Читать книгу A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors - Alexander Jacoby - Страница 16

(b. November 14, 1968)

古厩智之

One of the most promising of younger Japanese directors, Furumaya made short films in 8 and 16mm formats before winning the PIA Film Festival scholarship to realize his first feature, This Window Is Yours (Kono mado wa kimi no mono, 1995). This story of a teenage romance won praise for its sensitivity to the nuances of adolescent behavior, its way of keeping emotions implicit, and its careful evocation of the details of life in provincial Japan. These qualities were also visible in Furumaya’s semi-autobiographical second film, Bad Company (Mabudachi, 2001), about a trio of delinquents at junior high school. Virtually without major incident, apart from one tragic event, this subtly affecting film captured the beauty of rural Nagano without subsiding into mere prettiness and employed meditative long takes that faintly recalled the work of Hiroshi Shimizu in their way of observing, rather than passing judgment on, the characters.

Furumaya’s next film, Robocon (Robokon, 2003), also focused on alienated youth: its central character was a disenchanted girl at vocational school who becomes determined to win a robotics competition. In Goodbye, Midori (Sayonara Midori-chan, 2005), Furumaya shifted his focus for the first time to adult relationships, examining the dilemma of a female office worker attracted, despite herself, to an unworthy man. Visually more austere than Bad Company, the film was distinguished by its intelligent awareness of the way in which posture and facial expression reveal subtleties of character. With his detached yet compassionate style, Furumaya may succeed in sustaining a classical Japanese tradition of film drama based in realistic detail and behavioral nuance through the coming decades.

1991 Sutego no Sutekichi / Sutekichi the Abandoned Child (8mm short)

Shakunetsu no dojjibōru / Scorching Hot (lit. Red-Hot Dodgeball) (16mm short)

1992 Hashiruze / Running / Run! (16mm short)

1994 Tetsu to hagane / Steel Blue (lit. Iron and Steel) (short)

1995 Kono mado wa kimi no mono / This Window Is Yours (16mm)

1999 Indies B: Bokusā to tako / Indies B: The Boxer and the Kite (short)

2001 Mabudachi / Bad Company

2003 Robokon / Robocon / Robot Competition

2005 Sayonara Midori-chan / Goodbye Midori