User reviews

I saw RADIANCE at the Philadelphia Film Festival because I liked the writer/director Naomi Kawase's earlier film, SWEET BEAN. I am glad I did...but I also think it's a film that average viewer might struggle to enjoy...though it is well made.

The story concerns a woman whose job it is to provide descriptive captioning for the visually impaired so that they can enjoy movies. She comes in contact with a photographer who is having a hard time admitting he is blind and his life must change.

Overall, this is a lovely but deliberately paced film...with lovely music, nice acting and a story that fortunately avoids the usual clichés associated with films about the disabled.

Maybe my expectations were a bit too high after seeing Kawase's excellent An, but somehow this did not grip me as much. The story is decent, and the cinematography is good. The shots are pleasing, I would go so far as to call them loving. The music is not bad although a little melodramatic.

However the characters and story did not really pull me in, I did not get attached. It's not that I don't understand the minimalistic Asian approach, it's that I felt the performances were lacking, or the direction, or the editting... The whole thing just did not really gel for me.

Saw this at TIFF on Saturday night. Packed theatre, sadly the director and none of the actors were in attendance. This was the first Naomi Kawase film I've seen, and I really enjoyed it. She's taken a relatively common film story line - an unlikely friendship between two people - and turned it into something quite authentic and memorable. One person is struggling with profound loss (blindness - he's a photographer) and the other is offering help while also working out her own issues (her father's death and her mother's senility). Kawase treats this subject matter very delicately, with lots of camera playing with light and several long- held close-ups of faces. The sound editor of this film should win a very big award, by the way. Sounds clearly play a big role in this film, and it's recorded and handled very well.

Kawase shoots her actors in a strange way, and I haven't figured out yet if it was intentional for this film only, or if it's something she's done in her other films. She often cuts off the tops of heads when framing her actors. It's so obvious it must be intentional, and maybe it relates to a line in the film when the photographer says he can see better when he looks down. I'm not sure, but it's definitely noticeable and something to consider.

Beautiful film...I was glad to get tickets to see a film from a director I was not familiar with, and also a film that will likely not be easy to see in a theatre outside of the festival circuit.

What an interesting movie about loss and redemption by remembering the inherent radiance of all things and all experiences.

I had seen Kawase's "Sweet Bean" and really enjoyed it.

Yet, although this film, too, is about disability and those who live on the margins, the healing nature of the film lies in the character arc of the female protagonist to go through her own emotions of redemption and loss to begin to see those who are marginalized as equal, complex human beings, through the eyes of compassion, as opposed to a "rescue" mode, where she tried to initially insert uplifting didactic messages in an audio version of a film she is preparing for the visually impaired.

It's through compassion and a belief in the joint radiance of humanity, in spite of the challenges, hopes and losses of the human experience that we can find compassion and hope.

Radiance is a movie for the times of Covid. Our common humanity, our joint experiences of the ups and downs of life can be the bridge for healing the antagonisms and tribal frequencies that have been rife in this time of uncertainty and fear.

The Sun is always there, providing radiance.

I'm already in love with Naomi Kawase's works, after "Sabor da Vida", I want to marathon everyone, it's a pity not to have them available, the dramatic air is maintained here, however it is not so engaging and captivating, it became darker and colder, but the sensitivity her to complex themes and her portrayal in a convincing and necessary way are magnificent, a great filmmaker (director and script), surrounded by great professionals, actors, production, locations, beautiful...