Two Seasons, Two Strangers

A tale of cinema with a bifurcated film-within-a-film structure reminiscent of Hong Sangsoo, Two Seasons, Two Strangers begins in a seaside town, where tourist Nagisa (Yuumi Kawai) and local Natsuo (Mansaku Takada) fall into a lush summer romance, all deep-sea blues and wind-whipped sundresses. It then yanks us out of this story to show its screenwriter, Li (Eun-kyung Shim, a former Korean child star who also acts in Japan), ducking questions and musing on her own creative block at a deliciously awkward post-screening Q&A (“I don’t have much talent”). In need of a creative and personal refresh, Li heads off to a snowy resort, where she meets the divorced innkeeper Benzo (Shinichi Tsutsumi). The two soon form the kind of relationship that a filmmaker without “much talent” would struggle to make compelling. But not Sho Miyake, who builds his story—adapted from two manga by the legendary Yoshiharu Tsuge—on a foundation of shimmering, serendipitous images, at once cozy and profound, like the way the steam off a bowl of noodles fogs up a pair of glasses, or the revelation of a landscape as a train emerges from a tunnel. Miyake’s Small, Slow But Steady was one of the highlights of the 2022 Berlinale, and Locarno Golden Leopard winner Two Seasons, Two Strangers further confirms his status as a master of deceptively placid, sensitive, and witty studies of surprising human connection. A Several Futures release.