Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | Little White Lies

Blind Wil­low, Sleep­ing Woman

28 Mar 2023

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Pierre Földes

Starring Jesse Noah Gruman, Michael Czyz, and Zag Dorison

Animated figure of a nude woman standing in a dark, forested setting, with mist or fog surrounding her.
Animated figure of a nude woman standing in a dark, forested setting, with mist or fog surrounding her.
3

Anticipation.

The Murakami cinematic spin-off train just keeps on rolling.

3

Enjoyment.

A slight but intriguing exploration of anxiety and erotic fantasy.

3

In Retrospect.

Its themes are a little too softly-spoken to leave a major impact, but an impressively-mounted project.

Pierre Földes’ debut fea­ture is an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of a sev­er­al short sto­ries by cel­e­brat­ed Japan­ese author Haru­ki Murakami.

With the cin­e­mat­ic stock of Japan­ese author Haru­ki Muraka­mi at an all-time high fol­low­ing the Oscar glo­ry enjoyed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Dri­ve My Car, we now have anoth­er adap­ta­tion of a vol­ume of short sto­ries by the painter and film­mak­er Pierre Földes.

The eccen­tric, lacon­ic Blind Wil­low, Sleep­ing Woman is a pas­tel-hued ani­mat­ed patch­work of vignettes which draw togeth­er the ultra mun­dane art of the mean­der­ing one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with var­i­ous fan­tas­ti­cal flights of fan­ta­sy born out of dreams and inte­ri­or pro­jec­tion. The sto­ry takes place in var­i­ous Japan­ese locales, as its var­i­ous lost soul char­ac­ters pon­der their social and sex­u­al hang-ups in antic­i­pa­tion of a cat­a­clysmic earthquake.

Get more Lit­tle White Lies

A port­ly salary­man receives a vis­i­ta­tion from a talk­ing frog head­ing to bat­tle with a giant work; the man’s col­league has been dumped by his wife and heads on a jour­ney of self reflec­tion; a woman tells rum sex­u­al escapade in the great out­doors. The film does well to cap­ture the prob­ing lit­er­ary spir­it of Muraka­mi, even if it doesn’t quite man­age to chan­nel the intense emo­tion­al aspect of its work, instead com­ing across as dry­ly iron­ic and detached. Fans of Richard Lin­klater​’s Roto­scoped dream diary, Wak­ing Life, will be in for a field day, though.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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