Mjeteconer
Just perfect...
Smartorhypo
Highly Overrated But Still Good
Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Kong Ho Meng
One thing that i can commend about this movie is its superior usage of originality. This makes the 1st film i hv ever watched where the events are very comical, with Disney-like fairy-tale entertainment, enjoyable to laugh; yet at the same time manage to blend in the pain and tragedy that will make for some tear-jerking moments. Its like a good blend of black and white paint which doesn't become grey at all. Although the movie isn't too deep and simple to watch, i give high praise for it being the closest thing i hv seen that manages to express that life is indeed colourful, just as matsuko's life was. In the end, i don't feel happy nor sad for matsuko, i feel that she is considerably fortunate to have all types of colours in her life before departing, even though it doesn't turn out like that. It is not entirely perfect. I don't complain on its unrealistic comical moments nor that it needs improvisation. Its fine enough. But I don't see the purpose of including her nephew to 'narrate' her story, and hers isn't an outstanding testimony that deserves to be memorable -- she clearly is a weak character. But some of the messages does ring quite true: life is shapenned by what one gives not received, and her blessings and misfortunes both did formed the lives of others who were involved.
random-intestine
The film tells the story of a woman named Matsuko, who is recently deceased, as her nephew Sho uncovers her story piece by piece by talking to people she knew. Matsuko's life is tragic. She seems to go from hard times to hard times. But despite this despair her heart is always open. Her younger sister is very ill and as a result, her father is often to preoccupied with her to show young Matsuko the love that she craves from him. As a result Matsuko is desperate to be loved, and cannot help but become head over heels in love with every man that she has relations with. Unfortunately this leads to her being abused by many of these men and getting into lots of trouble along the way. She sees her life as a fairy tale, which the director illustrates by modelling the movie on a classic musical romance. The film's style is bright and magical which means that, like Matsuko herself, you feel as if this tale can only have a happy ending. Unfortunately for Matsuko her tale is actually very real and tragic and ends with her falling through the cracks of society and dying alone and dirty in a mess of an apartment.The first time I saw this film I cried quite epically and carried on doing so for about half an hour after the film was finished. Which is very unusual, because I had never cried over a film up until that moment. I could not stop thinking about the film for a few days afterwards and even now I'll think of it from time to time and some of those emotions come back. There's just something about this film which seems to deeply penetrate your emotional centre in a way that you would not expect a film to do. I would definitely recommend seeing this film, as it is a cinematic masterpiece.
Tweekums
I hadn't heard of this film till it appeared on television as part of a short season of Asian films. I'm glad that I decided to watch it though as it was a delightful film which made me laugh and cry.Shou is living alone doing nothing with his life till one day his father comes by and asks him to clear up the house of his aunt Matsuko who had been murdered. Up until then Shou had no knowledge of his aunt but as he sorts through her belongings and meets people who knew her he learns what an extraordinary life she had, some happy but much sad. It is especially sad at the end when we learn how she died after surviving many hardships.The film has a surreal appearance that reminded me of a cross between Amalie and the TV series Pushing Daisies due to the artificially vivid colours. If you want to see something different I'd certainly recommend this charming film.
badidosh
Like an amalgam of "Amelie," "Big Fish" and pretty much every depressing movie there is, "Memories of Matsuko" is simultaneously a charming and heartbreaking lampoon to the disgraced roles of women in Japanese cinema set amidst the world of Japanese kitsch, AV idols, and Yakuza gang members. Tetsuya Nakamura's genuinely heartfelt saga, charting her tragic heroine's life before she is found murdered in a grassy area not far from her slipshod apartment, at the very least superficially recalls Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" in as much as that both films' leads, mere victims of bad choices and circumstances, struggle to find the true meaning of joy in their godforsaken lives, as it is that the narratives are mostly told in flashbacks and driven by a fractured timeline.In the present day, a gruffly obese Matsuko Kawajiri (Miki Nakatani) is found murdered and Shou Kawajiri (Eita), her nephew by her estranged brother (Teruyuki Kagawa), is tasked by his father to clean her apartment after her cremation. He never saw her before but there, meeting Matsuko's raucous punk neighbor (Gori) and the chief suspect for her aunt's slaying (Yusuke Iseya) who provide clues to her aunt's identity, he gradually pieces the unbelievably hard-knock adventures of her departed aunt. As the film explores Matsuko's constantly frustrating search for happiness with the right man, it becomes a surprisingly bittersweet love story interspersed with musical numbers running the gamut from Christian hymns to cheeky J-pop tunes.Following his brazen though a bit hollow "Kamikaze Girls," writer-director Nakamura, a veteran of TV commercials, conveys the vaudeville-style film with gloriously saturated colors, highly diffused lighting, and a blistering cacophony of Nipponese pop culture to define Matsuko's epitonic past that sometimes, it feels as though the audacious employment of visual smorgasbord threaten to derail the emphasis from its characters. Still, Nakamura's direction is blissful, preoccupied by the premise that the constant pursuit for love and affection eventually pays dividends -- though sometimes in less expected ways -- as established early in the film's opening credit sequence that recalls classic musicals and in Nakitani's happy pap-pap trot in La La Land. It's Utopian thinking but its groundwork on the chronic impediment of the feminine role in a male-dominated culture and the ability of selfless pursuit to decimate that stigma is authentic and beautiful.
