Tony Takitani review

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Jun Ichikawa's Haruki Murakami adap is exquisite, but elusive. A small, perfectly formed tale of loneliness and addiction, it succeeds in matching the way the action in Murakami's prose takes place between the lines. The film's essentially a two-hander, with the leads doubling up in four roles. Issei Ogata plays a widower and his lonely son. The former, a trombonist, obsesses over music, while the latter falls for Miyazawa Rie, who turns out to be alarmingly fixated on clothes...

That wispy plot, though, plays second fiddle to mood and meaning. Through slow camera pans, voiceover and Ryuichi Sakamoto's delicate score, Ichikawa weaves a tone poem about distance, kept one remove from reality but so well-modulated it holds you like a trance. It's a slip of a film, perhaps, but the theme of haunting, isolating obsession is suitably ghostly and haunting in itself.

More info

Available platformsMovie
Less

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.