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‘Desert of Namibia’ Review: A Meandering Chronicle of a Listless Japanese Zoomer
Yôko Yamanaka's sophomore feature, 'Desert of Namibia,' is an intentionally languid psychological portrait.
Director Yôko Yamanaka was still a teenager when she made her debut feature “Amiko” in 2017, a sharply funny high school film with the jagged, quick-cut energy of a YouTube travel vlog. “Desert of Namibia” similarly follows a young woman trying to find herself (aged up to match Yamanaka’s own life experience, seven years later), but it swings stylistically in the opposite direction, holding and zooming for hilariously, sometimes painfully long. Before long, she start sliding into a funk during this introductory scene, when she’s told of an acquaintance’s suicide — news on which she can’t fully concentrate because of an unrelated conversation happening nearby.
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