hana to arisu

There are quite a few directors who I'm slightly obsessed with, but the magician behind Shunji Iwai's films, Noboru Shinoda, is possibly the only cinematographer who really pulls at my heart strings. The fleetingness of youth and love often portrayed in Iwai's films would lose all subtlety if it weren't for Shinoda's mastery of visual aesthetics. How he works with light and the transition of seasons is remarkably understated, but captures the ephemerality of adolescence and emotions just perfectly(so quintessentially Japanese, but never cliche). For me, the only duo who come close to rivaling Iwai and Shinoda would be Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle (although my favourite of their's, In the Mood for Love, is coincidentally most similar to Iwai's method of storytelling). 

Last night I watched the final collaboration between Iwai and Shinoda, Hana to Arisu. I say final because Shinoda passed away shortly after the film was completed. Although imdb tells me that Iwai has a few new films lined up, I'm skeptical as to if they'll ever live up to the standards of his previous work. For the time being, I'm a firm believer that it's the symbiosis between Iwai's directing and Shinoda's cinematography which breathed life into their films, but maybe I will be proved wrong...I hope so. 

If not, I can settle for buying the 11 DVD box set of all Iwai/Shinoda's past films from ebay and simply watch them over and over again. 

Here is a youtube clip of the most famous scene from the movie (Alice is auditioning for a magazine spread and the photographer, after seeing her resume which states ballet as a talent, asks her to perform for him):