Japanese director Matsumura Shingo’s “Between Us,” screening in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Nippon Cinema Now section, examines the emotional wounds that remain unspoken after a damaging incident separates two childhood friends.
The film follows Makoto and Kasumi, who drift apart after a joint family camping trip and meet again six years later in their high school drama club. Kawashima Ririka, Kurasawa Anna, Kikuchi Akiko, Usuda Asami, Saito Yoichiro and Miura Takahiro star in a story that relies on pauses, restrained performances and carefully observed space rather than explicit explanations.
Matsumura, whose credits include “The Lump in My Heart,” uses notably static camerawork. He said the decision helps distinguish the film from the compact-camera videos common on YouTube and social media, while also allowing him to capture the actors’ emotions gradually and truthfully. He has made avoiding handheld camerawork a rule across his films.
The physical distance between Makoto and Kasumi becomes a recurring visual element. Although they are often filmed far apart, the director uses their eyes, the arrangement of the spaces and the editing to suggest that each remains aware of the other. During separate drama-club read-throughs, cuts make it seem as though the girls are exchanging lines, gradually bringing them closer despite being in different rooms.
The play they perform, which provides the film with its title, becomes a means for them to express feelings they cannot communicate directly. Matsumura described the script as fiction that allows the characters to speak in their own language, helping to reduce the distance between them.
The film’s intimate relationship story was influenced by Matsumura’s reflections on disasters and social crises, including the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the pandemic and ongoing wars. He said he wanted to make a simple film about two people turning toward one another and consider what energy might emerge from that connection.
Matsumura stressed that the events in the film are not literal representations of those disasters. Instead, he linked them through the idea of unresolved trauma. In his view, earthquakes, nuclear accidents and wars can appear to become part of the past once they disappear from the news, even though their consequences remain.
The director said he gave the two lead actors little specific direction. He felt their attentiveness to other people and their ability to absorb and make words their own were natural qualities that suited the characters, allowing them to perform freely.
Matsumura also discussed the financial limitations facing Japanese cinema. He said the country has no single mainstream style, but films are generally made with far smaller budgets than productions in the United States, restricting the scale of the subjects they can portray.
He does not necessarily view that limitation negatively. According to Matsumura, filmmakers are responding by exploring different subjects within their reach rather than attempting to address one large, shared theme. He said this has produced a Japanese cinema landscape made up of varied films about smaller subjects.
The director added that he is currently uncertain whether his next direction will be a more personal artistic film or a project aimed at a mass audience. He said he has yet to decide whether to follow his instincts and express what is inside him or turn more directly toward society and viewers.
Sources: Variety.