IFFR 2010: AUTUMN ADAGIO Review

Editor, Europe; Rotterdam, The Netherlands (@ardvark23)
IFFR 2010: AUTUMN ADAGIO Review
When director Inoue Tsuki visited the International Film Festival Rotterdam last year, she brought her short film "The Woman Who Is Beating the Earth" with her. It was a wild short full of energy, and heavily relying on music and rhythm, indicative of her background in dancing and music videos.

This year she's back with her first full feature "Autumn Adagio" about a Catholic nun who, at age 40, re-discovers her own femininity and sexuality. But although music is again important this is a far more sedate venture. People expecting nunsploitation beware: this is not THAT kind of film! Instead you get a nice little drama about self-discovery, regret and acceptation.
 
The Story:

Sister Maria is a (rare) Japanese Catholic nun who donned the cloth at an early age, and she has lead an introvert life dedicated to faith and self-imposed drudgery. That changes when she turns 40 and menopause hits her like a second bout of puberty.
Maria suddenly feels uncomfortable in her existence and when she helps a local ballet school by playing piano during their lessons, she develops feelings for the handsome teacher. Now, at the end of her childbearing years, Maria starts to understand better what she abandoned when she became a nun.
 

The Movie:

It sounds like the start of many a dirty movie: nun leaves the convent and discovers the pleasures of the world. But "Autumn Adagio" bypasses any silly adolescent antics and treats the subject with respect. For starters: Sister Maria is never depicted as stupid or naive, nor does she leave the convent or abandon her faith. What she does do is examine her newfound feelings and try to make sense of them. It helps that the script throws some coincidents her way that act as catalysts.
 
Most of Maria's soul-searching takes place internally without any words spoken, which meant that musician-turned-actress Shibakusa Rei had to do some very subtle acting to keep the character believable. Thankfully she succeeds and seems to completely disappear into her role. An awesome performance, and on top of that she also wrote and played all of the musical parts herself. 
 
In direct contrast to the fast and jumpy "The Woman Who Is Beating the Earth", director Inoue Tsuki (working from her own script) chose to depict the story in a sedate pace. Long static shots show the daily routine of Sister Maria's life, giving her visits to the ballet school with its music and young, beautiful entwined bodies almost the appearance of an illicit adventure. The dancers actually help enhance her own talent for music, and Maria becoming attracted to the dance teacher is completely believable, this being the closest she's ever been to sharing pleasure with a man. It helps that Nishijima Kazuhiro, who plays the ballet teacher and is a professional dancer for real, might just be the handsomest Japanese guy in the world (or so my wife says...).
 
Don't expect any torrent affairs though: "Autumn Adagio" never tries to show events that are larger than life, though one subplot ends in a somewhat (too?) extreme fashion. So even with a running time of 70 minutes the impatient may have few things to look forward to in this movie.
Having said that, I thought the ballet scenes were riveting, the more so once I found out these were improvised rather than choreographed! Cameraman Omori Yohei frames the whole film nicely and is not afraid to use the available colors of a location, making them almost as much a character in the movie as the music is. 

 
Conclusion:

No exploitation, and no open criticism to the Catholic church either, "Autumn Adagio" might not be what many expected. In fact the first full-length feature by Inoue Tsuki might story-wise not seem much more than a television movie, but the film contains intelligence, honesty, maturity and a lot of heart. Strongly anchored by an excellent performance by lead actress Shibakusa Rei, "Autumn Adagio" turned out to be quite a crowdpleaser in Rotterdam, selling lots of tickets and scoring a respectable average rating of 3.9 out of 5.
 
For the patient, this one comes highly recommended.
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