While Trying, Yui Kiyohara’s ‘Remembering Every Night’ Is Something Special

“Remembering Every Night,” the new film from Japanese director Yui Kiyohara, raises a question: Are some art forms better suited than others in embodying particular kinds of experience or, for that matter, particular sensibilities? How much patience should an audience extend to a film that makes a point of doling out its narrative with a deliberation that borders on parsimony? Poetry can get away with that kind of thing; the visual arts, too. But a movie? There isn’t enough time in the day…. Ms. Kiyohara’s film is something special and something trying. Although there are cinematic precedents for “Remembering Every Night” — I am reminded, in particular, of films by Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer, as well as, oddly enough, the “Paranormal Activity” franchise — the artist who most often came to mind while watching wasn’t a filmmaker, but a painter: Johannes Vermeer. Like the Dutch master, Ms. Kiyohara privileges quietude over drama and favors stories whose logic is held at arm’s length. A good 75 minutes into “Remembering Every Night,” there’s a moment in which two women have an encounter through a window that has only begrudgingly been opened. The first woman is looking for the Tamura family; the second doesn’t know their whereabouts. The dialogue loops inconclusively and the participants engage with notable hesitation. There’s more to this conversation than is apparent on a surface level.It’s a terrific scene, one that recalls the elisions of meaning found in Vermeer’s “Girl Interrupted at Her Music” (circa 1658-59) and “Mistress and Maid” (circa 1667). Alas, Ms. Kiyohara’s film never again locates the same kind of friction. On the whole, “Remembering Every Night” cruises on a delicacy so circumspect that it can’t help but advertise its own preciousness. Back in the day, this kind of thing was called “twee.”Even then, “twee” is too strong a word for an entertainment that’s been crafted with a gracious hand. The title is ironic, given that the events occuring during the movie happen primarily during a beautiful spring day at a nondescript suburb of Tokyo. The film’s secret weapon is Yukiko Iioka, whose cinematography never fails to capture a startling sense of freshness and color, of brisk air, clean light, and the psychological momentum they can engender.“Remembering Every Night” concerns itself with three women, each belonging to a different generation: a soon-to-graduate college student who has suffered a loss; a gas company employee who hasn’t fully settled into adulthood; and a middle-aged woman who is at a loggerheads with her career. They are, respectively, Natsu (Ai Mikami), Sanae (Minami Ohba), and Chizu (Kumi Hyodo). Their paths don’t intersect so much as glance off each other. This is a film about tangencies barely acknowledged and then fitfully jiggered into place.Nothing much happens, yet everything is freighted with intent. Natsu has a brief meeting with a woman who is likely her mother, though that’s not clear, and then lights sparklers with a friend. Sanae helps an elderly man who’s lost his way; later, she hopes for a date with a photo technician. And it’s Chizu who is looking for the Tamura family. Why, we don’t know. For a job, maybe? All the while, Ms. Kiyohara’s camera takes in their doings like a sponge absorbs water.“Remembering Every Night” opens on a cadre of 20-somethings huddled in a public park. Each of them holds an instrument and they play a tittling brand of ambient music. This group never appears again, but at some point during the proceedings, we realize that it’s their quirky musical interpolations that provide the soundtrack. As a directorial filip, this is as cute as it is clever, and it’s of a piece with a picture that contents itself with meandering along its own bliss-ridden path.

While Trying, Yui Kiyohara’s ‘Remembering Every Night’ Is Something Special

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