‘Two Seasons, Two Strangers’ Is One Stimulating Trip

With peak vacation season approaching, a new Japanese film has arrived in New York exploring the benefits of travel and meeting new people. “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” tells the story of a lonely, insecure female screenwriter as she works on a script about a summer romance before heading off to a snowy town for a change of scene. Spare and lovely, the film floats some profound questions about existence, imagination, storytelling, and language but does so mostly in an unpretentious style, akin to a poem one cherishes.“Two Seasons” marks the first U.S. theatrical release for Sho Miyake, a Japanese director with several features to his name, after having won the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival last year. In his screenplay, Mr. Miyake creatively melds two short stories from acclaimed manga author Yoshiharu Tsuge, who died earlier this year. By combining the two stories through the character of a struggling screenwriter, the auteur not only constructed a unique three-act structure for his film but was also able to craft a quietly engaging tale filled with different locales, delicate surprises, and deadpan humor.At the start, we see protagonist Li, a Korean woman living in Japan, working on a screenplay with a pencil, notepad, and the occasional far-away look, hand gesture, and private smile, as some writers are wont to do. What she’s writing is then visualized for us: a young woman’s stint in a seaside town. Walking through the streets and an ethnographic museum listlessly, she eventually meets a young man on a secluded beach. The two develop a rapport based on their shared demeanors of dejection, heartache, and ennui, which develops into a type of flirtation and leads to a second meeting the next day despite persistent rain. Just as we’re settling into the narrative, with their budding relationship hinting at something deeper, even tragic, Mr. Miyake cuts to a shot of an audience viewing the short we’ve been watching. So begins the film’s second section, in which we follow Li’s city life as a somewhat successful, solitary screenwriter. At a Q&A after the screening with her director, she admits that she doesn’t think she has much talent, and when a professor advises her afterward not to “take it so seriously,” she looks slightly, wryly disconcerted. Soon, a tragedy does occur, which might be Covid-related though we never find out, and which results in her taking up photography and travel as a way to get out of a creative rut.The third act sees Li at a wintry village surrounded by mountains. Having embarked on her escape on a whim, no reservations were made, and Li finds that the only available accommodation is an old-fashioned inn far from the town’s center. Ben-zō is the middle-aged proprietor and manager of the rudimentary bed and breakfast, and despite being gruff, he also attempts to make Li’s stay comfortable. Her work becomes a topic of conversation, with him suggesting she write something humorous — but not too funny — and that she incorporate the inn in her script to encourage more tourism. Li makes her own suggestion about how he can spruce up his business, and this leads to the film’s climax sequence, though “climax” is too dramatic and inadequate a word to describe the duo’s nighttime trek in the snow and its culminating, ironic, amusing aftermath.The inadequate nature of language to signify sensations is actually mentioned in voiceover narration during the second act, with Li commenting on how she’s trapped by words and how travel may help to “get away” from them, to experience fresh impressions and mystery. The scenic, observant cinematography certainly transports viewers to another place, with several shots, such as the windscreen of a parked car reflecting quickly moving clouds, not only taking us elsewhere but evoking ineffable feelings. The push and pull between the intellectual and the sensual — between a museum and an adventure, between sadness and fun, between a forbidding cold landscape and an inviting beachy lushness — provides the film with its central tension, present in dialogue, the plot, and the ruminative yet striking imagery.Drawing parallels between Nagisa and Li, Mr. Miyake ingeniously transforms the screenwriter into the protagonist of her own film. As in the earlier tale, two lonely people develop a sort of intimacy, though the bond between Li and Ben-zō never indicates romance. As the latter, Shinichi Tsutsumi is fantastic, though it is Korean actress Shim Eun-kyung as heroine Li who naturally makes the biggest impression. Wearing minimalist, masculine clothing, she cuts a memorable figure, with her modest, sometimes affectless reactions curiously compelling. Ms. Shim is also effective when embodying the struggles of writing. As the two young people in the first part, Yuumi Kawai and Mansaku Takada portray unsure youth and budding closeness fetchingly, though their storyline is never revisited. One might lament this omission, and even wish the pace were a bit quicker and the tone a little less precious. Yet there’s no denying the film’s beautifully poetic construction and its gentle, resonant parable of inspiration and realization. It will have viewers longing to travel while at the same time feeling like they’ve just gone on an invigorating, stimulating trip.

‘Two Seasons, Two Strangers’ Is One Stimulating Trip

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