Our Next Presentation: Evil Does Not Exist (Thursday 29 January)

Chelmsford Theatre Studio, Fairfield Road @ 8PM (Doors open 7:15)

In the rural alpine hamlet of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo, Takumi and his daughter, Hana, lead a modest life gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for a local restaurant. The townsfolk become aware of a talent agency’s plan to build an opulent glamping site nearby, offering city residents a comfortable “escape” to the snowy wilderness. However, it becomes clear that the project will have a devastating impact on the local community.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to his Oscar-winning DRIVE MY CAR is a foreboding fable on humanity’s mysterious, mystical relationship with nature

Drama • Japan • Cert: 12A • Year: 2023
Language: Japanese • 106 mins

Click here for additional information.

Half-Season Memberships:

As we have now reached half way through our season, the membership fee now drops to £37.50 for the remainder of the season.

Our previous presentation:

Audience reaction to The Crime Is Mine

Audience reaction to The Crime Is Mine

17 response slips were returned. The breakdown, and comments were: Download the comments by clicking on the following link:Feedback PDF We are always interested to receive any additional comments people may have on this film and welcome all contributions to … Continue reading

Source:

May we encourage you to complete the Response Slips following the showing of each film – feedback (both positive and negative) helps us to decide what types of films to show in future seasons. In addition, you can leave comments for any of the films we have shown via the Discussion page.

Audience reaction to The Crime Is Mine

17 response slips were returned. The breakdown, and comments were:

  • ‘Excellent’: 5 votes
    • Very entertaining and outrageous.  I am sure everyone had great fun.
      Lovely use of colour, locations & fashion.  The France of fantasy!
    • Fun!
    • Good fun.  Lovely costumes and scenery.
    • Pacey!
  • ‘Very Good’: 8 votes
    • Very amusing, a bit of light relief following April.  The cinematography was excellent – the way it captured the feel of 30s cinema – even if the sexual politics were clearly 21st century.
    • Great fun!  Well adapted by Ozon
    • The perfect antidote to the rest of this season: light, frothy, inconsequential, but great entertainment.  Good to discover there were light moments even in the 1930’s.
    • A charming, frothy confection of a film, very stylistic and acted with great verve.  Ideal viewing for the festive season!
    • Cheerful.  Made a change!
    • A very funny period piece.
    • Great fun!
  • ‘Good’: 4 votes
    • Enjoyable, and certainly a comedy.
    • What a pleasant change to be not frightened, horrified, scared, bored.  A nice bit of harmless fun.
    • French slapstick, essentially.  I felt it was a little too derivative to award top marks.
    • An enjoyable romp.
  • ‘Satisfactory’ 0 votes
  • ‘Poor’: 0 votes

Download the comments by clicking on the following link:
Feedback PDF

We are always interested to receive any additional comments people may have on this film and welcome all contributions to this forum. If you did not leave comments after the screening, but still wish to do so, you can leave them here.

Audience reaction to April

15 response slips were returned. The breakdown, and comments were:

  • ‘Excellent’: 1 vote
    • This film either had to be ‘Excellent’ or ‘Poor’, so I’m going for the former.  René Magritte meets Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’?  A piece of real cinema – begging for a full seminar on its meaning
  • ‘Very Good’: 4 votes
    • Deliberately painful to watch and overlong.  The underling story was good and I eventually understood the fantasy sequences to be a reflection of her opinion of herself.  The soundtrack and cinematography were very good.
    • “April is the cruellest month, breeding” – Does art evoke life or imitate it?  Pace of film the key element – eventually I was absorbed.  Amazing use of non-diegetic sound.  Every edit came as a shock!
    • Powerful, challenging and uncompromisingly stark.  This made “Vera Drake” look like “Watch with Mother”!
    • Relentless
  • ‘Good’: 3 votes
    • The abortion in real time was very affecting, so was the thunderstorm on my ears!
    • I think I need to lie down for a few days.
    • Obscure, unsettling.  Need time to think further…
  • ‘Satisfactory’: 1 vote
    • I thought we’d reached the limit of female pain in the films we’ve already shown, but boy was I wrong.  I feel this film was constantly challenging me not to look away, I failed.  Not sure I was ready for this, and I suspect others weren’t too.  But I applaud on the subject so harrowingly.
  • ‘Poor’: 4 votes
    • Not an easy watch.  Abortion scene was too long and not a film I would recommend.
    • 2½ hours of Obstetrics! Didn’t understand it at all.
    • So slow – I fell asleep.  Beautiful photography though!
    • Awful.  I’m glad I didn’t bring a guest to see this depraved film. I had to leave early it was so horrible.
  • + 2 comments returned without a grade
    • Muddled.  Not sure I could sit through that again
    • As Alan Smith says, ‘Not for me’

Download the comments by clicking on the following link:
Feedback PDF

We are always interested to receive any additional comments people may have on this film and welcome all contributions to this forum. If you did not leave comments after the screening, but still wish to do so, you can leave them here.