A story about a story.
Hi
This film is a beautiful little saga, which works well also for a grown up audience. But it has “Indie” written all over it, so it will probably attract a rather small audience. An assumption well evidenced by the meager amount of threads here: 11 threads over almost a three years time span!! I really think that this little gem is worth a tad more attention than that.
SPOILERS!
The narration style and especially the ending seem to have caused some confusion. A confusion that makes me a bit confused: I think that writer/director Oberg is *very* explicit here.
First shot is an extreme close-up of the female protagonist’s hand drawing a meandering line on a drawing paper. The last shot is also an extreme close-up of the same hand writing the words “The End” on a drawing paper. It ends where it started; on the drawing board. We learn from the very start of the story that the protagonist is a comic drawer, and she is present both as the artist drawing the story (voice-over), and as acting out parts of the story (she is writing) in front of the camera.
To really spell it out loud and clear Oberg also has her saying (in voice over) during the first shot: “Every line you draw leads to something, and often you don’t know to where, - - - in comics everything is possible.” And during the shot just before the last one, the voice over continues: “… This is how I became a visitor in my own world”.
How could he possibly be more explicit and clear than this, without being ridiculously over-explicit? It’s a story about a young (and very beautiful ) female comic book artist telling her story. It’s both about *telling* the story, and the story *itself*. To me Oberg’s meandering (like the line in the opening shot) between these two levels of narration is both witty and emotionally captivating.
The saga/comic story is told partly via traditional separate comic book drawings, partly with traditional film narration (at times breathtakingly beautiful cinematography).
I can admit that this could have been rather confusing if the opening of film hadn’t been so clear as it now is.
If I’m reading the poster Asgardsrei1 right this is also his/her take of it. And another sharp-eyed poster here delivered rock solid evidence that the whole story is fiction, or rather meta-fiction. He/she pointed out the fact that at the end Angela is drawing pretty accurate portraits of some of the men and the scenes at the party, but *before* the party. Which would of course be impossible IRL.
Anyhow, it’s a well made film, told in an intriguing and captivating ambiguous way. It’s true film poetry about storytelling and image making with both pen and movie cam. Besides it makes Tokyo kind of a modern day Shangri-la (like Lost in Translation did as well).
cine
"Why is it that men are so much more interested in women than women in men?"
Virginia Woolf