Village of Dreams

This 1996 film by veteran Japanese director Yoichi Higashi is a flashback story about the postwar country childhood of identical twins Seizo and Yukiho, who grow up to be gentle, kindly painters. As third-grade boys, they are spirited young rascals who act up in unison like Japanese versions of that disruptive, anarchic, old-time comics-page duo the Katzenjammer Kids. Their father grumbles; what upsets him the most that they waste their time drawing pictures. What kind of future is there in that? Their mother indulges them; she's their teacher at school, and she offends the other pupils by giving prizes to her boys' paintings.

The film is fetchingly shot, with a watercolor, picture-book texture to match the story, and there's an oddly fitting score of madrigal-like music performed by the Caterina Ancient Music Ensemble. The twin boys (Keigo and Shogo Matsuyama) are perfect, bug-eyed little monsters in identical shorts and white undershirts. But there's little insight as to what makes these rowdy tykes into future serious-minded artists, or why, as children, they so love to draw. Too many episodes are random and directionless; the movie drags on and on.

It should be noted that Village of Dreams has its admirers. The film won the Silver Bear, second prize, at last year's Berlin Film Festival.

-- Gerald Peary