Another delightful film from Akiko Ohku in which her directorial prowess is perhaps most pertinent among the films of hers I've had the pleasure of seeing so far. Fantastic Girls is a little different in the fact that this story isn't centered so much around a sole subject's search for truth, connection, and meaning in modernity. It concerns itself with the relationship between two young women, the balance of their relationship, and the vestiges of adolescence that linger into the present. It's as charming and playful as I've come to expect from Ohku's films yet like much of her films it uses this welcoming veneer to ultimately excavate some hearty existential questions about life. Fantastic Girls is a film that conceptually speaking may even sound generic or too familiar for those uninitiated with the world of Ohku but her ability to find such moments of wonder in such stories always strikes me, exhibiting the nature of living with such a magical aesthetic tableau that reaches towards a form of ethereality while never diluting or devaluing the cutting nature of the underlying emotions she wishes to investigate. Interweaving the past and present seamlessly, Fantastic Girls is ultimately a wonderfully rendered story of female friendship, the nature of being, and the need for reflection. In the end, I think the throughline of Ohku's work is our social natures, and how we as humans need connection. There are moments of tragedy, heartbreak, regret, and pain - this is a certainty in life - yet the way Okhu embeds these stories with such an understated optimism about the beauty that is life is really special, these trials and tribulations define us and make life worth living.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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