Journey to the Shore

The ghost of a long-absent husband returns home to take his wife on a trip across Japan in this wistful supernatural drama from the Japanese master of dread, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, SFIFF 1997; Doppelganger, SFIFF 2003). Reuniting after many years with the long-time face of Japanese indie film, Tadanobu Asano (who starred in his 2003 youth ennui epic, Bright Future), Kurosawa brings a more mature, becalmed feel to this look at individuals caught in limbo, unable to move forward after tragedy. Shuffling through her gray days years after her husband Yusuke (Asano) has gone missing, young piano teacher Mizuki (Eri Fukatsu) barely bats an eye when he suddenly reappears in her apartment one night, dripping wet, and explains that he drowned years ago in an accident. The next day, they begin a journey across Japan, to visit the people that the husband befriended on his return, individuals haunted by their own sense of grief and loss, and also by their own ghosts. A moving and melancholy trek across a land of phantoms and sorrow, Journey to the Shore benefits from Kurosawa’s masterful staging, where nightmares are never far from reality, and the mundane and supernatural co-exist within each frame. —Jason Sanders