Venice Film Festival 2023 | Following The Sound

It’s been 12 years since his first feature, and Kyoshi Sugita doesn’t stop surprising the audience worldwide with the gentle poetry of his movies. In his cinematic narration of living, he explores themes that keep recurring, in a delicate and blissful style so clearly recognizable.

A Song I Remember (2011) was the narration of what good can still come out of a tragedy. After taking the instant picture of a kind looking woman who immediately after dies in an accident in the suburbs of Tokyo, the protagonist finds out that this person has a daughter. A contact between the two will soon arise, testifying how we can always find something beautiful to cling onto, despite the pain…or maybe thanks to it. His second feature Listen To Light (2017) focused on 4 women protagonists, dealing with untold feelings, but mainly lingered on their relationship with light, in its soothing effect that sometimes embraces them. Haruhara San’s Recorder (2021) was the portrait of the interior world of a young woman trying to find peace after a tragic event, narrated in a form which linger in the inexpressible rather in the actions per se. The Japanese director thus proved to be able to probe the spiritual that hides in everyday life, combining the mundane with the mystical, as if the latter could stem from the first. Meetings with people, teatimes and lunches can indeed unfold a secular spirituality that seems to be Sugita’s approach to the world.

All these elements are somehow comprehended in his fourth feature, and of course, the thematic presence of sound unites them as well. Coping up with loss, finding strength in the contact with strangers who become oddly significant and give sense to the pain, untold feelings which fills the room, the power of silence and the relationship with the senses, the quest for inner peace and the combination of societal events and loneliness which combined can bring mystical energies.

All of the above can be found in his most recent film, narrated in the Japanese director’s personal way. The camera is quiet and unhurried, most of the time fixed on a tripod. The movements are linear and composed and mostly destined to include other details in the frame, or to involve the sidelines in choral scenes. Sugita doesn’t really seem to explore actively but rather to sit back and let things happen, with very little interest in the actions but rather obsessed with capturing and rendering visible sensation and emotional atmospheres that he manages to make almost palpable. His stylistic choices are never intrusive and yet able to penetrate the inner life of his characters: their need for love and the impression of emptiness and distance that permeates them. These can only be filled when they let themselves go to the touch of other people – doesn’t matter if metaphorical or physical, but definitely always sublimated or sublime.

We cannot save ourselves on our own: that is the message at the core of this opera, which therefore talks about the power of community. Mostly the small ones, those we are able to create from scratch and that can indeed rescue our hurt souls, in the most secular and beautiful way.

After the European success of his last work, Following The Sound (Kanata No Uta) competes at Giornata Degli Autoriof Venice International Film Festival 2023, telling the story of Haru. We see the young woman in the first shot, as she listens to the sound of a flowing river on a cassette, recorded by her late mother. The film narrates the accidental encounter with Yukiko – an elegant middle-aged lonely woman – and Tsuyoshi – a man Haru follows along the train station. What the three of them have in common is an unmistakable and unfathomable sufference written on their face and that will not necessarily be mentioned or clarified within them or with the audience, but that will somehow be shared. And will become more bearable.

No matter what, life is harmonious. We see it in the discretion and gracefulness, the orderliness of the everyday action the characters make. Balanced, sober, measured, like when we look at them as they clean the dishes after eating, and they tidy up the kitchen, a simple gesture that hides the poetic order of Kyoshi Sugita’s vision of life. A life that is better when we’re not alone, as proved by the poignant power of the very final lines.

“Well, I’m going now…”

“Wait’, I’ll take you to the station.”

“I’ll be fine by myself.”

“No, you can’t. No, you can’t Haru.”

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