All Around Us

With its egregiously bloated running time and aggressively meandering structure, All Around Us‘ place as a sporadically intriguing yet hopelessly uneven effort is established almost immediately – with star Lily Franky’s surprisingly engaging performance generally remaining the film’s one overtly positive attribute. Writer/director Ryosuke Hashiguchi offers up a decade-spanning tale that primarily revolves around the exploits of married couple Kanao (Franky) and Shoko (Tae Kumura), though the filmmaker periodically focuses on Kanao’s work as a courtroom sketch artist (which affords the character an up-close-and-personal vantage point at some of Japan’s most notorious trials). Hashiguchi’s decision to pepper the proceedings with a number of head-scratchingly inconsequential sequences, including a five-minute, single-take scene in which Kanao and Shoko argue about sex, ultimately cements All Around Us‘ downfall, as it becomes awfully difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the various problems and issues within the central characters’ rocky relationship. Far more ineffective, however, is Hashiguchi’s emphasis on Shoko’s increasingly unstable mental state, with the filmmaker’s inability to fully flesh out the character inevitably lending an air of confusion to some of her outbursts and decisions (eg why does she not tell her spouse about that abortion?) It goes without saying that the emotional moments that crop up towards the end are consequently drained of their power, which is a shame, certainly, given the strength of relative newcomer Franky’s work within the film.

*1/2 out of ****