on streaming soon, more like conventional character dramas. And Sweet Bean is is an easier watch. I feel like sweet bean is one of her films. It's the least polarizing. It's a film that everyone thinks is like, kind of nice, except for Adam Cook.

Alex Heeney

And it's not like quote unquote difficult like there are these long sequences of the waves coming in and out and

Orla Smith

no, but there's long sequences of people making pancakes and

Alex Heeney

Yeah, well, there's lots of movies that do that.

Orla Smith

But people have more patience, I think for for watching pancakes being made then watching waves, because they get to think about eating the pancakes.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, like there's lots of films that do that that are mainstream films. I think there's also less sort of philosophizing about life and death and seizing the moment and all of that, which is sort of a thing in ger other films that

Brett Pardy

there's still some

Orla Smith

I think someone dies in every one of the films we're talking about today. Yeah.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. Wait, does someone die in True Mothers?

Orla Smith

Well, her flatmate

Alex Heeney

doesn't die. She leaves, okay, well, but the adoption agency woman is dying. We don't see her die, but she's dying. And that counts. But there's

Orla Smith

like the idea and there are people like many of these characters are people who know who are like sick and know that they are dying. Like, I guess a prime example of that is there's still the water mother and I mean, I really would just as a side note, I love the death scene was beautiful in that film. Yeah, and a lot of it is not entirely but a lot of it is shot in one shot and I just really haven't seen a lot of like, I mean, I to quote from another interview from last year. I was thinking when I was watching that scene about what Kirsten Johnson said when I interviewed her about Dick Johnson is Dead about how they're like many stages of of dying, that people don't really talk about, death is kind of perceived as like this, like you're alive, then you are dead. That, you know, like in this film, like there are several moments where it's the kind of the line between the moment when the mother is dead, and the moment when before his his blood, like there are several moments when you think she's died, and then she comes back, and then she sort of goes stiff again. And it's this very protracted death that feels very realistic in a way that I haven't really seen. And it's also I mean, it's just their family dynamic is so lovely. It's the kind of ideal scenario of the family accepting and the community around them accepting what's going to happen preparing themselves and their daughter for it. And then there's, it's an incredibly emotional scene. I just loved how that was handled.

Alex Heeney

Well even when they move the mother back... have we even given a plot synopsis of Still the Water?

Orla Smith

It's not incredibly ploty. That's true.

Alex Heeney

We've kind of given the general ideas. But like, even when they move the mother home, and then bring in a hospital bed, you know, from the start, I guess, because she says her mother is dying before but like nyou don't expect her mother to like make magical recovery or anything like you, I think it's also in sort of the way that it's shot. Like it feels like an ending, I don't even know how to explain this. But the way that like they, you know, they they've moved the they put the the hospital bed in a place where she can see the tree that she loved. And then they're sort of like, there's something about it that feels like a coda almost to her life, like, they've already accepted the end of her life, but they're still going to get to spend some time with her in the house. And they're going to talk about the tree.

Orla Smith

And I mean, I guess a stereotypical emotional scene that you would have in a movie about a dying parent who happens early on, like, very, very early on in the film, like, it's not a film where you find out that the mother is dying, you go through that whole process at the beginning, she just has a casual conversation with her father about it. And then very early on, she goes to the hospital, and she has this conversation with her mother about her mother's impending death. And her mother kind of tells her that she's not afraid of death because she was a shaman. And she so you have that that scene, which would maybe be like the emotional bedside climax of another film is early on the moment when the daughter kind of accepts her mother's death, and the mother accepts her death. And it's I mean, I guess we don't have like, we don't usually see films about people dying, where they've already accepted and made peace with that before it happens

Alex Heeney

I think the there's an absence to the mother from the beginning, because there's this really lovely scene with her she's she's gone swimming in the in the ocean, I guess, which was, which is prohibited anyway, and she gets a ride home from the boy that she's in love with. And as she's gone, she's gone swimming in her clothes. So she goes home to change out of her clothes. And we see the scene of her mother in the kitchen cooking dinner. And then when she gets into the house, we see that the kitchen is empty. And we realize that like she has imagined that her mom is at home cooking dinner and that she's already absent. And so then when the mother comes back, it's like, she's not back in her role of like, what she was as her mother to her, you know, like the fact that she can't cook or, you know, do the things that sort of made her her she's just this like body in a bed. It means like that there's already is sort of like some of that loss has already happened. And now it's just sort of about getting to spend time with her but not necessarily getting to see her in the role and the things that made her who she was and what she meant to people.

Orla Smith

And it's also about helping the mother through like the last stage of her life. It's not really about the mother, making sure everyone else is okay, before she dies. It's about like, now accepted that you're going to die. We're going to make your last days like as comfortable as possible. And make sure you've got everything you need. So you can have like a comfortable death.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, and have some, you know, get to spend some time with the family. But the time that they spend, it doesn't necessarily feel like, Oh, this is like an important moment where we have to talk about the meaning of life and what I want you to do with your life. And here's all the advice I've learned from my ears. It's like, no, let's just look at the tree and sit on each other's laps. Not sit on lie on.

Brett Pardy

Yeah, like in all of her films, there's kind of that sense that you just have to somehow make peace with the passage of time and that things change. And yeah, but like, it kind of makes death. I don't want to say like not a big deal, but not almost not the tragedy. It's almost always presented as in.

Alex Heeney

It's just sort of part of the cycle of life.

Milly Gribben

And I guess also like what we were saying earlier about the connections between family members continuing like it's almost as though I mean no, they have died. But it's almost as though they're still there. There's, there's that moment when that elderly man sees the main character and he thinks that it's her great grandmother. That right? He kind of has this uncanny moment. And yeah, it's like death is not a sound sort of really cringe with death is not the end in her films, I suppose. Or at least in that.

Alex Heeney

Well, and the boy in Still the Water, his father says that he looks just like his mother. And in fact, there's like conversation that the mother has with her daughter about how like her mother lives on in her daughter and, and on and on and on, which isn't true, because then there's that like, 400 year old tree that's like the one constant,

Orla Smith

but it's ripped down at the end.

Alex Heeney

I know. heartbreaking.

Orla Smith

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, like she shoots trees so beautifully when she gets here attached to this tree is like, a living creature. That the image of it being being destroyed is like, full of grief.

Alex Heeney

Any other general thoughts?

Orla Smith

The Mourning Forest is good, too. I guess I mean, that film, also, there's connections to what we were just saying about like, attitudes towards death with the the, the elderly man's journey into the forests towards his wife's grave as kind of his his journey towards death.

Milly Gribben

Yeah. And when he when he crosses the river, and she's kind of cooling like she's, you know, breaks down that was that wasn't so moving. And I wasn't sure if it was kind of talking to her daughter in some way or I don't know.

Orla Smith

Yeah, yeah.

Brett Pardy

Also, the most evocative title of her films groups kind of summarize the rest of her work, Morning and the Forest.

Orla Smith

It's a very literal title as well, we are going to mourn in a forest.

Alex Heeney

Okay, well, on that note.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, closing thoughts. I think she is a super, super interesting filmmaker. And like, watching these all in a week has been super gratifying, I think, and I really hope, like, it almost feels a shame that I feel like if Naomi Kawase started making films now, perhaps the narrative about her career wouldn't follow the same course. Because she really was sort of like, I don't know, ahead of her time. And like for example, a new filmmaker on the scene now is Chloe Zhao, who also makes films that really prioritize nature, in a kind of similar way to nearly Kawase films. They're very sort of like romantic films. They're sentimental films, and they have beautiful shots of landscapes. And actually, I mean, Alex and I are not huge fans of Nomadland, and we, and we think it's almost too romanticized. So it's funny that that Chloe Zhao is being very widely embraced now, whereas Naomi Kawase, whose films are sort of less romanticized, they're in their depictions of stuff like class, for example, which is quite like smartly dealt with in a bunch of her films, like True Mothers, for example, in a way that something like Nomadland doesn't necessarily do. But Chloe Zhao as a new filmmaker has been embraced and Naomi Kawase, it feels like because she's sort of, you know, went through that process of being trashed. She now has that on her name permanently. And it's going to be very difficult to like, shed the label of being like that filmmaker who makes like schmaltzy over sentimental films, when she's not really doing that. And I mean, I hope for a kind of narrative change the reappraisal of her work and also for it to be

Alex Heeney

available.

Orla Smith

Yeah, cuz I mean, think about it, like a lot of filmmakers working in the same kind of time as her have had their films, like rereleased on books that they've had retrospectives. And she hasn't had that treatment. And she hasn't had that opportunity for for a reappraisal and I really hope that come soon. I feel like she's like absolutely overdo it. She's made so many films, first of all, and she's made so many films that like were misconstrued and deserve revisiting. I mean, I think Alex is living proof of that because you went back and watch Still the Water again, and like a little more,

Alex Heeney

what I also think she's someone you kind of have to take on her own terms. I think it doesn't help to see her films out of contact. I mean, almost in a way like the difference between her and Chloe Zhaos that close down and makes films that are not about her home that are not about a land that she knows and so they have a sort of outsider's eye and and a romantic view of this landscape. And and that it means a lot to the characters in the film but you almost see it more from an outsider's are than like what it would be to just live there.

Orla Smith

But nevertheless is "excotizing" Japan.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, she got she got accused of that in multiple reviews, including one by a woman in Variety, I think for Still the Water. And I think what she does is the opposite is she sort of takes time to... well like you said, she's from there. But it's also like, she's takes time to notice the things about the land. And if anything, it reminds me more of the way Indigenous people actually shoot the land, like as a thing that is living that, you know, well that is essential to the place to the people that there's a there's a kinship and a relationship to the land. Like her like

Orla Smith

thereshown with like love and familiarity.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And that it's it's part of the land and the story of the line is as much the story as the people and you know, like it reminds her attentiveness to sound kind of reminds me of, you know, like the sound of the snow in Falls Around Her or the way that you can always hear the ocean in Monkey Beach, unlike Trickster, whereas Brett put it on our episode on that, it just regularly forgets that it's supposed to be by the ocean. Like there's a real attentiveness to the way she shoots forest. I don't know, like when I see that. I think this kind of reminds me of how I feel when I watch Indigenous film.

Orla Smith

No, I thought I felt that too as well, especially because we've spent a lot of time in the last couple years like interviewing indigenous filmmakers. And they're talking about how to shoot the land and create the sounds of the land. And it did make me think of that, like absolutely watching her films. Like there's such a sense of place. And the place is so tied to the stories it couldn't just take place place anywhere.

Alex Heeney

And I think like you really have to understand that that's part of her storytelling because I think a mistake I went had when I went into Still the Water. I didn't know anything about her filmmaking or her preoccupation. So I kind of went in wanting or expecting a certain kind of film. And then when I didn't get that I was like, Oh, well, I didn't like it, which I think is what you know, I mean, we've talked about this before like that's how people responded to Louder Than Bombs. At Cannes they were like, there was no big cathartic moment, nothing happened

Orla Smith

not so so film that I think people are accused of like schmaltzy ness just yeah, with emotion. Yeah.

Brett Pardy

Accusing a Isabelle Huppert film of schmaltzy.

Alex Heeney

One like it didn't it didn't have a screaming match. So it couldn't be a real drama, like nothing happened in that film. Would you also like you know, we've also accuse Naomi Kawase's films of nothing happening. But I think it's it's all very subtle. And you have to kind of go in with the understanding that you have to watch the ocean of the way that she uses the ocean and the leaves and the sounds that this is all part of immersing you in the world and the headspace of the characters. And that part of the character development is like the land development almost like I think there is much there's a lot in still the water, especially about the way that the girl is very tied to the land and she's connected to it. And that's partly in the way that she like goes swimming in the sea. And the way that the boy feels alienated from it, like he's afraid of the sea. And then he's sort of a city boy, and he doesn't want to slaughter the goat.

Brett Pardy

The other criticism is that her films are not political.

Orla Smith

She's, she's very, like, purposeful in picking subject matter that's like, sort of that is inherently poetry

Brett Pardy

She's about this, like rural urban divide and the kind of tradition versus modernity thing.

Orla Smith

yeah, she's talked about like, disability, people who are pariahs in society, and like her subject matters is it just is political. Like I read that I can't remember what review that was in that, like,

Brett Pardy

I think it might be even be on her Wikipedia

Milly Gribben

It is yeah.

Orla Smith

Oh, it is it is.

Milly Gribben

Yeah, it's mad. Although it's inherently political.

Alex Heeney

I do think that like, when you see her films together, you have a different experience of them. Like I can see watching Radiance on its own and being like, well, that was really interesting about translation, and then it kind of turned into a bad love story. And so it wasn't very good. Yeah. And like, like, that's not untrue. But I guess I think it's more interesting in the context of her work, because you think about how she is interested in sound and images. And then that kind of makes you think about also how she uses sound and image in that film. Whereas I could see if you were more focused on like, oh, and these characters are diametrically opposed, and they're gonna fall in love. And then you're like, well, but the love story is kind of unsatisfying. It's kind of like but that's it's kind of more of an excuse than what the film is about.

Orla Smith

Yeah, I mean, I, I had I really like I had interesting experience watching Still the Water because I really didn't know much about the film going into it. And so I just started it. I watched the first hour I loved it, and then I had to pause it cuz I had like scheduled a zoom meeting and and then in between that, like you guys we were talking on slack about, like how it had been critically panned. And I started reading up about it and because as I had been watching it, I was loving it so much I was like, oh, did this winner was it can this must have been really loved it can because he's really He's really good. And then I read up about it and it was so interesting how it made me think about how like we mentioned that the thing of her calling it her masterpiece before, which is like to explicitly make the connection of like, I think that is interesting that her I think her saying that probably damaged the trajectory of the film significantly, because like Millie, you were saying that it's rare that we see women talking about their films like that I that's so true. And I think that it's considered like almost like offensive to people that she would dare say that about her own film like but as you said, like Quentin Tarantino, literally, like ended one of his films with the line, I think this is my masterpiece, and then it was nominated for an Oscar. But like, I think people like they took it as a challenge to dislike the film that she said that.

Alex Heeney

I mean, it may be worthwhile pointing out that also Girls started in 2012. And when Hannah called herself the voice of a generation, people decided that that meant Lena Dunham thought she was a voice of a generation. And they like missed the fact that the show does a lot of making fun of Hannah. But they were just like, well, how dare a woman think she's the voice of the generations? Like First of all, nobody thinks head is the voice generation. Not like anybody involved with the show, except Hannah, who is too busy, who's got her nose in her and it was

Orla Smith

a fictional character.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. But like, like, I just feel like that's maybe important context. But like the idea of a woman declaring her importance was so sort of, like unacceptable, unacceptable. Yeah. And like, also, I think maybe it's a difference. There's a difference between saying your film is a masterpiece versus your masterpiece, which

Orla Smith

Yeah, I think for her, it seems like it's a film that's very important to her. And I think it is a film that like brings together a lot of her preoccupations in a very grandiose way. I can see why she think that. And it is it's actually probably my favorite of her films. So I mean, it just makes sense as a statement, like she's allowed to think that.

Alex Heeney

Yeah.

Orla Smith

she's not saying it is the masterpiece of the Cannes Film.

Alex Heeney

Who knows, like what the translation was, I mean, something that's interesting. This is a slight tangent. But something that I do note did notice it can and that I think was especially like, it's especially true of films that are like not European, is what can they have subtitles in English and in French, and as someone who speaks both languages, I sometimes I would actually often read the French ones, because the English ones are lower down. And if there's a head blocking them, you can't see them, whereas the French ones are burnt into the screen. But when you watch like a Kawase film, or you watch like a Japanese film, I would read the French and the English subtitles, and they would be completely different. And I would always be like, I really wonder what I missed. This is like the rare chance we actually can see simultaneous subtitles in different languages. And they would usually be relatively sparse. So like, you did have time to read both. And I would read both and be like, well, these are not overlapping. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Orla Smith

I mean, was really do have different meanings in different languages. Like, like I really imagine, like, the word masterpiece, or like, however it was translated, probably has different connotations, or different cultures is obviously not something people think about when they have a headline grabbing line. But yeah, I mean, I mean, it's probably a good note to end on is the idea of like, you were talking about it being very taboo for a woman to declare her importance, which I mean, I think she is incredibly important. Like she's an incredibly significant filmmaker. We were talking about how she is like one of the only sort of lauded Japanese female filmmakers, and was sort of trailblazing in that regard. And, and she was even doing interesting things in documentary like I read an interview with her from film comment about her documentary work, where she said at the time, she was making documentaries about herself, and many critics told her that they've worked encounters documentaries, because they're about herself. And she was like, Oh, well, I didn't I wasn't trying to do like push the the medium in a different direction. I was just making the films I wanted to make the people were telling me that they like didn't count. And I think in many respects, she is like, whether you like her films or not, she is an incredibly significant filmmaker. And she like I don't think it's like a terrible thing that she's I'm aware of that.

Alex Heeney

Yeah. And I think that the question is not why does can get programming Naomi Kawase. The question is why hasn't Cannes programmed Alice Winocour in their competition? I mean, they have programmed Alice Winocour but not in competition and why haven't they programmed like Elle-Maija Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn or, you know, deberg I mean, I guess Debra Granik played in Directors Fortnight, but she hasn't been in competition, I don't think or why haven't they programmed, Joanna Hogg? Like, there's so many amazing women directors, and they regularly ignore them or shove them into a Un Certain Regard, which like is not a bad place to be. But it is kind of considered second tier. Yeah, it's like basically,

Orla Smith

I mean from a completely practical perspective, a lot of critics won't see the films in Un Certain Regard because they go there and they watch the competition film. So your film is just not going to get as many eyes on it. Yeah, so it really does matter. Yeah. I did. I did want to read a quote that I really liked from our friend, Lindsey Pugh, who is a frequent guest on the podcast, not from her review, but from her interview with Kirin Kiki, who is in Sweet Bean. And I think she's in another Kawase film, but I can't remember which one, but not in a bigger role, which is in sSeet bean and Lindsey, it wasn't an interview for Sweet Bean, but Lindsay went out of her way to ask about Kawase. And she said she asked, I read somewhere that Naomi Kawase doesn't watch many Japanese films, which I found surprising. And Karen Kiki Says, I just heard that for the first time too. And I'm surprised and Lindsay says yeah, I was shocked by it. I wonder what she watches. And Kirin Kiki says she doesn't necessarily say anything bad about other people's work. But to her she's number one the best of the best. She's often disliked because of this. And you know what? Good for her.

Alex Heeney

I think a lot of directors think that way. They just don't necessarily say it.

Orla Smith

Yeah. The interview was on Women and Revolt if you want to check it out

Alex Heeney

Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes. Yeah, she has not been in I don't think other Kawase files but she's been in a whole kind of Kore-Eda films. Okay, on that note that she does not watch other film from Japan.

Orla Smith

Like she's too busy making a film every year. And the Olympic ceremony.

Alex Heeney

which is especially like because she writes her own films too. So like it takes time to write a script, even if the script says moonlight. I don't know. We'd love to know what her scripts look like. So like she's pretty, like even the Coens don't make a film like every year because they have to write their scripts. I think we're gonna close out our discussion of Naomi Kawase with the encouragement seek out her films. Some of them are available. We'll put in the show notes. We'll put info about like where you can stream or rent them in Canada, the US UK sometimes you can track down imports of some of the films sometimes there are sneaky ways to watch them. If you're in the wrong country, so Millie, where can people find you?

Milly Gribben

I have a blog. It's millygribben.wordpress.com.

Alex Heeney

and where can people find you?

Brett Pardy

I am on twitter @antiqueiPod and on the Seventh Row podcast regularly

Alex Heeney

and Orla,

Orla Smith

you can find me on Twitter @orlamango. I'm on every episode of this damn podcast. Pretty much

Alex Heeney

You aren't on every episode.

Orla Smith

The last one I wasn't on it was in December. So I get to say that and you can find my writing on Seventh Row. I have no idea what writing will be up there right now because we are recording this three weeks in the past.

Alex Heeney

I'm Alex you can find me on Twitter @bwestcineaste and find my writing on seventh row. Next week on the podcast. It's gonna be happy happy times happy happy times. By which I mean stories of childhood sexual assaults. Sounds like a fun listen.

Orla Smith

We've had a terrible lineup. Oh, when we're recording this we've just did an episode on genocide. And we're about to record the childhood sexual assault podcast and then the cancer

Brett Pardy

Are you releasing the cancer one on Mother's Day this year.

Orla Smith

No, no no we've gotten that we've gotten we've got other plans for Mother's Day.

Alex Heeney

There were the dead the mother, well, dead moms to be dead mom.

Orla Smith

But this this this episode is comparatively cheery. So this is like the nice break.

Alex Heeney

Yeah, sure. We'll do something cheery eventually. Again

Orla Smith

We've already used up the Paddington films.

Alex Heeney

I feel like there are other cheery films in our arsenal. We got to get to Weekend this year because it's the 10th anniversary of it. That's true.

Orla Smith

I mean, I wouldn't call it cheery. No one dies.

Alex Heeney

It's always like very like it's very warm. Okay, you know what? That's not even next week. It's a warm, fuzzy feeling movie, even if it's like bittersweet. Uh huh.

Orla Smith

But anyway, next we're talking about Una and Slalom, tthe newly released film, you know, the film from like, 2016. And yeah, another film that is due for re-appraisal

Alex Heeney

I mean, by the world, but by us because we were on the right side of history.

Orla Smith

Yeah. And they both deal with childhood sexual abuse. So we will be discussing that theme across both film. Yeah. You can tell from my tone of voice that I'm enthused.

Alex Heeney

They're both really good films. They're both really good.

Orla Smith

But yeah, I'm, it's gonna be an interesting conversation. Because that because it is such a it's a topic that you don't see a lot of films about, because it is such a dicey topic. And I think the way that these two films deal with it is super interesting. How they kind of dealing with something that is not talked about.

Alex Heeney

So yeah, that will be next week. And I guess I should mention, like, we have done a good job of mentioning many of our books in this episode. So what have we talked about? We will we mentioned our merge for our new book, they should, in their own words, fiction directors, which features that mean? Assume quote, yep, you get a beautiful tote bag with a bunch of other quotes from folks like Celine Sciamma and Kelly Reichardt

Orla Smith

And those quotes like that quote, probably a bunch of interviews you've quoted from in this episode. Those quotes are within the book. Yeah, their own words fiction directors, which has recently been released and you can find out more about theirownwords.ca. We had a little conversation upfront about Kelly Reichardt, but because we are all Reichardt fans on this podcast, we wrote a whole book about her. You can find it at Reichardtbook.com. And I know I guess we said that Celine Sciamma is good too. See Sciammabook.com. And we said that Joanna Hogg should be programmed at Cannes. The souvenirbook.com

Alex Heeney

And I was thinking specifically about the interview in the Debra gGanik book that Brett brought up.

Orla Smith

Yes, but we don't have a shortcut for that one. But look for our Leave No Trace ebook on our website, and seventh-row.com/books or you could buy a membership at seventh-row.com/join and get a free ebook with your purchase. We recommend it

Alex Heeney

All right, well, that's the end of this episode. Thanks for listening. That's all for this episode of the seven throw podcast. Tune in next week for our next episode with more in depth discussion and comparison of great films. If you liked this episode, please rate and review us on iTunes or wherever fine high quality podcasts are available. And check out our website seventh-row.com where you can find interviews and essays on the best current releases with a particular focus on films by about women, Canadians, young people and LGBTQ plus people. You can also find out more about and purchase our ebooks and merchandise on our website. I'm Alex Heeney, from all of us at Seventh Row. Thanks for listening.