Abstract
Nobuhiro Suwa, often called “the most French of Japanese directors”, has a complex relationship with European cinematic modernity. His two feature films H Story (2001) and A Perfect Couple (2005) can provide useful case studies, as they were created in dialogue with two key references of that modernity: Hiroshima mon amour (1959, Alain Resnais) and Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, 1954, Roberto Rossellini), respectively. Both films tend to confront and gloss their previous pairs, but they are also continuations of their concerns and their aesthetical discoveries. The presence of intertextuality elements connecting those films, as well as the use of myse en abyme structures are deeply analyzed in this article to attain a greater understanding on how this process of transcultural dialogue works. Besides, both films exemplify different ways of developing the references on which they are built, namely deconstruction for H Story and reconstruction for A Perfect Couple.
Highlights
Nobuhiro Suwa and European Modernity “If modern cinema was already a post-cinema, what about cinema that watches and is inspired by it today?” asks Cahiers du cinéma critic (Joyard 2001, p. 68) in the introduction to his article on H Story.This question may be the most appropriate one in addressing the work of Japanese director NobuhiroSuwa, whose complex relationship with European cinematic modernity is at the same time one of quotation and gloss, of continuity and confrontation
The intertextual relationship between A Perfect Couple and Journey to Italy is generated through allusion
Rosellini’s original move towards mise en abyme comprises a reconfiguration of the meaning of the story by drawing a preceding narrative articulated by the statues into the diegetic frame of his work
Summary
Nobuhiro Suwa and European Modernity “If modern cinema was already a post-cinema, what about cinema that watches and is inspired by it today?” asks Cahiers du cinéma critic (Joyard 2001, p. 68) in the introduction to his article on H Story. 58–60), who frames the director as one of the main examples of the last decade’s aesthetic migrations from European modernity to Asian cinema, includes in this concept the films that derive from the developments following the first wave of Italian Neorealism to the new cinemas of the sixties. He summarizes its spirit in the ideas of three essential authors: André Bazin Concerned about the act of representation itself than the cinema that preceded it, as well as key practices in Suwa’s films
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