August in the Water (1995)

A teenage girl gains supernatural power after an accident and comes to understand her place in the universe.

Director:

Gakuryû Ishii (as Sogo Ishii)

Writer:

Gakuryû Ishii (as Sogo Ishii)

Stars:

Rena Komine, Shinsuke Aoki, Reiko Matsuo

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Rena Komine
Shinsuke Aoki
Reiko Matsuo
Masaaki Takarai
Yanosuke Narazaki
Hideyo Amamoto
Genjiro Arato
Isamu Ôsuga
Kou Machida	...	(as Machizô Machida)
Tetsuji Mitoma
Terumi Matsuno
Rina Yamanoi
Miyako Ishii
Miyo Kumagai
Motoki Nakamura

Storyline

A teenage girl gains supernatural power after an accident and comes to understand her place in the universe.

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Genres:

Drama | Sci-Fi

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Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

9 September 1995 (Japan)

Also Known As:

August in the Water

Company Credits

Production Co:

Hill Villa

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

User Reviews

Imaginative but slackly plotted film which never quite fulfills its potential

There's a new girl at high school, Isuku (Rena Komine), whose arrival as a high diving champion creates quite a splash. Her appearance coincides with a double meteorite strike in the forest outside the town, which inexplicably acts as a catalyst for a drought and a local epidemic which causes ones inner organs to turn to stone. Taking in the whole spectrum of pre-Millennial New Age phenomena, Ishii's bizarre film is a bit of a mixed bag. Thematically, its a real inspiration: The X-Files notwithstanding, this sort of imaginative pseudo-scientific fantasy stands uniquely amongst contemporary cinematic output. To my mind it evokes the more imaginative sci-fi pictures from the 60's or 70's, such as ‘Quatermass and the Pit' or ‘Doomwatch'. ). Unfortunately in execution it is often unfocussed and confusing, lurching from one idea to the next (Gaia theory, Chaos theory) but never quite drawing any satisfying conclusions. It has a detached air about it which I personally find to be the case in a lot of Japanese films. This is often down to the cultural and linguistic differences, though in this case it is the plotting which is most likely the cause. It perhaps suffers from trying to fit just too much into its running time, and the finale is rambling and unnecessarily protracted. Stylistically the film admirably eschews expensive visual effects or CGI in its portrayal of the assorted esoteric ephemera, settling for natural lighting, brightly lit exteriors, rapid multiple-angle edits, and abstracted close-ups of natural phenomena (much akin to ‘Pi'). Ishii certainly has an aesthetic eye, and the film possesses an oneiric quality that will remain with the viewer for a long period afterwards.