From the manga to the animation film, Look Back has already made a lot of road. After a family business and Monster, Hirokazu Kore-eda takes over the story of Tatsuki Fujimoto (known to the most for Chainsaw Man) and translates it into live action. Presented in Venice, Look Back comes from November 12 in Italian cinemas with Lucky Red and BiM Distribution. The story is intimate and delicate: but do you really need this second adaptation?
Look Back: nemiche-amiche
Fujino’s comic strips in the school newspaper are super popular: his talent as best elementary designer is undisputed until Kyomoto arrives, a peer who does not attend classes but draws far better than her.
What begins as a distant rivalry turns into a friendship when Fujino discovers that his mysterious competitor is actually his greatest admirer. The two begin to draw together, building a friendship and artistic collaboration that will accompany them for years: from the first stripes to the competitions, from self-conclusive stories to great occasions. But growing up also change ambitions: what happens when such a narrow diade wants to go in different directions?
Essere ragazze insieme
The emotional core of Look Back has genuinely touching elements. The film avoids the usual bakery of creativity as creativity and focuses on the relationship, innocent and overwhelming, between the two. It’s the film that maybe more than everyone in history has given me the measure of what it might mean to be girls together.
Fujino and Kyomoto complete each other, envy each other, they push each other, building a bond in which it is difficult to distinguish love for the other from love for what is becoming.
Questioni di formato
The problem is a certain narrative insecurity. I confess that I have neither read the manga nor seen the anime, but I suspect that it is primarily due to suboptimal interactions between the original material and the medium of the live action. More guilty are in fact some twists of scene a little dropped from the sky and a third surprising act — in the literal sense: it completely changes the rules of the game. But the suspension of unbelief is very different in a medium designed/animate and in the live action, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
The question remains: did we need this further adaptation? History works enough to make me come the curiosity to recover the original. In this new dress the result is not a bad film, but not even one that I can recommend tout-court.
Il cast
Natsuki Deguchi plays Fujino, aspiring mangaka estroversa and competitive. Aju Makita is Kyomoto, precise and patient but far too reserved; the protagonists of girls are interpreted respectively by Furi Nanase and Rokka Okada. In the cast also Masaki Suda as editor Maeda, Kankurō Kudō in those of elementary master and Kayo Noro in the role of Fujino’s sister.
L’articolo Look Back is tender but does a step too – The review comes from Dituttounpop.it.
