Yoshimasa Ishibashi who's Milocrorze: A Love Story wowed the Japan Cuts Audiences a little more than a decade ago, returns with an environmental tale wrapped in a strange mystery.
When a photographer's father passes away he is has to return home to sell his father's things which are located deep in the woods. While heading home with a real estate agent of questionable motives, they find they can not leave the woods. They are in fact held captive after a fashion by six beautiful but strange women.
The hows and whys of what is going on takes some time to unravel and as it does the films shifts from a kind of mystery into the territory of environmental fable. It's an odd shift that allows for some amazing sequences that draw us in as the beauty and strangeness of what we are seeing makes us lean in. This is for much of its running time a very compelling film
At the same time the shift untethers the narrative just enough that Ishibashi can't reign it all in. Plot threads shoot out from between his fingers and there is a sense that everything doesn't matter so long as his point is made. The result is a film that almost works but doesn't quite do so because the director stopped caring one connecting the path to the ending and just jumped there.
I was disappointed.
While the film isn't bad, it also doesn't work the way it should.
despite over all reservations there are enough moments that the film is worth trying, especially if you are a fan of the director.
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