About him & her (2023): A movie review…
Think about all the little elements of fate that lead to us crossing each-other lifepaths, some of them leaving everlasting marks, others just ending up as ghostly shadows of destiny. The movie, “About him&her”, explores this theme, as two phone line cross accidentally, and the people in both sides of them end up forming a special connection.
Hiding from Tokyo’s summer heat and humidity, I put the movie on, not really intending to watch it closely, but rather as a distraction as I was sorting things out a little bit, but it grasped my attention, not to let me go, till the last screen, when I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. SPOILER ALERT.
The movie is set in 1989 and the opening screen shows a black screen and visualized telephone lines getting intertwined, featuring bits and pieces of different conversations. Then, out two main characters’ phone lines cross and they end up talking to each-other. They realize it must be a technical issue, but they keep talking to each-other and soon, that simple initial sparks, turns into daily, hours long phone conversation. Both, him and her, have past experiences that have left them scarred, and they find that they can confess to the other, what they couldn’t to anyone else.
The year is 1989. A movie unfolds with a simple yet mesmerizing sequence—a black screen adorned with a graph of telephone lines that gradually intertwine. This initial encounter between characters is a work of sheer cinematic brilliance, a poignant symbol of lives converging despite the distances that separate them. What makes it even more remarkable is the fact that it is based on real events experienced by the film’s own director, infusing the narrative with an additional layer of awe.
As I was starting to get afraid that their connection would, as many of mine were, forever kept in a spiritual realm deeply divided by geographical distance, the two of them decided to meet up! They meet in a lovely hotel room, but deciding to go through the entire experience without looking at each-other – you have to see the movie to understand how they made it happen-and at one point they were sitting back-to-back and describing and drawing one another, without looking.
“I know I’m not even good to myself right now, but I just want this feeling to last a little longer”, is a quote from her that echoes throughout the movie. Both are hurt and can’t seem to forgive themselves for what happened in their pasts, but they finally seem to have caught a break. I have to add that the music was well chosen and I kept listening to it as my background after the movie ended.
And, in the end, came the little black screen with a cute drawing and some text- the beautiful moment that made me tear up a bit. I learned that the entire hotel scenes were spontaneous and that the actors recorded the entire part without ever looking at one another, thus the scenes were genuine and so were their drawing. They first actually saw each-other at the premiere of the move.
It was a beautiful movie, made even better by the fact that I stumbled upon it without planning to, without reading a summary or watching its trailer, like the good old times.
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