Passion

Colour, HD CAM
Japan, 2008, 115 min
Section: Another View – Tokyo FilmeX Presents

Synopsis

A young couple announces their engagement at a celebration with friends whose reactions, however, indicate that within the group lurk unspoken, contradictory feelings concealing affairs of the distant past. While the women go home after the celebration, the men carry on and end up at the flat of a mutual girlfriend. During that night and the following days, tension between the participants rapidly comes to the surface and their mutual bonds fundamentally change. The movie structures the narration into four parts individually tied to a certain time and place, each of which moves the general situation in a surprising direction. As the ambiguous title anticipates, passion can suggest affection, anger, or suffering. The film treats the communication of extreme emotions as a variation on the cycle of violence from which there is seemingly no escape. This delicately-conceived film gradually shifts attention away from specific relationships to a common plane where the outcome becomes a complex meditation on wounding others and the burden of forgiveness.

About the director

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (b. 1978, Japan) graduated in esthetics from Tokyo University in 2003, and then worked for three years as an assistant director in film and television. His interest in movies led him to further study, this time at the Graduate School of Film and New Media at the Tokyo University of Arts. Following his feature debut Solaris (2007), Hamaguchi shot Passion, his graduation project, screened at the Tokyo FilmeX and San Sebastian festivals.