It's too difficult to endure Koreeda's past films in decent timeframe, so I just try to scratch a few worlds of Air Doll despite my original plan of introducing myself to his complete filmography first. I’m still one film short (Wonderful Life).
Fantasy tale Air Doll is a breath of fresh air from director Koreeda Hirokazu, whose fame lies mostly on festival favorites such as Maboroshi no hikari (1995) and the Ozu-esque Still Walking (2008). Air Doll, first and foremost, is a very un-Koreeda movie, partly for being so easily accessible with immediately identifiable characters, but also for its audio visual beauty that is far more aggressive than in the director’s other movies. Cinematographed by Lee Pin Bing (In the Mood for Love) it's no doubt one of the most beautiful looking films in years. Notable is, that unlike most Koreeda films that favor static cinematography, in Air Doll the camera is in almost constant slight move. The downright terrific score - which at times resembles Philip Glass's work in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) - is by World's End Girlfriend.
Storywise the film is undeniably dumb - exactly what Koreeda, whose works often have suffered from a certain sense of safeness, needed to do. Korean import Bae Doona, who already made a delightful visit to Japan in Nobuhiro Yamashita's 2005 crowd pleaser Linda Linda Linda, plays an air doll turning into a living human being - or at least a rubber figure with heart. A Pinocchio modification often used in Japanese cinema, Koreeda has brilliantly opted to cut down cliché even at the expense of logic. Clumsy transformation scene aside the practical difficulties of the "newborn in an adult’s body" scenario are happily ignored. The protagonist is welcomed to the society with no reservations or attention paid to her abnormality. It's illogical, fresh, and does so much good for the film's cinematic fluency.
Acting performances are solid. Bae’s strength, aside her acting talent, is that she’s not afraid to perform in her birthday suit; a factor that Koreeda takes use of with great natural approach that adds to the film’s quality. If there's something to criticize in the film, it's the ending. While not bad, Koreeda's personal humanist values raise their head a bit too noticeably and also slow down the audio visual feasting that dominates most of the film. Some of the supporting characters - an old lonely man in the park, a middle aged woman obsessed with beauty, and a few others - do not have much other reason to exist in the film than spread good hearted but borderline pretentious message for the audience. Symbolism is, of course, plenty in the film, but generally it's there as a mild spice - easily ignorable if so preferred by the viewer.
(yes, it really was my intention to write up to 5 sentences)
(and yes, these are all screencaps from the dvd, although some of them look more like promotional photographs)
