Korean photographer Baehwan and gay japanese hotel employee Ryu work together on a series of photographs. Their relationship crosses uneasily between friendship and love, while they also battle their own internal scars. Their salvation comes by their photographs which helps them find the meaning of their lives.
심도, 深度
Japan
South Korea18
Japan
South Korea
“What is it you like about him?” “You must not be able to see it.” A bride spontaneously running off from her wedding celebration, an old man’s corpse smuggled out of a hotel room, a photographer visiting from Korea and a moody young male prostitute no one can seem to look away from; a series of eruptions and collisions out of which Hamaguchi spins a beguiling, sinister web of irrational passions and competing desires. A missing-person mystery that turns into something stranger once Yuko’s pimp sends him to Bae-hwan and Gil-su’s photography studio for some updated headshots; each man seeing something more than whatever their camera’s able to capture, Gil-su left wondering if he ever even saw the wife he’ll…
54/100
A big step forward visually and with performances, but a step back narratively. The two leads are really good here, each running the spectrum of emotions, and, in his third available film, Hamaguchi has fully smoothed out his visual kinks. Where before there were sporadic issues, with certain frames lacking tightness, or being generally cold, there's no longer an issue of any kind, with each frame carefully put together and navigated. Narratively, this feels like much less for Hamaguchi, with a comparatively narrow scope, and characters with much less depth. By the end, certain beats feel borrowed which is very unusual for Hamaguchi, but they still contain resonance by and large so I won't complain that much. Hopefully, with the next one, I get to see the combination of technical and narrative greatness, because now the pieces of each are fully in place, he's just got to put them together.
Feels almost amateur in the context of what Hamaguchi would later achieve with Happy Hour (or even the "lesser" Asako I & II), but even before his peak he still possessed his key sensitivities.
The broken relationships, the debts they incurred and the linguistic divide that speaks to both make for mere sighs drifting to a greater breeze, pained in a wider conscience of human fallibility. In the struggle to understand, let alone accept, there grows a desire for something rash, a need to leave it all behind. But Hamaguchi's sensibilities steer it back to a belief that relocation comes in the shift of the self, with a single photograph able to recapture a soul that had previously been lost in the distance instilled by hotel ambience.
Not that this arrival can always outpace the circumstances that made it all so necessary, ultimately settling into a subdued sadness as quiet as the connections that bridged it in the first place.
Something of an abridged Happy Hour focused on male relationships, with thriller genre trappings, and nowhere near as good. The two main characters are friends. One has left his wife behind in Korea while he attends his friend’s wedding in Japan. He arrives in time to witness the bride abscond with another woman during the reception. Staying on to help his stricken buddy, the homoerotic boundaries of the men’s friendship are tested by a young male escort. Circling around this intriguing triangle are other male characters (and the ghosts of the absent women) who draw us into thrilleresque sub-plots.
There’s some of Hamaguchi’s more mature autograph on display here, including his interest in depicting the creative process (this time photography),…
an oddity in hamaguchi’s filmography. it all works well enough. i dig the slight genre play and thematically it lands. wouldn’t say he is typically very subtle but there’s something a little too manufactured about the beats and payoff here.
Hamaguchi's most destructive in that the expressions of emotion made by his characters are inflicted in more violent and hurtful ways. Some fantastic ideas, both thematic and visual, are scattered throughout. And although this might drag a lot, the unfurling of his characters on-screen are some of the most incredible things to behold.
Unless I can get English subtitles for Storytellers by tomorrow, then this is all of Hamaguchi's work I have to watch before finally catching Drive My Car.
This what quite a morally complex experience from Hamaguchi. His character development is always beyond exceptional but here his blend of drama and the subject matter is a bit average. Within his unique intricate style The Depths kept me intrigued.
Hamaguchi is always such a kind and sensitive storyteller, even when the characters in his stories are decidedly not. However, you won’t find the movie making any judgements about the characters’ actions; Hamaguchi is too interested in creating something honest to let moralistic judgements get in the way. Like the other works I’ve seen from him, this is an exceptional composite of complicated people brought together by complex circumstances that rarely delivers a false moment.
i expected this to be average and i only saw this to complete hamaguchi’s filmography, but i genuinely loved this. i cant explain it. this is nowhere as refined as happy hour but i think i love this more. this might be my favourite hamaguchi. so much violence, fear, loneliness, and unspoken tenderness. incredibly raw and intense. i cant take my eyes off ishida houshi
the film ended more than an hour ago and my heart is still beating super fast. i really cant get over the ending. they spoke so little words yet i felt so many emotions all at once
ok maybe i can explain why i love it. ive come to realise that the central theme of…
Early Hamaguchi - a bit too early, perhaps. Despite its title The Depths, it feels a bit shallow to me at times. I didn't really care about the characters, which surprised me, and I wasn't too invested in the plot, either.
Maybe I should have worked myself backwards through his filmography, rather than jump to a place near the beginning.
It’s a gay thriller with genre conventions displaced by the more obscure homoerotic attraction amongst (mostly) three men, especially in the second half. The generic elements of a gangster film are mostly for plot advancement and never lead to any substantial impact, it’s the tender, yet paradoxically ferocious interactions of the male leads which provide the lens (alike the motif of one-sided mirror and the photo-shooting camera) for the repressed, and eventually liberated, affection throughout the film.
