spsn | Entries tagged with otonari

Just finished watching this movie yesterday and it left good impression on me. This movie is one of those slow phase movie but they line up the plot quite neatly that I still don't know whether there's a happy ending until the very end, and that sets me over the edges in imagining what if they still don't end up meeting each other with all those 'so close yet so far' atmosphere.

The story is about the separate life of 2 people, an aspiring florist, Nanao, and a photographer, Satoshi, who live next to each other (otonari - literal meaning) in the apartment that its wall is so thin that you can hear almost every sound that the next door make. This then become the distinct feature of the movie that actually connect them together. They never met even though they live next to each other, yet somehow the sound of Satoshi's daily coffee grinding and Nanao's French self study connect these 2 souls together from the very beginning. There are other aspects that connect them later on, but you'll be focusing on just how they connect through the sounds of pipping water filter, folk song humming, alarm clock and so on. It is said that humans are searching for keynotes in their hearts and to these 2 people, the sound of coffee hand grinding and French self study are their keynotes and they only realize it when they notice that they stop hearing these sounds and start to yearn for it.

What you'll love from this slow phased movie is that it doesn't make you sleepy. You'll be curious in what's the actual connection between Satoshi and Nanao because their lives are totally separated and not related at all almost in 3/4 of the movie. Even Nanao has her own episode of romance while Satoshi is busy with the mess that his buddy, Shingo got him into. One of the lovely scenes that I like is when Nanao is crying in her room silently but heartbreakingly enough to make me want to knock on Satoshi's door and make him comfort her. Off course, the wall is so thin that Satoshi heard the crying, and he comforts Nanao with the folk song humming that Nanao always sings. Another lovely scene is the ending, which is the major spoiler if I just said it.

This movie is filled with lots of beautiful scenery and flowers (due to the florist job). I like the park scenery and how Satoshi and Shingo said that this scene never change. It sort of telling the audience that they actually didn't change as person, only their surrounding change thus leads to the mess that Satoshi is in at the beginning.

The real reason why I watch this? It's Jun Okada *yeah, I'm a shallow fangirl :p*. Okada don't have lots of dramas or movies under his belt, and very seldom his works got subbed too (V6 is not as famous as Arashi, and obvious fact), but I like him in SP as the blur bodyguard with extra sensitive hearings, so any subbed works available, I'm there.