Film Review: Drawing Closer

I've been hearing in soundtracks a lot recently the trend of using arpeggios (often guitar) for usual moments and intercalating the scenes, strings for emotive moments or when it gets really heavy they break out the chords. It's a little tiring musically. Occasionally they mix it up: chords on the piano and arpeggios on the guitar. It's tiring...

The film was alright although at two hours it was a bit long it felt. Really, two hours isn't that long, but the film sort of struggled to hold my attention for that long a little.

I watched the film in Japanese and without subtitles, where I could largely understand it, I suppose because the film is quite easy, the characters speak fairly short and easy sentences and never use particularly difficult vocabulary.

Also, the Japanese name for the film is horrendous. Following in the tradition of things named in a tedious and long winded way that explains exactly the nature of the content. The English name meanwhile, is fantastic.

The other thing, that I suppose I grew used to after a while, was how anime-ish the entire thing felt. I suppose it's the heavily dramatised speech.

The film had its emotive moments, like at the bunkasai, and the confession as he drew her profile, but overall the film itself was totally average. The byouki of the two main participants felt a bit forced, and really only was there as a narrative point. Mostly the dialogue between the characters was totally ordinary, which I suppose is what romance is.

A good watch for getting back into Japanese, but I wouldn't say it is a particularly fantastic film in all.

The second portion of the movie reveals that, whilst initially it seemed she didn't know he was yomei ichinen, she does in fact know. Which was... fine, I guess?

The cinematography, or whatever the word is for the way it was filmed, is quite nice, and the cameras used make all the scenes feel very radiant, particularly those with background sunlight, or the green of the rooftop gardens. It is very vivid and pleasant to look at.