A Scene at the Sea

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The story:

A deaf-dumb binman repairs a beat up surfboard found on one of his rounds. With support from his new girlfriend (who is equally deaf dumb) the couple take the stairs down to the rocky beach every afternoon. Oblivious to the taunts and hassle from the trendy surfer locals, she gleefully watches him from the beach as his surfing is mocked by his peers. As he improves, he catches the eye of local surf shop owner who takes him along to a competition.

*Spoiler in this paragraph!*

The film’s tagline is “A summer which only happens once” – this can be applied in fondness of the films events – or otherwise – as our surfing protagonist drowns at the films climax. Strangely enough, as the two characters have a secure bond there is a sense of uncertainty from the start. From the characters perspective, the story is sadly proven too good to be true.

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As you can imagine there is virtually no dialogue in this film as the two leads are mute – making this film incredibly unique and minimalistic. Takeshi Kitano’s approach to storytelling in this film is inspiring, as the narrative is mostly propelled by body language and facial expressions.

The music is fantastic as always in Kitano's films, but here it is used ever so sparingly in favour of buzzing ambience and the lapping of the waves. This, accompanied with Kitano's editing style of overly long scenic shots etc makes this film almost meditative. Visuallly, this is a very stark film. The shots are framed in a simplistic manner, often with characters walking directly in and out of fixed shots - much like watching a stage performance. When used in the right place (such as this film) this method is proven to be very effective.

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The Trailer:

Trailers always fascinate me as they can make crap films look fantastic, and can also make fantastic films look crap. Thankfully this trailer makes the film look rightfully glorious. This is an interesting take on the trailer as there is no narration or structure leaving it open to the audiences interpretation. The strength of this trailer clearly lies in the music, followed closely by the photography. Most of the cuts are irrelevant to the main story yet give us a clear idea of what this film entails. Having screened this trailer to a few friends with extremely positive reactions, this trailer is hugely successful in making people want to watch the film.