Domains (2019) User Reviews

Needlessly Long, Uninteresting End Product, But Interesting Concept

[dommercaldi · 5/10 · 10 April 2020]

Pros: 1. The framing helps to add a personal feel to the movie, thus giving the character interactions greater depth. 2. The lighting is superb and it changes to appropriately match the intended atmosphere of the Director (Natsuka Kusano). 3. The actors, and especially Asami Shibuya (Aki) and Tomo Kasajima (Nodoka), give as decent a performance as they can give with the dull script. 4. The film does a great job at showing how the same conversations, the same words, can have different meanings and tones depending on context, physical gesticulations, voice intonations.

Cons: 1. The movie is ridiculously, and pointlessly, slow-paced. It does not feel that the run-time of 2 hours and 30 minutes is justified. It definitely would have worked better as a short. 2. None of the characters are interesting and likable which makes it difficult to be invested in their circumstances, and the script in general. 3. The plot, if it can even be called that, is rather dull, and for obvious reasons, way too repetitive. 4. The film is rather pretentious and thus obnoxious. 5. The opening scene of Aki conversing with the detective ruins the potential tension that could have been built on throughout the movie, as you already know the outcome.

Domains

[RaulFerreiraZem · 7/10 · 18 March 2020]

Really good film!!!

Kind of like what Godard did with Passion this film explores cinema as a product of labor but unlike Passion, Domains focuses more on the acting side of it. The film consists in the most part of rehearsals for the filming of the film we are seeing. This scheme is really interesting for a few reasons, first of all, the way that the plot is presented to the audience is not linear which is something that on its own tends to alter our perception on the subject at hand. This is amplified by the constant repetition of the same scenes with slight variations in the text and in the frame. For example the scene where the husband argues with the wife's friend. The scene is shown a couple of times but sometimes the camera focuses on the wife, sometimes it focuses on the husband and sometimes in his wife's friend. Depending on which one the film makes us feel a different way. The repetition also serves as a Brechtian strategy to desensitize the audience and externalize the action by highlighting the fact that the film is not natural but constructed and so are the characters and ideological implications of the work.

I really liked it, the film was gorgeous in its simplicity ( the few outdoor scenes were absolutely beautiful in my opinion) i liked how raw and emotionless( and yet full of emotion) it is; it might not be an easy watch but it is a worthwhile one.

When "experimental" goes too far

[mbarbalia · 2/10 · 11 April 2020]

Interesting concept, but unbelievably unjustifiable film length. Please save yourselves two and a half hours.