Rating of
4/4
Sentimental Recollections
industrialist - wrote on 07/04/11
Shunji Iwai gained considerable acclaim with his first full-length feature, establishing himself as an erudite of post-structuralist film semiotics and a contemporary auteur of considerable note. 'Love Letter' unfurls like a pragmatic illusion, dreamlike in texture and composition, yet grounded with modal realism, presenting interpretive undertones concurrent with formalist integrity and ethnographic realism that grants it a dichotomy somewhat rare within the romance genre.
A woman in mourning over her fiancé’s tragic demise sends a letter to his childhood address to reflexively cope with her grief. To her surprise, she receives a reply, thus igniting a renewed connection to her lost love and a strange new association with a woman from his past who knew him as intimately as she did. Iwai dons many badges with his films, here functioning as director, writer and editor, denoting both the investment he has in his projects and inferring that much of the tangibility of the finished product lies with him and his auteur sensibilities. It is impressive for a number of reasons, most significant being that Love Letter is not linear discourse, but rather unfolds as a fractured narrative of entwining lives - moments from the past intermediate with events of the present, and multiple perspectives interweave into a lattice of temporal-spatial relations. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, the contrasting strands of each protagonist would be a somewhat treacherous navigation, but Iwai employs spatial relations, ellipsis, and intellectual and tonal montage to piece together his narrative with assured impetus and a refreshing unpredictability. The focus is not traditional sequentialness but more a cause-effect model, exploring the connectedness of human nature and establishment of enframed recursiveness that promotes phenomenographic engagement rather than subversive involvement.
Another significant deployment is the casting of Miho Nakayama as both female protagonists. Such a decision may seem gimmicky to the easily perturbed, but she inhabits each role with distinguishable warmth and clarity. One might, for amusement, speculate how an actress of significantly poor ability such as Katherine Heigl might attempt a similar maneuver, no doubt needing to employ cheap theatrics such as alternating fashion sense, different make-up and over-exaggerated personality templates to make clear she is playing two disparate women. Nakayama avoids such simpleton pantomime, instilling unique traits and subtle fragility in each woman with warm and effortless pathos, distinguishing two souls orbiting similar patterns while eliciting compelling empathy for each.
Indeed, it should be clear at this point that Love Letter is not stock rom-com schlock for vapid gum-chuggers in search of another low-level Jen Anniston romp. The central conflict is devoid of histrionics, absurdity and judgment; interactions are driven by sentimentality, nostalgia and vestige rather than contrived hubris. In comparison to intellectually devoid junk such as ‘John Tucker Must Die’ or ‘Tad Hamilton', in which rules and construed morality propagate, the subject of relationship, feelings and attraction within the hemispheres of Iwai’s work are not denoted as basic impressions for the superficial and shallow workings of the average Kate Hudson fan. Here, love is a difficult, complex and multidimensional phenomenon that is not easily surmountable and does not bear easy clarification.
Such films mentioned would make explicit their denigrations, but Iwai broaches the subjects with maturity, for example, utilizing the deceased as an enigmatic catalyst rather than a gross caricature. There is almost a metaphysical ethos to the film in this regard, no doubt due - in great part - to the work of the late Noboru Shinoda, who asserts himself as a masterful exponent of light, blocking and composition. His winter panoramas, sunlit dwellings, spatial awareness and visual zeitgeist are laced with the activities and gentle musings of the expressive actors that occupy his shots, which are as observant as they are immersive. It becomes evident in his first collaboration with Iwai how he came to be such an integral component of the former's projected deliverables, proving himself an upper echelon DoP who understands story and character with equal aplomb to his knowledge of ambience and tone.
The film offers a painted world of formalist proceedings that is beautiful in both look and feel, and Iwai engages us with his subjects through a measured pace, dissecting action and inaction with thoughtful sentiment, and finding moments of pure reflection in activity and silence, company and isolation, loneliness and attachment with graceful denouement. The final scenes play out with subtle intensity and emotional resonance, easily one of the most touching in a romantic drama, and quite beyond the faculties of the mentally undeveloped. Love Letter is a film that is imminently human even as it is spellbindingly spiritual, striking in its moments of introspection and powerful in its recollections of love as both ethereal and empirical.
