Our House

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dustin d Our House is a student film that literally defies explanation. Set in an unidentified Japanese seaside town, perhaps in a parallel universe where there are late-model cars, but apparently no cell phones, Yui Kiyohara's film follows the women who unknowingly share a house. The film is undeniably well-made, especially for a student project. Under the tutelage of horror director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, himself influenced by legendary director Yasujiro Ozu, Kiyohara and her team achieve an eerie atmosphere while evoking Ozu's eye for composition. However, other than an experiment in style and narrative structure, the film doesn't have much else to recommend it. The movie follows two women: Seri, a middle-school girl who lives with her mother in an old house in the back of a shuttered tobacco shop, and Sana, an amnesiac who gets taken in by Toko, a young woman who is engaged in some sort of subversive activity that involves mending children's clothes and passing on secret documents, who happens to live in the very same house, but in a parallel universe. These two narratives only connect at the seams. This would be fine as a narrative device if there was an actual story. We never learn what activities Toko was engaged in, or the cause or resolution to Sana's amnesia. Seri and Sana both seem to sense the other inside the house, perhaps due to the former's young age and Sana's mental condition, making both more sensitive to the sort of noise adults have conditioned themselves to cancel out. Dust is something of a motif, with Seri recording dust bunnies she counted in her diary, Sana dusting the house, and her friend, Natsuki, saying something to the effect our perceptions might amount to a mote of dust. There is something significant about Christmas trees I couldn't really apprehend. I found myself wondering if this was set in a parallel universe in which reconstruction following the 3/11 earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown had gone differently. The streets in the film are oddly devoid, except for cars and pedestrians out-of-focus in the background. Most shops are shuttered. The documents Toko passes on at some risk pertain to contaminated water. Seri plugs a strand of Christmas lights directly into the ground, and they light up--due to high radiation levels? Who knows. I entertained the idea Toko and Seri were sharing the house in the same universe, but somehow have never seen each other (I once had a friend who saw his roommate like once a year as they had opposite schedules). I disregarded this theory as too stupid, if true. Other than confronting the apparitions she regards as ghosts toward the end, Seri's story goes nowhere. Ultimately, this movie breaks the contract with the audience to not waste our time. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Our House

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