Zíza

A very strange, tragic, artistic – or as they say here art – film based on the 4th album of the band Acid Black Cherry. It's that album that tells the story of Eru, which eventually received this film version. So it's no wonder that it partly feels like a long music video, but also feels like a theatrical production. Even though the film tells the tragic life of a bland woman who was apparently loved by men due to/because of her pretty face and sweet demeanor (well, except for one), I couldn't help but like the heroine. I found her incredibly flat (her breasts, that is). Hirose Alice is beautiful and I think she did as well as she could, but the direction was rather weak, so it doesn't have the proper impact in the end. It's basically such a miserable story, almost like Victor Hugo wrote it. But you can contemplate Eru and her men. Who was the worst. Who was the best. And why.

It's kind of that classic thing where someone goes to a new job, doesn't like it at first, actually looks down on the rest, and expects to be out soon. But then he starts to get to know the lovely family in his new job, falls in love and enjoys it, and generally everything is bathed in sunshine. And so it was. All smiley, non-confrontational, nice and sweet. There's not really suspenseful moment in the entire movie. The whole thing is so superficial, not just the story but the characters, that it just fails to "enamor". You don't care and look forward to the end because it's boring. No conflict, no people, just colors. Maybe the creators were trying to imply that there was some sort of conflict between the main character and her boyfriend, but it completely fizzled out. [SPOILER] The way they break up in the end doesn't make sense, unless they were high school friends and didn't really want the relationship. He just repeats her first impression from the park, she just looks at him, and that's just the end of it. No debate, no more substantial reasons, etc. [END SPOILER] And this only took up such a tiny part of the movie that they could have easily afforded to cut it. (Like a lot of other scenes.) A weak 2 stars.

While it's nice that we get to see 30 years of two characters' lives as they evolve, wither, and blossom again, it's just that those excerpts don't quite make you like or understand the characters. Maybe not understand them, so much as sympathize with them. Basically, the whole film left me cold except for the moment when the camera panned to an alarm clock, which also showed the date: 11 March 2011. That made me cringe, but then the film went on its way. It doesn't develop one coherent story, but glues the pieces together weirdly. I can see why, it's obvious, we are after all looking at thirty years of their lives; but it didn't quite work for me. It had a lot of interesting ideas that would have been better if they were explored more in-depth rather than being done away with like that. The acting was perfectly fine, the main characters were likable, the direction and script were well handled. But it just didn't leave anything in me, and in two weeks I won't even know I've seen it.