泳池边的人 (2016)

Contemporary, low-cost, independent production from the Land of the Rising Sun actively struggles with a difficulty that has been plaguing it long-term – a certain isolation, a lack of communication with analogous tendencies in film culture happening in the rest of the world. Hirobumi Watanabe, one of Japan’s most exciting young filmmakers, is succeeding through style and in his manner of developing a story. His third film presents pool man Yusuke Mizuhara, a loner of few words whose monotonous life plays out in a suburb north of Tokyo between home and a nearly-deserted pool. His stoic expression knows no variance, not even under the deluge of words streaming from his somewhat overbearing coworker Koji. What’s behind the impenetrable façade worn by a young man confronted daily by reports of the tragedies besetting different parts of the world? A formally ambitious, geometrically precise film about certain unexplained thought processes associated with the Japanese mentality.