HARMONIUM
DIRECTOR: Kōji Fukada
119 MINS, japan, france, 2016, SUBTITLED
Winner: Jury Prize Award, Un Certain Regard, Cannes International Film Festival 2016
Screening followed by a Q&A with writer-director Kōji Fukada, hosted by film critic John Maguire (Business Post).
BOOK TICKETS
IFI DUBLIN
Harmonium is divided in two halves: in the first we meet Toshio (Kanji Furutachi), who runs a workshop under his home where he lives with his wife Akié (Mariko Tsutsui) and their lovely daughter Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa). When Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano) a friend from Toshio’s s past, newly released from prison, arrives in their life, Toshio offers him a job. Slowly the close-knit family grows into a foursome sharing meals and vacations, but this seemingly idyllic arrangement can’t last. The second half jumps some eight years after… As with Kōji Fukada’s most recent film Love Life, underlying tension and flaws in social and domestic harmony spiral out of control with the unexpected arrival of an outsider with a shared past. With a significant narrative jumps, naturalistic performances and elegant visual compositions, camera setups and extended tracking shots reveal another deeply harrowing slow burn psycho-drama.
Harmonium received the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016.
NOTES BY MARIE-PIERRE RICHARD
