Visions du Réel 2024: Okurimono | Review
Quebec filmmaker Laurence Lévesque unveils a delicate balance between past trauma and present resilience, crafting a poetic ode to the enduring power of memory and the legacy we leave behind, in Okurimono, premiering at Visions du Réel 2024.
Noriko hails from Nagasaki, Japan, but she immigrated to Canada several years ago. In Okurimono, Laurence Lévesque captures her journey back to her hometown to clear out her deceased parents’ house. This debut documentary feature by the filmmaker from Quebec premiered at Visions du Réel 2024, in the International Competition for Feature-Length Films.
The film opens with a poetic and delicate sequence as Noriko pulls back the heavy curtains and slides open the glass doors of the family home she has just returned to. Sunlight filters in gradually, replacing the silence with the sounds of the outside world and the chirping of cicadas in the garden. It’s a metaphor for life resuming in this place, for the veil lifting on the past after so many years. The camera delicately captures these unfolding spaces while subtly working with chiaroscuro, where truth gradually emerges.
For Noriko, sorting through her family home is an opportunity to reminisce about her childhood. When her sisters come to help, they browse through family photos together, reminiscing about the memories they evoke. However, a much darker aspect of her family’s past is revealed when Noriko discovers letters carefully preserved by her mother, detailing her correspondence with other survivors of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. It’s a genuine discovery for Noriko, as her mother had always kept silent about what she experienced that day and in the following months.
Interspersed with direct cinema are sequences where we hear Noriko reading these letters aloud while seeing images of Nagasaki and its surrounding nature in present times. The contrast between the narrative of chaos, horror, and suffering and today’s landscapes is striking – nature is lush, the sunset over the hills and sea is beautiful, and the city seems peaceful. Without these letters, what would remain today of these invisible yet profoundly deep wounds? Nature has closed over this tragic event in Japan’s history. These images offer a metaphor for the reticence and resilience with which survivors silently buried this past. It takes scratching beneath the surface to understand and fulfill a duty of remembrance.
Driven by her thirst for knowledge, Noriko visits survivors of the bombing during her stay in Nagasaki, who now agree to share their stories. Laurence Lévesque films them facing the camera, with Noriko off-screen, as they testify with great dignity. This choice of set-up respects their space for expression.
While the family home is initially cluttered with objects and furniture that have lived a whole life, as the sorting progresses, the house empties, and order returns, mirroring Noriko’s memory. Following her brilliant short film Perséides, Laurence Lévesque presents us with another poetic and graceful work in Okurimono, a reflection on what we leave behind for future generations. Truth, even if painful, soothes. Revealing it, even unwittingly, can be likened to a gift (“Okurimono” in Japanese) to one’s descendants. Thus, Noriko welcomes her mother’s letters in this poignant and inspiring final reflection: “My mom may not have intended it, but I wonder, could it be that the letters were her gift to us? […] Even though what is given was not intended as a gift, if the person receiving it considers it so, then it becomes one. […] I hope someday I can leave someone a legacy like this.”
