Venice Film Festival 2023: Following the Sound (by Kyoshi Sugita) | Review
Kyoshi Sugita presents a patient and heartfelt drama focused on the rehabilitation of loss expressed in the poetic and lyricism found in the natural order of life.
Kyoshi Sugita is standing out to become one of the more auteur modern filmmakers that represents a certain type of harmony and lyricism through his unique approach, mainly due to his use of subtle and patient style. Beginning in 2011, his debut first feature, A Song I Can Remember premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Only three features and twelve years later, he’s premiering his latest at the Giornate Degli Autori section at the 2023 Venice Film Festival where he continues to make emotional stories through persistent and atmospheric methods. Following the Sound follows Haru, a bookstore clerk following two people separately, Yukiko and Tsuyoshi, where the three share a deep sorrow and a shared experience that link the three together that follows death, grief, and companionship.
Following his thematical presence of sound that is omnipresent in all his films (and their titles [A Song to Remember, Listen to Light, and Haruhara-san’s Recorder]), Following the Sound begins with Haru listening to a cassette recording of waves or oceanic sounds in contemplation recorded by her mother. This device acts as the vehicle to lay out Haru’s past and present through her encounters with Yukiko and Tsuyoshi. Yukiko, a somber middle-aged woman whom she meets for directions and Tsuyoshi, a man where Haru follows along the train station, acts an investigation pursuit from Haru’s point of view. Sugita carefully and patiently allows the mood to draw from these in elliptical and durational storytelling devices. Extended shots of walking and following from the city to the rural, we follow Haru finding the origin of the recording. We also see her attend workshops such as filmmaking and drawing classes that expand on her character’s interest and its relation to her past. The three all seem to carry a heavy burden on their faces, while Sugita unpacks the three’s past through tender company between the three eventually getting to the bottom of Haru’s past.
Sugita’s style is eminent from the very beginning. Presented in academy ratio like in all his films, he uses extended sequences of walking across the small town or nature, but is less focused on narrative and more on atmosphere, exuding a harmonious rhythm of surroundings and encounters. He also uses art as a plot device in most of his films. In here, the recording is a connective tissue for Haru and Yukiko to travel to neighboring towns to find the sound that was recorded by Haru’s mother. With Tsuyoshi, she connects with him through his daughter’s interest in filmmaking. There is little that happens, but in a few words, the film centers on the sadness Haru experienced on the event of her mother’s death years ago. With Haru’s contemplative appearance, Sugita explores the theme of grief not only through one’s mourning period, but as an act of unity and camaraderie.
Through the interactions and meetings between Haru and the two, Sugita explores the process of rehabilitation through the little joys in life. This could either be collaboration between like-minds for artistic endeavors or as simple as making the perfect soft egg omelette. Sugita allows time and space to build up these feelings of melancholy and sorrow, so when certain moments are unveiled, its intensity is as felt through the character’s performance. These experiences don’t have an ambitious or explosive moment for the film, but rather the beauty in the ordinary. Sugita uses the Japanese culture backdrop to expand on the process of grief, while using the erudite feelings from the mourning period to provide nurture and care for those in need.
