Two Seasons, Two Strangers
Tabi to Hibi
Locarno’s Golden Leopard winner is a sublime nested tale of creativity, loneliness and making new connections.
Screenwriter Li (Shim Eun Kyung), a Korean expat living in Japan, is hard at work on a new idea: a story of a blossoming friendship between Nagisa (Yuumi Kawai) and Natsuo (Mansaku Takada), a young woman and man who meet by chance on a quiet beach. When that story fails to connect with an audience, Li retreats to a remote inn in wintertime. There, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with the taciturn owner, Benzo (Shinichi Tsutsumi), who says he rates films based on “how well they depict human sadness”.
Following his impressive previous pictures Small, Slow but Steady and All the Long Nights, rising Japanese auteur Sho Miyake received Locarno’s top honour (plus an additional prize from the Junior Jury) for this tender exploration of human aches and interpersonal dynamics. Adapting two short stories from legendary 20th-century manga artist Yoshiharu Tsuge, this elusive diptych has earned comparisons to the work of MIFF mainstay Hong Sang-soo.
“Rich, per its title, in doublings, parallels and reflective surfaces … revels in the kinds of experiences that most storytellers wouldn’t deem remarkable, though it unassumingly articulates what can be life-changing, or even life-saving, about them.” – Variety
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