Well shucks...I guess I do like Shunji Iwai's April Story. Clocking in at 67 minutes, it's barely more than a short film. There's even an extended sequence of the main character watching an old Toshiro Mifune samurai film that felt like desperate padding. It feels like it was constructed solely of the bucolic bits that populate the spaces between the scenes of brutality and cruelty that dominate his other films. The last 10 minutes are such a heart-breakingly beautiful cinematic expression of love that they forgive the rest of the film's languidness. It's nice to see some of Iwai's trademarks like scenes involving live music, people traversing pastoral countrysides on bicycles, and almost neurotically timid female protagonists (well, maybe I didn't enjoy seeing that last one...).
7/10
