Journey to the Shore

The cinematography by Akiko Ashizawa ensures that their vacation is always lovely to behold, but almost everything else about this odd, elliptical drama is frustrating.

Overall the tone is one of quotidian melancholy, emphasising how people cope with grief by getting on with working, cooking and taking long walks, as if Yasujiro Ozu had made an episode of that TV show The Ghost Whisperer.

A neat concept, but dull as all hell.

The best thing about the film is the naturalness with which the living and the dead converse and bond. The worst, the... distant tone chosen by an almost unrecognizable, as of today, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. [Full review in Spanish]