The Tale of Iya

Iya is a place, not a person, although it comes to be one over a 169 minute running time which never overstays its welcome. This is the astonishing second film of Tetsuichiro Tsutu, incredibly not yet thirty years of age. The story of a detached rural village and its people, it presents a clash between nature and modernity, its mist shrouded hilltops giving a sense of prehistory before the bubble is punctured by symbols of contemporary life; comparable to when the tanks roll into Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum and its timelessness cruelly evaporates.

An ecological parable, the film runs in harmony with nature, the sense of time signified visually by the changing of the seasons. It’s as if the Japanese masters of cinema – Imamura, Ozu – have been resurrected but with the density of a great novel; the poetry of Mishima and fantasy of Murakami. In all disciplines, the finest technique is invisible; beautiful imagery never impedes upon this tale but becomes ingrained as part of it. Gentle yet thankfully not genteel, this is pure cinema, with moments so profound as to leave you in wonder. [Alan Bett]