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Bookmark this pageJapón (2001)
Director: Carlos Reygadas
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Perhaps too self-conscious a stab at a 'great' movie, Reygadas' debut is nevertheless an impressive, engrossing account of a man - a little lame, probably in his sixties, possibly an artist - who travels to a remote valley with thoughts of suicide. Renting a room in an elderly woman's house high above a village, he slowly rediscovers, through a tangle of unexpected emotions, the will to live. Little is explicit in this slow, measured, parable-like film; we're left to deduce motivation from a telling use of music (memorably the final movement from Shostakovich's 15th and Pärt's Cantus), landscape (shot in Super16 'Scope), and the performances of an almost wholly non-pro cast of local peasants. Mesmerising - even after one drunken actor hilariously shatters suspension of disbelief with a whinge about the crew.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Carlos Reygadas
Producer: Carlos Reygadas
Cast: Alejandro Ferretis, Magdalena Flores, Yolanda Villa, Martín Serrano, Rolando Hernández, Bernabé Pérez, Carlos Reygadas Barquín, Fernando Benítez full cast
Duration: 134 mins
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