Sisters of the Gion recounts the story of two geisha sisters in the working class district of Gion. The elder sister, Umekichi (Yoko Umemura) is old-fashioned and traditional, and believes in the loyal duty of a geisha to her patron. Her younger sister named Omocha (Isuza Yamada), which literally means “plaything”, is modern and unsentimental, […]
Sonosuke Asai (Benkei Shiganoya), the manager of a pharmaceutical company, begins each morning with a familiar ritual: selfishly praying for “wealth and health”; harshly berating the servants; complaining of his wife’s (Yoko Umemura) untraditional behavior. Yet, having married into prominence and career, he is unable to censure her conduct, and is compelled to submit to […]
An apprehensive Olivier (Mathieu Demy) inscrutably stands watch at an outpost on the side of a mountain, cursorily surveying the desolate topography with a pair of binoculars, waving to armed comrades situated on an adjacent clearing, checking the sight on his rifle…waiting for something to happen. The seemingly idyllic opening sequence of natural communion provides […]
A jeweler presents Max (Vincent Cassel) with three prospective rings for his upcoming marriage to Muriel (Sandrine Kiberlain): the first is elegant, yet understated; the second is intensely beautiful, but dangerously sharp and cutting; the third is seemingly ordinary, but has an inner glow and luster beneath the surface. Unable to choose among them (and […]
In an early episode in the film, a bookish, teenaged François Grimbert (Quentin Dubuis) sits in a classroom intently watching the archival footage of the mass collection and burial of concentration camp victims during the Holocaust, before flying into an inconsolable rage over a student’s racially insensitive comments. For François, the sobering images of emaciated, […]
During the Q&A for the film, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman commented that the inspiration behind his remarkable transformation into the character of novelist Truman Capote came from the idea of someone who needed the other person much more than the other needed him, but concealed this lopsided dependence in such a manner that the other […]