Ramblers

Two amateur film makers, Tsuboi and Kinoshita, agree to meet a well-known actor in a remote town. Unfortunately, the actor does not turn up. The two decide to wait, condemned to having an uneasy holiday. They roam around aimlessly, have a bath in the hot water spa, go fishing and gaze at the sea. They spend the nights in cheap boarding houses until their money runs out. On one of their bored strolls, they meet Atsuko, a girl whose unusual behaviour forms a pleasant change from the generally bad tempered locals. The three immediately get on very well and set off to travel together. But then suddenly Atsuko disappears. Just like Yamashita’s first films, Hazy Life (Tiger Award Competition 2000) and No One’s Ark (screened in 2002), Ramblers is about sympathetic losers: kids who will never make waves in the wind-still universe that recession-hit Japan has become to them. The style of Ramblers meshes perfectly with that. Yamashita, a small-scale master in choreographing minimal, barely visible deviations from the expected pattern, has turned Ramblers into a film larded with eccentric and occasionally even absurd characters who slowly -and almost as calmly as the characters -win your heart.