Still the Water review: a bewitching, sideswiping experience

If, like this reviewer, you reach for the revolver upon hearing the word “spiritual”, you could be forgiven for approaching the latest film from Naomi Kawase with some caution (and a revolver).

There is a degree of mystical baloney in this puzzle picture set on an island in the southern Japanese archipelago. A young woman drifts toward death with improbable equanimity, taking solace from the branches of a towering tree.

For all that, Still the Water proves a bewitching, sideswiping experience. The final sequences, in which two characters commune with the coral, have a beauty that requires no metaphysical boosting. Anyone able to tolerate the oblique turns in Terrence Malick's more recent work has nothing to fear here.

Teenager Kyoko (Jun Yoshinaga) is falling in love with a grumpy young neighbour, Kaito (Nijiro Murakami).

Kyoko’s mother is gravely ill and Kaito’s dad, a tattooist, has flown the coop for Tokyo. Various tensions are released when a body washes up on the beach.

The young actors work through the domestic tragedies with confidence, but what makes the film soar are the overpowering visual flourishes and simmering soundscapes. There is a sense that nature is ever looming, eager to annihilate and absorb. Kawase has things to say about the fragility of society’s buttresses against the elements.

She has oversold her own film by calling it a masterpiece before its appearance at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The hubris may have contributed to its lukewarm reception, but it remains an extraordinary thing.