Get the latest gossip
‘Brand New Landscape’ Review: An Architect Has No Design for Family Life in a Quietly Affecting Japanese Drama
The changing cityscape of Tokyo parallels the evolution of a shattered family in Yuiga Danzuka’s ruminative debut 'Brand New Landscape.'
Tonally unassuming but intellectually ambitious, this promising debut feature from 26-year-old Japanese writer-director Yuiga Danzuka maps these fractured relationships against the fragmented, fast-changing urban geography of Tokyo — as befits the perspective of its emotionally detached architect patriarch — in pursuit of a broader statement about evolving, dispersing family structures in the modern world. There’s a palpable chill at the table between middle-aged Hajimi (Kenichi Endo), a renowned architect, and his wife Yumiko (Haruka Igawa); their children, restless pre-teen Ren (Arao Rintaro) and his near-adult sister Emi (Ishida Riko), seem likewise checked out of this supposed bonding time. They’re en route to their seaside holiday home, where the mood doesn’t lift: The parents discuss separation, the children whisper to each other that mom is in another of her “low-energy” phases, while unhappy household silences are chiefly broken by Hajimi’s never-muted work phone.
Or read this on Variety
