THE SAMURAI I LOVED / CICADA CHIRPING (LIT.) (SEMISHIGURE). Viewed on DVD. Subtitles = seven (7) stars; score = seven (7) stars; costumes = four (4) stars; choreography = four (4) stars; surround sound = four (4) stars; cinematography = two (2) stars. Director Mitsuo Kurotsuchi (who is also credited as co-screen writer) delivers an Edo period non-starter "love story" that is uneven, snail-paced, and mostly emotionless as well as poorly photographed, costumed, choreographed. The movie might be summed up as: teenage boy meets teenage girl, boy loses girl (and Vice Versa), boy (now grown) re-meets (after two hours of confusing plot trivia) mature girl, but its way, way too late (including for the audience that hasn't fallen asleep). To say that the actors lack direction would be a bit of an understatement. A noticeable mismatch in the similarity of teenage actors and their adult counterparts does not seem to help matters. Inter-scene continuity also falls by the wayside as editing makes for nonsense in the last quarter of the movie. Costumes (even those worn by characters at court) look cheap. Sword-swinging choreography (there is about five minutes in total) appears fairly phony with stunt actors being permanently incapacitated from a sword whacking while "good-guys" after being slashed in the same way seem fine and/or recover completely in the next scene or two! Except for medium shots using a telephoto lens to capture shimmering waves of heat, cinematography (wide-screen, color) is a disaster zone. Scenes (especially exteriors) are fuzzy-filtered as if photographed through mosquito netting! Many are also not quite in focus. Lead actress Yoshino Kimura's different size eyes are usually on full display (particularly in close-ups due to the use of unflattering camera angles) which can distract from her performance. Surround sound fields are poor to nonexistent. Score is very good and ranges from rousing music played by a small orchestra to haunting single notes from a piano. Subtitles are well done. The viewer has a choice of colors for expository text and lines delivered by different characters. Inter-scene consistency for the latter is fine. Great shots of cicada and snakes. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.
Review of Semishigure
