One of the great batches of recent restorations are those from Shinji Somai, as detailed by Jaime Grijalba in our feature last year. The latest to get a wider release is the new 4K restoration of his 1993 classic Moving, which Cinema Guild will open in theaters starting at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center on August 2 in its first-ever North American debut. Ahead of the release, the new trailer has now arrived.
Here’s the synopsis: “When her parents split and her father Kenichi moves out of their family home, Renko (Tomoko Tabata), a bright and energetic 6th grade girl, is left alone with her mother, Nazuna, in Kyoto. As Nazuna sets out new rules for their life together, Renko makes plans of her own, and sees to it that any changes happening in her family happen on her terms. Since its premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard in 1993, Moving has been one Shinji Somai’s most beloved films. In this poignant family drama, Somai transcends the tropes of stories of children dealing with divorce to bring us a film filled with indelible images about an unforgettable teenage girl who encounters the unknown and refuses to succumb to it.”
Soham Gadre said in our Japan Cuts preview, “In a pivotal sequence of familial infighting, the young Renko yells out from a bathroom she has locked herself inside, “Why did you have me?” The framing of scene, blocking its characters in a crowded hallway and shutting out Renko, aims to create a sense of crowdedness and disrepair. Framing is consistently, consciously at the forefront of Shinji Somai’s Moving, where characters are cut across, divided, and askew amid the Japanese architecture of Renko’s home. This coming-of-age story about a young girl dealing with her parents’ divorce uses the doors, walls, stairs, and corners of what was once a wholesome family home to exacerbate Renko’s feeling of being split in half among her parents and outright neglected in their decision-making. A carefully compassionate and bittersweet movie.”
See the trailer and poster (designed by Brian J. Hung) below.
