True Mothers bears Kawase’s familiar textures and ambiance but is hampered by a few too many banal plot beats. Adapted from a 2015 bestseller by Mizuki Tsujimura, Naomi Kawase’s True Mothers is a melodrama rendered with an admirable textural specificity and a feel for the…
A Decade Of by Tony G. Huang Feature Articles Film Streaming Scene
Soft to the Touch: Radiance and a Decade of Naomi Kawase
In the U.S., the films of Japanese director Naomi Kawase have often been met with apprehension, not accorded the same respect as other celebrated works from the European film festival circuit. Perhaps this is because it’s hard to formulate an academic assessment of films that unabashedly invite intimacy: Kawase…
Concerning the brief, fleeting romance between a woman who writes audio descriptions for films and her harshest critic, an all but totally blind man, Naomi Kawase’s thinly-sketched Radiance feels designed to court claims of poignancy. The pair clash repeatedly as she tries to lend…
