Megane

This movie is one of those SLOW and SUBTLE Japanese movies. It's a simple movie about a lady professor going to an island for an off-season vacation.

The crazy residents on the island and subtle humor in this movie was very enjoyable for me and there were some really beautiful scenes of the coastline. Acting in this movie is very solid. Not many things are said in this film, but it's very easy to connect with all the characters and tell how they're feeling.

We live in such a fast-paced society today, it's nice to be reminded that it's important to take a break once every while and that once again, beauty and happiness can be found in simplest things.

This film is the follow-up to the director's hit "Kamome Shokudo" but where that film succeeded because of its healthy balance of strangeness with beautiful sets, good acting, interesting characters and quirky humor, this film gets only the beautiful sets right and goes WAAAY overboard with the strangeness. A good example of this is the asinine dialog which makes no sense and sounds like each character is having their own conversation with someone off-screen, unaware of the other (onscreen) characters around them.

Nothing happens in this movie and there is no exploration into the characters or the environment at all. In fact this movie is nothing more than a glorified screen-saver and would be much better as a slide-show of beautiful scenery, without the stupid characters. Add in some ocean sounds and I would be asleep right away and dreaming of watching a better film.

Have you ever wanted to escape the banality of your daily, stressful routine and venture to an unreachable island? It's an almost universal desire – one which has been covered in a few different ways over the years in cinema. There is the light-hearted approach of traveling to an 'exotic' land, or lands like in the huge commercial success Eat, Pray, Love (2010). Then, there are tales which show a plan to retreat gone wrong such as the dark, independent film 'Martha, Macy, May, Marlene' (2011) or more well-known 'The Beach' (2000).

Director Naoko Ogigami's black comedy 'Glasses' ('Megane' in Japanese, pronounced may-ga-neh) falls under a new category. The 2008 Sundance Film Festival entry is neither superficial nor dramatic and follows Taeko, a middle-aged academic professor, searching for a few peaceful days on an unnamed island. There's something charming about her destination but its inhabitants – who all wear glasses – have weird routines she doesn't appreciate.

Arriving at the inn, Taeko's stiff modern image reflects her personality: she's an antisocial career woman who hopes that abandoning her phone connection will bring her the rest she's seeking. She expects to be served and pampered but instead is faced with characters who continue to invade her personal space.

The inn's proprietor Yuji (Ken Mitsuishi) fails to pick up her suitcase as she enters and later annoyingly joins her for meals. In the morning an older woman, Sakura, stares at her while she sleeps to wake her up. Perplexed and surprised, she engages with them out of courtesy. Twilighting, an activity that seems to involve staring at the sky for hours and contemplating, is their favorite bizarre pastime.

This is not her idea of a retreat, so she leaves. But sleep-watching Sakura goes looking for her and Taeko returns, realizing the island is not so bad after all, and finally drops her hostile attitude. It's somewhere here that a delightful journey of self-discovery begins.

'Glasses' is the director's criticism of modern societies. The expressive cinematography; long beautiful shots of life's simple pleasures like watching the ocean, playing the mandolin, preparing and eating and good food, hypnotizes the audience into a contemplative state along with the film's characters.

Visually, people and nature merge perfectly in this purposefully slow-paced film, Ogigami's seventh as director. Complementing the mesmerizing landscapes is a script bursting with absurd wit and dark humor.

Unlike other films about escapism 'Glasses' didn't make the headlines for boosting tourism in Japan; this is not an attention-seeking picture. Spend 106 minutes with these characters. You might not jump on your computer to book a holiday but you may forget about life's troubles for a while.

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"Megane" (Glasses) is the story of a professor from the city named Taeko, who takes an off-season vacation to a remote seaside rest house called Hamada. The people in this house include the absent-minded proprietor named Yuji, a local biology teacher named Haruna and a mysterious old woman named Sakura. Will the snooty Taeko also fall under the inexplicable spell of Hamada with its "twilighting", morning exercises at the beach and "the best shaved ice in the world" concocted by Sakura-san?

We never really find out anything substantial about any of these characters. Why are they all here? Why do they behave in this strange way? What happened to them before they came here to Hamada? The director and the script do not tell us directly about anything. The dialogs are thrifty on words, but perhaps pregnant with meaning, I do not really know. Maybe these details are not really important at all, as much as what the effect of the place and of Sakura-san on all these other people.

This is what I like about Japanese movies. They have a sense of serenity so unique to them. The music was beautiful, especially with the cello and the mandolins. The stark but artistic photography is mesmerizing with the unique blocking of the people and objects in the shots and the magnificent seaside sceneries. I do not think a movie like this could have been successfully done by any other culture.

An easygoing film that is as satisfying as a refreshing sea breeze during a summer night at the beach. Impeccably done and acting that is superbly measured.

The location is a small island near Okinawa. White sandy beaches and paradisaical transparent waters. A woman flies in and walks to a guest house near a beach. The place, called Hamada, is not easy to find but she does. It's Spring. Off-season. Hamada is operating but the woman is the only guest. The place is run by a cheery and nononsense man that is also the cook. Other characters include an older enigmatic woman that comes to help and a young teacher at a local school. We don't learn a lot about who these people are. This is fine for it lends a whiff of mystery, especially regarding the older woman.

The film is primarily about the transformation of the young woman as she is drawn into the unhurried atmosphere that permeates the island and Hamada. She slowly succumbs to the local habits.

Despite its slowness, it is never boring. Plenty of whimsical offbeat humor to keep us going. Also plenty of food on display. By the end I was hungry.