Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda 'sL'Innocence is due to be released on VOD for purchase and rental on April 25, 2024, and on DVD from May 1, 2024 . The film was presented in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2023 under the name Monster, and won the Screenplay Prize. Dysfunctional, reconstituted, invented, the family remains the Japanese filmmaker's favorite theme, this time focusing on the youngest generation: children.
Five years after winning the Palme d'Or for Une affaire de famille , and after detours in France(La Vérité) and South Korea(Les Bonnes Etoiles), the director returns to his homeland with a gentle film featuring triptych editing that plays on the plurality of points of view - a Rashômon atmosphere set to music by Ryûchi Sakamoto, his latest.
A fifth-grader, Minato (Soya Kurokawa) is a disruptive and troubled pupil. His tender, understanding mother (Sakura Andô) is worried, as everything seems to point to a teacher, Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama), who is allegedly violent. Minato strikes up a strong friendship with Eri (Hinata Hiiragi), another student at the school, in the greatest of secrecy, against all the other students in the class.
This is how L'Innocence begins, through the eyes of the mother who forcefully confronts the stubborn members of the school board and the headmistress, wiping the floor with criticism of the low level of education that single mothers - she's been on her own since the death of her husband - give their offspring.
The story is then told from the point of view of the accused professor, and finally through Minato's eyes. The last segment, which holds the real truth, is undeniably the most poetic and moving, following the two boys' sober wanderings through the woods to the imaginary world they create for themselves, populated by reincarnated creatures. Kore-Eda pushes the device to the point of explicitness, meticulously answering all the questions left unanswered by the fragmented montage.
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