This is a short film by Hiroshi Teshigahara about teenagers (16 years) in Japan in the mid 60's, what they do and what matters to them. It is in black and white, which enhances the film, as you see young people just being themselves. It stars Miki Irie, who played the young lady who was scarred by the atom bomb in "The Face Of Another". She presumably gave up acting after that, though I thought she was good in that film. This film is part of the three films by Teshigahara box set of "Pitfall", "Woman In The Dunes" and "The Face Of Another". He was a maverick, uncompromising film director. Think an edgier version of the Coen Brothers. This film isn't a masterpiece but its always interesting to see an admirable director's other work. So, buy the box set, which I recommend, and you'll get this also. Nothing special, but it should have been elongated to a feature film with more character development. We'll make do with this.
2 Reviews
No Plot, But An Amazing Piece of Art
Ziglet_mir30 May 2020
Morning dreams come through... Evening dreams never come through.
I'm definitely witnessing one of my favorite directors of all-time unfold before me eyes. This short, Ako (also called White Morning), is the only fictional short Hiroshi Teshigahara made in his career (all his other shorts are documentaries), and what he paints us is a beautiful dream of a day in the life of a 16 year-old girl and her friends who work at a bakery and go out on the town.
Plot-wise you don't get anything out of this piece, and that's ok. This is more like one of those films you treat like a piece of art where you throw it up on the wall and let it evoke emotions out from you.
Teshigahara gives us some beautiful black and white camera work plus some incredibly artsy sequences of filtering images on top of other images. The use of sound is the true highlight of this piece for me though, that in ways evokes the spirit of David Lynch before Lynch was even a household name.
I'm definitely witnessing one of my favorite directors of all-time unfold before me eyes. This short, Ako (also called White Morning), is the only fictional short Hiroshi Teshigahara made in his career (all his other shorts are documentaries), and what he paints us is a beautiful dream of a day in the life of a 16 year-old girl and her friends who work at a bakery and go out on the town.
Plot-wise you don't get anything out of this piece, and that's ok. This is more like one of those films you treat like a piece of art where you throw it up on the wall and let it evoke emotions out from you.
Teshigahara gives us some beautiful black and white camera work plus some incredibly artsy sequences of filtering images on top of other images. The use of sound is the true highlight of this piece for me though, that in ways evokes the spirit of David Lynch before Lynch was even a household name.
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