Nagi Notes
An artist invites her former sister-in-law to a small mountain town to sculpt her portrait in this slow-burning yet eventful drama.
Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi) leaves her everyday urban life behind and travels to rural Japan, to Nagi, to visit her former sister-in-law Yoriko (Takako Matsu). The women are close, even though they no longer see each other very often. Yoriko is a sculptor who wants to make her new work using Yuri’s face as the model. Her wooden portraits are hauntingly beautiful and take a long time to create, yet they remain sitting on shelves in her studio.
Even so, Yuri has wanted to escape her busy life in Taiwan specifically for this. Both women try to keep their feelings of loss buried deep inside, but creating a wooden portrait is a slow process, and the passage of time gives them an opportunity to pause.
Others also begin to untangle their emotional knots at Yoriko’s home: teenage boys Keita (Kiyora Fujiwara) and Hatsuko (Kawaguchi Waku), as well as Hatsuko’s widowed father (Ken’ichi Matsuyama), who sees something familiar in Yuri. There are plenty of twists and turns, yet the storytelling remains exceptionally relaxed and unhurried.
Originally written as a stage play, Nagi Notes explores themes of loss and loneliness while also offering hope. Life in Nagi moves at a leisurely pace. Silence is occasionally broken by firing exercises at the nearby military base and announcements on Nagi’s local radio station.
Santtu Nikula (translated by Herman Tikkanen)
Screenings
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Kino Engel 2Sat 19.9. at 18.00–19.50110 min, 1/3
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Kinopalatsi 2Mon 21.9. at 18.15–20.05110 min, 2/3
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Kinopalatsi 2Sun 27.9. at 13.15–15.05110 min, 3/3