These gestures are simultaneously a movement outward, testing the contours of an impossibly complex and ever-shifting world, and a movement inward, probing their own unknowable emotions, minds, spirits. Sōmai’s characters are jumping out of their skins. They are possessed—in the sense of a soul exceeding the body, spilling out from it. As in Bresson, Rivette, Ozu, Godard, and Rossellini’s, this is a cinema where spirit and the material world are inextricably bound up in one another, in which movement speaks and words have an autonomous, illogical weight.

My piece on Sōmai for the Brooklyn Rail :
brooklynrail.org/2023/05/film/Rites-of-Passage-The-Films-of-Shinji-Somai

“Somai-san was a very private guy, very quiet. He didn't really share a lot of thoughts with me. As you can see, I'm a very bright and upper type of character, whereas the character is very much the opposite of that. So he always called me “the fool.”

Myself and Mutoh-san and an assistant director stayed together at the assistant director's house. The assistant director was always responsible for making sure we got onto set on time and everything. When we came in, the director coined us the san baka torio: three stupid trio.”

My interview with Monday Michiru:
www.screenslate.com/articles/luminous-woman-interview-monday-michiru

Amélie for millennials, though I'm sure Jeunet's bonbon, swarming with wasps and green and red mold, has aged better than this will. Some of the most cynical product I've seen in years. It's like the NYT Op-Ed page mated with an in-flight entertainment system. Irredeemable, witless, ugly trash (yes, even taking into account some pretty sharp performances).