An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Yasujirô Ozu and since it was on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. It’s only afterwards that I discovered that it was his oldest movie available. Indeed, the few movies he made before were apparently lost. Well, one of the interesting things about this movie was how modern it actually felt. Indeed, even though it is now almost 100 years old, it almost felt like watching a contemporary US feature dealing with college students. The other thing that I really enjoyed was the really neat body language used by the actors involved. Since it was a silent feature, there was obviously no dialogues involved (there wasn’t even some soundtrack so I ended up putting my own music). However, they didn’t rely too much on inter-titles and, instead, sometimes by just slightly moving their hands or their head, the actors would tell what they wanted to say which was really cool. Unfortunately, the narrative turned out to be rather clunky, I’m afraid. I mean, I really loved the first scene, how this young guy lured this young woman in his apartement but, what was exactly supposed to be his endgame? With the other student, basically his competitor, it was even worse, I really had no idea how he got acquainted with this young woman. Finally, they both ended up living in the same apartement but it seemed to be so random and even though it would make more sense if they actually knew each other before, I really have no idea if it was really the case though. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Yasujirô Ozu’s work.