Reverse Shot A different angle on moving images—past, present, and future

Yamanaka has made two features to date, along with a few shorts and some contributions to television programs, yet her body of work already contains enough formal gambits and tonal shifts that one might expect from a significantly more experienced filmmaker.

Like these displaced, directionless characters, I feel like I'm at a crossroads with hundreds of possibilities arrayed around me, none especially appealing, and this essay acts as a distilled exemplar of that tendency.

The willingness to downplay repetition in favor of a seemingly linear progression of events means that the fuzzy temporal links are more subterranean and trickier to parse than in any of his prior films.

The sense of characterization emerges equally from the supposed downtime, the moments between the conversations.

Perhaps the most radiant film I have ever seen . . . Its ebullience rests largely in its synthesis and transformation of those most obvious of French cinematic stereotypes: an obsession with love and sensuality, extended conversations about overtly philosophical subjects.

This week’s critics come together to officially put a nineties lesbian coming-of-age comedy and a sixties Hong Kong musical romance in the queer canon.

The specificity of China is largely displaced and obscured, and The Farewell never communicates the full force of its semi-connected scenes of sadness and lost identity.