Just watched: The Woodsman and the Rain

Free time? Yeah, I think I remember that. What with thing and another, my TV watching has been reduced to half hour bursts, and if I do have an evening spare, I find myself unable to watch anything more demanding than Running Man or Vs Arashi. I’ve even been reduced to putting episodes of Amachan on my phone so I can watch it during my lunch break, and even then I’m falling way behind.

But I did manage to watch this film. The Woodsman and the Rain is a gentle, humorous tale of a director who’s trying to make a low-budget horror movie, and a local lumberjack who helps him.

It has a Mitani Kouki kind of feel to it, possibly because of the lead actor, Yakusho Koji, and also because it’s a film about making a film and Mitani Kouki often wrote about that kind of thing. But it’s actually directed and co-written by Okita Shuichi who I haven’t heard of before, but I’ll definitely try to look out for his work in future.

It’s a sweet little film, with lots of nice scenes. The performances are great, with Yakusho Koji especially good. He can go from macho indifference to childish glee and it doesn’t look forced. The scene where he sees himself on screen for the first time is a joy. Oguri Shun is also great as the director who is hopelessly out of his depth, but who finally comes out of his shell.

The whole film wanders along, looking quite lovely, and being rather sweet.