Hitoshi Yazaki

  • Hitoshi Yazaki – Taiyô no Suwaru Basho AKA The Place Where the Sun Sits (2014)

    Drama2011-2020Hitoshi YazakiJapan

    Quote:
    A 10-year high school class reunion becomes a hotbed of speculation, jealousy, revenge, and ulterior motives when the former classmates come face-to-face.

    Kyoko is the former class queen who is now a local news reporter, while another woman named Kyoko was very plain in high school, but has gone on to become a successful actress. When these two people with the same name meet again at their 10-year high school reunion, a long-held secret will finally be revealed.Read More »

  • Hitoshi Yazaki – Kazetachi no gogo AKA Afternoon Breezes (1980)

    1971-1980DramaHitoshi YazakiJapanQueer Cinema(s)

    Natsuko nurses a helpless crush on her roommate Mitsu and tries to possess her for herself by generating conflict between Mitsu and her boyfriend, Hideo. Mitsu discovers what is happening and throws Natsuko out of the apartment. But Natsuko cannot bring herself to sever the one-way emotional bond.Read More »

  • Hitoshi Yazaki – Sangatsu no raion aka March Comes in Like a Lion (1991)

    1991-2000AsianDramaHitoshi YazakiJapan

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    TimeOut London:
    March Comes in Like a Lion
    Review

    Or, perhaps, love among the ruins. In present-day Tokyo, a waste land of tenements prey to decrepitude and demolition, ‘Ice’ (Yura) decides to collect Haruo (Cho), the young man she’s set her heart on, from the hospital where he’s being treated for amnesia. A little lie is needed to entice him back to the apartment she’s found for them: she tells him she’s his lover, neglecting to add that she’s also his sister. With no recollections to suggest otherwise, he goes along with her – but how long before his memory returns? With its long, static, carefully composed takes, taciturn script and tantalisingly ambivalent tone, Yazaki’s beautifully matter-of-fact study of incestuous longing is an engrossing, sexy and remarkably tender movie. Crucially, it eschews both easy judgments and fake sentimentality; indeed, there’s a droll, deadpan humour at work, most noticeably in the frequent sight gags. At the same time, however, the evocative use of metaphors ensures that the general air of detachment makes not for a dry, academic exercise, but a poetic tale of a fragile, blossoming romance that’s finally both subtly subversive and, thanks to the charismatic central performances, deeply affecting.Read More »

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