| Japan, 2017 | Ironic Psychological Comedy Romance Drama (yes) | Author Work | Trailer |
This. This baby here has been the most tasteful, most perfectly shot, most intriguing, most lovely, but also the most mysterious and the most ungraspeable movie of all the JFF+ Festival 2021 Edition. It has been all this to the point that I don’t know how to judge or score it. I don’t know if it’s an objectively bad or good movie either. I only know that it hasn’t left my mind ever since I watched it, and that it’s, certainly, one of the highlights of recent Japanese cinema landscape. It has catapulted its director to the media Olympus, and not for a banal reason.
So, yeah, that’s definitely a nice and intriguing introduction, but… what the hell is this movie about? I really can’t classify it. It’s just kind of a… personal story? The story about how a person with their flaws copes with life and modern society standards? And therefore, offering an unique point of view, as valid and as questionable as any other point of view of any other person in this world. Yes. Definitely this.
We have main character 24-year-old social outcast Yoshika (if I remember the character’s name it’s that the movie definitely got into me) who has a crush since high school and still hasn’t get rid of it. There is this coworker that falls in love with her and tries to gain her favour. Yoshika is divided between both men. Attraction and repulse. Or repulse and attraction? Ideal and reality. Illusion and reality. This simple premise serves as a starting point to a psychonautical journey where we will turn into Yoshika and learn about her and her Weltanschauung, feel what she feels, and not trust anything we perceive. Sympathetic cinema, could I call this. Reality is subjective, and that’s definitely the lesson I can take out of this experience. Even when forcing an absolute and objective point of view, it’s never implied it’s not a subjective view on the world.
This movie also employs a lot of tropes from other media, but I am not sure if they are ironically or earnestly performed. Soap opera effects, cheesy comedy bits, tragicomic additions, heavy psychological illusions, facepalm teeny-weeny moments and even AN A CAPELLA SONG are dumbly/cleverly introduced to produce diverse effects. And the best/worst of it, it’s… that IT WORKS. It’s amazing. Or amazingly painful. Depends on how you want to take it.
So, Tremble All You Want is everything I said before, and at the same time the sum of all components becomes nothing. It’s deceiving. It’s sincere. It’s raw. It’s a happy story. It’s a trail of tears. It’s… you, the audience. Why not? 🙂
Is it a bad movie? Could be. Is it the best movie you will ever see? Perhaps. But undoubtly, it will catch you. And it will stay with you.
Now, THESE are the things that make me love cinema. Without any single doubt. I am really happy to have watched it.