Review by bmoroncini

I am not sure what the people who are giving accolades to this film saw, that I didn't. I am quite an avid film watcher, and have no problem sitting through Pasolini, Bergman, or Tarkovsky. This film's self-imposed obstacles are not its slow pace--though the editing room could have been busier with cuts--or even the mundanities of the majority of its content. The problem is that we are given no info on these characters, except for the fact that the father is a sensitive young man, possibly dealing with emotional ups and downs he tries to manage through Ti-Chi and meditation, and that the kid lives with her mother. Their interaction between the two is caring. The father makes two mistakes and apologizes profusely for them, and the kid has lots of questions that are not, or can not always be, answered. I am not insensitive to the nuances and subplots of a relationship, but this was just too little for anyone to justify why, as an adult, the kid should be so haunted by that holiday. I kind of hated this movie, found it terribly pretentious and a bit too precious (what is the point of watching people sleep for almost one minute?). Someone here said "This movie hurts." Well, not for good reasons it doesn't. The performances were the only good outcome, but I still wanted to fast forward to the end.