‘Between Us’ Uses Stillness to Mend Emotional Distance — SkimNews
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- Between Us reunites childhood friends Makoto and Kasumi six years after an incident on a joint family camping trip, when both return to their high school drama club; the script leaves much of what each character feels unsaid.
- Matsumura Shingo says he avoids handheld camerawork in his films, deliberately distinguishing big-screen storytelling from compact-camera videos on YouTube and social media while seeking to capture actors “truthfully, slowly.”
- Matsumura Shingo shoots Makoto and Kasumi far apart, then intercuts their separate drama-club read-throughs as if they are trading lines, making each cut bring them closer before the discovered title script begins mending their relationship.
- Between Us draws inspiration from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the pandemic and wars around the world, but Matsumura says the story is not literal: both characters’ family-linked trauma remains unresolved even when public crises disappear from the news.
- Matsumura Shingo gave his two lead actresses no specific direction, allowing their practice of listening closely and absorbing others’ words to produce naturalistic performances that contrast with his precisely controlled camerawork.
- Japan has no singular mainstream in cinema, Matsumura says, because financing for one film is very limited compared with the U.S.; filmmakers respond by choosing different subjects within their reach rather than pursuing one shared big idea.
- Matsumura Shingo is weighing an artistic film that expresses what is inside him against a mass-audience film oriented toward society, and says he has not decided which direction to take.
Why it matters: For Japanese filmmakers, the material constraint Matsumura identifies is the budget for one film, described as very limited compared with the U.S. That limit constrains what each production can portray, while his account of a field without one mainstream shows directors pursuing different subjects that fit within their reach.
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