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Waste of time

Let's be realistic.

As Good As It Gets

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Hana and Alice are good friends and they do everything together. They go to the same high school and they go to school together. One day Hana falls in love with a boy who goes to the same high school. Hana deceives the boy and gets him. However, the boy loves Alice and Alice also loves him. What will happen to the relationship of the three.I have a lot of friends but I don't have friends like Hana and Alice. They are always together and they say everything each other. They look happy and I think it is good thing. However friends sometimes become rivals. In this movie, Hana and Alice love the same man and they become rivals each other. I think moderate distance is important. We can share glad feeling or sad experience with our friends, but not interfere deeply. By watching this movie, we can rethink about the relationships with our friends.

Iwai's tale of friendship and love among 15-year-olds is a bitter-sweet affair, joyous and poignant in fragments. It is not a perfect film, but still imbued with enough of Iwai's visual flair and inventiveness to raise it above much of what Japan has offered up in the first decade of the 21st century.Hana (Anne Suzuki) is inadvertently brought to Ma-kun by her best friend Alice (Yû Aoi). She utilizes an accident to convince clumsy Ma-kun (Tomohiro Kaku) that he has lost his memory and that she is the love of his life. The lie grows out of control, and sucks in the best friend. Alice, meanwhile, has her own troubles to contend with, namely an eccentric mother, disinterested father, and an acting/modeling opportunity that continually misfires.Like Iwai's 'Love Letter', the essentials of the plot are intricately laid out, but ultimately matter less than the shot-by-shot, scene-by-scene poetry conjured up by camera, light and direction. There is one breathtaking shot in a classroom, when Astro Boy is revealed watching brazenly over a lover's tiff. The manga motif serves to underline the heightened emotions and extreme dramatics of the tale. Similar optical playfulness is employed when Hana watches Ma-kun on the train, seemingly in conversation with his girlfriend. That shot is matched later when we are optically fooled into thinking Ma-kun will kiss Alice. It is this continual ability to surprise and delight that means the 2-hour plus running time, while self-indulgent, manages not to feel too much of an imposition.There are some wonderful set pieces to celebrate here. Alice's father making a complete mess of gifting his daughter a fountain pen is painful and hilarious. Ditto Hana's mother appearing in her undies before a shell-shocked Ma-kun. A klutzy classmate's photos of the girls in ballet tutus turn out to be magical. These scenes, stagy and contrived in the hands of a lesser mortal, are fluid, vivid and delightful when presented by Iwai.It is testament to Iwai's genius that a host of A-listers line up for walk-on parts in this film. For example, Hirsohi Abe, used to playing leads, is practically an extra here when he shows up as the boyfriend of Alice's mum. What other living director elicits such reverence? Hana and Alice glows, quite literally. The film captures that vividness of passionate friendships and love first encountered that only the qualia of a 15-year-old knows. Ultimately, the running time is a shade too flabby to count it among Iwai's masterpieces (the plural is deliberate), but this is a subtle, complex film worthy of repeat viewing.

Director Shunji Iwai is most comfortable chronicling the magic and heartbreak of high school years, and HANA AND ALICE emerges as an intimate, stylish, and often quietly amusing character portrait. The strengths of the story come from the chemistry of ordinary characters filmed in a loose narrative. As a result, don't expect a fast-moving plot heavy on easy humor or bawdry. HANA AND ALICE certainly has its memorable quirks, but nearly all of Ieai's films, the narrative is naturalistic, the story fairly long (at two hours, fifteen minutes). As you might expect, the film-making itself is the strongest of its assets, with often striking photography.

It didn't take me too long to realize that Iwai is one the cinematic epitomes of rich human elaborations, as well as a cultivating virtuoso and a master of abstract imagery and atmosphere. As an amateur film maker I couldn't have been more appreciative of the way he combined subtle expressions with sounds of music that set moods for his characters in the most distinctive and relating way.Obviously out of the wide range of movies he did, from the initial look Hana and Alice seemed most linkable to All About Lilly Chou-Chou. In a way it seemed like a new chapter to the original film which took on friendship in a harsh and mesmerizing manner, and more ways than not, Hana and Alice was just what I wanted to see from Iwai.As we meet the lead characters, nothing seems extraordinary and we get a glimpse of what two friends do on their way to and out of school. Iwai, perfectly capable of story telling without any twisting premises set up and he can go on for hours it seems by simply offering realistic dialogs and gorgeous visuals. Of course when the male character gets introduced the chances of a conflict quickly arise, but the story chooses to shelf Alice for the short time while letting Hana follow Miyamoto as he numbly recites poetry without looking ahead. Really there is no point in me detailing how exactly the trio come about, it's nothing astounding, but entertaining and at times harmlessly humorous.Other minor but compelling conflicts are planted in both Hana's and Alice's lives, but the building blocks seem more geared toward heightening the love interest of the two leads. In the midst of all the romance and friendly endeavors, Iwai doesn't shy away from creating ambiance as he once again reels into the darkness, similar to what he did in AALCC, but this time around with dove like images of ballerinas dancing and glimmering under a pursuing light. All of this fitting beautifully with the story and underlining his unique style.Obviously equal emphasis is put on how Hana and Alice mature with time and since the film is rather long, sufficient time is given for that to convey albeit through some events that might seem a bit filler to those unaccustomed to Iwai's style. Considering how young the actors are their delivery was perfect and they were able to pull me right in as I developed a genuine fascination for what they were going through. However, as the film was nearing the end, the romance slowly deflated. The resolution with Miyamoto was carried out abruptly toward the end. Understandably so, it seemed like his sole purpose was to strengthen the bond and importance of Hana's and Alice's friendship, but not so much to make the truly worthwhile romantic impact that the film was using as its backbone the entire time. Again, that's something that was purposely articulated and may not please all.Some might find such closure to be a bit inadequate, others might find Hana and Alice's reunion after a minor struggle with love to be enchanting and perfectly satisfying. I got pleasantly stranded right in between, as this film was able to hit some strong marks with great acting and Iwai's superb visuals. Definitely an easy recommendation to the fans of the director and alike.