When technical illustrator Tony Takitani asks his wife to resist her all-consuming obsession for designer clothes, the consequences are tragic.

Quote:
Against all odds, director Jun Ichikawa has successfully adapted Haruki Murakami for the screen, transforming one of the writer’s lyrical short stories into an equally lyrical film. “Tony Takitani” is as detached and melancholy as its subject, a technical illustrator (Takitani, played with muted sorrow by Issey Ogata) in love with a woman (Rie Miyazawa) whose perfection conceals a spiritual flaw.

Tony is born into isolation, burdened with a roaming jazz musician for a father, a mother who died in childbirth and an unfashionably Western name. A virtuoso at drawing machines but lost when it comes to human beings, he is just sliding into middle age when his hermetic world is breached by the appearance of a wisp named Eiko. She is perfection in form, but as spiritually bereft as Tony. While he dwells on machines, she is compelled to buy “an alarming number of clothes.”

Together, they embody the psychological fallout of Japan’s postwar boom: equal parts technical precision and compulsive materialism. “I’ve never met anyone who inhabits her clothes with such obvious relish as you,” Tony tells his love. She replies that she feels “clothes fill up what’s missing” inside of her. Their respective obsessions form a perfect union until Eiko is consumed by her own consumerism, and Tony finds himself alone again — with a pivotal difference. This time he recognizes his solitude for what it is and aches for what he’s missing.

Directed with economy and an elegant eye, Ichikawa’s visuals resonate beneath their simplicity, with monochromatic backgrounds doubling as expressionistic landscapes. The camera pans from left to right, from scene to scene and time to time, observing Tony through an omniscient voiceover occasionally punctuated by the characters’ own self-narrative.

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano soundtrack is equally muted as it underscores the film’s vision of emotional desolation within a free-market heaven. Whether you view it as a metaphor for a country or a singular study of the human condition, “Tony Takitani” explores the borders between solitude and loneliness, hunger and consumption, memory and loss. Ichikawa has made a film that’s more a visual poem than a narrative, and all the more exquisite for it.

— Neva Chonin

Tony.Takitani.2004.WEBRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

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Runtime: 	1 h 16 min
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https://fikper.com/m5L64Q60WT/Tony.Takitani.2004.WEBRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Jun Ichikawa – Tonî Takitani AKA Tony Takitani (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The story takes place in a beautiful pavilion in 1930’s Suzhou. Jade is a famous songstress courtesan, marrying into the noble house. She develops a dubious relationship with a female cousin of the family and also being admired secretly by her butler. LAN, the cousin, is a modern woman who wants to be independent and serves her country, but when she meets the charismatic Shing, an official from the North, all her plans go astray.

These two women’s love bears no fruit with their men and in the end they have only each other to lean on.

1.70GB | 2h 02m | 704×326 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3D2960375A88DEE/Peony.Pavilion.AKA.Youyuan.Jingmeng.2001.DVDrip.x264.mkv

Language:Mandarin
Subtitles:English,Chinese

The post Yonfan – Youyuan jingmeng AKA Peony Pavilion (2001) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Director Hirokazu Koreeda turns the popularly held conventions of the typical samurai evenge tale on their head with this story of a man whose quest to avenge the death of his father gradually takes a back seat to his emerging role as a key figure in the community. The year is 1702, and young samurai Sozaemon Aoki (Junichi Okada) has arrived in Edo to seek revenge against Jubei Kanazawa (Tadanoby Asano). Kanazawa is the man responsible for the death of Aoki’s father, and now it’s up to the grieving swordsman to settle the score. When Aoki begins teaching the children of Edo to read and write, however, his bloodlust slowly begins to subside as he cones to realize the true value of his useful place in society. Upon falling in love with the beautiful Osae (Rie Miyazawa), Aoki comes to realize that although the sword may be a powerful symbol of strength, allowing oneself to fall victim to its savage allure may not always be the best way to realizing ones true heroism.

1.37GB | 2:14:00 | 624×336 | avi

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Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English (srt)

The post Hirokazu Koreeda – Hana yori mo naho (2006) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel.

2.92GB | 2h 9mn | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/C1775EBE350B598/The.Twilight.Samurai.2002.576p.BDRip.x264.AC3-Q0S.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Yôji Yamada – Tasogare Seibei AKA The Twilight Samurai (2002) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Alone and self-sufficient since childhood, Tony shuns emotions as illogical and immature. After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated with Eiko, whom he marries. His life changes, he feels vibrantly alive, and for the first time, he understands and fears loneliness. But when Eiko’s all consuming obsession for designer clothes ends in tragedy, Tony finds himself alone again, sitting in his wife’s closet, gazing at her treasured couture pieces, the whispering ghosts of her soul. Finally, Tony places an ad in the paper searching for a woman who fits Eiko’s measurements perfectly.

Voted as one of the best Japanese movies of last year by Midnight Eye, and one of the few Japanese arthous movies that reached European and American cinema screens in 2005, deservingly so. A brilliant movie about loneliness and consumer culture.

Quote:
An adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami, even at only 75 minutes Tony Takitani feels laboriously over-protracted. Despite his impressive track record with films such as Tokyo Lullaby (Tokyo Yakyoku, 1997) and Osaka Story (Osaka Monagatari, 1999), Ichikawa’s primary career as an advertising commercials director is most in evidence here, in this tale featuring Ogata as the eponymous middle-aged technical illustrator whose solitary childhood (his mother died when he was young, and his father was busy touring with his jazz band) resulted in his emotionally introverted personality. When he meets Eiko (Miyazawa), a beautiful and refined female client, he becomes besotted and ends up marrying her, but it is not long before her obsession with expensive haute couture designer clothing ends in disaster. Soon Tony finds himself left with nothing but an en suite wardrobe full of expensive fineries and no one to wear them. Out of desperation and loneliness, he places an advert in the paper for a perfect size 7 woman.

Tony Takitani plays out with the ersatz sophistication of a glossy commercial for cars or perfume, composed of delicate images, slow-motion sequences, and a muted greyish colour palette. Soft breeze rustles through every scene, with the camera panning seductively from left to right to the evocative tinkle of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s continuous piano score through a variety of chic interiors ranging from Tony’s minimalist design studio to smoky lounge bars and fashionable boutiques. A comment on the shallowness of Japan’s consumer culture and obsession with the exotic allure of the West, perhaps, but the approach taken here is too subdued to stress the point, as shot after shot, the camera seems content merely to linger on the emaciated beauty of Miyazawa, whose role amounts to little more than that of a clothes horse, while an aloof third person narration from Nishijima further serves to keep us distant from the characters. Beauty is, after all, only skin deep, and boredom sets in even before Tony’s back-story, relayed through an atmospheric montage of old photos and film stocks, is over. (Midnight Eye)

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Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Jun Ichikawa – Tony Takitani (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.