Ame agaru (1999)

Director:

Takashi Koizumi

Writers:

Akira Kurosawa (screenplay)
Shûgorô Yamamoto (short story)

Release Date:

22 January 2000 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Ihei Misawa and his wife Tayo, stranded by rains at a country inn, bring a great deal of happiness to...

Plot Keywords:

Rain | Samurai | River | Ronin | Jidai Geki

Awards:

14 wins & 6 nominations

Cast

Akira Terao	...	Ihei Misawa
Yoshiko Miyazaki	...	Tayo Misawa
Shirô Mifune	...	Lord Nagai Izuminokami Shigeaki
Fumi Dan	...	Okugata
Hisashi Igawa	...	Kihei Ishiyama
Hidetaka Yoshioka	...	Chamberlain Gonnojo Sakakibara
Mieko Harada	...	Okin
Tatsuo Matsumura	...	Sekkyo-Bushi Jii, the Old Preacher
Takayuki Katô	...	Hayato Naitô
Tatsuya Nakadai	...	Tsuji Gettan
Makiya Yamaguchi
Toshihide Wakamatsu
Daisuke Ryû
Bin Moritsuka
Masayoshi Nagasawa

Also Known As:

After the Rain (International: English title)
Après la pluie (France)
When the Rain Lifts (USA) (festival title)
Aharai Ha-Geshem (Israel: Hebrew title) [iw]
Ame agaru (Poland) [pl]
Après la pluie (Canada: French title) [fr]
Depois da Chuva (Brazil) [pt]
Nach dem Regen (Germany) [de]
Sateen jälkeen (Finland) [fi]

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

Japan | France

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

France:U

Company:

7 Films Cinéma

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999) (TV)

Feel-good movie with no edges

I have seen this two days after the exhilarating "Kill", by Okamoto. So ? They both feature a middle-aged ronin with a good heart and an even better sword, inns full of "the good people", poor but industrious, and rather mean and silly clansmen. And pensive wives or wives to be. But Kill is a stylish, funny, irrelevant film, with a wonderful comical Tatsuya Nakadai, whereas Ame agaru fails in almost everything it attempts. The actor playing the ronin has no body tension (all right, that's part of his technique, but it doesn't work on screen. The old master — incidentally played by dear Nakadai — could have taught him a few of his acting tricks.) and there is no chemistry between any of those actors. Shiro Mifune has his papa's voice, but not much more — in this film at least, and the landscapes are filmed with a striking apathy. Worst of all is the drivel about "the good poor people" — so damn condescending. Hadn't Kurosawa had his take on the subject with the great Lower Depths ? And there was no condescension then. For a great film on the Japanese slums (other than Lower Depths, that is), try Humanity and Paper Balloons. And well, feel-good movies are seldom good.