Saraba nacu no hikari

A thoroughly original copy, which not only pays tribute to/steals from/lets itself be inspired by the visually striking references and forgets itself in the film Last Year at Marienbad. It is difficult to determine what is Japanese about the film, apart from the two main actors and the (invisible) crew, when everything else we see is European material viewed in the style of Resnais and Antonioni. Yoshida and his team have created a strangely fascinating simulacrum of European progressive cinema, which, together with the story of a painful melancholic search and missed love, fascinates with its relevance to the time and icons. This is especially true of the form, which, in its somewhat empty (often slavish) imitation of its models, reminds us of the artificiality of the choice of kitschy stage sets of the "most beautiful" and "most iconic" European destinations, from the Eiffel Tower through the Roman Forum to London and Lisbon, where the entire film takes place. However, these scenes are also among the most interesting in their own way. Nevertheless, Yoshida absorbed the experimental narrative structure through (not only) this film (not entirely successful in itself, but reaching above the average of that time as well as today), which he soon after ingeniously and completely originally used in his subsequent films, following in the footsteps of his European teachers, playing with the temporality of the plot and the nature of the characters, dealing with alienation and love/life/politics, etc. (20.07.2016)