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Since European film critics have anointed director Kiyoshi Kurosawa "the dark prince of Japan’s new wave," Bright Future’s irony would seem to precede itself. Actually, the film is pervaded less by depression than by a subtle layer of melancholia. It depicts a world in which human communication is out of synch and prone to explosion; one at first recalls Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse or Michael Haneke’s Der siebente Kontinent. Kurosawa’s mood piece, however, turns more playful and slippery, much like the jellyfish that serves as the film’s visual leitmotif. For every icy composition, there is a scene in which the characters appear up close and vulnerable; poky ditties in the soundtrack interrupt what might seem like heavy-handed symbolism in the mise-en-scène. With Bright Future, Japan’s dark prince delivers an enigmatic chiaroscuro. In Japanese with English subtitles. (92 minutes)
BY MATTIAS FREY
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